Monday 27 August 2007

Back Again!

Hi folks,
Been missing for a while as I have had one of those really busy spells both at work and away from work so not managed to do much blogging - hope to get back in the swing now!
Had an interesting service yesterday as I was preaching at my own church where we have been thinking about buying a projector for use in services. I bought myself one a few weeks back so decided I would try it out yesterday for the hymns and the readings - only one church in our circuit does this - and I was pleasantly surprised by the result. We had all the hymns and the readings on a powerpoint presentation and my daughter operated the projector for me as I was playing keyboard as well as taking the service. I was ably assisted by the worship leaders and a guitarist and bass guitarist and the worship was very good. I had been told by someone from the other church in our circuit that they felt the singing was better with the projector because the congregation were looking up rather than looking down at their hymn books. I did think this was the case yesterday morning.
I asked people as they left how they had found the projector and the response were quite favourable so it may move us towards actually buying the equipment for use in the church.
I suspect the only difficulty with using this type of equipment will be persuading preachers to provide their hymns early enough in the week for them to be put onto the computer - really needs to be no later than Thursday evening and I know that sometimes when I am wearing my other hat as an organist I don't get hymns until Saturday morning.

2 comments:

Methodist Worship Leader said...

Good to read about your experience of using a projector. My experience is definitely that the singing is better with projector. There are some other issues (skill/sensitivity of operator, some people like to see the whole hymn/song rather than just the few lines on the screen, appropriate colour scheme to give good contrast of words/background, etc.) but lots of positives, not least being able to choose appropriate background images (beware of overdoing this though).
I'd suggest you try some dedicated worship software rather than using Powerpoint (although Powerpoint is fine to try out the principle of using a projector). All of them will allow you to have a database of songs/readings/backgrounds/etc. so you could almost run the songs without prep.
We use Easyworship but there are lots of others available. We ended up with EasyWorship chiefly because it looks like a 'normal Windows app, is fairly easy to learn and is licenced on a 'per projector' basis (or something like that) so that everyone who operates the projector can have their own copy and just take the schedule file to church on a USB memory stick.

Fat Prophet said...

Thanks for your comments and I am sure when the church actually goes for a projector we will investigate relevant software as well as the hardware to do this properly. Our local Anglican church have a projector and some software which seems very good - but I understand it was quite expensive - I will have a look at the one you mention and get the details for our next Church Council Meeting. The comments re skill of the operator were equally true of the good old OHP where you could often find the slide developed the 'shakes' particularly if it needed moving during the song. I was very pleased with the way it went yesterday as it was my daughters first attempt at doing this.
I did use the projector at Borth during the beach mission and on the Friday night the group brought their songs on a memeory stick and they had used backgrounds on the slides- there was one slight problem because the lighter ones were more difficult to read. I have no doubt I will repot on the blog on any progress with this one. Thanks again.