Let your pastor draw on sermon slides from an iPad: the full Sunday setup

This is the whole flow, start to finish, for a volunteer in the booth and a pastor with an iPad running live drawing over sermon graphics. There's nothing to install, and you can teach the setup to anyone in one run-through.

What you need

• A booth computer. Any machine that runs a browser.
• Your projector or screens. Whatever the room already has.
• An iPad with an Apple Pencil for the pastor. A finger works too, but the Pencil feels best.
• Your sermon visuals. Images or videos, such as maps, diagrams, verse art and backgrounds.

Before the service (about ten minutes)

1. Sign in at the booth. Open app.telestrator.live in any browser. This is the operator's control page, where the media, slides and live buttons are.
2. Upload the sermon graphics. Drag your images and videos in, and order them to match the message. Set your church logo as the Main Logo. That's your resting screen between moments.
3. Build the text slides. Type a verse and press Enter, or paste the whole list with Add Multiple Slides and set one shared formatting for the batch. Assign a background graphic and the verses sit on top of it.
4. Send it to the display. One click pushes the audience output full-screen to the projector. What you see in the booth preview is exactly what the room sees.
5. Pair the iPad. Open Settings → Show pairing code. The pastor scans the QR code with the iPad and the draw pad opens. There's no account to sign into on their end.

During the sermon

What makes it work is the split: the pastor only draws, and the operator runs everything else.

• Operator fires a slide from the booth. It fades onto the big screen and mirrors to the iPad at the same moment.
• Pastor draws. Circle the city, underline the phrase, box the word. Each stroke shows on the wall as it happens. Palm rejection means they can rest a hand on the glass.
• Verses on tap. The operator steps through the text slides, keeping the same background and moving to the next verse, with the arrow keys or a click.
• Zoom for detail. Push into one region of a map or diagram live; the ink stays pinned to the image.
• The three live buttons: Main Logo (return to the resting screen), Blank screen, and Clear ink. The ink fades out at the same speed as your slide transitions, so nothing snaps.

Small settings that make it feel professional

• Fade duration. Around 0.8s reads as intentional; crank to Cut if your church prefers hard switches.
• Slide labels. Name slides ("Verse 1", "Map: Damascus road") so the operator can navigate at a glance; labels never show to the audience.
• Pen colors. Pick a palette that holds up on your projector. White and a bright accent usually work better than dark colors on low-lumen projectors.
• Videos. Open the audience screen a minute early so videos buffer; loop b-roll backgrounds with the loop toggle.

If something hiccups

• Wi-Fi blip? Both the booth and the iPad auto-reconnect and re-sync to the live state, and the audience screen keeps showing the last slide in the meantime.
• iPad went to sleep? Wake it; the draw pad reconnects on its own. Keep Guided Access on if stray taps are a worry.
• Wrong thing on screen? Blank screen is your instant out; Main Logo is the graceful one.