Improve Retention with Sermon Notes

The following post was written for my sponsor, OnlineGiving.org and can be found at https://www.onlinegiving.org/blog.

A few Sundays after I resigned as a Senior Pastor and began working full-time in the stewardship ministry, I found myself daydreaming during my pastor’s sermon. I was shocked to realize that all those years, I thought people were listening to me preach. They were probably working on their grocery list. I determined to be a better listener, and I found that taking notes on the sermon helped keep my mind focused.

If you browse the Internet, you will find many studies and articles on how taking notes helps you stay focused and helps you better retain and remember what you have heard. I learned the hard way in college the value of notetaking. I remember cutting class once for some reason, missing a whole lecture. Wouldn’t you know it, much of the next test came from the lecture I missed that day. Needless to say, my grade suffered from my lack of notes.

As a preacher, I wanted my members to remember what I had preached from one Sunday to the next. How best to do that? If you were to leaf through my high school Bible, you would find scores of sermon notes scribbled on torn-apart offering envelopes. That didn’t seem like a workable solution. So, I came up with the idea of making room on the back of the Sunday bulletin for sermon notes. To me, that beat trying to use the envelope in the pew rack to write thoughts on.

For years I would attend churches and find that they, too, gave space in the bulletin for sermon notes. Then came Covid. One of the first things that disappeared in church life was greeters standing at the entrance of the worship center handing out bulletins. Now it is rare that you see bulletins being passed out. I doubt we will ever see paper bulletins again.

This begs the question; how can we help our listeners retain the biblical truths we proclaim each weekend? It might surprise you, but we have the answer. Our clients can use our Custom Forms feature.

Scores of third-party companies offer custom formatting if you are willing to pay them for that service. At OG, we provide this to our clients, thus saving them money. Custom forms give our clients a tool for collecting donations and payments and contacting and engaging with their members. You can customize forms for baptism signup, camp registration, surveys, etc. The options are limitless. We have one client that has over 100 customized forms they use through our platform. Our Custom Form feature also integrates with the major Church Management systems.

Here is another post featuring our Custom Forms Feature sharing more ideas on using this robust communication system, https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/remarkably-custom-forms.

Do you want to know what else our Custom Form feature works great for? Sermons, small group studies, and notes. Please don’t take my word for it. Check out these churches and see how they use Custom Forms for sermon notes and small group materials.

https://gocoastal.onlinegiving.org/donate/sermonnotes/2653#!/

https://gocoastal.onlinegiving.org/donate/sermonnotes/2657#!/

https://moodychurch.onlinegiving.org/donate/sermonnotes/2659#!/

https://seacoast.onlinegiving.org/donate/sermonnotes/2622#!/

Another thing I love about our sermon note feature is that you can email yourself your notes, thus keeping your thoughts for future reflection. The bottom line is that using our Custom Form builder can help your attendees improve their retention of your sermons and teaching.

This feature is one of many we provide for our customers beyond providing them with the best processing platform in the industry. At OG, we like to say we are more than a processing company. Can your current online provider make the same claim?

We would love to show you how easy using our Custom Form features is. To schedule a free demonstration, contact us at (615) 206-4000 or support@onlinegiving.org.