Build the sermon's slides from your notes

Present turns a pastor's notes into the sermon's slides: a title, the passages as Scripture slides, the points (one line at a time where the notes read like a list, with a blank where a word was underlined), pull quotes in the notes' own words, and places where a picture would help. Nothing on the slides is made up, and the notes that go on the pastor's screen are the pastor's exact words, copied from the paragraphs each slide came from.

1. Open the service's slides. On the Sermon part (or any Slides with words), press Build from your notes. For a sermon that isn't on the plan yet, press Add here, then A sermon, from notes: give it a title, the passage, the speaker and the series first.
2. Paste the notes, or drop a Word file, a PDF or a .txt file. Headings, bold and underlined words come along. Put [slide] or --- on a line where you want a new slide, and [brackets] around a word to leave blank.
3. Choose the Bible for the verses, then press Build the slides. About 4¢ for a 4,000-word manuscript, from your AI allowance; up to about 12,000 words. It takes a minute or two.
4. Look the slides over. From ¶ under a slide opens the paragraph it came from; your notes sit beside the slides on a wide screen. Press Kept to remove one, Keep all points or Remove all picture ideas.
5. Press Add the slides, or Replace what's there. Undo puts things back; it stays on the part, as Undo the last build, until you build again.

Big enough for the back row

The slides keep to rules the back row can read: at most four lines a slide, each about 42 letters, and the words never smaller than about an inch tall on a ten-foot screen. A line longer than that wraps at a comma or before a joining word, and a point with more than four lines goes on two or three slides with the same heading, marked "1 of 3": whoever runs the slides sees the part beside the cue, the pastor's screen says it on Next, and the pastor's own words keep their page across the parts. A quote longer than two sentences splits at its sentences.

Slides built before these rules, or written by hand with too many words, show in Get ready for Sunday under Fix what's missing: Rebuild with the new rules builds a sermon's slides again from its notes (with Undo; pictures and slides made by hand stay), and Split it puts a plain words slide onto parts.

What's checked

A quote must be in your notes word for word, or it's left out and the review says so. A passage must be a reference PraisePad can read, and its verses come from the Bible you chose, never written by the AI. Where your notes quote a verse in a translation PraisePad doesn't ship (the NIV, say), tick Use the words in your notes to show your words under that translation's name instead.

While you preach

The pastor's screen pages through each slide's paragraphs, in the pastor's own words. Whoever runs the slides sees "When you hear" with the opening words of the next paragraph, so they know when to advance. Points come in one line at a time, as points do; a later part of a split point comes up with its first line already showing.

Change the notes and build again: a slide whose paragraph changed says so under it, with Update to take the new words onto the pastor's screen and Keep to leave it.

Picture ideas

A picture idea says why a picture would help and what it could show. Make it makes one with AI (see pictures), My pictures picks one from the Library, and Copy the idea takes the words elsewhere. Several ideas can be making at once, each showing "Making 2…" on its row; close the review while they're making and they still land in the Library under Made with AI. An idea with no picture chosen adds no slide.

A guest speaker

A guest with a private link can build their own part from their notes once your church turns on People with a private link may use AI (from our allowance) in Present's settings, under People. See owners and guests.