This post is part 12 in the series 20 Ways to Share Your Faith Online leading up to Internet Evangelism Day on April 25. We encourage you to tweet, share, blog & discuss these ideas in your church & circle of influence.
Do you make your sermons available on your church website?
Many of the churches on my mailing list have church websites that are under utilized for getting their message out.
Church websites are an awesome place to your recorded sermons, so that
- People can hear samples of your preaching.
- A global audience can receive your sermons through podcasting
- Your church website is updated regularly for better search engine reach
- Your spoken word can have global reach and impact.
For example, I subscribe to church podcasts from churches based in countries not my own.
I listen while exercising and some of those sermons have influenced my blog posting and ideas.
The Problem
But here is the problem to getting your sermons on line.
Recording Sermons has been a painful process.
Do you no longer record your sermons because it’s just too cumbersome to store and duplicate cassettes?
The practical death of recorded sermons
I talked with some pastor friends this week.
It was like a “stop recording virus” had infected them all.
They said they no longer record their sermons because
ITS JUST TOO MUCH
TROUBLE TO MESS WITH CASSETTES.
Problems:
- Poor quality,
- Horrible audio,
- God-awful mixing
- Sermons get half recorded,
- Difficult and slow duplication
- The machine might eat the only master.
- Expensive blanks that are of questionable quality
- People forget to flip the tape after 30 minutes and you loose your recording.
- Can’t find people to give cassettes to after passing time duplicating them.
People want portable copies of meaningful sermon audio, but for many churches, it’s just another horribly expensive and inefficient task.
Get your Sermon audio on-line in under 30 minutes
I also spoke with a pastor who found a workaround that makes this
- fast,
- really easy
- (and cheap!)
So I’ve put this little video together to show you how to jump start the recording and distribution of your sermons
- in less than 30 minutes after you record it, and
- for under $100 in equipment costs.
(Rss Readers, click to see: How to Record a Sermon and put it on your website.)
Resources for easy sermon capture (affiliate links at Amazon):
- The one I Use: Sony ICD-UX71 Digital Voice Recorder with 1GB Flash Memory
- Red one: Sony ICD-UX71RED Digital Voice Recorder with 1GB Flash Memory
Why record your sermons and put them on-line?
There are plenty of benefits of recording and putting your sermons as an MP3 at your church website.
- Your members can get into the archive at any time and listen via their computer or download it to a device.
- The links to the sermon audio can be emailed and shared in social networks.
- Your members who are out of town can listen to the sermon on-line.
- Your members who have moved away can still hear your sermons online or through their downloads
- Visitors can catch up on prior sermons online in the series.
- Visitors can get a sample of your preaching style.
- The Word of God is distributed and God can use it wherever people choose to listen.
- Your archives are on-line for 24 hour global access.
- No more additions to a clumsy tape storage system.
Some programs and add-on services are available for your website like RSS feeds that subscribers will receive your new sermons automatically.
No more duplicating cassettes!
By providing fresh content for your website, you’re drawing search engine traffic.
Some of your sermons will be very evangelistic, and who knows how God will use those sermons.
Your archives are “space less” meaning no physical cassettes to store, and no CDs to stack and keep from scratching.
With sermon recording now this easy and inexpensive, perhaps it’s time to start getting the Word back out there with some low cost recorders.
Final Disclosure: If you place an order through any of these through my link to amazon, I will receive some compensation from Amazon. It’s my tip jar.
Chris Walker is the principal writer at EvangelismCoach.org. He helps people discover that personal evangelism can be as normal as breathing. Along the way, he helps churches with hospitality ministry and coaches pastors on leading congregational evangelism. He’s currently planting a church in the city in which he lives. Other than that, he’s a sinner who’s life has been redeemed and wants other people to know the grace that has captured him.
7 Comments
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For those of you who prefer text to watching the 8 minute video. The 6 steps are…
1) Get a Digital Voice Recorder
2) Get a cable
3) Plug it into your system
4) Push the record button
5) Transfer it to you computer (via USB)
6) Distribute it (put it on your website, email it, etc)
Thank you guys for sharing this info: on recording. TGL
Thanks for the presentation. I just participated in a luncheon with Kingdom and have been praying about the CD duplication angle. This seems a lot less expensive, but I see advantages to the Cd format, too (like putting something physical into the hands of congregants and seekers). Being a small church, and having the desire to be good stewards of the resoucres GOd gives us, this is a lot to ponder. Any suggestions?
If you only knew how long I have wanted to accomplsh this task=) Thanks
I don't see a comment on this that got emailed to me, but it's in here.
For a small church, I think that going straight to MP3 creates an easily duplicable file that you can burn to CD for distribution. Some churches do want to still give CDs away.
Here is what I found when we recorded straight to CD.
1. We had to maintain a physical library of masters in protective sleeves. That depended on a physical filing system and storage space. Eventually only one person who knew how to find something becuase they designed the storage system.
2. 70 minute limit — sometimes the preacher would go longer.
3. Keeping the kids out of the stack of blanks.
4. Stack of blanks was a cost.
5. Technicians would forget to label the master and a few weeks later not remember which CD was which.
6. To avoid loss/scratch of a master, we started duplicating the master (two CDs, physical space).
7. If people wanted a recording, the data would be transfered to a computer, and then duplicated 1 at a time. Even with a 52x CD rom, this was still a time consuming process. Often, this wouldn't be ready for at least a week.
8. Never made it to the website: too many steps in the conversion process to mp3, that could only happen when a computer was available.
Here is what we are going to do (our first services are May 9).
1. Record straight to mp3 with this little device.
2. Post it to our website.
3. Email the link to the website to those who want the sermon.
If somebody wants it on a physical CD, we'll offer to email it to them instead.
Chris Walker
EvangelismCoach
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