By ACNS staff
The Anglican Communion has a brand new website that, at its heart, aims to promote communion among Anglicans and Episcopalians everywhere.
The new-look anglicancommunion.org is the second of two websites designed and launched by the Anglican Communion Office's (ACO) Communications Department - the first being anglicannews.org.
The outgoing Director for Communications Jan Butter said he was pleased and proud to have been able to launch such a comprehensive and easy-to-use site.
"The genesis of these websites stretches back five years when we worked to produce a look and feel for all ACO products that spoke of a modern Christian faith community steeped in tradition with people at the centre.
"We used that as the jumping off point for these sites and asked: 'How can we use websites to demonstrate the richness of Anglican Communion life and ministry around the world?', 'How could we provide tools to help Anglicans and Episcopalians benefit from and celebrate being part of a global family?'
"With the plethora of stories and multimedia resources on anglicannews.org and the Vacation Exchange, prayer wall and theologian database on the main site, I honestly think we've achieved that."
The ACO's Communications Department, comprising Jan Butter and Michael Ade, worked with the team at Zebedee Creations to create two user-friendly, easy to navigate, sites.
New features include the Vacation Exchange, formerly the Episcopal Vacation Exchange Network run by Episcopal priest Revd Ken Howard, which offers Anglican Communion church workers and clergy the chance to swap homes for free during the holidays, saving them both vacation accommodation costs.
The prayer wall is social media enabled so people really can 'share for prayer', and the Theologian Database now showcases the best theologians the Anglican Communion has to offer.
"We couldn't have done it all without the financial support of the Compass Rose Society and the Church Missions Publishing Company," said Mr Butter. "I am genuinely grateful for their willingness to back what many people thought was an overambitious plan.
"Thanks to the hard work of Michael, Zebedee Creations and the generosity of our funders, we now have two top-class communication tools that will serve the Anglican Communion well for years to come."
Note: Further enhancements to the website will be added in the coming weeks.