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Making sure your A Church Near You page is up to date is really important.

As always, the Church of England's national campaign will be sending people to the main A Church Near You website.

From there, people can find the relvant pages for our churches and if your details are not there, you will be missing out on attracting potential visitors to your church over Chistmas. 

Remember too that being an A Church Near You editor also gives you access to a whole load of Christmas resources that you can use for free!

A little time invested now could easily see you rewarded with people engaging with you for the first time over Christmas and beyond.

Adding information to ACNY is easy and the functionality is improving all the time. Incumbents are automatically editors of their church’s ACNY pages, but special arrangements are easily put in place for those parishes in vacancy.

People are already planning which events and activities they will attend this festive period so don’t leave it until Advent before updating ACNY – make sure you have access now so you can get everything in place before the seasonal rush!

At the very least:

1. Ensure your contact details are up to date on ACNY. That means an up-to-date telephone number that people can call (if possible) and a link through to your church's website and/facebook page.
2. Make sure your page's welcome message is there and is actually welcoming! Make it invitational and, most importantly, make it relvant to those visitors to the page who may not already be regularly enganed with the Church. We assume people know they arealways welcome in church, but the sad truth is that many don’t realise that or find it intimidating. A genuine, warm, welcome will ease any anxiety.

 Ideally:

1. Post details of all your Christmas services and special events (such as Christmas tree festivals). This makes them searchable and more easily findable by the general public.
2. Use the system's 'tag' facility to make your events stand out even more.
3. Add your other regular services and group activities. If people like what happens at Christmas, they may want to come back – so make it easy for them!
4. Facilitate your facilities! Does your church have toilets? Accessible toilets? Do you serve refreshments? Is it wheelchair friendly? Do you have a hearing loop? It’s all useful information to let first-time visitors know what to expect.
5. Lighten up! Christmas is a time of joy and hope and of giving and sharing, so let your communicatios reflect this and don't be afraid to inject a little humour.

See also:

>> How to become an editor of your A Church Near You page (CofE website)

If you struggle with your A Church Near You page, please contact the Communications Team. (Please note, the Comms team cannot give you access to your page or update it for you, but we can help you get there!)

Want to take this further?

Watch how to use your ACNY page as your main website