Homily Builder is a writing tool that lets you quickly create a homily manuscript, a slide presentation, handouts, and discussion questions simultaneously. Use Homily Builder on mobile to capture those thoughts in your homily document because you’re not always with your computer when an idea for a homily hits you!
Note: Any homilies you create in the Verbum iPad app will be available to you in the Verbum desktop app, and vice versa.
Skip ahead to:
Start a Homily
Add Homily Info
Add Homily Content
Preaching Mode
Note: Homily Builder works closely with Homily Manager, though they are not the same. Homily Manager organizes all your homily documents while Homily Builder creates specific homilies.
Start a Homily
Start a new homily or access an existing homily by tapping the navigation drawer , and then Homilies under the Documents section.
From here, open an existing homily or tap the in the upper right corner to open a blank homily document.
You can all create a new homily or access an existing homily through the Homily Manager on iPad. Learn more about Homily Manager here.
Add Homily Info
The Homily Info pane holds important details about your homily. The more metadata you add, the easier it will be for you to find at a later date. If you use Faithlife to publish your homilies, this metadata will help others discover your homily and know what it’s about.
Note: If you don’t see the Homily Info panel, tap the info icon to the right of the Preach button to toggle it on.
If you publish your homily to Faithlife Sermons, the homily info you provide is indexed and searchable. Many of the input fields are preloaded with consistent naming conventions, like the topics and reference fields. This helps you stay consistent and avoid duplicate tags.
- Series: Provide a series title to add the homily to a series. Matching existing series show below as you type.
- Topics: Begin typing to show predefined biblical topics and themes. Select one from the list to add it to your homily details. You can add multiple topics.
- Passages: Add a biblical passage by typing and choosing the passage from the list below. You can add multiple passages.
- Description: Provide a couple of sentences describing the homily's content.
- Private Notes: Unlike the other homily metadata, your private notes will not publish to Faithlife Homilies, but are visible to you when viewing the homily in Verbum.
- Speaker: By default, your name shows for any homilies you create. To change the speaker, provide a new name in the input field.
- Occasion: Add a date, venue (like a specific church or conference), and time (e.g., 10:00am Service).
- Audience: Provide audience segments like General Adult, Kids, Youth Group, Conference, or Other.
- Liturgy: Where applicable, add a liturgical day, season, and year.
Note: To create a template for use in the Homily Manager, select Template at the top of the Homily Info pane. Learn more about the Homily Manager tool available on the Verbum desktop application.
Popular Quotes Tool
Use the Popular Quotes tool to find quotes related to your homily or passage. Verbum will pull together all the related quotes and you can bring the best one into your manuscript.
tap the quotes icon and enter your topic or passage.
Drag the quote you want into your manuscript. Homily Builder will bring it in as a block quote and make a dynamic slide. Edit the style of the slide from your Desktop.
Add Homily Content
Ensure the Edit tab is selected to add your content. Start writing your homily by creating homily headings and text on the left. While building your manuscript, you can generate slides, a handout, and a question document simultaneously.
As you write, Verbum will automatically create slides and populate your handout and question documents based on the formatting options you select. By default, headers generate slides and are added to your handouts and question documents automatically. Any standalone verses also generate slides automatically. Using the options below, you can create additional slides or add anything to your handout or question document.
And adding scripture passages to your homily is as easy as typing the reference! When you enter the reference, Verbum will ask if you want to insert the text of the passage in line with your text, or as a text block. To keep things moving, you can quickly insert the passage inline by pressing the Tab key after your reference, or you can insert it as a text block by pressing Enter after your passage.
Note: You can toggle the visibility of the Scripture insertion helpers from the panel menu. Click the panel menu icon and Show/Hide Scripture insertion helpers. While creating lists, you may prefer to show only the reference of a passage. You can set whether or not to allow Scripture insertion in lists from the panel menu. Click the panel menu icon
and check/uncheck Enable/Disable Scripture insertion in lists.
The Formatting Toolbar
The formatting toolbar offers a variety of options and works similarly to other word processing software.
- Text Styles: Choose a text style from the dropdown menu.
- Normal: Use this style for the text of your homily. Normal text will not automatically appear in slides, handouts, or questions.
- Heading (1, 2, 3, 4, 5): Verbum will generate slides from each of your headings, as well as include them in your handouts and question documents.
- Blockquote: Set block quotations apart from the rest of your manuscript text.
- Illustration: Set your illustration apart from the rest of your manuscript text.
- Prompt: Set prompts apart from the rest of your manuscript text. Prompts will not be included when you export the transcript of your homily.
- Formatting Styles: Call special attention to any text in your homily manuscript. Tap the styling dropdown to add font, color, and background color styling to selected text. Save any selection as a new style to use in the future.
- Text Styling: Style any text with standard formatting options like bold, italics, or underline. You can also create bulleted or numbered lists or change the indentation of any selected text.
- Fill-in: Select any text and choose Fill-in from the formatting toolbar to generate a fill-in-the-blank style for the text in your printable handouts.
- Include in Handout
: Include text in the handout document by highlighting it and tapping the Handout button. Text included in the Handout document is indicated by a blue background. Selecting this option does not change the appearance of the text when you export it. Deselecting this option will remove the text from your Handout.
- Include in Questions
: Include text in the Question document by highlighting it and tapping the Question button. Text included in the Question document is indicated by a green background. Selecting this option does not change the appearance of the text when you export it. Deselecting this option will remove the text from your Question document.
- Undo/Redo: Undo to remove the last content change or redo to add a removed content change back into your document.
- Add Slides from Selected Text
: Tap to create a slide from any selected text in your homily document.
Note: Editing the content later will automatically edit the slide. So, for example, if you change the length of the quote, your slide will automatically adjust.
- Add Slides from Selected References
: If you’ve added a biblical reference within a paragraph, Verbum can generate a slide for that reference from your preferred bible if you select the paragraph and tap this button.
Note: To quickly create slides for biblical references, write the reference on a new line and press enter.
- Clear markup: Clear styling on any selected text with the clear markup button.
The Document Toolbar
The document toolbar allows you to switch between the different documents within your homily.
- Outline: Tap the outline menu icon
to show an outline of your main headings.
- Edit: Select the edit tab to add content to your homily document.
- Text: Display a text-only view of your homily.
- Slides: Show all of the slides in your homily document.
- Handout: View your handout. If you have fill-in-the-blank words, you can show or hide answers in your handout.
- Question: View your question document.
Preaching Mode
Enter preaching mode to view a speaker-friendly version of your homily document. Learn more about preaching mode.