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So You Think You Can Preach? Try Preaching on Camera

preach to a camera

If you are a pastor (like me) you have spent your whole ministry preaching to a room of people. You feel their energy. You read body language to know if they are engaged. You know if you are going too long or if you are connecting or not. So you think you can preach? And then Covid hit, so you preached to a camera in an empty room. Going forward you will certainly do both. We can all use some tips for preaching on camera.

What was a relational part of your ministry now feels like a disconnect. You wonder, who is on the other side of that camera, how engaged is your church as they sit in their pajamas, am I connecting with them, are they following along. While this is a new challenge for a lot of pastors, it is not a death blow. It is a pivot but one you can still utilize to reach people.

So You Think You Can Preach? 7 Tips for Preaching on Camera

1. Be Prepared.

This isn’t just one of the tips for preaching on camera, but for preaching in general. I think it matters even more when people are sitting at home and can change the channel. In the digital world, your preparation has to go up. When you preach to people in a room, there is a give and take to the preaching, you can improvise a little bit easier, and it plays well. When you stand in an empty room, there is no feedback to know how that landed with the audience. Because as we’ll see in a minute, eye contact becomes even more critical, you can’t be tied to your notes, but you must know the content so well that you can keep your eye contact as much as possible. This means you must prepare more. As well, you must be shorter than usual, which means more focused preparation.

2. Be Clear.

As you focus your preparation, you must focus your message. I’ve always been a big believer in a message having one main idea, one point you are trying to drive home, one clear action step. This matters even more now because people are sitting at home and have more distractions than their attention spans or their phones. They have their children, the coffee maker, their computer, etc. Clarity becomes even more of a big deal when you are preaching in a digital world.