LONDON (RNS) The Lord's Prayer -- which could easily be the most translated passage in all literature -- has now been translated into the language of the text message, the highly abbreviated form of English adopted by mobile phone users.

It is the first step in devising an entire church service in text message format, to be launched at the Greenbelt arts and music festival for young people to be held in Cheltenham next month. The aim is to bring Christianity to a generation too busy to go to church.

The project meant compressing a text of 372 characters to 160 or fewer without losing anything important. The final version was devised by a history student at York University, Matthew Campbell, and reads:

"dad(at)hvn, ursphl.we want wot u want&urth2b like hvn.giv us food&4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uvaz.don't test us!save us!bcos we kno ur boss, ur tuf&ur cool 4eva!ok?"