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1. We establish a theme for the graphics we use with for each PowerPoint/Song presentation. Once we come up with the them then we look for pictures, animated gifs, backgrounds, and effects with the words themselves to bring off that theme. We decide on the theme by listening to the style and rhythm of the music along with the words as a whole. Then we find the graphics and effects that we feel will compliment and enhance the message. We never use a graphic or effect just because it is awesome. If it doesn't enhance the song and message we keep it in mind for a future slideshow. Once we complete a slide show we may tinker with it but we don't change it from service to service. If you pay attention to trying to keep each individual presentation unique as possible and you don't use all the same songs service after service then you have a good balance of variety and familiarity. This process is very time consuming, but it is also very creative and well worth it. We have continual feedback that tells us it is the visuals which often are the thing that drives home the point that the song is trying to make.

2. We're pretty strict about putting copyright info on every slide, at the bottom, usually in 20-point type versus about 40-point for the lyrics: ex: ©1996 Russell Fragar Hillsongs Australia CCLI #nnnnnn

We do work off printed slide handouts, color, six to a page. It helps to add notes from the message text for cues. A copy of whatever the preacher works from really helps.

Knowing the songs is huge- if your operator can run slides along with music practice that helps. We (music and worship leaders) have found that it really helps to be consistent with the song arrangement and to have the slides go in sequence with the arrangement- always going forward. That means if you're going to repeat a chorus, plan it that way and put the correct slide in sequence, rather than only having one chorus slide and trying to go back and forth. Not spontaneous, but then you're not jerking the congregation's attention around while they're trying to worship and you're desperately trying to get the right slide up. There's a tradeoff, I guess. I imagine the folks who are using dual-monitor systems may have it easier for "pickin' and switchin' ".

When we first started (and sometimes still) we used standard kinds of backgrounds, now I try a little harder to use pictures as backgrounds that go with the song or the particular verse. Takes a lot more time to prepare slides each week, but seems to be effective.''

3. We generally put the licensing info at the bottom of the first song along with songwriter information etc. in smaller font--but don't follow after that first slide.

The presentation is the flow of the service--if you can't maintain some continuity between the words you are projecting and the music being presented that can really be a problem--its sort of like using technology for the sake of it without using it correctly. The worship leader and slide presenter need to be on the same wavelength--they should always work and practice together. Simple is best and flow is crucial--even if you have a chorus repeating itself 3 times to a bridge and then 2 more times through a chorus--they should be typed out in that order and presented--the flow looks natural, keeps everyone in the band and congregation together and makes for a more meaningful experience for everyone. Besides PowerPoint--let me also mention another program that has a lot more power regarding music, composition, song flow, etc--SongShow Plus--really is much more useful for music presentation where PowerPoint tends to be more useful for lecture, sermon, etc presentation.

We usually keep the same background for all songs in a given week--but are constantly changing the backgrounds--generally they are simple and are designed to be attractive but not distractive from the words. Also, something else you might consider doing--use PowerPoint to do a slide show before the service making all the announcements with music playing in the background--that way you don't have to worry about interrupting the service--the rule of thumb we have always used--as I am sure others have also, anymore than 7-10 seconds of silence (unless it is planned silence

through prayer, meditation, etc) is deadly. That's why the transition from songs are important and transition from song to other components of the service are equally important--a great worship leader/musician can fill those voids to make the transition pretty smooth--there are some other things you can do also--moving in an out of video, etc.

4. I'm enjoying this interchange. What you say about flexibility in PowerPoint has some merit. We set up the whole slide show sequentially, Verse one, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, etc.. If we ever decided in the middle of the service that we wanted to skip Verse 2 for some reason or to sing the Chorus one more time while accompanied by music we could not do that. On the Library issue I'm not too sure what you are getting at. All our Power Point presentations are stored in folders according to use. One of the folders are "Songs" that folder is open during the service with all the slide shows alphabetically arranged, if there is a song we want it takes the tech 4 clicks to get it up on the screen" Open, setup show, monitor 2, run show" Of course one of the reason we can do this is because we run two monitors. I'm not sure that a 1 monitor set up would work so smoothly. I guess the long and short of it is that I agree you do loose some flexibility with power point compared to SSP, but from our perspective we find that the power of graphics to add meaning outweighs the amount the flexibility we lose. Of course that is the kind of decision everyone has to make for themselves.

5. Advertising campaigns can be fun and there are now many Christian marketing companies that can put a slick, multifaceted program together for us. But it seems to me we are barking up the wrong tree if that is our focus. Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting we abandon our yellow page and weekly newspaper ads or even the seasonal mass mailings. But a 1% response to an expensive mailout isn't going to grow your church.

George Barna's research has repeatedly documented that 80% of the unchurched people who come to church do so because they were personally invited by someone with whom they had a relationship - a friend, neighbor or coworker. The common element in the double digit growth of rapidly growing churches in America is that people are saying "I am so excited about my church and what I am learning there to live life in the 21st century that I want to share it with you. Won't you come with me?"

Until we address and create a culture that creates that kind of environment and excitement, our ads will continue to catch the eye of the handful of folks who are church shopping for whatever reason and ran across our piece in the yellow pages. And the mailer may have put bodies in the pews on Easter Sunday and pumped up the numbers a bit, but unless there is a transformational environment, will they be back in the weeks following?

We've also discovered pictures/graphics are much more well received than just putting the words up. There are tons of free images on the internet available for download.....in all kinds of categories. Freefoto.com is one, Lycos image gallery is another. I like the Lycos the best......... http://multimedia.lycos com it has a dynamite search engine, just type in a word, Jesus, heaven, fire, water, baptism, etc. and it pulls up the pics. We've had the same problem, images looking good on the monitor, but blurring on the big screen, especially if the size of the pic is small.

6. On running the power points: First, get your person running the power points some kind of bulletin, script, whatever so they can follow along. Second, let them play with the power points before at least, if not a full blown rehearsal, which it sounds like you did already. Remember, it is easy to flip thru a power point, use the page up and page down keys to go forward and back thru the presentation.

On the backgrounds, some places use the same background, one appropriate to the theme, throughout. We usually try to vary ours from song to song. Make sure you test the backgrounds & fonts on your actual projector or screens in the celebration space at the time & lighting conditions you are going to be doing this at. We did some great PP's for Easter and discovered at our Saturday run thru that while they looked good on a monitor screen, they were terrible when shown on the video screens the congregation uses. We quickly redid them. Make sure the background doesn't distract too much from the words, etc.

7. We use PowerPoint quite a bit in our services. What we are doing makes it pretty simple to follow for the tech support person to follow along. One of the most important things is that the tech can SEE the band, that way they can pick up on the cues the rest of the band uses to follow along with the slides. Also the way you have your equipment set can help make things easier too...this is what we do.

I will explain our equipment, then what makes it easier now compared to the way we used to do it. We recently got PowerPoint 2000, it is a bit pricey but it has an awesome feature that former versions don't (not that I know of at least). It allows you to view the outline view and the slide view at the same time. The computer we use supports a second monitor, we run our projector on the secondary monitor.

We set the view to "normal", which shows the outline view on the right, slide view on the left, and the notes at the bottom. In the "set up show" dialog box, we set the slideshow to run on the secondary monitor. We also use the "bulleted list" format for the slides, only we turn the bullets off, and basically have two text boxes on each slide, one for the title, and one for the words to the song. Setting up the songs this way allows the tech running it to see all the words to the songs in the outline view.

What all of this allows to happen is simply this....the song (or sermon helps or whatever) shows on the projector, but the tech running it not only sees what the projector is projecting (slide view) but also all of the words to the song (outline view) on the computer monitor. By having it all there on the screen, the tech can follow closely and even if he or she has to wait for the band to sing the first word or so they can easily see which slide they need to go to. We have not found the small lag time to be a problem for our congregation...especially as our tech builds the chemistry with the band and becomes a part of it...they will work as one.

We have found this a lot handier than printing out the sheets with six slides miniatures on them...especially if the Lord leads to a song not on the schedule

8. PowerPoint Songs Issue,

Here's what we do at Ginghamsburg for songs. Create your background (or find a background you like) and put it into Photoshop. If you're using Photoshop 5.0 you can make your song lyrics look much smoother buy doing them right in Photoshop.

Type your first verse on a new layer and the turn on the background layer. Then save a copy of with the two layers turned on, to put into PowerPoint. Make your next verse on a new layer turn it and the background (make sure all other layers are off) and save another copy for PP. If say, Awesome God were my song, I would call the files some thing like: Awesome 1, Awesome 2.

I always add a dark glow around white text to separate them from the background. If the background is white or really bright, then I use black text. Sometimes I will also blur the image I am using for the background. This helps separate the text from the image.

One last thing, we always make sure our type is at least 28 point. Most fonts are hard to read if they're smaller than that. So anyway that how we do it.