THERE must be a certain etiquette for chat rooms which, having never visited one before, I was unaware of until it was too late. Worshipping at the world’s first 3D cyberchurch was a liberating experience, one that liberated me too much.

“Ruth be quiet, everyone can hear you,” said one worshipper, just as my computer froze and my on-screen avatar was thrown out of church by a technological glitch. “Have you ever been thrown out of church before?” he asked on my return. “Of course,” I said. “I’m a journalist.”

There were 25 worshippers and another 500 or so “ghosts”, or people who could visit and watch but not take part due to limited bandwidth, in the Church of Fools. Run by the online magazine ShipofFools.com and the Methodist Church, and launched this week at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Esher, Surrey, the project will run for three months and possibly longer if it is a success. The aim is to make worship accessible for people who would never dream of entering a real church.

It was an extraordinary experience, resembling a real church service and yet at the same time being completely different, akin to one of the “out of the body” dreams I used to have. Sitting in front of a computer screen, I quickly identified with the yellow-haired onscreen avatar, a sort of ecclesiastical Lara Croft that had been designed for me by the “creator”, Darrell of specialmoves, who was also in church.

Besides raising my arms and yodelling “Hallelujah!” I could kneel, cross myself, stand up and sit down, walk around, get up into the pulpit, heckle the bishop during his sermon and wander down to the crypt to chat and scrutinise the noticeboards.

The preacher was the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, who had been vested a bit too lowly for his liking.

Bishop Chartres is a princely, patriarchal figure who seems to hail from an earlier age. His nickname in ecumenical circles is “quiverful”, a psalmic reference to the four children he has with his wife Caroline. In real life, he is a man of steel — the steel nib of a fountain pen.

He is one of the Church of England’s greatest spiritual assets. He took to the occasion as a fisherman to his nets. He spoke in the name of Jesus “who commanded us to put out into the deep and let down our nets for a catch”.

Speaking words that appeared in speech bubbles above his head in the pulpit, he said: “We toil in the night of unawareness until we can hear within ourselves the call to cast out into the deep. We begin this venture in the faith that we are called to be participants in a dense web of compassion and meaning that binds together a divine creation.”

He then became almost poetic. “So let us take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea to discover ourselves in the light of the Spirit. Let us use this gift which has been given to our generation to heal and not to hurt.”

Afterwards, he welcomed the venture as clearly a good thing for the Church to be doing, to counter the negative and destructive material on the internet. But he added: “The more we live through screens, the more we need face-to-face encounters. It is obviously very important that there should be a spiritual presence in that world but I do not think it is a total substitute.”

We were now speaking face-to-face. The bishop was right. There is no substitute for the real thing.

A five-star guide

VENUE: The internet

MINISTER: The Rev Jeremy Clines

ARCHITECTURE: Virtually Romanesque. Seven Stations of the cross, beautifully detailed icons for meditation, on the walls, and it contains a basement crypt

SERMON: The bishop drew a clever analogy between the disciples fishing with nets and the Church becoming a fisher of men with the internet

MUSIC: The piped church muzak, which filtered out of my computer speakers, reminded me of being in a shopping centre. Words to hymns appeared on screen but I resisted the temptation to sing along. This bit was too kitsch, even for me

LITURGY: The bishop invited us to use whatever version of the Lord’s Prayer we liked. French, English, Italian and other languages popped up on the screen. I typed: ‘Our Mother, who art in heaven ...’

SPIRITUAL HIGH: It was the most fun I’ve had in church for a long time, although I got a bit carried away with the “hallelujah” button

AFTER-SERVICE CARE: Although it had an online collection plate, to raise money for the dilapidated virtual roof, this church lacked a café. They should set one up, just to see if anyone will make a credit card purchase of an online cup of virtual tea to cradle as they gossip on the benches in the crypt