Preaching with an iPad

The recent Jesus Im Fokus conference in Germany represented the first time I've preached from an iPad (I saved my message scripts as PDFs and loaded them on the iPad before leaving home, opening them in iBooks).


It worked very well--for me and my style, at least. I speak from a full manuscript, but am not bound to the words on the page.

The iPad's size makes it about perfect for holding in one hand, yet keeping the document size large enough to see at a glance (I use 16-point New Times Roman in my scripts; the screen size of the iPad, which shows a full page at a time in the portrait mode makes it smaller, of course, but still a good size).

Before speaking, I locked the screen aspect (so the document wouldn't turn as I moved the screen), and turned the "sleep/auto-lock" off, so the screen wouldn't go dark if and as I departed from the script or spoke from memory.


I also kept a printed script on hand, in case, I dunno, some Satanic electronic anomaly affected my iPad, making it impossible to use. But that didn't happen.

I have also wondered in the past if the glow from the lit screen would be a distraction, but I asked several people if they even noticed it, and they said they didn't. And one of my listeners, a young man who owns an iPhone but said he'd always wondered why he would need or want an iPad, too, said watching me speak with the aid of an iPad actually answered his question, somewhat.

His observation underscored another reason I have hesitated--and still may do so. I have worried that using an admittedly expensive device in preaching might pose a mental or spiritual obstacle to some people, particularly to those who could never or would never make such a purchase. This didn't seem to be the case this past week, but could in other venues, even in my own church.

In any case, I realized two disadvantages, nonetheless--I couldn't make handwritten notes on the page to revise the wording or remind me of something (which I do all the time, and had to do in each of my conference talks). I just had to remember the changes. The other disadvantage was, I had to turn the page (elegantly, with a quick swipe) after EVERY page, whereas in hard copy I print front & back of every leaf, making it possible to see two pages at a time and keep page-turning to a minimum.

However, I don't think either disadvantage limited my effectiveness at all--just my perfectionistic preferences.

All in all, it was a great success from my perspective, and allowed me maximum mobility and flexibility in delivery.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone