COOL ANGLICANNIA:

The iGod (Jonathan Petre, 05/08/2005, Daily Telegraph)

The podcast is becoming the Godcast. In a phenomenon which has amazed the clergy, thousands of worshippers are using their iPods to listen to sermons.

While most people use their fashionable portable music players to download their favourite pop tunes from the internet, many are adding a spiritual element to their playlists.

The Rev Leonard Payne, the vicar of a remote parish in Suffolk, has been overwhelmed by the response after he posted some of his homilies on the Apple iTunes store last month.

"We were stunned. Within a short period of time, over 2,400 people had downloaded one of the sermons," he said yesterday.

"The volume was so great we had to change servers and in the last five days of July, over 230 copies of our talks have been delivered, an incredible reaction to the work of a small rural congregation."

Mr Payne, the vicar of St Nicholas in Wrentham, is one of a number of Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy who are harnessing the fashionable technology to reach the young. His church has developed its own website for more adventurous members of the congregation and it includes a selection of his sermons for those who missed the services and wanted to listen at home

But Mr Payne said his church had become the first in England to be able to place the sermons on iTunes, the internet music store.

The vicar said he hoped that the technology would allow the Church to remain in contact with those who were "believers rather than belongers".

He added: "This will not replace church because people have to meet together. But it is a very useful tool."