You’ve worked all week on Sunday’s sermon. You’ve prayed over it, refined it, delivered it with everything you have. Afterward, someone on your team runs it through an AI transcription tool — quick, cheap, done in minutes — and posts it to your website.
What could go wrong?
As it turns out, quite a lot.
The Transcript Your Congregation Is Actually Reading
Most pastors never go back and read their AI-generated transcripts after they’re posted. Why would they? The sermon is done. The week moves on.
But your website visitors are reading them. Your hearing-impaired members are relying on them. People who discovered your church through Google are forming their first impression of your ministry based on them.
And if your transcripts were generated by an AI tool, there’s a very good chance they contain errors that range from embarrassing to theologically alarming.
Here’s a small sample of what AI transcription tools have actually produced from real sermon audio:
What the pastor said: "We serve others with humility." What AI transcribed: "We serve otters with human ability."
What the pastor said: "He laid down His life for us." What AI transcribed: "He laid down his wife, Doris."
What the pastor said: "We welcome all who are new today." What AI transcribed: "We welcome all who are nude today."
What the pastor said: "We can pray together this morning." What AI transcribed: "We can prey together this morning."
What the pastor said: "We are forgiven through Christ." What AI transcribed: "We are fort driven through Christ."
What the pastor said: "Let us turn to the book of Acts." What AI transcribed: "Lettuce burn the book of facts."
What the pastor said: "He calls us to walk by faith, not by sight." What AI transcribed: "He calls us to walk by fate, not by sight."
What the pastor said: "We see this in Psalm 20:3." What the AI transcribed: "We see this in Psalm 23."
Read that list again slowly. These aren’t minor typos. These are published statements on your church’s website that misrepresent your message, your theology, and your character as a pastor.
“We can prey together.” “We are fort driven through Christ.” “He laid down his wife, Doris.”
Do you want your words distorted that way? Of course not. But if your AI transcripts are unedited, you may already be publishing them.
“But I Can Fix the Errors Myself”
This is the most common response, and it’s worth thinking through carefully.
Consider this quick exercise. Which takes longer?
1. Typing the words “New Testament”
2. Finding and correcting the words “and the Testaments” back to “New Testament”
The second one takes longer. Every time. And that’s just one error in a 45-minute sermon that probably contains hundreds.
A typical sermon runs 35–45 minutes of audio. AI transcription tools regularly produce transcripts with errors throughout: misheard words, missing punctuation, run-on sentences, no paragraph breaks, and scrambled proper nouns. To clean up one of these transcripts properly would take hours of careful editing, assuming you even catch every mistake.
That’s time you could spend on sermon prep, pastoral care, or time with your family…every single week.
And that estimate assumes you even know to look for the errors. Many pastors post AI transcripts without reviewing them at all, which means the errors stay published indefinitely.
What a Messy Transcript Actually Costs You
The real cost of low-quality transcription isn’t measured in dollars; it’s measured in trust.
Your credibility takes a hit. A transcript filled with errors signals carelessness to anyone who reads it. For a first-time visitor to your website, it may be the only impression they get of your ministry. Excellence in the pulpit deserves excellence on the page.
Your message gets distorted. “We are fort driven through Christ” is not the gospel. “We can prey together” is not a sermon point. When errors like these go uncorrected, you are (no matter how unintentionally) spreading a distorted version of the message you worked so hard to deliver accurately.
Your hearing-impaired members are under-served. For members of your congregation who are deaf or hard of hearing, your transcript is the sermon. An inaccurate transcript isn’t just an inconvenience for them; it’s a failure to include them fully in what God is doing through your teaching.
Your website SEO suffers. Search engines index the text on your website. A transcript full of gibberish, run-on sentences, and misspelled words is nearly impossible for Google to interpret and rank. A clean, well-formatted transcript, on the other hand, helps your church show up when people in your community search for biblical answers online.
The Difference Between “Fast” and “Good”
AI transcription tools are genuinely impressive in one specific way: they are fast. Astonishingly fast. You can upload a 45-minute sermon and have a transcript back in under a minute.
But speed is only valuable if the output is usable. And in our testing, even the most popular AI transcription services regularly produced transcripts that required significant editing before they could be published.
Here’s an actual example. A pastor said this:
“When we moved to Austin, Texas, eight years ago… Last week, by the way, was the eight-year anniversary of The Austin Stone. Kind of missed telling you that. Happy anniversary! Anyway, we’ll celebrate more at 10. We won’t just do the golf-clap thing; we’ll actually go nuts at 10 if we make it that far.”
One popular AI service transcribed it this way:
“When we moved to Austin Texas eight years ago last week by the way was eight year anniversary and also kind of missed telling you that happy anniversary. But anyway we’ll celebrate more at 10:00. We won’t just do the golf club thing we’ll actually go nuts at 10:00 because we if we make it that far.”
“Golf-clap” became “golf club.” Punctuation was random. Sentences ran together. The meaning was butchered. This is not something you would want on your church website or in a book manuscript, is it?
A fast transcript that requires hours of editing isn’t actually saving you time. It’s just moving the work somewhere else.
What a Professional Transcript Looks Like
At SermonScribe, we define accuracy differently than most transcription services. We don’t just transcribe what you said. We transcribe what you meant to say. Let me explain.
That means we look up every Bible verse to verify the correct chapter and verse. We verify the spelling of every name you mention, including your wife, your kids, and the seminary professor you quoted. We check Hebrew and Greek words. We verify quotes and their correct attribution. We catch the moments when you said “Old Testament” but meant “New Testament,” when you said “King Saul” but meant “King David.”
Beyond accuracy, we design every transcript to reflect your brand with your logo, your formatting preferences, your style. The result is a document you can post on your website, print for your congregation, or hand to a publisher as the foundation of a book, without changing a single word.
This is not what AI tools do. This is not what most human transcription services do either. It is what we do, every week, for pastors who take their message seriously.
Is a Professional Transcript Worth It?
That depends on what you believe your sermon is worth.
If your sermon is worth the week of preparation you put into it, it’s worth being represented accurately in print. If your congregation is worth serving well, they’re worth a transcript they can actually read and rely on. If your online visitors are worth reaching, they’re worth a website that reflects the quality of your ministry.
AI transcription tools have their place. This is not the right place.
Ready to See the Difference?
We’d love to show you what your sermons look like as professional, custom-designed transcripts. Schedule a free consultation call with Ginger and we’ll talk through exactly what the process looks like for your church.
Schedule Your Free Consultation Call →
SermonScribe has served pastors and ministry leaders for 18 years with accurate, beautifully designed sermon transcripts. Learn more at SermonScribe.com.
