The Ten Commandments may have come down from the mountain on tablets of stone but one English church is putting tablets to a very different use.
St John’s Church in Mickleover, Derbyshire, has become the first in the UK to swap hymn books for tablets as the congregation went digital for Sunday worship.
The UK’s first ever digital service was held this morning at St John’s Church in Mickleover, Derbyshire, with the entire congregation connected to a Wi-Fi network.
Amazingly the worshippers were not told in advance about what was happening in case going hi-tech would put them off from attending.
However in the end they all gave a massive thumbs up to being able to see the hymns and readings on iPads and other hand held devices.
The initial idea for the digital service came to allow some of the older members of the congregation see the words of the hymns more easily.
While a traditional hymnal may be difficult to read, it is easy to zoom the text in and out on a tablet to get it at the size you want to suit your eyesight.
Church curate Rev Alun Rowlands told the Daily Mail: “The church leadership team is really keen to make our services as accessible as possible.
“At the same time we are keen to use audio visual technologies by projecting our liturgy and songs on to large screens.
‘The two aims seemed to be in tension until we had Wi-Fi installed and began experimenting to replicate the exact content onto individual tablets for those with visual impairment of differing kinds.
‘We are delighted with the progress so far and look forward to see how we can develop things further.”
The church worked with networking company The Cloud, which donated a number of tablet computers, to implement the futuristic idea.
Church member Stephen Templer, who helped set up the equipment, said it was a huge success.
The idea for the hi-tech service came from fellow churchgoer Paul Gribbin and Simon was on hand to ensure it all went off smoothly.
Simon said: “We have computer support and training for our parishioners every Monday and this is just a natural progression from that.
“Young people, families and our older parishioners all said they really enjoyed using the tablets and we want to incorporate technology more and more into church activities.”
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Pictures: © Colin Haxall. Reproduced with kind permission.
