Have ot say that wigan council recycling is pretty rubbish. HAve moved from Leicester where LOADS of stuff was recycled but now  I collect it in a big box under the work surface and once a week when I go to (Horwich) Tesco, I recycle it there or make a trip to Tyldsley or other recycle centre.

In the spirit of being a green Christian does anyone have any recycling tips they wish to share? I heard about a brilliant website called www.Freecycle.org where you can offer for free stuff you've finished with but don't want to end up in landfill so that other people can collect it and get further use out of it. You can also request things you want if you have a specific need. The only conditions are it needs to be legal and free to a good home. Your offers are emailed initially to the local Leigh group and then can be posted on other local groups websites if there are no takers. This helps to save the environment further by reducing the miles people have to come and collect the item. I thought it was a great idea if your local charity shop can't take any items you have. Any other good ideas?

Is anyone else finding that they have to log onto the site and then again onto the forum? Perhaps this is discouraging people from posting?

Has anyone else been watching that Secret millionaire programme on Sunday nights on More 4? For those who haven't a millionaire goes to live in a deprived area with a view to finding people/projects they can help by giving some of their own money. They obviously keep their identity/wealth a secret during the 10 days they are there and have to live on the same money as the people they are hoping to help. There have been quite a lot of Christians on the programme who have welcomed and helped the under cover millionaire to settle in and have ended up receiving help with their projects and I have found it to be a very encouraging and heart warming programme. If you've seen it have their been any stories that particularly touched you and are there any lessons we could learn as a church from it?

I agree Eric. The hot topics thingy on the opening page did sort of entice you into the forum and you could see instantly if someone had replied to your post. Please dear moderator can we make it so?

Hi Simone

The Forum doesn't seem to have taken off. I generally do quick entries from work but I don't find this new forum as prominent, intuitive or easy to use. Because of that I can't just pop on as I used to.

I don't know why it doesn't feel as easy to use - maybe I just need to get used to it.

From what I can remember the old forum had a scrolling list box on the home page showing all the latest post headings - it kind of wetted your appetite. Maybe the new website should employ this?

I have tried to list 2 new links in the resources section in the last few months for Tearfund and Activate but since Evan left the links have not been established. I don't think these links are particularly controversial so I assume that no one is approving them at present. Does anyone know how we get links approved now and is there someone in charge of things like this on the website now?

Things have got so bad on the website that I've had to start replying to myself. Is there anyone else there?  Surely other people have some more exciting things to say. There is no point in having a beautiful and flashy website if no one uses it.

I was reading an article in Idea (The Evangelical Alliance) magazine this week about internet evangelism day on 29/4/07 and how other churches are using their websites to reach out to the internet community. There are some suggestions at www.internetevangelismday.com and in the magazine. I think our website is excellent and looks really attractive but are there ways we could make it even better or could we use this date as an opportunity to advertise the website better both to the community in Leigh and the church community? Anybody got any good topics for discussion which could be helpful to other people to answer difficult questions or help people going through similar situations?

I wondered if it could be possible to have a couple of new sections in the website. One would be a prayer area where people could post prayer requests for people to pray for. I would commit to pray for these weekly so at least we could guarentee that these would be prayed for regularly. Another section that I thought could be useful is a campaigns section where requests from eg tearfund, oxfam or jubilee debt campaign could be posted with links so that a wider number of people could respond from the church eg by emailing their MP as part of a social action campaign. I thought these might be better in separate sections as they could get lost in the discussion and aren't really for discussion anyway. What do other people think? Are there any other sections we could have?