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A worship presentation program is a computer software package used to present text (songs, scripture, announcements), images and/or video, normally in the form of a slide show. It typically includes a text editor, a system to manage song lyrics, background images and other media, database of various Bible translations, and a slide-show feature to display the content.

Purpose

Churches, or houses of worship, use hymns, or songs of praise to God, for participants to engage in corporate, or collaborative, worship. As both personal computers and video projectors became reasonably priced and increase in performance, contemporary churches began to use presentation programs to not only display announcements, but song lyrics of hymns, praise songs and/or study notes to enhance sermons. Due to the dominant position of Microsoft in the "office suite" market, PowerPoint became, and remains, the most widely used presentation program in houses of worship.

As the Spirit moves the worship leader, the chorus and verses (see verse-chorus form) may not be performed in the same pattern each time. Depending upon how closely the computer operator works together with the worship leader (or worship band) may determine how coordinated the lyrics may appear in conjunction to the performance. Many early generation presentation programs only used a single video output, so the projected image was the same image that appeared on the operator's monitor. For a business presentation, this may be more than adequate. But in a live worship environment it makes it very difficult to jump from one slide in the presentation to another slide not in sequence. Personal computers that have dual video capability allowed for presentation programs to be designed that would use a primary screen for a control interface and the second screen (the projected image) to show the slide that was selected to be displayed.

The desire for even more control lead to software designed specifically for worship. The advantages included being able to incorporate a database of songs, background images, Bible scriptures, video and audio files. Additional features might include the ability to display a movie clip using the computer's DVD player, have text displayed over moving video, animations or live video, integration with CCLI's SongSelect, the ability to either import or control PowerPoint files, announcement loops and an on-screen indicator to call parents of children in child care.

See also

External links

Christian music

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Worship presentation program".

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