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January 31st, 2007

Advice for those using Powerpoint in church

projecting

I’m no expert, but that dosn’t stop me talking about a subject. Here is my advice:

1. Read Seth Godin’s thoughts on Powerpoint

Seth’s Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint

He’s approaching the subject from a marketing / sales perspective, but I think what he has to say is very useful.

2. Remember that you don’t have to be tied to Microsoft these days

I’m sure most of you know this, but you can get software to do presentations for free – no need to go and buy Microsoft Powerpoint for your church. I use OpenOffice – the presentations bit of this is OpenOffice Impress. It will open Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and you can save presentations as Powerpoint files in case you need to pass them on to people who do use the Microsoft programme.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have entitled this post ‘using Powerpoint’, but that is still the phrase that most people use.

3. How about using some cartoons?

This is where I come in with my heavy handed sales pitch.

You can get a licence to use my cartoons as many times as you want in your church presentations for £35 a year. Worth thinking about perhaps.

[Small note to existing subscribers: I'm going to be adding quite a bit of new material for you soon. I'm also aware that I'm still woefully behind with my renewals reminders - if your 'year' has run out please keep using the material and I'll hopefully get in touch with you shortly.]

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13 Responses to “Advice for those using Powerpoint in church”


  1. Marcus Pickering says:

    For song projection I really recommend Zionworx. Not only is it free, but it is specifically designed for the purpose of displaying worship songs and is much better than Powerpoint at this particular task.

    If you are willing to spend some money, there are other more fully featured packages – EasyWorship being one of the best.

    For those tied to Powerpoint, you can import Powerpoint presentations into both Zionworx and EasyWorship.

    January 31st, 2007 at 1:39 pm
  2. Ian M says:

    SongPro, from Creation Software is what we use for projecting in worship. I’d describe it as expensive and buggy, but very powerful. http://www.creationsoftware.com/

    January 31st, 2007 at 3:29 pm
  3. Dave says:

    Thanks for these tips – most useful. I’ve had no experience of the song projecting side of things.

    January 31st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
  4. ash says:

    OUr church uses a designed-for-churches program called ‘Easy Worship’ for our songs etc. It’s good because it is powepoint compatible, has a really good seperate screen for controlling, which shows previews and all the files in your library etc. You can even have video backgrounds to songs, and find songs, liturgy and bible verses all without minimizing a screen, and all while showing something else to the congregation.

    It is bad because it costs lots of pennies. And with those pennies you could probably get about 6 years of Cartoon Church Cartoons…

    January 31st, 2007 at 4:05 pm
  5. Solveig Haugland says:

    I’m so glad you mentioned OpenOffice. It handles Powerpoint really well, though sometimes if you have a video you’ll need to re-insert it (Insert > Movie and Sound). The good news is that Impress handles more movie/sound formats than Powerpoint!

    Another benefit is that you can export Impress (not a feature of PowerPoint) to PDF, then run the presentation on any computer that has Adobe Reader, if you don’t have Impress installed on that computer. (File > Export as PDF.) You could also export it to HTML or Flash for the same reason (File > Export, select HTML or Macromedia as the format).

    For easy clipart access, you can add items to the Gallery. Choose Tools > Gallery, click New Theme to create a new category, and in the same window click Files to add files on your computer to that category. Then you can just drag the added files from that theme into the slide.

    OpenOffice.org also of course has Writer, a Word equivalent, and Calc, an Excel equivalent, which can replace Microsoft Office for free.

    January 31st, 2007 at 4:11 pm
  6. Philip of Samaria says:

    aaarhg tecnobabble!

    January 31st, 2007 at 9:01 pm
  7. Davo says:

    It all works great until a main fuse blows in the church and you have no power to any of the electric sockets (but we still, strangely enough, had all the lights and the photocopier working!).

    However, I guess that would have put the OHP out of action as well…

    (We have got the power back on again now – having an electrician as a church warden certainly helps)

    January 31st, 2007 at 10:19 pm
  8. Rhys says:

    Easyworship is very good (and easy to use too: I managed to get up to speed with it in five minutes). The only problem with it, and presentation software in general, is its insistence on making you use trendy backgrounds, which make the text far less legible than it would be on a plain background.

    Also, looking at Seth Godin’s article, yes, I’d happily remove all the transition effects from Powerpoint with rusty pliers, but: only six words as a maximum per slide? Could your vicar/preacher cope with that?

    February 1st, 2007 at 9:52 am
  9. Clare says:

    Dear me, all these complicated things for projecting songs. We’re still reeling from moving from hymn books to printed hymns on the service sheet!!
    (Apparently the idea behind the move was so we could have a greater variety of hymns, but we still seem to be firmly wedded to the New English Hymnal . Rumour has it, that it’s so that those who insist on still using a hymn book can continue to join in )

    February 1st, 2007 at 10:16 am
  10. Dave says:

    Rhys – I think preaching on verses that are six words or less might be the answer. Or leaving out the words that are not intended to be taken literally.

    As for the trendy backgrounds – I might be inclined to agree. Perhaps sunsets should be reserved for times that the sun is setting, rather than in church.

    February 1st, 2007 at 10:38 am
  11. Struggling with IT « Matt and Polly’s blog website says:

    [...] [...]

    February 1st, 2007 at 3:04 pm
  12. John Bennett says:

    I did my first school assembly using powerpoint today – some pictures of the sea of galilee and the words of a song.

    Nothing clever, but I think it added something.

    February 1st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
  13. Bimble says:

    Hymns Ancient & Modern; been working for ages, tends not to break, easy to use.

    February 2nd, 2007 at 9:02 pm