If you're like me and you are involved in your church's audio/visual department, you'll know that software for presenting visuals in church during worship and to illustrate sermon points is becoming extremely popular and is found in most large churches and a very large number of medium size to smaller churches.
Software packages such as MediaShout, SundayPlus, EasyWorship and others are taking the place of the tired monotony of the powerpoint presentation on sunday mornings. Churches are now including projected visuals in almost every part of their sunday morning experiences.
Key ways that churches are incorporating visual graphics and images in their sunday morning services are as follows...
- Pre-service video loop (including announcements & vital information accompanied by background music)
- Sermon illustrations (these programs provide a much cleaner way of displaying scripture, sermon points, video and text)
- As a visual accompaniment during worship (words to songs are projected during worship times on a large screen with imagery that relates or applies to the song)
Over the past few years only a very few of these types of programs existed. As well, their price reflected their scarcity. Because there weren't many options, churches who could afford to drop anwhere from two thousand dollars and up on a video projection unit did, and bought the appropriate software ranging in price from two hundred to well over six hundred dollars USD.
As with almost all modern commercial software, there usually exists an open-source or freeware alternative that grows and sometimes surpasses it's commercial counterparts in terms of features and useability. This is the case with 3 new software packages developed by independant companies that are offering their blood sweat and tears to churches who wish to kickstart their sunday morning services at a more "church-realistic" cost.
"ZionWorx is a powerful, professional yet easy-to-use song display program, designed to meet the needs of churches that want to use multimedia in worship.
Many churches today, from all denominations, are experiencing the benefits that technology can bring when it is applied to worship in a sensitive and unobtrusive way - and this is where ZionWorx might be able to help you.
Unlike similar commercial worship software, ZionWorx is absolutely free."
According to the Zionworx website, the program features the typical dual monitor support that is typical of all the presentation packages, is fully compliant with CCLI's licensing laws and uses one click lyric scheduling as well as extensive formatting options.
What's even more impressive than those features is the software's requirements. While most commercial programs are demanding Windows XP, mimum of 1 GHZ PIII 256 MB ram and large amounts of video ram, Zionworx delivers large, but asks for very little. Check out these specs!
- 500 MHZ+ Processor
- 64 MB RAM (obviously more won't hurt)
- Dual head or dual output videocard
- Video Projector
That's a requirement list that fits even a very modest church budget!
Another program I've discovered recently is a free open-source program called Opensong. It was created much the same way as Zionworx to manage lyrics, chords, leadsheets and computer projection. The program also appears to interface directly with CCLI's SongSelect website which allows for the quick downloading of over 60,000 song lyrics into your song list without the need for manually typing in lyrics provided the church is registered with CCLI.
The program also allows for any order of your song list to be presented at a split-second's notice, timed loops of slides for pre-service announcements, fully customizable font styles, shadowing and the importing of background images and colors. The company's site also includes language modules, background packs, song packs and various bible translations...All for free!
The company does not give a short list of system requirements, but it does note that Opensong is available for PC and Mac! Anyone wishing to use Opensong only has to register for free at the company's website. Check it out at www.opensong.org
"Openlp.org was initially started as a project for a local church in london, england who couldn't afford a piece of projector software. tim started developing it particularly to the projector operator's needs, and as it became more polished, decided to release it on the web. since then many people have joined the team and the program has grown from strength to strength. despite the increasing maturity of this program openlp.org has, and always will remain an application that is available to all; at no cost."
The company features a large feature list including over 120 transition effects, simultaneous display and editing of songs, directx support, full powerpoint support (with a copy of powerpoint), announcement popups and an interface with CCLI's Songselect. One very cool feature worth mentioning is that OpenLP actually allows you to drop text over live video through a DV camcorder connected to your computer through firewire, a feature even some of the modern commercial packages cannot offer.
What's more, the program boasts system requirements that are totally within reach of most small and medium sized churches.
- 500 Mhz+ Processor
- 64 MB Ram
- 25 MB Hard drive space
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- Multiple monitor support
- DirectX 7 or greater
- Text over live video with a Firewire port and DV Camcorder
- Powerpoint support (using Powerpoint 2000/XP/2003)
Check out the company's modest website as well as the developer's blog at www.openlp.org
I hope you have found these links as useful as I have, I know they will make some church techs very happy! If you have found this article useful in any way, please comment below, I'd love to hear from you!
