One of the finest examples of powerful religious oration is Mother Teresa’s 1994 sermon at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Through this sermon, the Nobel Peace Prize winner offered strong opinions and inspired the audience with her words of faith. You can watch the video, available on YouTube, if you need inspiration and have half an hour to spare. But if you don’t, how else might you get the essence of her sermon quickly and easily?
You could read transcripts. Sermon transcripts allow an audience to scan sermons for key points and compelling phrases. They make sermons easily accessible and enable those who are deaf or hard of hearing to enjoy the message, too.
Transcripts deliver these benefits and more. But should you be the one to transcribe the sermons you deliver? If you’re interested in efficiency or in having more time to write your sermons, probably not. Instead, rely on a transcription service to transcribe your audio to text.
Preparing a sermon takes long enough. You have to determine its purpose. You have to compile notes and relevant scriptures, craft an introduction and conclusion, integrate examples and quotations, and inspire unity with your words. After writing your sermon, you have to practice and refine your delivery. These are the tasks you should focus on. A professional transcriptionist can handle preparing sermon transcripts for you.
A reliable transcription service will save you vast amounts of time. People often underestimate (sometimes severely) the time it takes to prepare a detailed sermon transcript. A sermon you deliver in forty minutes could take a transcriptionist up to four hours to convert to text, including transcribing, formatting, and proofreading. Your time is better spent making your sermon more powerful.
A service that specializes in sermon transcripts will produce an accurate text that audiences can enjoy at their own pace whenever they want. They can save the transcript for later reference or share it with family members and friends, putting your words in front of more people.
Don’t try to take on too much. Invest wisely in services such as sermon transcription that can save you time and allow you to focus on what’s most important—writing and delivering your sermon.