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Hi, I am new to this forum. I am currently a married Christian mother of 4 who lives in the Nashville area. I have been doing medical transcription for the past 15 years. Recently, an opportunity fell into my lap. I was asked to transcribe my pastor's sermons. I have to say that after years of transcribing despair (currently transcribe for a large cancer hospital), transcribing the word of God was like music to my ears. I can't wait to get another sermon. Not only is it so refreshing, I am learning so much. The medical transcription business is slowly dying. Most large hospitals have gone to voice recognition systems and most large transcription companies are Indian-owned and transcription is being outsourced to India where transcriptionists are doing my job for pennies on the dollar. I don't foresee a bright future for the conventional medical transcriptionist. My pay has been cut so many times in the last few years that I could literally work at McDonald's and make more than I am currently making. My husband is currently going through the social security disability application process and I am our only breadwinner.

I have prayed about our situation and I feel like God wants me to pursue a business transcribing his word. After just a little research, I found that there are actually sermon transcription companies out there. Lights are going on for me.

Do any of you have experience with this? As a pastor, is this something that you would be interested in? Do you currently have someone transcribing your sermons to be posted on your church's website? I am curious as to what sort of calling there is out there for this and in your opinion, is it worth a shot?

mandiemt
we at bible.org cant help you much as all our translators and transcribers are done by volunteers. http://users.bible.org/groups/site_volu ... ption_task

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Thank you for your reply, David. As I said, I am new to this forum. I was not aware of your volunteers for transcription. I was not asking about transcription for this site, but in the private church sector.

So many churches large and small have websites with podcasts or MP3s of their Sunday Sermons. As you stated on your volunteer page, many do not have the capability to listen to MP3s nor the time. Many folks would rather hold a hard copy of a sermon in their hands to study from and make notes. Written sermons posted on the web are also keyword searchable on the internet, thus have the capability of reaching millions.

My question was, is this something that individuals (pastors and churches) are utilizing currently or have thought about using? My pastor has been having me transcribe a particular series that he wants to include in a published book.

As a side note, I currently have 2 jobs transcribing medical reports, but in my spare time, I would be willing to transcribe for Bible.org for free.

Again, thanks so much for your kind response! God bless.

Good Evening
I am the volunteer Coordinator for bible.org. As David said to you, our volunteer transcribers do this for us for free as we are a donation based ministry. How grateful we would be for you to do some sermon transcription for us as God leads. To begin with I need to have your volunteer application into my database of volunteers. Please go to the home page and click on the volunteer link under Welcome to bible.org It is listed as #6 in the listing. That will take you to the application and information page. If you fill out the application it will be forwarded to me and I will take it from there. You also need to read the submission guidelines so that you can do the work and then all work can be sent to the Publishing Director who is Todd.

Thank you for your consideration of this service for our pastors.
Now to your general question, are there Pastors out there that would use this type of service, I think yes that would be something to explore. This is a good start here. Now we need to help you in some way get the word out that you are available. As I send out the weekly prayer journal I will add that if that is ok with you??? Let me know.

Gaye Austin, a.k.a. SonShine

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SonShine <)))<>
Psalm 48:1 "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised" Jeremiah 2:2b The LORD said: "I remember you"

Thank you, SonShine. I would love to be added to your prayer list. I need all I can get.

I will get the volunteer application filled out tomorrow. I also have samples of my work if you need them for verification purposes.

Thanks again, Amanda.

Hi Amanda,

I left the MT industry a couple of years ago and started a sermon transcription business. The answer to your question is a resounding yes, but you may need some training if you want to do this kind of work professionally. My experience has been that pastors want transcriptionists who understand the unique style of Christian speaking and writing rather than someone who simply knows how to type. For instance...

They want someone who knows when to capitalize "Christian" words such as gospel, cross, and church and when to leave them lower case.

They want someone who knows the difference between a direct biblical quote and a paraphrased verse and how to punctuate each.

If the pastor accidentally says, "When Abraham smashed the tablets...," they want the transcriptionist to know immediately what's wrong with that sentence and correct or flag it.

They want them to understand that most pastors don't want every um, uh, cough, sneeze, and "Earl, could you turn down the heat back there?" in their transcripts, but at the same time they do want a clean transcript that preserves their particular style of speaking.

If you can't find a job working for a sermon transcription company then you can transcribe sermons as a volunteer or work for yourself, but if you do that, I strongly recommend you get a copy of The Christian Writer's Manual of Style and use it as a guide. You can also find transcripts online that were transcribed by professionals and use them as formatting guides. If you're not sure how to find them or how to tell which transcripts are professional and which aren't, send me a message, and I'll be happy to help you.

One more thing... There are plenty of pastors who need help, but unless you can afford advertising, it is a very time-consuming process to find them. You might want to keep that in mind when you consider working for yourself. It took me months to get enough work to do this on a full-time basis.

Hope this helps!

Ginger

I would be interested in transcription services as a pastor. I've often noted that certain "writers" must simply have someone doing such for them, because when you read their books you can hear them preaching in the exact same manner. I'm curious as to the range for costs to transcribe messages? I'm utterly unfamiliar with the actual practices of such work, but know that it happens quite regularly. I doubt that a pastor in a small rural church like mine would be able to afford such luxuries. I would certainly think that as GSchell noted that one would have to be well-equiped for dealing with the particulars of sermonic transcription. I have actually transcribed certain things as I've been writing articles and working on scholarly papers, but never a sermon. You certainly have my interest peeked. Blessings.

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Hi Antipater! You can shop around for rates, but I think the average rate for online transcription services is $1.50 per recorded audio minute. My rates vary depending on how often and how many sermons you need transcribed. If you click on my profile, you can see a link to my website for details.

I write complete sermon manuscripts. However the sermon always takes shape a little different in the pulpit. This is especially true if I leave the pulpit and expound on the thoughts in a more extemporaneous fashion. I am currently working on my second book from sermon series and I find myself having to listen to the sermon for the nuance changes, and often significant differences between the manuscript and the actual sermon delivered.

I would be interested in having this done about once a year for a 6-8 week sermon series when I am working on the next writing project. I would be interested in getting your information. You can email me through my website:

http://www.chrissurber.com

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Hi Chris,

I understand what you mean. Sometimes a pastor will contact me about proofreading his sermon notes, and I'll ask him to let me transcribe the sermon so he can see how big the difference is between the notes and what he actually said. There is always a big difference. Transcripts are much more comprehensive than the sermon notes.

I'll email you today.

Thanks,

Ginger

Greetingz!
Just an example:A pastor just said this in a sermon we transcribed for him:

"And one of the things we are really excited about…since we have been doing our English transcriptions…Mexico Missions down in Mexico has asked us to give them those...which we have, and they're in the process now of translating those into Spanish, which will be used to be a challenge and an encouragement to the Mexican pastors, who, by the way, get no training at all.

But here's what's also neat is they have said what they would like to do is to take those Spanish translations of our message transcriptions, and they plan to take them…hand-carry them into Cuba where, again, the pastors get absolutely no training in Cuba. And they would like to use those messages to encourage the Cuban pastors, to help equip them as pastors, and then to be a model for them on how the Word of God is to be taught. We are involved in trumpeting God's truth."how to hypnotize people

Interesting that you are transcribing English sermons and then translating the transcription.

Is there anybody out there transcribing sermons delivered in Spanish directly into Spanish?
Are they volunteers, or do they earn some money doing it?

I'm really not asking regarding myself. While my Spanish is very good, I can't see myself as a transcriber.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

Hi Strider33,

Ashantycapre actually got that quote from my business Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=351857391752). That was a quote in a sermon by one of the pastors we've helped. We didn't handle the translation part of the process for them so I'm not sure if they were paying someone to help them with that or not. I don't know of a sermon transcription business that specifically offers Spanish-to-Spanish transcription, but many general transcription businesses do offer that service.

Ginger

Ginger
Are you still interested in transcribing pastor's sermons ...and if so as a volunteer or for a fee.
Please email me back.
Gaye Austin

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SonShine <)))<>
Psalm 48:1 "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised" Jeremiah 2:2b The LORD said: "I remember you"

Hi Gaye,

I'd love to help you. I own a sermon transcription business, so all of my work is done for a fee. If you look at my profile, you can click on the link to my website to get my rates.

Thanks,

Ginger