Going Deeper

How to Make Sermons More Accessible

Is your sermon accessible? Sure it is. Could it become more accessible?
Today, modern tools can empower a sermon to reach much deeper into a community, and we do this by making sermon content more accessible through transcription, closed captions, and foreign language translation.

1. Get a website.

Website design has come a long way. Platforms like Wordpress and similar tools make web design almost as easy as creating a Microsoft Word document. Now, this does not mean that making a web site is easy, just like knowing how to use Microsoft Word does not make one a great writer.

ReSermon can create your online platform. Learn more.

2. Digitize your sermons.

Have a box full of sermons on old cassettes or older media? Digitize those cassettes by converting them into an audio file that can be transferred from your computer to the internet, and then to other computers around the world.

ReSermon can digitize sermon content from outdated media storage. Learn more.

3. Upload your sermons to a podcast platform.

Upload your sermons to podcast platforms like Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and more for greater reach and impact around the world.

ReSermon can set up your podcast and administer each weekly episode. Learn more.

4. Transcribe Your Sermon

Transcription makes your sermon searchable by keyword, and therefore more accessible to fellow staff, congregation members, and outsiders.
Transcription enables closed captioning, which empowers your sermon to reach a broader audience that includes the deaf and hard of hearing. Hearing people prefer closed captioning, too; more on that in a moment.
Transcription enables sermon projection, which we'll cover more below. Before a sermon can be turned into a blog post, book, or more, a transcription is needed.

ReSermon can transcribe your sermons. Learn more.

5. Close Caption Your Sermon

If your sermons are available on video, like on a platform such as YouTube or Vimeo, close caption your video. Closed captions are the first step in reaching the disabled, like the blind, the deaf, the hard-of-hearing, war veterans, factory workers and elderly, and people learning English as a second language.

Captions are popular with the Hearing, not just the deaf. Despite that only 11 percent of the population identifies as deaf or hard of hearing, Netflix reports that over 80 percent of its content is regularly streamed with closed captions on. Many hearing people prefer captioning.
What about YouTube's automated captioning? Google does not index its own automated captioning; it only indexes content that has been manually captioned by humans because accuracy is more likely. Manual captions make your sermons indexed in Google, Bing and other online providers. If search engines can't find your sermon, your sermon can't be found.

ReSermon can close caption your sermons. Learn more.

6. Translate Your Sermon

While you do not have to translate your sermon into all of the world's 6,909 distinct languages, what translations do make sense for your ministry to your target community? Spanish? French? German? Burmese? Vietnamese?

ReSermon can translate your sermons into foreign languages, including American Sign Language. Learn more.

How to Make Sermons More Searchable

Is your sermon searchable? Sure it is. Somebody in the office is bound to remember who preached on what topic last Christmas.

Could it become more searchable? Making sermon content searchable means enabling a searcher to find your sermon content -- not just the title of the sermon. For example, if Jerry is looking for sermons related to "grace" he won't likely find your sermon entitled, "Finding Forgiveness in Christ." In order to give your sermon the optimal level of searchability, it will need to be transcribed and then posted on your website so that search engines can find the content.

1. Transcribe your sermon.

Can't emphasize it enough; transcribe your sermon.

2. Post your sermon as a blog item on your website and then tag it.

In your website, create an area dedicated to hosting your sermons. A blog is an ideal tool for this, because on many platforms, blogs come with a convenient tagging convention for more easily finding content.

Therefore, each blog post gets its dedicated audio file, summary notes, transcription, closed captions, and tags (e.g., "1 John 3; Revelation 3; Grace; and so on). Using these modern tools helps make your sermon optimally searchable.

ReSermon can make your sermon corpus searchable. Learn more.

How to Make Sermons More Projectable

Preaching today is as simple as it was hundreds of years ago -- pray, study, proclaim. Modern distribution, however, now affords pastors a much more capacity for projection.

Each week, your sermon contains thousands of words of content. Most people speak around 150 words per minute, meaning that a 30 minute sermon can generate around 4,500 words. How much is 4,500 words?

Ten (10) 400-word blog posts.
Three (3) 750-word editorials that can run on a newspaper's editorial page
One half of a chapter of a 100,000-word book. Every 20 weeks, you could conceivably preach the length of a 300 page book.

But that's just scratching the surface of modern media opportunities for repurposed sermon content. Within these media opportunities, there are more opportunities for public square penetration:

1. Sermon to Blogs and Editorial Pages.

What gold nuggets in your sermon could be repurposed into editorials or blog posts that run in local newspapers, websites, blogs, and elsewhere? These venues are desperate for fresh, winsome content and they are often open to contrarian and innovative positions.

Mars Hill is calling.

ReSermon offers expert editorial support to help prepare manuscripts from your sermon. Learn more.

2. Sermon to Tract, Monograph, Booklet or Full-Length Book.

If your sermon was good enough for a live audience on a Sunday morning, could a distilled print version also prove helpful? Regardless of what the primary subject matter was -- whether sharing the gospel, or effective parenting, or effective money management -- distilling your sermon into a tool like a tract, monograph, booklet, or even full-length book can prove to be a helpful tool for you, your staff, and your friends.

ReSermon can help distill your sermon into tracts, monographs, booklets, and full length books. Learn more.