A few years after joining The Times in 1987, I began a weekly column called At Your Service. It ran for more than ten years. I rarely missed a week. It involved visiting a different church, and sometimes a mosque, Sikh or Hindu temple or synagogue, or even a Buddhist sangha, and awarding stars out of five.

These would be for architecture, music, liturgy, the sermon or talk, after-service care and spiritual high. The column was great fun, both to do and to write, and generated a lot of reader response. It also led to a book, At A Service Near You, that reproduced the first couple of years of columns without the star ratings.

The best thing about it for me was that it got me out into the worshipping communities of all faiths. Week after week, I found out what was going on at the grass roots. I soon learned what worked and what didn't, how important the welcome was, how off-putting a cold building could be, how necessary a cup of tea was after 90 minutes of icy Prayer Book worship in a draughty medieval country outpost.

Many memories stand out. Once I was at a cathedral in the south, singing along lustily as I like to do. The frosty looks from in front, beside and behind chilled me to the bone. The cathedral is meant to be one of the best in the country, but I've never dared go back.

Another time, I was at a Church of England parish in south London where all around, the congregation was being "slain in the spirit". I began to grow dizzy and the room span around me. I ran for my life, and again have never been back. Then there was the mosque where, more than a decade ago, I heard a chilling, radical sermon extolling damnation on all things British. I assumed it was an aberration and thought little of it.

There was the Sikh temple where I was fed with mouth-watering Asian food and was lulled by sweet-sounding drummed music and rhythmic readings from scriptures. And there were the many synagogues, where I sat in the ladies' galleries and read the Torah, the prophets and the psalms, and pored over the accompanying commentaries while the sublime beauty of the cantor's Hebrew filled the air.

The column came to a natural end with the advent of the Internet. Churches began audio-streaming and then video-streaming services. Suddenly, worlds that had been little known beyond the practising members of a faith or denomination were opened to all by the Internet. Mystery Worshipper, which was begun by Ship of Fools a few years after I started At Your Service and was inspired by the retail background of one of the site's founders, Stephen Goddard, was in effect an Internet-friendly incarnation of my column. Stephen was able to call on legions of church visitors, and the format was well-adapted to online. My little contribution was made redundant. But I did not mind. I returned to doing news full time, and was for the first time in years able to start going to a regular church of my own.

That was what I had missed most, being part of a community. That was the longing I felt each time I visited a thriving church or synagogue. I wanted to know everyone there and to be part of that group. Those years of visiting others' churches and synagogues have made me really appreciate my own church in a way I could never have done before. I don't miss the column, but it was a privilege to have the chance to do it for all that time.