According to statistics, there are churches in America that can register an attendance of over 2,000 congregants in a single church service.
What does this imply?
That in order for each and every member of the church to listen to and internalize the sermon, they will have to be hyper-attentive.
Imagine attending such a large church and you happen to be seated in the back seat. As the preacher delivers the sermon, a question crosses your mind, one that requires urgent intervention. But since it may take you forever to reach the preacher and pose your question, you opt to sight tight with it.
Well, there are very many such cases where a critical question goes unaddressed simply because you cannot draw the preacher’s attention.
Much of the problem arises from the traditional practice whereby most churches deliver unanticipated sermons.
As a congregant, you are left guessing as to what the preacher meant and without a deep insight of the Bible, you may lose the sermon altogether.
So, how can we help these unpleasant situations from occurring?
The solution lies in transcribing the sermon. In this post, we shall discuss why churches ought to transcribe their sermons.
5 Reasons for Transcription in Churches
Saves Time
This is indeed the most common reason why churches should transcribe their sermons.
In a normal course of sermon delivery, there are often so many questions that arise in the mind of congregants.
These may be fundamental questions touching on the gospel or those specifically touching on a point the man of God is trying to pass across.
And like any student of the Bible, such questions need to be addressed as conclusively as possible.
But like we have already mentioned, it may be very difficult to get the pastor to address them when the sermon is in progress.
There are two possible reasons for this.
- First, most churches, such as the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, do not allow questions to be posed to the preacher mid-sermon. This means you will have to wait till the sermon is over, and is if you are still lucky to get hold of the preacher.
- Another reason is that the question may be a little off-topic but still somewhat connected to the sermon being delivered.
Therefore, it could set the preacher back a few minutes trying to clarify it.
This is where sermon transcription services come in handy.
If the congregation already know what to expect out of a sermon, they can prepare their questions in good time and submit them to the preacher before the sermon begins.
Reading is more personal
Indeed, not only is reading faster than listening, it also comes with some personal appeal.
When you read something yourself, you are likely to internalize it better than if it was spoken to you, and less so if it was spoken to a large audience.
As you read through the sermon, you are likely to read between the lines.
As a result, you will be able to pick up grey areas and bookmark them for further reading and also pick up issues with certain texts and seek clarification on them as soon as you can.
Even better, you will be able to scan through the document and derive the main points.
If you are taking notes, you can note down these main points and follow along as the man of God expounds on them.
This way, the church will garner more members because it will be easier for each and every member of the congregant to understand the sermon on their own.
Time will also be saved since the preacher can also focus on the main points and forego the nitty-gritty of the sermon.
Accessibility
Another reason to convert audio to text as far as church sermons go is for accessibility purposes.
It is important to remember that a sermon once delivered, does not end there. Instead, the message should be made as accessible as possible.
But there is a problem!
However, interesting or touching a sermon was, it may never be presented in the same manner even if it were delivered by the same pastor.
Therefore, anyone wishing to get their hands on such a sermon might only rely on third-party narrations.
And as you probably already know, the message might get a little distorted as it passes from the main preacher to other narrators.
Thanks to transcription services, the sermon can be made available to as many people as possible.
Those that did not go to church on the said day can get their hands on the sermon and keep up.
Even better, the printed copies can be used for televangelism at a later date.
It will be very easy to deliver the message since you would only be referring to your notes.
Taking Care Of The Disabled
A typical church draws its audience from far and wide.
There are the rich and the poor, the young and the old and most notably, the able-bodied and those living with one form of disability or another.
One of the worst forms of disability include blindness and deafness
However, the gospel deserves to reach all and sundry regardless of their disability conditions.
The World-Health Organization states that up to 5 percent of the world’s population are auditory-impaired.
So, it is not unusual to find hard-of-hearing Christians as part of a church congregation.
It can be very insensitive on the part of a church to simply overlook such groups of people simply because everyone else can keep up.
One way to ensure that these sensitive segments of the church are catered to is through transcribing audio to text.
They can then read and follow through. If at all possible, there should be a braille system to take care of the visually impaired as well.
Transcribed Sermons Are Marketable
Transcribed sermons can be repurposed in vary many ways and marketed as part of the church’s televangelism campaigns.
There are so many churches that now have some form of online presence. This could be in the form of blogs, official websites or social media platforms.
A transcribed sermon can be posted on such platforms for marketing purposes.
People searching on relevant information can easily get their hands on such a sermon.
And in order to make it more interactive, you could even add images, video captions, screenshots and infographics.
Here, you may have to hire the services of professional SEO specialists and have them carefully pitch the sermon in a manner that it becomes discoverable by web crawlers.
Apart from posting the sermon online, it can also be repurposed into newsletters.
These newsletters can then be sent out to members of the church for further digestion in the course of the week ahead.
Evidently, there are so many reasons why any church would consider transcribing their sermon.
As a general rule, always have a professional do all your sermon transcriptions. And when looking for such a company, look no further than transwriter.com.
Our transcription services are not only professionally-delivered, but are also fairly priced. Give us a call today for all your sermon transcription services.
