A World First? Vicar in Surrey To Deliver Electronic Sermon

Posted by Kendall Harmon

An Anglican Parish Church has joined with speech technology company SpinVox so that as the Rev John Kronenberg, vicar of Hinchley Wood in Surrey, delivers his sermon to the congregation his words will be automatically sent to the inboxes of 100 church members.

Mr Kronenberg said: "There are many reasons why people may not be able to make it to Church on a Sunday. They may have to work, or visit families far away, some may have trouble leaving the house if they are elderly or ill and some families can only get to church a couple of times a month because of other commitments, but they still want to keep in touch."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Preaching / Homiletics • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet

4 Comments
Posted November 28, 2008 at 7:42 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. libraryjim wrote:

Sermons at St. Peter’s have been available as MP3 downloads since the parish formed. In fact, all the sermons are still archived and can be accessed at will.

Jim Elliott
Florida

November 28, 11:06 am | [comment link]
2. miserable sinner wrote:

Might want to visit the ‘Anglican Cathedral’ on SecondLife before claiming too many world’s 1sts.  Services are held regularly.

-miserable sinner

November 28, 3:54 pm | [comment link]
3. Jon wrote:

LibraryJim is right.  Christians being able to hear sermons via the internet is not new.  It’s been going on for years now in many places.  Prior to the internet there were these things called “books” where one could access sermons already preached, sometimes sermons preached centuries ago.

I think what the article is trying to claim as a novelty is that AT THE VERY INSTANT the sermon is being preached a written copy is being sent via email to homebound people.  Again, I’m not sure that’s a novelty—it’s been happening via TV in some places for a while—nor why it is significant.  I download sermons myself, but I can’t rushing to my PC to listen to them the moment they are first being preached.

Of course, I’d certainly agree that there is a lot to be said for a group of people all worshipping together at the same time.  That’s why we have sacred spaces and Sunday morning services and regular attendence at a local parish.  But once a person admits to being apart in space, perhaps for very good reasons (like being an invalid, etc.) then it’s unclear why it would be such a big deal to instantly shoot the sermon to them within seconds of the words timbling from the cleric’s lips.

November 28, 3:59 pm | [comment link]
4. jsimnett wrote:

I work for SpinVox and, reading the above comments, I wanted to correct any misunderstanding about why the Rev. Kronenberg’s sermon is a world first and clarify what will happen in Esher on Sunday.  As the sermon is being preached, the actual words being spoken by the minister in the church will be captured by microphone and automatically converted to text by SpinVox during the service.  SpinVox will then send the converted text within minutes as an email to parishioners who are not able to attend church on that day. It is not a situation where a prepared text file of the sermon is sent to the parishioners nor is it an audio recording - it is a live voice-to-text conversion of the actual words said during the sermon which the parishioners can read immediately, consider later or store, forward or even edit as they would do with any email.

November 29, 5:41 am | [comment link]
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