How I Preach From an iPad?

By Jeremy Roberts

Dr. Jeremy Roberts, 28, is the Pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, TN.  Previously, he pastored Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Lenoir City, Tennessee and First Baptist Church of Blue Ridge, Texas.  Dr. Roberts currently serves as a professor at Tennessee Temple University and previously served as Adjunct Professor at Criswell College, Dallas, TX and Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA.  Dr. Roberts served on staff with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.



I bought an iPad the first day they were for sale in 2010.  My main purpose in this purchase was for preaching.  It has been a great transition over the last few years from my leather preaching notebook to my iPad.

I preface my explanation of how I preach from an iPad with the disclaimer that this system may not be best for you, but it is my favorite process after a few years of tweaking it.

1.  I am a manuscript preacher.  I highlight key words and color-code my manuscript to make it simpler to follow.  Click here to see one of my recent sermon manuscripts.

2.  Once I finish my manuscript, I save it in landscape format as both a PDF and Word document.  I save it in landscape because I like to have my iPad in landscape on the pulpit.

3.  I put all of the files pertaining to one sermon in a note in Evernote.

4.  I access my sermon manuscript in Evernote on my iPad, and open it into iBooks.  iBooks has clearly become the best option pertaining to simplicity in flipping through pages.  If you simply preach from the PDF within Evernote, one accidental swipe can cause you to move from page one to nine in the blink of an eye.  iBooks is key to effective page-turning during preaching.

5.  I put my iPad on the pulpit before the service ever begins.  This may not be something everyone does, but I like to just carry my Bible with me when I walk onto the platform.  Furthermore, it’s less cumbersome.  When I walk up to the pulpit, I simply hit the home button, swipe, and the manuscript is right there.

The people sitting in the congregation cannot tell I’m preaching from an iPad, and I like it that way.  I was initially afraid I would appear flashy for preaching from an iPad, but that quickly became a non-issue.  I preach from it for the sake of efficiency.



COMMENTS

1. Great article! I also use my iPad. However, I construct my manuscript in Word on my Mac, then save as PDF and put it in dropbox. I access it on my iPad through dropbox and open it in iAnnotate and leave it ther until Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, iAnnotate allows me to highlight, underline, add last-minute notes, etc. Then, I export it to iBooks at the last minute. What a great tool!
   
2. I preach from an iPad, but I use a teleprompter app which scrolls at whatever speed I choose, but I can pause it slow it down, speed it up at any point. I also love that it tells me how long the sermon will be at various speeds and during practice, it will tell me actual time after I speed up and slow down at certain points. I can set it to show the timers during the sermon (small and on the top of the page) so I can do my best to not go on longer than I intend to. I am not really a manuscript preacher, but rather use an outline to keep me on point. I LOVE the teleprompter app and it only took a few weeks to learn to use it seamlessly.
   
3. I preach from an iPad but I use GoodReader to view the pdf file that I preach from. It has great controls for swiping or tapping to turn the page and works great for me.