Using PowerPoint in Church Services

[mike_b]

This thread is for the discussion if MinistrySource.com's article 'Using PowerPoint in Church Services'.

Original Article

[don the techtacular]

Originally Posted by mike_b

This thread is for the discussion if MinistrySource.com's article 'Using PowerPoint in Church Services'.

Original Article

nice typo MB.

[don the techtacular]

Who actually uses PowerPoint in church and why? I have tried Easy Worship and Media Shout and they were both better than MSPP. I landed with Media Shout since it had more features than the version of Easy Worship at the time. We currently use v3.0 and have had no problems with it. It does have it's qwerks though and it currently is not totally supporting MSPP so if you have someone bringing their presentation on MSPP then some of the transitions may be lost during conversion. Supposedly this is being worked on but as of yet I have received no fix for this and am still using PowerPoint viewer with Media Shout to run the .ppt files that come in which works fine. Fact is, most people know how to use MSPP so most every speaker that comes in will have it in .ppt format. Problem with MSPP is that it doesn't support anything that Microsoft doesn't want to support - namely .mov files and anyone worth their salt in the video editing world produces movies in .mov format. Arguably most files can be formatted as mpegs and then put into PP but why have to do so. Easy Worship and Media Shout are 3rd party presentation packages and are great at what they do - present. They are not all about trying to be the WalMart SuperCenter of software like Microsoft is. They are good at one thing and that's it and they both have fantastic user forums to help work through different problems along the way. So if you are actually using MSPP in your church - try a demo of something else. Believe it or not there are better things out there.

Don

[moonweb]

There definitely are people still using PP although the rise of the church presentation software industry is upon us. Though the new software offers better solutions, some churches still don't have the budget for them. Remember, 80% of churches are still less than 200 people.

I would also say that the points in this article are valid even for churches using a different presentation software. The fonts, background choices, and proofreading are all critical to engaging the congregation in worship rather than distracting from it.

[don the techtacular]

I totally agree on the fonts and what not. For example, this week our "volunteer designer" is using what I'm calling the It Came From Mars font since it looks like all those B horror movie posters from the 60's. It's totally distracting and hard to read, not to mention that it's done in a fast paced song so by the time people figure out how to read the font, the song will be over and they'll be filling out a comment card that I get to use as toilet paper.