Using PowerPoint for Worship – Part One

Many worship leaders and church committees automatically dismiss PowerPoint out of hand when considering the best way to provide a multimedia worship experience for the church. Although it was designed specifically for the purpose of putting ideas up on a screen, PowerPoint is not viewed as a viable tool for use in worship. The interesting anomaly is that if the pastor wants to use bullet points to support his sermon, more often than not it is a PowerPoint that is integrated into some other worship presentation software. This series of posts will clear up some of the misconceptions about this tool and provide a tutorial on the best way to put this powerful software to use.

For those who may find themselves in unfamiliar territory here, PowerPoint is a presentation software tool that is a part of the Microsoft Office software suite. It is a graphical tool that organizes the content in the form of slides. Like an old photographic slide carousel, the presenter can advance from slide to slide at a pace that matches their talk. Through the years, the power of the program and the graphical capabilities possible have advanced so that very sophisticated multimedia displays are possible. This same power allows for extraordinary abuse in utilizing the features inappropriately. Those who have sat through any number of PowerPoint shows know precisely what I’m talking about. To steal a line — “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The PowerPoint presentation is constructed by building a series of slides. In a simple form, the design of the slide will be the same throughout the whole show so you can simply pick one and begin adding content. When you display the show, each slide will fill the entire display screen. The editing portion of PowerPoint does not show. As we will see in upcoming posts, there are a number of ways to conduct a presentation above and beyond the simple linear sequencing. To be able to utilize PowerPoint in a worship sequence, the presenter must be able to move fluidly between lyric slides as the Spirit moves the worship leader. Many people are unaware that PowerPoint can accommodate this need.

In my next post, we will construct a simple show.

Tagged as: PowerPoint