I remember my last sermon before lockdown. I had travelled from Brighton to Manchester to speak to a room full of social justice warriors. I opened up the Parable of the Sheep and Goats to encourage them that what they were doing was close to God’s heart and not to give up. I urged them not to be discouraged when others put them down. It is the Christians that don’t get justice who are the weird ones—not them. I showed them from the Bible how their unwavering passion for justice, and concern for the poor was part and parcel of the normal Christian life.

That was my last “normal” sermon. Had I known it at the time, I may have done it very differently.

What was your last “normal sermon” like? If you had known it would be the last time you were going to be face-to-face with your congregation for many months would you have changed anything about your message? Would you have interacted differently with those in the same room as you? Shaking hands with those that had heard you preach, listening to those questions and concerns people made to you in the intimacy of a one-to-one conversation at the back of the church building, catching someone’s eye, waving an encouragement across a crowded room, lingering until the last person has left the building—did we make the most of that last opportunity?

Face-to-face preaching is already beginning to feel like a distant memory. I miss eye contact. I miss the immediacy of a laugh, a nod, or a tear in response to my preaching. I miss watching the impact of a scriptural truth landing with a room full of people. I miss seeing God at work in the different ways people respond at the end of a service. Sometimes I miss it so much, I fear I am at risk of missing the potential of screen sermons.

New Opportunities

Preaching in a pandemic brings many new and amazing opportunities. From the beginning, I have been engineering as many ways to preach as I can. On Day 1 of lockdown I started a YouTube Channel which, if nothing else, has helped me stay sane. I have preached my way through passages in Scripture that can help us live well in lockdown and beyond. It turns out that there are at least 45 passages that can help us with “Faith and Quarantine,” and that’s just before Jeremiah.

I have also preached every Sunday since lockdown for our local church. In an ironic twist of Baptist protocol, the year began with some debate about whether or not it was appropriate to post our sermons on social media, and we were due a big debate about it at an upcoming church members meeting. Then suddenly with our church building shut we just took the plunge and went digital on Facebook.

While I, personally, have the tech and the team (my large family of 8) available to pull the services together, all sorts of people of all ages have been sending me their digital contributions—prayers, poems, songs, readings, notices, and our church has seen more “visitors” than in a very long time. When lockdown is over, there will be a lot to miss about these opportunities.

So here are six quick reflections I have on preaching in a pandemic.

Keep it Short and Direct

It is not for nothing that the world’s most popular curator of short talks recommends a 17 minutes optimum length. I love watching TED-style talks online and rarely choose to watch anything longer at my computer. Although I am from an old school tradition with a 30-40 minute sermon, I believe that online I can hold people’s attention and be of help to a wider audience by being shorter, and, if possible, memorizing enough of my talk to keep eye contact at all times with the camera.

Scripture Is Your Super Power

We know it theoretically but faith really does come from hearing the Word of God. Sometimes Scripture wakes up my own soul even as I preach, and I have found myself experiencing fresh faith and hope even in my dark makeshift garage studio. If God can do that to the preacher, imagine what he can do to those who are listening.

Ultimately it is not your on-screen presence, your technical savvy, your jokes, or your amazing visual effects that are going to make your preaching effective. It is the Word of God that makes the difference. It is the power of God that transforms despair into hope, sinners into saints, and death into life. Keep Scripture centre-stage in your preparation, prayer, and delivery.

Make it Accessible

Tearfund recently did a survey across the UK and found that 24% of the population have visited an online service or watched a service on the TV or Radio and 5% are doing church for the very first time in this way. Thanks to social media it is very easy to invite someone to church and indeed many churches are broadcasting their services on Facebook or YouTube, so it is very easy for people to stumble upon a service as they scroll through their feed.

What will they deduce if they see a two minute portion of our service? Let us work hard at making our sermons accessible to people from all stages of their understanding of Christianity. Let’s make sure we can find something to help an outsider find Jesus through what we are saying.

Deal with the Hard Stuff

Lockdown plays havoc with our emotions and anxieties and it is important, pastorally, to help people know that it is ok not to be ok during these times. I have found preaching on the Psalms, Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes has helped me with this. Tackling some of the more challenging parts of the Bible broadens our scope of application so we can speak to the wider range of experiences people are having during the pandemic.

Rather than sugar-coating the situation we are facing or offering saccharine sermons we have the opportunity to help people access the resources that the Bible has to help even in extreme crisis situations.

Get Creative

Getting services available online is a major effort and the church has managed to make this leap in record time. We are agile, adaptable, and accessible. We have much to celebrate. But there are still so many ways we can innovate and improve our online offerings that will mean they will reach more people and be more impactful.

I have been experimenting as I go and sometimes this means I have to accept failures, other times I discover surprising successes. I learned the hard way that providing music to sing along to is fraught with difficulties—so we generally go without it. Some people miss it. Others are more willing to share services without the music.

The more services I do, the more creative people are getting with their contributions. Last week our Bible reading included a Playmobil re-enactment of the stoning of Stephen voiced by a five year old! And this has inspired me to be more creative too. When I discovered that many people in the village where our church is based are in total isolation I decided to record my sermon whilst walking through the village. Because of the on-location setting, it was shared on the village Facebook group and had thousands more views as a result.

Call People to Christ and Compassion

In these difficult times I believe we need to be clear to call people to become Christians. For those joining our services looking for hope and help, this essential step of discovery of faith in Jesus as our Saviour and Lord has to be grasped. Being clear about what it means to follow Jesus as King must include calling people to live out the love of God and neighbour day by day, and we do this by teaching it and by modelling it.

Lockdown is hard for everyone but it is particularly difficult for the vulnerable and so we have this critical opportunity to ensure that we are practicing what we are preaching—that our churches continue to demonstrate the love of God in practical ways.

One of these days, I will give my last talk in lockdown. I might not know it at the time. I might never know who has tuned in or why. I might never find out if it is their first time or last time connecting with church. I might never know who needed a word of encouragement or challenge to keep going in those final days of crisis. So, let’s make the most of every opportunity—including using our online sermons to preach to the glory of Christ.

Dr. Krish Kandiah is a social entrepreneur who advises the UK government on child welfare reform and refugee resettlement. He is in demand as a speaker, writer, and theologian.