Crossring
Crossring was a website aimed at young Christians that I established and ran for many years, in several different formats.
Crossring was originally established in 2000. I had previously edited a couple of Christian newspapers for young people, one of which proved very popular. In discussion with friends at university, and after much prayerful consideration, I launched Crossring. The site published regular Bible-focused articles, and even featured a very busy discussion forum. With very little else like it on the internet, Crossring became incredibly successful, and at its height received in excess of 2.5 million unique visitors every month. We continued to run the site after graduation, but soon found it too much of a struggle to maintain the site when we all had full time jobs. Reluctantly, we took the decision to close the site round about 2005.
In 2009, I was approached by one of my pupils who wanted some advice on starting a website for young Christians. After much discussion, we decided to work together on relaunching Crossring, with a focus on good quality, original, Biblically focused material. Whilst never reaching the success the site experienced in the early part of the decade, Crossring quickly established itself as a friendly and reputable web presence. In this format the site ran until 2012, remaining online until 2014 when it was finally shuttered.
Still convinced that I had a calling to write Biblical content for the internet, I set up ReadMarkLearn.com, a website to host all of my previous writing as well as a vehicle for any future writing that I undertook. ReadMarkLearn.com ran until the end of 2014 when I decided to revive the Crossring ‘brand’ to take the place of ReadMarkLearn. So it was that at the beginning of 2015, Crossring was reborn in its third incarnation. Crossring lasted in this form until 2023, when the content was moved to the more self-explanatory domain Biblenotes.co.uk, and finally to this website.
You can now access all of the content that I produced for Crossring, plus other Bible-related content, reflections and sermons, in the Faith Channel of this website.
The Crossring cross emblem, as shown at the top of this page, is from a photo by Joachim S. Müller, and used with permission. The cross itself is at Derrynane Abbey, a 6th century abbey in County Kerry, the Republic of Ireland.
