A couple of weeks ago, I shared on my WordPress blog how I’d started experimenting with reveal.js (a web-based presentation framework) for sharing online worship. At the time, it was an experiment. I was curious whether something designed for conference talks and tech demos could work as a simple, elegant way to offer liturgy, readings, and reflection online.

It did. It more than worked—it became a space. A chapel. Not in the traditional sense, but something that still invited stillness, participation, and contemplation. People clicked through, prayed through, and I kept learning.

Since then, I’ve taken things a step further. I’ve set up a custom url:onlinechapel.uk. It’s now the home for these worship slides, gently animated and quietly scriptural. But what’s made the process more interesting (and at times frustrating) is that I’ve been learning how to build and maintain all this using the command line.

Confessions of a Cleric at the Terminal

I have to admit that this is not coming naturally. I am much more comfortable with GUIs than a command line. Every computer I’ve used seriously since the mid-1980s has had one. I don’t have any nostalgic hankering for terminal windows with blinking cursors. But when I started thinking more seriously about how this project could live independently, outside of commercial platforms, without unnecessary clutter or distractions, I realised I needed to understand the tools behind the screen.

So I started using Git. I learned how to push changes to GitHub from the terminal. I got a domain name and configured DNS records (with only mild panic). I used a “static site generator” and began to understand how ssh access works. Somewhere along the way I even started to understand what a “bash script” does, though I’ve not actually written one of my own yet.

And here’s the surprising thing: the command line isn’t just a place for technical incantations—it’s oddly contemplative. You focus. You type deliberately. There are fewer distractions than a GUI, fewer shiny buttons to click. It turns out, writing code in Vim and building worship slides in markdown have something in common: both are about stripping things down to essentials.

Sacred Simplicity

The new Online Chapel isn’t flashy. It’s intentionally minimal. It opens with a title and a line of scripture. You press the right arrow key. You move through the service. There are no sign-ups, no analytics, no autoplaying videos. Just words, timing, and presence.

Behind it, though, is a quiet framework of open-source code, version control, and hand-crafted HTML. It’s not magic. It’s just simple tools being used prayerfully.

And maybe that’s the point.

I’m still learning. Every time I touch the terminal, I have to Google at least three things. But I’m learning to build digital space the way I’ve learned to lead worship: not perfectly, but attentively.