Your sermons, written ahead

Present's Sermons is where your sermons live: the ones you write ahead, and the recordings from the booth. Write a sermon weeks early with its notes and slides, keep it to yourself until it's ready, then put it on a Sunday. Sunday gets a copy that keeps up with your sermon until the service.

Write one

1. Open Present, then Sermons, and press New sermon.
2. Give it a title, the passage (like John 15:1-11), the speaker, the series and, if you know it, the Sunday under Planned for. Choose Private or Shared. When the speaker signs in to PraisePad and makes slides, "can change it too" is on, so the sermon is theirs as well.
3. Press Make the sermon. Write in Notes: headings, bold, lists, and an underlined word for a blank on the slides. The notes save by themselves a second after you stop typing, and the line under them says how many words, and about how long it takes to say (at your own pace once your recordings have transcripts).
4. Big idea: say the sermon in one sentence.
5. When the slides should be made, press Build from your notes under Slides, or Open the slides to make them by hand, as on any Sunday (the sermon from your notes).
6. Press Mark ready when it's done. The list says "Ready since Thursday".

Two writers at once? The notes refuse to save over someone else's change and say who made it: press See the new notes to take theirs.

The helper

Press Helper above the notes. On a laptop it opens where the slides were; on a phone it's a sheet at the foot of the screen with your notes still above it. It's for the sermon's writers.

Read it through reads your notes once and gives you a short report, like a friend who read it: the big idea as it heard it, with Use this as the big idea; five marks, the main point, Scripture, the opening, the close and the length, each Strong or Could be stronger with one line, and Show me to jump to the paragraph it means; how it might land with a first-time guest, a teenager and someone who's been coming for years; up to three suggestions; and about how long it takes to say. A long sermon takes half a minute; Stop ends it. The report stays until the notes change, and Mark ready asks once, "Read it through first?", when they have. It never blocks you.

Help with this part works on the paragraph where your cursor is: A stronger opening at the start, A way to close at the end, Find verses, An illustration (serious, moving or light-hearted), Say it simpler and Questions for small groups. Each gives up to three to choose from: Use this puts one in your notes as a new paragraph, with a thin amber mark in the margin until you edit it, or Copy, or let it go. Verses come as references, with the words from your church's own Bible; one that doesn't exist is dropped and named.

What it never does: write your sermon, judge what your church believes, change your notes by itself, or write a verse's words. It reads this sermon's notes, title, passage and big idea, nothing else: not other sermons, not people's names, not recordings. Each read-through costs about 3 cents from your church's AI allowance for 4,000 words; a chip is under a cent.

Private or Shared

A new sermon is Private: only you and the writers you add see it, not an owner or an admin, until it's on a Sunday. Shared lets everyone who makes slides read it and put it on a Sunday they run; only its writers change it. Change it any time with Share at the top of the sermon, where you add writers too. If a writer leaves the church, their Private sermons are deleted 90 days later; Shared ones stay with the church.

On a Sunday

From the sermon, press Put it on a Sunday under Sundays and choose a coming service. Or on the Sunday's slides, press the Add button, then A sermon, then From your sermons. A copy of the sermon lands in the Message section, and the plan's sermon item takes its title, passage and speaker where they're empty.

Sunday's copy keeps up with the sermon until the service: change a slide in Sermons, and Sunday has it the next time the slides open. On Sunday's copy, a writer sees "This is Sunday's copy of your sermon" with Open in Sermons. If someone fixes a typo on Sunday's copy at the booth, the copy stops following; when the sermon changes after that, the copy says "Changed in Sermons" with Update to take the sermon's slides again (and Undo), and the writer gets Save to your sermon to keep the booth's fix in the sermon too.

New, from notes on the Add button's sheet makes the sermon in Sermons as well, with Keep it in Sermons on, then opens Build from your notes on it. Turn the switch off for a one-off part that lives on that Sunday alone. An older Sermon part can join the library from its ⋯ menu with Keep in Sermons.

The list

Chips sort the list: All, Mine, Drafts, Ready, Coming up (on a Sunday still to come) and Preached (its recording, or a Sunday that has passed). A lock marks a Private sermon. Recordings from the booth are here too (record the sermon); one made while your sermon's copy was on screen shows under the sermon's Sundays. A deleted sermon waits in Recently deleted for 30 days, with Restore.