a Voice in the Wilderness

I’m beginning a series on using PowerPoint[11] to enable worship. This is the first post and will give a little background. My wife recently became the Pastor of English Ministries at a Korean Church in Cleveland, Ohio[1]. As she gets the ministry rolling, one of my jobs will be to get PowerPoint set up for the worship music. This is one area I had not worked in at past churches, so I’m starting somewhat from scratch. I have seen a number of different implementations, so of course I have some opinions. This is a departure from Open Source, since it’s based on Microsoft PowerPoint. The techniques can be applied to OpenOffice’s Impress[10], I’m sure. I just haven’t done it yet. At the end, I hope to have an example template available of both PowerPoint and Impress. I have a couple of laptops at my disposal that are running Office 2007, so I’ll work from that perspective.

If you are going to use PowerPoint in your worship setting there are two schools of thought. I would call them Simple and Visual. Mars Hill Bible Church[2a] & [2b] uses a real simple white text on a black background. It’s simple to keep consistent. It’s easier to set up. I’ve seen this style at at least two other churches, Gateway Community[3] and Midtown Fellowship[4]. MidTown’s worship service is simple and uncomplicated. Their PowerPoint projector[5] sits on a box on the front edge of a stage in RocketTown[7] (they generally don’t use the main stage). The computer is generally just off to the right, down in the first row of chairs on the main floor. The worship band[6] is tucked off to the side and you can’t even see them. In fact, the last time I was there, the Pastor thought they weren’t in place to begin the show and asked for volunteers from the audience. It’s Nashville, I’m sure you could have scared up a really good band from the 1000 or so in attendance.

The other approach involves using imagery behind the words to enhance the song. This approach gives visual people something to think about while singing. Care must be taken in this approach to make sure the words are not difficult to read. If you know how, moving backgrounds can be utilized to add to the experience. Again, care must be taken not to distract from the song. The videos are looped, and generally long shots of nature. Things like waterfalls, lakes, woods or even people in nature worshipping. One particularly moving background is of several people in nature praying with hands raised. I found a place with a fairly comprehensive collection of backgrounds at Songs on Powerpoint[8] It’s a relatively inexpensive way to get a large number of quality backgrounds. I’m getting paid for this, just really like the product.

You’ll want to make sure you are legit and not breaking copyright laws. If your church doesn’t already have one, head over to CCLI[9] & pick one up. The licenses are not cheap, but not outrageously expensive either. Well worth the peace of mind to avoid problems down the road. Since I’m fairly new to CKPC[1], I’m still working on this.

So you’ve decided on your approach (simple vs. visual), got some backgrounds if needed, got your CCLI[9], and your ready to roll. Now what? See the next article in the series…

Links in this article:
[1] http://www.ckpc4you.org
[2a] http://www.marshill.org/
[2b] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Hill_Bible_Church
[3] http://gatewaycleveland.com/
[4] http://www.midtownfellowship.org/
[5] http://www.midtownfellowship.org/?q=node/232
[6] http://www.midtownfellowship.org/?q=node/233
[7] http://www.rocketown.com/
[8] http://www.songsonpowerpoint.com/
[9] http://www.ccli.com
[10] http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html
[11] http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/default.aspx

Tags: PowerPoint, Worship