How to display sermon points on screen

Presentation · preaching

A well-timed point on screen helps people follow the shape of a message, remember it through the week, and take notes that mean something. Done badly, though, on-screen points become a cluttered wall of text that pulls attention away from the preacher. This guide covers how to display sermon points and outlines so they genuinely serve the message — what to show, how to design it, when to change it, and how it works alongside Scripture on screen.

Golden rule: the screen supports the preacher, it doesn't compete. If people are reading a dense slide, they've stopped listening. Less on screen almost always serves the message better.

Decide what's worth showing

You don't need to put the whole sermon on screen — you need the load-bearing pieces. Good candidates:

The main points — the two to four headings the message hangs on.
A key phrase or "big idea" — the one sentence you want people to leave with.
Scripture references being taught (more on combining these below).
Fill-in-the-blank notes, if your church uses a printed or digital outline people complete.
Definitions, quotes or lists that are hard to follow by ear alone.

Leave stories, tangents and the connective tissue off the screen — those live in the spoken word.

Design points that read instantly

People should grasp a slide in a glance, from the back row. Apply the same discipline as good lower-third design:

Few words per slide — a heading and maybe a line, not a paragraph.
Large, high-contrast text — legible from the furthest seat.
One idea per slide — reveal the next point when you reach it, not all at once.
Consistent style — the same font, colours and layout across the series looks intentional.
Generous margins — keep text away from screen edges so nothing is cut off on different displays.

Get the timing right

A point shown too early gives away the turn; shown too late, it's useless. The cleanest approaches:

Advance on cue — a volunteer changes the slide as the preacher reaches each point. This needs a shared plan (a run sheet or the preacher's outline) so the operator knows what's next.
Preacher-controlled — some preachers advance their own slides with a clicker, keeping timing perfectly in sync.
Blank between points — when there's nothing to show, show nothing (a clean background or the camera), so the screen doesn't distract during stories.

Who runs it — and how to set them up to succeed

If a volunteer advances slides, give them the outline in advance and agree clear cues. The single biggest cause of mistimed slides is an operator guessing because they've never seen the outline. A short pre-service run-through of the points prevents most errors. See our tips for presentation volunteers.

Combining points with Scripture

Most sermons move between your points and the Bible passages behind them — and juggling both on screen is where operators struggle most. Manually finding and typing each reference as the preacher jumps around is stressful and error-prone.

This is exactly where automation helps. Let the operator focus on the sermon points — the part that needs a human who knows the outline — and let TajiCast handle the Scripture: it detects each verse the preacher quotes and displays it automatically as a lower-third in OBS, vMix or full-screen. Points and passages both appear, correctly and on time, without one person trying to do both at once.

A quick pre-service checklist

Slides match the final outline and are in order.
Text is large, high-contrast and inside safe margins.
The operator has the outline and knows the cues.
A blank/clean slide is ready for stories and gaps.
Scripture display is set to run automatically.

Let the verses run themselves while you drive the points — free.

Download TajiCast — free