I started Easter morning serving in my role as the online pastor for my church, facilitating conversation in the comments section during our livestreamed service. Then I joined a Zoom call as the guest preacher for a friend’s church. After the last “Amen,” I headed to my parents’ house to help them participate in their church’s online service. They are strangers to the internet, but there they were, bowing their heads on cue, celebrating the hope of resurrection.
While that particular Sunday was unusual for most churches due to the outbreak of COVID-19, it also reflected an already-evolving reality of how the story of God now gets told in the world: through streaming services and online content.
Preachers must sort out where their words fit in as more people spend time online, a context already inundated with words and images. Questions abound: How does the art of preaching change in a world in which people are scrolling for truth on social media? When people are now used to offering feedback on everything from their Uber ride to their latest e-book, where does that impulse belong in a church environment? If many congregants are now conditioned to pay attention to online videos for just two minutes, will they really watch the same screen for a 40-minute sermon?
But amid these questions are profound spiritual opportunities. People are hungry and thirsty for good words. They are consuming them in new ways, inviting them into their cars and coffee breaks. Online preaching expands the reach of churches, removing geographical—and maybe even emotional—limits to church attendance. This is a moment for pastors to find new answers and to reimagine the work of preaching.
Use Specific and Detailed Language
As the potential listening audience gets wider and more churches upload their content, the language of the preacher actually needs to get narrower and more specific rather than more general. For example, when we use words like we or you or them in a sermon, we have to describe whom we’re addressing: What are their pains and strengths? What defines the community we’re trying to build, especially if it isn’t proximity to a building? Preaching online requires us to call out what actually defines the community of faith, whether it is a faithful life in a particular neighborhood or the righteous presence of the church throughout the whole world.
These questions can help us better connect with the lives of the people we hope hear the story of God’s redemption through us. A few years ago, I intentionally made a shift from writing sermons in an office to writing them in coffee shops. The change in venue helped me put my words through new filters: Is this true for our whole city? How could I communicate this to the student drinking a latte next to me? Or to the woman sitting in the corner?
Preaching online also requires us to use clearer language about our beliefs, particularly for listeners who have little familiarity with church. When I train other preachers, I advise them to decide early on how they are going to talk about Christianity’s core ideas. For example, what are their words for the life and death and life again of Jesus? Do they know how to talk about sin to someone who didn’t grow up in the same world as they did?
Establish Your Voice
I’ve found that online preaching has similarities with guest preaching: Just as we need to let a new room know who we are, we need to be intentional about letting an online audience know who we are. When I go into new environments to preach, I notice that I have to establish my voice more quickly. Similarly, online, I have to be purposeful and strategic about establishing my voice. For example, as someone who tells dry jokes that people sometimes mistake for serious statements, I know I need to offer more cues—like being very purposeful about vocal inflections and facial expressions—when I preach online.
Connect Through Stories
In a local church context, a congregation naturally comes to know the personality and the character of the preacher. In addition to establishing our voice, we can work to build essential connection and rapport by telling stories that help online viewers get to know us and grow to trust us.
Whether they are personal stories or Scripture’s narratives, the best stories often rest on particular details that open our imaginations and connect better to our own worlds. When we craft online sermons, we can describe exactly what the Good News looks like in the homes, businesses, and intersections of our community. Consider Jesus’ example: He pointed to a particular field and called out the lilies to help the world see a universal truth about anxiety. He told detailed stories about a lost coin in a house and lost sons in a family.
Attend to the Listeners’ Context
Perhaps the most exciting reorientation that online preaching requires is for preachers to reimagine their listeners receiving the sermon in their context. The online sermon enters right into the space where listeners live. As we preach about the power of forgiveness, they may be sitting in the kitchen where they just had a fight with their spouse or in the break room right before a heated meeting. They may be driving by the neighborhoods, parks, stores, and restaurants where they could carry hope. They are listening in the very spaces where they need these words to come to life.
Online preaching can intentionally draw listeners’ attention to God’s presence in their context. For example, in a recent online sermon, I invited everyone to pause and pay attention to what they sensed around them—to thank God for what they saw, heard, smelled, tasted, touched. We praised the God who shows up in every room.
Initiate Interaction
Online preaching is an invitation for us as preachers to reform our understanding of ourselves. There are dangers in this context, to be sure. For example, the temptation for comparison is strong as we evaluate metrics such as viewing data or the number of likes a sermon received. The potential for discouragement looms if we open ourselves up to the gauntlet of comments sections.
But for all the dangers of ego, there are also opportunities for growth. Online preaching provides the opportunity for us to make the sermon less preacher-focused and more interactive, such as by inviting people to post questions or answers or to press pause for conversation with others. The shift invites us to help listeners see and articulate where the Spirit of God might be working in and around them.
The Word in Their World
Psalm 107 describes how different groups of Israelites arrive at the temple. Some wander through the desert, some travel through storms at sea, and some make their way out of prison or sickbeds. But they all cry out to God and wait for God’s response. When they reach the sacred space, the psalm reframes their world. Rather than inviting them to set their journey aside now that they have arrived, the psalm gives them the right words to celebrate the specific ways God rescues them.
Our best preaching should do nothing less, whether it’s to a crowded sanctuary or through an internet connection: We call out how and where God is working. The online sermon allows us to tell a full and rich story of how the Spirit of God moves as listeners receive the Word in their everyday context. And while we may not know exactly who’s listening, or when or where, God does. And God is there.
Laura Buffington is the online community pastor for SouthBrook Christian Church near Dayton, Ohio. She holds a doctor of ministry degree from Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College in Tennessee.
