Copying out Bible text has never been too much of a problem for me. I have pretty much always had access to an electronic version of the Bible from which I can cut and paste Bible text into a relevant document.
So I can't imagine what it was like for pastors in the past who had to write Bible verses out manually again and again in their writings. They certainly must have begun to memorise verses much faster. But with any manual copying, there is also a great potential for error (as any scribe or text critic knows). Also valuable time can be lost due to one simply becoming a copyist for a good portion of each week.
So how do you cut and paste text to save time?
My initial dealings were with the free website Bible Gateway. Which served me well particularly before I became a minister.
But for serious pastoral productivity, you should have multiple versions of the Bible in a software program on your computer.
For example, from having Bibleworks on my computer, I can:
(i) access multiple translations much faster than through an internet connection;
(ii) cut and paste while offline;
(iii) load many, many versions at the same time, some of which are simply not readily available online;
(iv) export whole Bible books, and even the entire Bible, to a document;
(v) custom tag the end of my copied texts thereby saving time usually used copying out a reference, e.g. when I hit paste, the Bible reference and translation are put at the end automatically for me, e.g. Mark 2:1-10 (ESV).
Also I should give a quick exhortation to learn the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl +C (to copy) and Ctrl + V (to paste). They'll save you even more time. And you may also consider installing software that strips formatting like PureText.
So don't wast time typing out text yourself or laboriously copying it from a website. Get some serious Bible software.
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