Turn Sunday’s sermon
into a week of clips.

A real sermon, run through Slice

We pasted the link to Tim Keller’s “Let the Psalms Teach You to Pray”, a 40-minute message from The Gospel Coalition’s 2016 women’s conference, published on The Gospel Coalition’s YouTube channel. About two and a half minutes later, Slice had transcribed it and listed four moments, each already cut, captioned and vertical:

Here they are side by side, with where each one comes from in the sermon:

Two things worth seeing. The third is the shortest and simplest: one pastoral observation, half a minute, ready to post. The second is built from passages almost seven minutes apart, which is how an argument gets into a minute. A clip like that is the one to watch before you post, to be sure it still says what the preacher said.

For this page we picked the clips and opened one in the editor, as a church media volunteer would. Nothing was posted or published. The titles are Slice’s suggestions, not the preacher’s words. The step-by-step guide walks through the same sermon from the paste to the post.

Make it look like your church

The clips come back ready to post, and every part of the look is a tap away. Choose it once and every clip that week follows it.

• Caption style. Clean, Bold, Pop or Minimal, bigger text if you want it, or no captions at all.
• A title on top. A short line at the top of the clip, in one of three styles, or turned off.
• Vertical or the original shape. Vertical for Reels, Shorts and TikTok, or the wide shape of the service video.
• Crop or the whole picture. Crop in on the preacher, or keep the whole stage in the frame.

Before you post, open a clip in the editor. Fix a word or a name the transcript got wrong, trim a line, or change the shape.

What makes a good sermon clip

• It stands on its own. Someone who never heard the first half understands it. One idea, not “part three of Sunday”.
• It starts on the line, not the run-up. The first sentence is the one that makes someone stop scrolling.
• It ends where the thought lands. Not mid-breath, and not two sentences into the next point.
• Stories and confessions travel. An illustration, something the pastor admits about themselves, a moment at a bedside. In the example above, two of the four are exactly that: a deathbed and a confession.
• It keeps the meaning. A complex point cut to a sound bite can say less than the sermon did, or something else. If it can’t be said in a minute, leave it in the sermon.

Slice looks for these. It is still a first pass, and the people who do this every week say so:

So the list is for choosing, not for posting blind. When a sermon has nothing that stands on its own, Slice says so rather than padding the list. And if you would rather pick a moment yourself, you can make a clip from any stretch of the transcript.

A weekly routine for a church media team

Most churches that keep this up do it as a rhythm, not a project. One church communicator on r/churchtech plans the month on a printed calendar, with Monday kept for sermon clips:

With Slice, a week can look like this:

• Sunday. Preach, stream, and let the recording finish uploading to YouTube.
• Monday. Paste the link. While Slice reads the sermon, write the week’s other posts. Then pick three or four moments.
• Tuesday to Thursday. Post one clip a day. Each one comes with suggested post text you can edit.
• Friday. Point to Sunday: the next sermon title, or the clip that did best this week, on your stories.

The point is that it is small enough to keep doing. The hard part was never one week:

Captions that let everyone follow

Every clip has its words burned onto the picture, appearing as they are spoken. Most people scroll with the sound off, and some of the people you most want to reach are deaf or hard of hearing. Captions are how both groups hear the sermon.

Speech recognition is good on ordinary speech and still gets names wrong: Habakkuk, Melchizedek, your pastor’s surname. Every word can be fixed in the editor before you download, and there is an .srt subtitle file too if you want one. Pick a caption style once and every clip that week follows it, so your posts look like your church’s.

Sermon transcripts and notes

Clips are one use of a sermon. The words are another: notes for the website, a study guide for small groups, a sermon your deaf members can read, a quote for Monday’s email. Slice Transcribe turns the recording into text.

• What you get, free: one recording a day up to 90 minutes, as a transcript in paragraphs, with each speaker labelled when more than one person talks (a guest speaker, a Q&A), plus .txt, .srt and .vtt files.
• With hour packs: recordings up to 3 hours, notes with a timestamp on every paragraph, Word (.docx) and Copy for Notion. Paid once, and the hours never expire: 5 hours for $4.99, 15 hours for $9.99, 40 hours for $24.99.
• What it does not do: it does not summarise the sermon or write discussion questions. You get what was preached, in order. Transcribe takes a file, not a link.

More on the sermon transcription page, where you can try it on a sermon now.

Questions churches ask

More for churches

• How to turn a sermon into short clips: the steps, with the same sermon.
• Sermon transcription: the words, for notes and small groups.
• Reels safe zone: where the buttons cover your captions.

What goes in, what comes out

Before you upload an hour of your own recording