Church services now available through iPods

• Maya Elmer is 84 years old, and when health problems arise she has been known to skip church.
• She misses the fellowship and the spiritual release that comes with sitting in the pews alongside kindred spirits, but she never misses the Sunday sermon.
• Thanks to podcasting or "godcasting," as the technology is called in cyberspace, Elmer downloads the sermon on her computer and listens to the religious messages in the privacy of her Berkeley home.
• "The older I get, sometimes I don't make it on Sundays. I can't walk very well or my blood pressure goes up or whatever," said Elmer, a long-time member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. "It really comes in handy. It's really delightful to hear the minister's voice coming off the speakers of my computer."
• A fast-growing phenomenon that took off less than a year ago, podcasting allows users to automatically download audio files on religion, travel, technology, music, health and fitness and hundreds of other subjects from the Internet to an iPod or other personal MP3 player.
• Already popular technology, researchers predict that MP3 players will be in 12.3 million households in the next five years, according to Forrester Research.
• Podcasting is basically a radio-style show put out over the Internet. That means, worshippers can catch their Sunday church sermon in the car during Monday morning rush-hour traffic or on the treadmill at the gym after work.
• And there are plenty of religious podcasts to choose from. Last summer, podcastalley.com listed roughly 170 religious and spiritual podcasts on its site. A recent check showed that number has jumped to more than 600 religious-based podcasts.
• "I think it's an expansion rather than a replacement of the service and other (parts of church)," said James Schinnerer, a 32-year-old Albany man who uses podcasting when he can't get to church.
• "I think it's the future ... it's another way to reach people and keep members connected and allow people who are looking for a new church to get a better idea of its philosophy," he said.
• It's also a great public relations tool, said the Rev. Christopher Craethnenn, the new 29-year-old minister of religious education at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley (www.uucb.org/podcast).
• "One of the things the liberal church is trying to learn from (those) in more conservative circles is how to do outreach. When your faith isn't grounded in evangelism, it's harder to bring people in. Our religion is really grounded in free exploration so we work really hard to bring people into our circles," said Craethnenn.
• Along with Craethnenn, co-ministers Barbara Hamilton-Holway and Bill Hamilton-Holway will be featured in the future podcasts, along with community ministers, seminarians and lay people in the congregation. The church has some 500 members and the trend seems to be catching on quickly.
• "We have 10 to 30 people a day who are downloading the sermons," said Brett Hamilton, a listener who also helps the church with its podcasting technology.
• Hamilton, 29, moved from Berkeley to Portland, Advertisement but he still listens to his former pastor's message on his Apple laptop.
• "I was really surprised about the impact it had," he said. "It was like 'Wow, this is like being at church.'"
• Although podcasting is becoming increasingly popular in the liberal, technology-savvy Bay Area and along the West Coast, the trend is popular in other parts of the nation and in China, England, South Africa and elsewhere around the globe.
• In the Netherlands, Dutch podcaster the Rev. Roderick Vonhogen began podcasting while paying his respects to the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in Rome. Now he has a reported 10,000 listeners at catholicinsider.com and distributes messages on a wide range of subjects, including the underlying religious themes in the "Star Wars" movies and the biblical and Christian symbols and themes in Harry Potter books.
• The Rev. Tim Hohm of the Central Assembly in El Sobrante distributed an initial podcast by way of a Christmas message last December. Now his 15-minute weekly addresses are heard at home and in England, South Africa, Australia and China.
• "At first had 10 or 15 subscribers," he said. "Then it jumped to nearly 1,000 and now I have 6,000 per week who download the program."
• Hohm, who speaks about marriage and family, controlling anger in the workplace, leadership, long-term life goals and how to get along with your children does not see podcasting as a replacement for the Sunday sermon.
• "If you are on vacation or want a bit of an inspiration for the day, that is what it's out there for," he said.
• Researchers and scholars agree.
• "I do not see it as a substitute for going to church. People go to church to congregate with other people," said Steve Jones, professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has written books about the Internet, related technologies and their cultural significance and use.
• "One of the big knocks against podcasting is it's not at all interactive," Jones said.
• Craig Detweiler, an associate professor of mass communication at Biola University, a private Christian school in La Mirada in Southern California, said he has "mixed feelings" about godcasting.
• "For people who cannot get to church for various reasons, this is a great option. But it will always be a poor substitute for joining the faith community in person. Surely, the church experience is about more than a message. We are always better off together than flying solo. Godcasting is a supplement, not a substitute for weekly worship," Detweiler said.
• But Berkeley's Elmer is sold. "When I turn on the computer and the speakers, its sort of like a magic miracle to have the minister's voice coming into my house."