115,000
Believers on Christmas Day ’22 in the stream
700,000
Visitors per year
14,000€
Maintenance costs per day
The Berliner Dom (officially: Oberpfarr- und Domkirche zu Berlin) is an important Protestant church. In addition to church services, it is also used for state ceremonies, concerts and other events.
1894-1905
Berlin-Mitte
Religious institutions
Berlin Cathedral App
Berliner Dom – a tourist attraction in the heart of the capital and a place of living faith in one. With the Berliner Dom app, SPRYLAB created a modern channel for one of the largest Protestant churches in Germany that enriches parish life, builds up the digital community beyond the city limits and supports visitors.
The Covid-19 pandemic in the early 2020s presented the congregation and the cathedral collegium with two challenges at once: On the one hand, the coronavirus regulations meant that the usual face-to-face church services and congregational events could no longer take place, or only to a very limited extent, and on the other hand, the number of visitors required to maintain the building fell dramatically.
The cathedral collegium decided to see an opportunity in the crisis and launch new initiatives to digitalise the church. Since March 2020, the congregation has continuously expanded its streaming services and now has highly professional equipment including a studio. Sunday services are streamed via YouTube and other channels. Around 3,000 people around the world join in the celebrations – the digital congregation is constantly growing. Over the Christmas holidays in 2022 alone, 115,000 people used the church’s streaming services, including from Toronto and Beijing.
“However, we then also asked ourselves – particularly in light of our solid digital church growth – what the future of our digital church offering for interested parties could look like,” explains Dr Jan Kingreen, Managing Director of the Berliner Dom.
“In addition to the website as the central medium, we wanted to create additional, low-threshold and modern access for parishioners, church service participants and tourist visitors. An access point that offers interested parties a dynamic church experience when they want it – church on demand, so to speak.” A mobile app was to extend the reach of the Berliner Dom and the congregation and appeal to new target groups. The Berliner Dom collegium decided in favour of SPRYLAB as an experienced and local IT partner to take the next step for its digital church offering.
SPRYLAB supported its client throughout the entire design, realisation and publication process for the Berliner Dom app as part of the church’s digitisation project. With its uncluttered design, the app offers its users clear and intuitive guidance through the various options. SPRYLAB made it available in the app stores just in time for Christmas. “The development as a hybrid app ensured a cost-effective and fast realisation. It dispenses with native services and avoids unnecessary duplication of maintenance work,” explains Anja Schrön, Project Manager at SPRYLAB.
“We were in close dialogue throughout the entire process. It was goal-orientated and agile. Change requests were usually implemented the very next day. An app in ten weeks – that met our expectations in terms of realisation speed,” adds Kingreen, “SPRYLAB’s professionalism throughout the entire process impressed us.”
The entire infrastructure for the app is provided in a highly automated manner via Terraform. Directus runs as the central application on a virtual machine in the cloud. It interacts with third-party tools such as Sendgrid, Twilio, Stripe and Mypostcard. Content is provided by the Berliner Dom website. With admin backend access, employees can manage parts of the app themselves and also import their own specific app content. Stripe takes care of payment processing, for example when a user makes a donation. The architecture also takes data protection issues into account, e.g. the data centre is located in Germany.
The app makes the Berliner Dom a pioneer of the digital church. At the same time, the app manages the balancing act between marketing Berlin Cathedral as a tourist attraction and providing services for the existing congregation and the growing digital church community.
“What we are doing here is not a gimmick. We have to be interested in how people want to experience church today. We want to realise the church experience in the 21st century. People should celebrate church services when it suits them. We are breaking up static structures and moving towards ‘on demand’,” summarises the Managing Director. The feedback from users encourages those responsible on their path: “So far, we have only received positive feedback about the app.“
The app allows you to take part in church services via video stream or donate to the congregation’s causes. But it also offers visitors the opportunity to buy tickets for concerts or book a sightseeing tour. Users can receive reminders about current events or light a digital candle for people who are close to their hearts. This was a response to a frequently expressed wish from members of the congregation.
The digital candle is a tool for charity and care that may seem unusual at first glance because it is virtual. It allows people to receive comfort and encouragement by email, text message or WhatsApp, even when there is no time for a face-to-face conversation. “We use the best of digital technology to fulfil our age-old need for intercession and togetherness in the 21st century,” summarises Kingreen.
In all of this, the app does not replace the traditional church service. Rather, it becomes a complementary element. A hybrid world of faith is emerging: Digital church meets physical church. Through the app, people can become participants within the digital church – who can also support the services offered by Berlin Cathedral financially.
Version 1.0 is the first version available. But of course the app’s possibilities are not yet exhausted. “We have now created a basis for maintaining permanent contact with our existing and growing digital community and our visitors. We have opened the door to digital community life a little further,” says the Managing Director. However, he is not stopping at what has been achieved, but is already looking to the future. Additional information or visitor services can easily be integrated into the app. There are plenty of ideas for this: “In the next step, we could integrate further tourist services and offer our audio guide via the app, for example.”
Berliner Dom is one of Berlin’s most outstanding sights. 700,000 tourists visit the cathedral, where the Prussian kings are buried, every year and use their entrance fees to finance the maintenance of the cathedral – the upkeep of the listed building costs €14,000 every day. But the cathedral is more than just a tourist attraction. As a parish and cathedral church, it is also the centre of a lively Protestant community in the heart of Berlin. This means that 200,000 other visitors enjoy church services and regular concerts, including the cathedral choir.
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