Go check your transcripts right now. I’ll wait.
I’m serious. Before you read another word, open a new tab, go to your church website, find one of your sermon transcript pages, and read the first two minutes.
If you’re using an AI transcription tool or a cheap transcription service, there is a very good chance that what you find is going to surprise you. And not in a good way.
I’ve been transcribing sermons professionally for nearly two decades. I’ve worked with some of the most well-known voices in Christian ministry and leadership, people who are meticulous about the quality of everything they put their name on. Their books are excellent. Their websites are beautifully designed. Their social media is carefully crafted. Every detail reflects the standard they’ve set for their ministry.
And then there are the transcripts.
I’ve watched it happen more than once. A leader I’ve worked with for years makes a staffing change or a budget decision, and the transcription work gets handed off to an AI tool. The leader doesn’t read the transcripts themselves, their team doesn’t flag the errors, and so the transcripts just sit there on the website, quietly undermining everything else the leader has built.
The errors aren’t small. They’re not the kind of thing a careful reader might generously overlook. They’re the kind of errors that make a first-time visitor wonder if anyone at this ministry is paying attention.
What These Errors Actually Look Like
Here are real examples from real sermon and podcast transcripts generated by AI tools. These aren’t edge cases. They’re the kind of thing that shows up in the first few minutes of a transcript, before most people would even think to start checking.
What was said: “We welcome all who are new today.”
What the AI transcribed: “We welcome all who are nude today.”
What was said: “It’s all kinds of people praising the Lamb of God.”
What the AI transcribed: “It’s all kind of people grazing the lamb. God.”
What was said: “We are called to serve others with humility.”
What the AI transcribed: “We are called to serve otters with humility.”
Those are the errors that are easy to laugh at. The ones that concern me more are the ones that are harder to catch: a Bible reference where the chapter and verse numbers are wrong, a proper name spelled incorrectly, a sentence so mangled that the theological meaning is lost entirely. A visitor who doesn’t notice the otters might still quietly lose confidence in your ministry because something about the transcript felt off without them being able to explain why.
The Blind Spot That’s Hard to Explain
Here’s what I genuinely don’t understand, and I say this with real respect for the leaders I’ve watched make this mistake.
These are people who would never publish a book with typos. They’d never send a newsletter with grammatical errors. They’d never post a social media graphic with a misspelled word. The standard they hold for everything else they put their name on is genuinely high. That standard is part of their brand, and they know it.
But somehow, transcripts get treated differently. Maybe it’s because transcripts feel like a secondary element, something that lives below the audio or video and doesn’t really represent the ministry in the same way. Maybe it’s because the decision to switch to AI was made by someone on their team who was trying to solve a budget problem and didn’t fully think through the quality implications. Maybe it’s simply because no one on the team reads the transcripts after they’re posted.
Whatever the reason, the result is the same. A first-time visitor finds your church through a Google search, lands on a sermon page, reads the transcript, and encounters errors that would get a student failed in a high school English class. That visitor doesn’t know about your budget decisions or your staffing changes. They only know what they see. And what they see is a transcript that says your congregation was welcomed while nude and called to serve otters.
That’s what represents your ministry to a stranger on the internet.
The Good News Is That This Is Fixable
I’m not writing this to embarrass anyone. I’m writing it because I care about the quality of the content that represents your ministry, and because in almost every case I’ve seen, the pastor or leader genuinely didn’t know how bad the transcripts had become. They assumed their team was handling it. Their team assumed the AI was good enough. And nobody went back and actually read the transcripts.
So here’s what I’d ask you to do. Go to your website right now and read one transcript from start to finish. Not skim it. Read it. If what you find matches the standard you hold for everything else in your ministry, then you’re in good shape. If it doesn’t, now you know.
Professional sermon transcription that is accurate, beautifully designed, and ready to post on your website costs less than you probably think, especially when you consider what it costs your ministry’s credibility to leave the AI version up. SermonScribe has been providing clean, verified, publication-ready sermon transcripts to pastors and ministry leaders since 2008. Every transcript is proofread by a human who understands theology, checks every Bible reference, and cares about what your message actually says.
Your sermon deserves better than what an AI tool produces. So does your congregation.
Ready to Fix Your Transcripts?
Schedule a free consultation call with Ginger. We’ll talk through what your transcripts currently look like, what professional transcription would look like instead, and whether SermonScribe is the right fit for your ministry. No pressure, no obligation, just a conversation.
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SermonScribe has provided accurate, beautifully designed sermon transcripts for pastors and ministry leaders since 2008. Learn more at SermonScribe.com.
