how about internet church by email

Looks like another way to do an "internet campus". This article about a church in the United Kingdom that gives "closed captioning" a whole new spin (pun intended):

Voice-to-text church services delivered via email

It's no longer uncommon for churches to offer services online or via streaming video, but a UK church has now begun using voice-to-text technology to convert its live services into text for near-simultaneous delivery via email.

Using technology by SpinVox, St. Christopher’s Church in Hinchley Wood, Surrey, just gave what SpinVox says was the world's first voice-to-text service this past Sunday. Rev. John Kronenberg led the service celebrating the beginning of Advent, and as he spoke to the congregation seated in the church, his words were automatically converted by SpinVox and sent directly to subscribers’ in-boxes in a matter of moments. Some 100 members of St. Christopher’s church received the sermon by email on Sunday, and the next such service will take place on Dec. 21.

I'm going to apologize in advance, since I'm not hearing-impaired, and don't know the sensitivities of being a part of that community. Would this be helpful to some of your church attenders?

-- DJ CHUANG, Director at Leadership Network

Comments

[Chris Huff]

I'm not hearing-impaired, but this would be helpful for me! There have been many occasions where I've missed a Scripture reference or wanted to hear a part of the sermon again. This is an awesome technology. Why haven't we thought of this before?

[dan ohlerking]

definitely checking this one out. love the idea that it's now possible to be legal and twitter-while-driving. but the big potential is in the auto-transcription of sermons. dang that'd be nice.

[Alex Tran]

Very interesting . . . we had a women attend our Internet Campus service a couple weeks ago asking for a service similar to this.

She is hearing impaired, but does not know sign language. So her only option is either to lip read or closed captioning. Since lip reading is hard to do doing service, closed captioning is her best option.

But no churches that I know of CC services live.

I'm wondering if the translation could be displayed near real-time anywhere? Whether that be during service or online?

This could be a potential solution for the hearing impaired. Have a transcript emailed to them as well as a link to download the video. Although this wouldn't provide a real-time church experience, it is better than nothing.

[dan ohlerking]

i discussed this briefly on twitter with @whatleydude (of spinvox) and he said he thinks they will only handle 3 mins max but he's checking on it and will let me know. i don't think there's any way that the UK church in this story only has a three-minute message, so either they do allow longer, or there's a way that the church is stringing several 3-minute segments together.

feels like we are looking at something cool, and on the verge of an even cooler thing.