Five winning stories will be selected by a panel of judges, and the winning entrants will each receive an Amazon Kindle 2 as well as Dragon NaturallySpeaking upgrades for three years.
This may be a Professional story. It may be Educational. And it's definitely Personal. So I'll let you decide into which category it fits.
I'm a pastor. That's my profession. But, it also means I teach. And being a pastor means that I interact with folk in a very personal way. As a church, we make considerable use of the Internet. Our website reaches people from all corners of the globe and we encourage them to let us know they're listening, reading, and learning. For a relatively small church tucked away in a suburb of Nashville, we get a remarkable amount of web traffic -- chiefly because our site is "content rich." On a good month we receive half-a-million hits. But the constant requirement to create new content, new articles, new Q&A subjects, and even new books requires a tremendous amount of tapping away at the keyboard.
On top of that, I am dedicated to replying to every e-mail I receive. However, as our outreach has grown, so has the e-mail. And it became genuinely overwhelming. I couldn't really hire an assistant or secretary to handle the correspondence since so much of it is both personal and theological. And most of the questions I receive cannot be answered in one or two sentences. I was really beginning to feel the strain of so much typing.
One of our members suggested that I try Dragon NaturallySpeaking. At the time I was woefully behind in my e-mail correspondence and other writing obligations. But once I learned the basic commands and navigation, not only did I get caught up but I am using it in the writing of my latest book. I really appreciate the way the software "learns" new words. Most dictionaries include only scant theological jargon. So, teaching Dragon NaturallySpeaking words like "infralapsarianism" or the difference between an Armenian and an Arminian has been both fun and challenging. But the resulting ease of simply saying complex words and phrases has been well worth it.
But here's the real success story:
Everyday I hear from people who are struggling to make sense of their lives. They have questions. Sometimes they are in physical and/or emotional pain. People pour out their hearts and they trust me with their intimate secrets. But mostly, they want answers. In the modern mega-church environment it's nearly impossible to receive personal attention or answers to questions. So, they write to us. And I treat their communication as a sort of "sacred trust." I simply could not do that and respond to every person individually if I was still strapped to a keyboard. Dragon NaturallySpeaking has allowed me to continue preaching to the world while giving personal attention to everyone who writes.
And for that, I am truly grateful.
Jim McClarty
Pastor: Grace Christian Assembly
www.salvationbygrace.org