Yesterday I got the news that the Churchbass email list had been shut down. It had been on the cards for a while but the hosting service ended up pulling the plug earlier than expected and so the mailing list is no more.

Churchbass was a community of Christian bassists that was formed in the mid-1990s as an email list. I was an early member and active contributor and became one of the triumvirate of list moderators. It spawned the Deep to Deep events I helped organise in the UK and, as well as online fellowship, there were plenty of face to face meetings generated out of it as well – I met quite a few visitors to the UK and also had a trip the US where a lot of the itinerary was “… and today we’re going to meet a bass player I know”.

The email list had been moribund for sometime. In the 21st century, it is so much easier to connect with people of specialist interests and there is a wealth of material you can browse to learn about all manner of topics. I still fondly remember when the email list was thriving (including the period before I got online at home and used to save message digests onto floppy disk at work to take home and read).

The list is survived by an active Facebook group.