Creating content for your church can be a chore. Especially if you’re in between major liturgical events (Christmas, Easter, etc…). However, there is one source of content that is constant, the sermon.
The sermon can be a source of content for your church social media channels for an entire week. If you have a pastor who’s willing to have their sermon transcribed and a little patience to work out the process, you’re on your way to great content. Here’s how to get started:
Third Party or Volunteer
The most cost efficient and best method for transcribing is using a volunteer. If you can find someone from within the church who’s willing to help out with this, that’s a huge win for you. This is for two reasons, first they will have a vested interest in making sure it’s accurate. Second, they were there when the sermon was delivered so they can go ahead and adjust for oddites that might come across if it was a straight audio transcription.
There are a lot of third party services you can use (a quick google search will show you this), however you will need to test drive them before you make a long term commitment. Also be aware that some of these services might not use staff that are not native english speakers. This could lead to ocassional errors.
Make it Readable
Once you have a transcribed copy of the sermon, you’ll need to some editing. Just a quick read through of the transcription will show you that it will need some tightening and tweaking to make it sound more natural.
Use Every Part of the Buffalo
In the behind the scenes features of the movie The Incredibles, director Brad Bird shares his philosophy of using “every part of the buffalo”. He’s referring to the concept that Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. They left nothing to waste. Brad encouraged his team to use everything they had at their disposal to create the movie. The same thing goes for a sermon transcription. When you have a sermon transcription, you need make sure you every part of it to create content.
Now the first thing you can do is just break up the sermon into a series of blog posts. However, there’s a lot more you can do. Pull quotes for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook posts. You can create a wiki that will allow your church to search sermons for specific questions about spiritual subjects. You can also create a list of action points for your church members to follow up on. The possibilities are endless. Use every part of the sermon.
One Added Benefit
There’s one more benefit to using your pastor’s sermon as social media. You elevate the pastor’s sermon and you keep it front of your congregation throughout the week. This can help continue the conversation from the previous Sunday and prepare your congregation for the next Sunday.
Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want your congregation to continue the conversations that started on Sunday and carry them all week long? Don’t let your Pastor’s sermon get preached once, never to be heard again. Give it life and make it a part of your social media content.