We asked representatives from seven of the top producers of church presentation software to tell us what they'd like to tell you about this great visual tool. Enjoy!

1. Less is more.
The more you put on the screen, the less the audience will grasp. Here's a low-clutter diet for your designs:

• Less text : Even if the text is sufficiently large, a screen crammed with text framed within narrow margins causes anxiety in your audience.
• Fewer styles: On any given screen, and among multiple screens in a series, pick a solid header font and a simple, crisp, readable body font, and stick with them. 
• Less competition: Keep the background in the background. If it competes with foreground text for attention, your audience will have to fight too hard to catch the words.
• Fewer capital letters: Lower-case letters are more readable than capitals because there's more variation in their shapes and sizes.

--Jann Saulsberry , MediaComplete Corporation

2. Turn your computer into a media center.
Many worship software programs now have or are adding support for CD audio tracks and DVD video clips. This means churches can now use their computer as a one-stop media center. Simply hookup your computer's audio line-out to your sound board, and, with the right worship software, you can play CD audio tracks right from the computer. If the computer is also equipped with a DVD ROM drive or DVD burner, you can play DVD clips as well. Some worship software programs even support defining and saving multiple clips for easy one click playback without pre-queuing. Throw in a serial cable connection from the computer to the projector and most worship software programs will allow you to control your projector for switching inputs, power on and off, etc, right from your Worship software window. This type of setup can be much easier to run, especially when there are only one or two people, and some churches may find they no longer need a separate DVD and CD player.

--Woodie Morris, Worship Him

3. Use metaphors in presentation.
The dominance of multimedia presentation in business has had a major influence on how we think about this communication tool. As a whole, we tend to think in terms of words when it comes to multimedia. If we think in terms of graphics, it is as a supporting role for the words. It is all about the text.

Notice how we pastors spend so much time weaving together verbal illustration after illustration, story after story, pouring on the metaphors like maple syrup. Then notice how many pastors use presentation media for the sermon outline with perhaps a little supporting graphic now and then. Week after week this metaphor rich tool of multimedia sets abandoned to some sort of scrabble purgatory.

Try this experiment. For one sermon, limit your presentation text to no more than 25 words. Focus your presentation on visual metaphors. Now, there is no need to load up on 10 different movie clips. If you are teaching on the 23rd Psalm, find a peaceful clip of sheep with a shepherd on a hillside. You can just let it play or make a loop. If you are preaching about what happens when a person dies, find footage of a bridge at sunset. When the time is right, you may switch to a sunrise at springtime.

Watch movies and pay attention to the visual metaphors used to support the storyline. This will give you ideas for visual backdrop style metaphors. Remember, the objective here is to visually illuminate the big idea with suffocate brightness to penetrate the soul.

-- John M. Heskett, Media 4 Ministry

4. Lead the leaders.
Timing is everything. This is particularly true when advancing song slides. The person running the slideshow must be intimately familiar with the songs so that he/she can anticipate slide changes and lead the leaders as well as the congregation. Improper or untimely slide changes are a major distraction that can trip-up your praise team. Lagging changes are just as bad. It is essential that you attend rehearsals and take good notes so you can literally lead the singing. I always work from a script, noting every slide in order on paper, along with production notes such as "musical interlude" or "repeat 3x." Never attempt to "follow" what they do on stage. For a smooth presentation, it is essential that the slides lead the leaders.

The overriding goal of anything that goes up on the screen during a church service must be to enhance the atmosphere of worship. The images that you project onto your screens must become nearly invisible to those in attendance. Anything that draws undue attention to itself distracts people from the message.

-- Chuck Peters, Digital Juice

5. Take advantage of what's available to you.
I am a yo-yo performer. That's right; I perform for kids with a toy that is attached to my finger by a string.

Almost everywhere I go I get the same question, "Is that a Duncan ?" Duncan yo-yos were the thing like 30 years ago. Since that time, yo-yo research and development has made yo-yos faster and better than ever. While I could still perform with a Duncan , it would severely impair my yo-yo-ability.

Sometimes I am asked, "Can you do two yo-yos at once?" Imagine if I replied, "That sounds cool but I only have one yo-yo." Ridiculous! Why unnecessarily limit myself?

This is exactly what has happened in many churches with their multimedia. The tools are available to turn their ideas into reality, but they are still stuck in the " Duncan " age of church presentation where the only available option for digital projection is PowerPoint.

Don't conform your worship to your software, but find tools that will conform to your unique style and needs.

--Adam Bottiglia, Creative LifeStyles Inc.

6. Don't "settle" about picture quality.
Perhaps the most important tip I can give is to make sure your visual quality is a high priority. Since we are talking about "visual" presentations, it is so important that every participant from every seat can see clearly. When you get done with your projection installation project and the church says, "The picture is blurry" or "The text is grainy" or "I can't see when I sit at the sides," there are problems. Many things affect picture quality: lumens of projector vs. ambient lighting, video card and computer resources, software generating the images and text quality, resolution and projector quality, screen type and ratios, throw distance, and scaling or changing native resolutions to the projector. It might be wiser, if faced with limited funds, to wait until you can save some money and insure a quality picture. I would get some help from a qualified projection AV company who understands worship.

Also, you should obtain a trial version of the different projection software available. Notice the picture quality when projecting the same background and words or text over it. Each uses a different technology to project text. Notice the comparison of outlining and shadowing. Look for fuzziness around text when playing video in the background and during song and video transitions. If picture quality is important to you, you will notice that all software is not created equal. Choose software that will fit your needs. And as far as projection brightness, most churches do not choose enough lumens to offset ambient lighting. Your audience is used to computer monitor and TV brightness. You will hear from them if your projection cannot compare. Since God gave us the ability to see color and 3D, we should take advantage of the aesthetics. After all, we are striving to present the finest quality picture to create a conducive environment, enhance your worship and move hearts with the finest message on earth.

--Derek Pfeifer, EasyWorship

7. Look for considerate software.
The most valuable features for software applications are often found outside of the realm of buttons and obvious capabilities. Polite software considers the user. Church-oriented presentation software has to be most usable during the service by non-professional multimedia directors. Who cares if your software lays text over video or switches seamlessly between Greek and Hebrew translations of the Bible if a volunteer can't learn in minutes how to move improvisationally through the service? Sometimes a few moments prior to the service are all you have to get accurate imagery on the screen.

Another example of thoughtful design for the church worship arts customer is found in pricing. Multimedia design is collaborative. Of course, the software should contain tools for teamwork. It makes no sense for a church to build a multimedia team if the cost of collaboration swamps the effort. Software should be priced affordably as a site license to be of any use to often financially strapped smaller churches that make up the majority of worship presenters across the country.

Rather than looking for over-priced software that confuses your non-professionals, assess your investment through the eyes of your media volunteers. They're your true stakeholders. Unnecessarily complex software often goes unused or uninstalled.

--Lou Douros, Grass Roots Software (SundayPlus)

Sidebar
Product Roundup

Digital Juice's Presenter's Toolkit
The Presenter's Toolkit from Digital Juice enlivens and enriches programs created with PowerPoint, EasyWorship, SundayPlus or any other software application that uses graphics, video and music. The Toolkit includes more than 4,500 graphic backgrounds, 4,500 photos and photo objects, 3,200 video clips, 900 music clips, 6,700 illustrations, and free indexing and processing software. The entire collection of graphic backgrounds in the Presenter's Toolkit is designed for variety and versatility. Organized categorically, customers can easily find thematic elements using the included search utility. All of the images are high-resolution and look just as good on a plasma display or a big screen as they do on a computer monitor. With an infinite number of styles and looks, a presentation can visually convey a message that is meditative, energetic, subdued, elegant, professional, serious, fun or inviting.
www.digitaljuice.com

Worship Him
Worship Him is designed to meet the presentation needs of today's spontaneous church services. For churches using a video projection system, Worship Him can make preparing and executing a worship service fast, fun and easy. Preparing for a worship service with Worship Him takes minutes instead of hours. The program features full, multiple-monitor support, automatic song usage tracking, automatic backups, PowerPoint import, transitions, Bible verses, pictures, nursery messages, video clips, DVD clips, Shockwave Flash movies, audio clips, CD audio and more.
www.worship-him.com

MediaShout 7
Media used to proclaim life's most important message should be as compelling as the message itself. MediaShout 7 is a simple, powerful presentation tool with a dual-screen design, allowing users to create, modify and preview presentations at any time, even while a program is underway. The program allows users to display song lyrics, Bible verses or text with full audio and video integration to enhance the worship or teaching experience. The new version 3.0 adds to MediaShout's extensive feature set. Among the new capabilities are Bible "keyword" search, a new user interface, live video feed, video transitions and selectable in/out points for DVD playback. Included are more than 50 Bible translations.
www.mediashout.com

Vox Proxy Version 3
Right Seat Software, Inc. has announced the release of Vox Proxy Version 3, bringing new versatility to the process of adding and viewing 3D-animated talking characters in Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. The Vox Proxy collection of fun, effective characters, which are custom-designed for the PowerPoint platform, can now be viewed using the free PowerPoint 2003 Viewer, while media files can be played using Microsoft Windows Media Player 9. A new online help system has also been added, along with Vox Proxy CD Prep enhancements that allow the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer to be included on Vox Proxy presentation CDs. Vox Proxy, a leading interactive add-in for PowerPoint, uniquely allows users to incorporate talking, animated characters in PowerPoint presentations.
www.voxproxy.com

Presentation Manager from Creative Lifestyles
This multimedia projection software package, with a preloaded database of images, songs and Bible text, helps simplify slide preparation. Presentation Manager includes 10 tutorials, making it easy to learn and to teach. The program has quick Bible and song search capabilities and can use live video or motion backgrounds, as well as imported PowerPoint presentations and songs from CCLI or other online services. Beginners will find all the tools they need to get started, while advanced users will enjoy the more dynamic features. Visit the website to download or request a free demo.
www.presentationmanager.info

EasyWorship
With everything in view, EasyWorship users simply drag and drop items to be projected into their schedule. Song, scripture and image databases are present on the screen, along with the next item to be projected and what is currently live. EasyWorship allows users to project text over video with broadcast quality, and capture cards make it possible to project live feeds as backgrounds for text over projection. Users can go from a song to a scripture to a PowerPoint slide or file of slides to a video clip to a live camera to DVD-all with one key stroke. Visit the website to download a free trial version.
www.easyworship.com

SundayPlus
Grass Roots Software manufactures SundayPlus, intuitive presentation software for church communicators. SundayPlus is an affordable and dynamic presentation solution that can be used for a wide variety of worship venues, ranging from large churches with full-scale audio and video set-up to small churches struggling with PowerPoint. Renowned for its true church site license and free technical support, SundayPlus 2.4 is volunteer-friendly software that makes it easy to create visually rich presentations for any sized congregation. SundayPlus is sold as a single disc product and comes with an unlimited site license for churches and free technical support to all its customers. SundayPlus 2.4 is available for Windows 98 and higher.
www.sundayplus.com