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Posted Posted on Sep 7, 2013 in on Sep 7, 2013 in ToolsTools, , Worship MinistryWorship Ministry | | 10 comments10 comments

Why You Can’t Afford to Neglect YourPresentation Anymore, Part 1

resentation matters. Sometimes all that separates a cheap meal from

an expensive, gourmet meal is it’s presentation. People pay for it,

people are wowed by it, people are drawn to it.

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I’ve seen a lot of worship ministries that strive for excellence in their musical

presentation but the lyric presentation is AWFUL! Words unreadable, images

blurry with copyright info all over it, off-centered, gawdy video loops, ugly

fonts…all this communicates, “we don’t care if you sing along or not, we’re

just here for us.”

If you truly value and prioritize the church’s song, prove it! Invest in an

excellent presentation that will draw people to participate. If you use

hymnals, provide nice ones. And if you use screen projection, project

excellence. How? That’s the million-dollar question and I’m going to break

this into 2 posts: This one discusses software choices. The next will give tips

for creating an excellent presentation.

When it comes to presentation software, you have 5 viable options. Which

you choose does matter. Some make it easy to project excellence and others

do not. I’ll countdown to what I like best:

#5 Easy Worship (Price Tag: $399)

I’ve talked with several churches that use this and like it. But this company’s

still selling their 2009 version and for the same price as MediaShout and

ProPresenter who are constantly working to stay cutting-edge and up-to-

date. I’m skeptical + the name just bugs me :) I want excellent worship rather

than just easy.

#4 MediaShout (Price Tag: $399)

Neil Oldham

I am the pastor of Cypress Street

Church of God in West Monroe,

LA and spent over a decade as a

worship leader/pastor before

that. I am also the author of

BlueCollarWorship.com, which

has worship ministry tips, tools,

and resources for leading strong

in the local church. Oh, and more

importantly, I'm a husband and a

dad!

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This was my first foray into the church presentation software world beyond

PowerPoint. I hated it. The interface was ugly, unpleasant to use, and hard

to learn. Most importantly, I felt it was built poorly for formatting (a.k.a.

making slides look good).

#3 Proclaim (Price Tag: $200+/yr)

Honestly, I have no personal reference or experience with this one but their

website looks nice so that’s always a good start! They offer a few unique

interfacing features so, if you rely heavily on Planning Center and other

techie services, you should check it out.

#2 PowerPoint (Price Tag: $109.99)

Are you surprised I ranked it so high? Plain ol’ PowerPoint, really???

PowerPoint is 100% designed around formatting excellent presentations. If

they would’ve incorporated background video, I doubt I ever would’ve left.

And, honestly, finding quality still images is a lot less work (+ free) than

tracking down great background videos. You can do more to extract

excellence out of each element than you can in any other presentation

software. That being said, it’s still geared to the business-world, not the

church-world.

#1 ProPresenter (Price Tag: $399)

Pro-Presenter was like a breath of fresh air compared to my previous

experience with MediaShout. It’s as powerful as you could want but as

simple as you and your team need. It contains tools I’ll never need in my

blue collar ministry setting. But there are also some I never thought I’d use

but now love. The initial cost was a hard pill for our small budget to swallow

but everyone involved would tell you it’s been worth it. Here are a few of my

favorite things about ProPresenter:

I actually enjoy using it. Kudos to companies who make software that’s fun

to use (Cloversites.com, here’s looking at you!).

I can run it remotely from my iPhone or iPad. That means I can now run

both our sound board and computer remotely…crazy times we’re living in!

Stage Display allows me to post both the current and next slide’s lyrics on

the back wall for my vocalists (you can also stream that to your iDevice).

I can easily create my own countdowns.

My videos, images and audio files are super-easy to organize and access.

Last-minute edits on Sunday morning are a breeze.

Our new recruits have learned to use it really fast.

What presentation software do you use? And if you have any questionsspecific to ProPresenter or PowerPoint, I can take a stab at answering!

Disclosure: I have not received any compensation for writing thispost. I have no material connection to the brands, products, orservices that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance

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10 Comments

I’ve used MediaShout since version 2. I now have version 4.5 and have

been testing MediaShout 5 Beta. Honestly, version 5 hasn’t got me sold on

it yet. I’ve never had any issues with MediaShout, but I really don’t think

we’ll be upgrading to version 5.

I downloaded the free demo version of ProPresenter 5 a couple of weeks

ago. I plan to ‘play’ with it for the next few weeks before I make a decision,

but it looks like we may be switching! :-)

Thanks for the reviews on the various presentation software we have

available.

Jeff

with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “GuidesConcerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials inAdvertising.”

1

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Jeff LutzJeff Lutz September 9, 2013September 9, 2013

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Thanks for sharing, Jeff! That’s what we did at first, too. Also, I

found a lot of the ProPresenter Video Tutorials on their website to

really be helpful. I sat down with another guy that was going to be

using it and we just invested some time viewing the main ones.

Helped shorten the learning curve timeline!

The initial switchover to any new system is a little time-consuming

but can certainly be worth it in the long-run. Good luck!

When I came to my current church, they were using MediaShout. We made

the switch to ProPresenter probably a month later, and I haven’t regretted

it for a minute.

I’m a stickler for a smooth, seamless presentation. I don’t want any weird

breaks or jarring cuts – I want the presentation to enhance, not distract,

and ProPresenter has features that allow me to do that – even on the fly

during the service, if I have to.

That said, I’m looking forward to the next post in this series!

Awesome, I agree with you 100%. Thanks Bryan!

We have been using EasyWorship for years but has been giving us trouble

so we are now switching to ProPresenter. I have a trial installed now. It’s up

Neil OldhamNeil Oldham September 9, 2013September 9, 2013

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Bryan TownsendBryan Townsend September 11, 2013September 11, 2013

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Neil OldhamNeil Oldham September 11, 2013September 11, 2013

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RichRich March 5, 2014March 5, 2014

and running with three displays. My question has to do with the Stage

Display. For worship songs it’s nice to choose the option Text Only.

However, our Pastor uses PowerPoint for his messages and with Text Only

set, nothing shows up on the Stage Display when PowerPoint is running

slides on the main output. If I turn off Text Only, they show up on the Stage

Display. I want Text Only for songs and full PowerPoint slides… Is this

possible?

Thanks

Rich

Sure, Rich, we ran into the same problem. The best solution seems

to be this simple piece of hardware: A VGA Switch. You run your

stage display monitor/projector to this box and run signal from the

computer for both the front-of-house screen that everyone sees

and the stage display for the worship team. Then you just switch

that back screen back and forth as needed. Does this make sense?

http://www.amazon.com/Manual-VGA-Switch-Model-MT-15-

2C/dp/B000I9B2KK

We use ProPresenter at our church and is great. Lyrics and videos are

crisp, user face is Swift and easy to use. Learning curve is also very short.

Thanks for the article.

Thanks Caleb!!!

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Neil OldhamNeil Oldham March 5, 2014March 5, 2014

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CalebCaleb September 14, 2014September 14, 2014

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oldhamn@yahoo.comoldhamn@yahoo.com October 2, 2014October 2, 2014

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We are thinking of making the switch to PP, but the question I have is, have

you had success using this software with Windows? We have a couple of

tech guys who can support a pc, on the fly, if there are any issues that

happen, ie hard drive failure or memory needs replacing, but macs aren’t

made to be serviced easily.

I have never used it on Windows but I know that version has been

out awhile so they’ve had time to work out glitches. I guess, if I

were you, I’d download it (the download is freely available) and try

it out. If it works well, pay them to remove the watermark so you

can start using it in your services.

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AaronAaron December 8, 2014December 8, 2014

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oldhamn@yahoo.comoldhamn@yahoo.com December 8, 2014December 8, 2014

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