Journal
Sermon Cloud
1 September 2006 › 8 comments
If you’re the type who appreciates good preaching, I would encourage you to check out Sermon Cloud. If you have not yet heard about it, allow me to attempt to summarize. It is part podcasting site, part social networking, part tag cloud, and part Digg (minus the annoying users). Confused yet? Don’t be. It’s really quite simple. You, or someone you know, uploads his or her sermon as an MP3 file, with an optional PDF manuscript or message notes.
Sermon Cloud then converts the MP3 to an appropriate compression level, saving you having to optimize it. So, for those who have a church sound board, just save the audio and then the site does the rest. It also adds it to an RSS feed so that people know your sermon has been uploaded. This way, they can add it to their playlist, and download it directly into iTunes for listening on their computer or take on the road in an iPod.
Additionally, there is a Flash based streaming media player built right into the site, so if you feel like listening to a sermon from a kiosk without downloading anything, that too is an option. After listening to a sermon, you can indicate that you liked it by adding an Amen. This process is much like digging an article, adding to its popularity so that others know it is a good one. It may seem funny, but I like the lighthearted tone, as is evident by the t-shirt.
You can also tag each sermon with relevant details. For instance, a sermon on the book of First John could be tagged with 1 John, as opposed to the gospel of John, to avoid confusion between two similarly named books. This constitutes the Bible cloud. Additionally, people can add tags for any topic, such as community, faith and prayer. This makes for the Sermon cloud, which is where the site gets its name. The number of tags added then of course makes the words increase in size within their respective clouds.
This site isn’t pulling any punches either, delving into the nitty-gritty of our society, covering topics such as: sex, sin, social justice and even the taboo of pornography. The cool thing is, none of these categories are pre-defined, so what you see on the site is geared to be a representative cross-section of the user demographic. If a particular topic is being tagged often, it means that people are preaching about that more. If it takes off, it could be a way to keep tabs on the pulse of our culture, checking the spiritual temperature.
Overall, I am very impressed with this site’s functionality, and am excited to see how it fares. It is a testament to the versatility of the CMS which runs it: Ekklesia360. I think this site will be a great way for churches to let the rest of the world know about them, instead of having sermons localized only to a particular church site. That’s enough from me, go visit Sermon Cloud.
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 Etienne
Thanks for the write up on Sermon Cloud. The site is as you describe with the one tiny exception that sermons don’t actually have to be tagged with a book of the Bible. When a sermon is uploaded the publisher can specify the passages from which the sermon was preached and that automatically helps build the Bible Cloud.
It’s fun because the other day I started reading through 2 Kings and thought that some perspectives on 2 Kings would be interesting and so I went to the Bible Cloud and found some very cool sermons on Elisha in 2 Kings.
#2 Jonathan E
Nathan, the site seems like a great resource and looks like it’s got quite a lot of content so far. Any idea how long this site has been running for?
The search didn’t seem to work very well for me; it just hung with the loading image spinning ‘round and ‘round.
I also liked the lighthearted tone of the site, and the Amens made me laugh when I first saw them. :)
#3 Aaron
Very cool. How did you find this site…and are there more like this?
#4 Nathan Smith
Etienne: Oops, my mistake. That’s cool how people can tag their own stuff, even before they upload it. It’s also funny how things can get mixed up, but I guess that’s just a drawback of the tagging concept in general.
Jonathan / Aaron: This site is fairly new. I have been sort of watching it progress for awhile now, but only recently got the green light to talk about it from Drew Goodmanson, one of the lead developers for Ekklesia360. As far as I know, it is the only site for this particular niche of online sermons.
#5 Matthew Pennell
“Sermon Cloud then converts the MP3 to an appropriate compression level, saving you having to optimize it.”
I read that as “compassion level” initially – is there anything you can’t do with Web 2.0?
#6 Nathan Smith
Matthew: That would be pretty cool if it were possible, as I have heard some pretty dry sermons in my lifetime, many of them while at seminary.
#7 Josh
Wow, sweet resource! I had no idea such a thing existed. I hope more great Christ centered projects like this arise. Thanks for sharing!
#8 Matt Heerema
This site is going to be an awesome resource. (I’m a little biased right now because we’re pumping content into it…) I can’t wait to see what happens when the public really starts using it.