This is a question for all the worship leaders: which worship presentation software would you rate highest and recommend? I’ve been looking at a few different products, but I am really quite uninformed about worship presentation software. Your experience in this area and product recommendations are seriously coveted. We are in the midst of acquiring the basic equipment we need for our church plant, and quality worship presentation software is a priority. So, if you were building your worship experience from zero, which presentation software would you have to have? Thanks, leaders.
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20 Comments
I head our media ministry at my church and I use Microsoft Office’s Powerpoint for our worship presentations. It is run on a laptop and hooked up to a projector and projected onto a large projector screen :o)
Thanks, Jenn! Good ‘ole MS Powerpoint! It works, and we may have to use it until we master whatever other program we decide to use. I do know that other software out there, built especially for live worship settings, is way more flexible that Powerpoint. Most of the other presentation software out there use “cues” instead of slides, and stores songs in a database. It is so much smother, IMHO.
It’s great that you are that involved in ministry! I wasn’t aware of that fact about you. Very cool!
I would use a Mac and get ProPresenter. This software is great specifically for presenting worship and can work side by side with PowerPoint. It can play video loops and mix moving and photo backgrounds like a DJ. (This software and others works best on a dual video card so you can view the computer separately from the projection…but can work on laptop).
If you are in the PC world, by far the most easy to use is one with an awful title. “Easy Worship.”
Thanks, Rich. We are in the PC world for now. So …
I am in the process of trying to figure out if the laptop we nabbed has dual monitor/video card capabilities.
I’ll check out Easy Worship. What a title!
@Rich - I downloaded and installed Easy Worship. I have to say, this is the best looking presentation software I have seen yet! It looks crisp and intuitive. Thanks for the tip.
I tried one called MediaShout last evening. It looked awful, bro. I mean, the text and images looked all pixelated and generic. It flat out looked horrible and it was incredibly difficult to understand and use. Have you ever tried it (MediaShout)?
I’m not a worship leader, but I have helped out during a conference where they were using Easy Worship and it is indeed easy to use and very good.
@Yannick: Thanks, bro! Easy Worship is taking the lead! It is by far the easiest to use, so far. I’m still messing with it. The Easy Worship people were good enough to make available a fully functional demo for 30 days. That’s very helpful!
Check out this service: http://www.planningcenteronline.com/
As far as presentation, I try to use Open Source Software to stay away from the Microsoft tax. http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html
@Steve: Thanks for the link and intro to Planning Center Online. That service looks really, really helpful. Thank you!
My recommendation is this: http://www.songshowplus.com/
I have several reasons why, but the big ones is that most music is already programmed and you can find it and display it in a matter of seconds, (for the impromptus preacher)It is fully registered and displays copyrights for you (yes even churches must do this) Updates frequently for latest releases. And graphics are 100% separate from words. Slides can be moving and you can change them mid verse and not affect the words. Any way I know its not open source, and I know its a little pricey, but its IMHO probably the best and easiest one out there.
I mention this product because I have messed on it a few times and its soo easy. Also using stock programs like PowerPoint and ProPresenter can lead to legal issues with copywrites.(assuming most folks forget to add them on the slide) Wasn’t sure if my first post said that clearly. Good luck!
@BigDaddy - Thank you! Yeah, I’m pretty convinced that Open Source isn;t going to work this time around. I have yet to find anything Open Source that will put together worship presentations like these apps were all talking about.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t open source somewhere that I haven’t found … If that’s the case feel free - anyone - to point towards it!
There is software now called Easy Worship? *cackle* I’m sorry, that just seems so… I mean, just the idea that worship requires a computer now, and to name the thing Easy Worship. Is this really the direction we want to be going?
@Mark - Hey, man! Thanks for the comment!
The name can seem a bit silly, but I think the degree of silly is proportionate to level of reader response theory we each bring to the interpretation of it. LOL! In other words, I think they really meant “we can help make your presentations easier to put together,” rather than “we make worship easy.”
There’s give and take. For example, one of the main reasons we want to move to a computer based presentation is because projection uses way less paper. In fact, we will use zero paper! Like it or not, people need to see words to worship. We were using recycled Spanish class worksheets to print out our songs for Sunday morning (our worship pastor and his wife are awesome that way). Still, we wanted to move away from paper because it’s a waste. it was actually a stewardship issue which was solved with projection. So …
I am a mac user but I have to say EasyWorship kills anything else. The ease of use and power are by far more than enough for 95% of the Church’s out there. We have been using it for 4 years now and we can do anything from streaming live video through it to playing dvd and such.
I just wish they would make it for the mac!
Wes
@Wes - Thanks for the suggestion. I liked EasyWorship, but I also gave MediaShout a second go. This time I adjusted my screen resolution correctly and the software/interface looks beautiful. The awful appearance i cited in a comment above was a result of my own bad settings.
I really, really like MediaShout now that I’m getting the hang of it. I like it a lot.
Shawn, what did you decide on? I am looking for a new solution. I found MediaShout to have a terrible interface but it is powerful. Sunday Plus has a better interface and I will try Easy Worship.
Thanks,
Chuck
@Chuck - I decided to stay away from every single piece of commercial software … and their bloated price tags! Open source is where it’s at!
See this recent post/conclusion to my search: http://www.lofitribe.com/2008/06/27/open-source-worship-presentation-software/
I was a pastor of worship for a couple years at a mid-sized church. I currently serve as a senior pastor at a small church. I am a big fan of Songshow Plus myself. One Sunday morning at my old church, my multimedia operator slept in, and I didn’t realize he wasn’t there until about 5 minutes before the service. I pulled a girl off the praise team who had never run the program before, and in 3 minutes of training, she was running it for the entire service. Now that’s just the basics, but it is that simple. In the church I currently serve, we have limited resources and people, and the versatility of the program has proven it is worthy. Honestly, I’ve tried all the others, and I would recommend SSP hands down.
About your dual monitor capability, using a laptop you can plug your projector directly into the 15 pin output. If you would desire to use a 2nd monitor (which i would recommend), you can purchase a VGA splitter/amplifier for around $30, depending on how many outputs you want. They are available at tigerdirect.com Hope this helps.
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