SATURDAY was without doubt the biggest day of 2009 for the Diocese of St Albans, but it was also arguably the biggest day of the year for the district.

With the Christian world watching on, it was important that our historical city stepped up to the plate and welcomed the tenth Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Reverend Alan Smith, in a manner befitting his role.

The weather played its part and hundreds lined the streets to welcome what was the first Church of England appointment of 2009.

It was wonderful to see such a spectacular turn-out for a Bishop who could be on the verge of changing the way the Church of England is seen by a generation which cares more about hulu, Flickr, BeBo, Twitter, digg and orkut than religion.

In January we revealed that Bishop Smith was the first to announce his appointment via YouTube.

So could this collaboration of clergy and modern networking websites lead to a rise in interest in religion for today’s youth? The Church certainly hopes so.

I was actually brought up as a Catholic. I was baptised, took my First Holy Communion and my Confirmation.

But when I was given the choice of continuing to attend Church on a Sunday morning or playing Sunday league football with my mates, I chose the latter.

I did not feel connected with the church. I prayed every night, mainly because I was worried what might happen if I stopped. I also spoke to the Almighty when the not so mighty Spurs were losing at half time (quite often then – yes I have heard them all before) but that was about it.

Religion was not cool. And by the time I had stopped attending a Catholic school, it did not seem worth mentioning.

But the Church of England could be about to make religion appealing to today’s youth through web-savvy Bishops like the Rt Reverend Alan Smith.

Bishop Smith’s YouTube clip peaked at number 75 in the most watched news and politics section. When you consider that 13 hours of video are uploaded to the website every minute, that is not bad at all.

His three-minute broadcast was watched by almost 3,000 people in just the first few days.

Bishop Smith said he wanted to “engage with the world” and during an interview in January reminded our reporter how important men of the cloth were to media in the UK during the earlier days of broadcasting.

For decades clergy have regularly been on air and the BBC has broadcast religious programmes for 80 years. There is a market out there, but can social networking help religion break boundaries? Will teenagers stop watching Rev Run on MTV and tune in to find out more about the Rt Reverend Smith? Who knows, but approaching people in this manner will make some want to watch, just to see what he has to say.

If the number of Facebook users was a country, only China, India and the USA would have larger populations.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and more than 100,000,000 video clips have been uploaded.

Just by using these sites Bishop Smith, 51, has made the Church of England more appealing to a huge global audience that television and radio simply cannot reach.

Again in January Bishop Smith said: “Modern technologies might help us to connect with groups which we find hard to reach – such as younger men. The YouTube statistics show that two-thirds of those watching my video are men and in the first 48 hours after its launch 20 per cent were between 13 and 24.”

Now what if five per cent of that 20 per cent decide that as a result of this clip, they want to attend church? What if they feel they finally have an association with a religion that they used to laugh about in the playground with their friends?

Could we even see congregations downing their hymn books and cyberspace flocks downloading the latest service podcasts? God knows, but just three years ago I laughed at the prospect of newspapers letting their own websites dictate how they report news. Now we operate a web-first news desk where reporters upload every single story directly to our website. They no longer have desks and all work from their respective patches via laptops, mobile phones and video cameras.

St Albans should be proud to have the first Anglican bishop to use YouTube as its own and now the Archbishop of Canterbury has even posted films in an attempt to reach a younger audience.

Bishop Smith deserves credit for taking a gamble which could easily have been attacked or criticised by those who would prefer the word of the lord to be spread via newsletters and Bible classes.

Time will tell whether or not today’s teenagers can be drawn to religion via social networking sites. However, one thing is certain: it is fitting that a city steeped in such historical richness as St Albans should be at the forefront of such a campaign .