Technology

Using PowerPoint® in Worship

Written by Sharon Westerfeld

People by nature are very visual and with the tremendous influence of television and Internet on today’s culture, it is more critical than ever to include visual interest throughout the worship experience.

One simple way to give a visual impact to any worship service is through the use of PowerPoint®. Creating interesting slides for songs, sermon notes, and even announcements can add interest to any worship experience.

Today, PowerPoint® has become so common that there are probably several members within your church who already know the program so intimately that they can easily create the whole worship order or teach the program to someone who can create it prior to the service. When time for the worship service arrives, a volunteer needs to only click a mouse or tap an arrow key to make the worship experience visually and technologically enhanced for the worshippers.

Songs:

Using PowerPoint® for song lyrics is similar to using the old, lower-tech, overhead transparencies. However PowerPoint® can make each worship service more customized each week with the flexibility to change the order of verses and choruses, exclude one or more verses, or repeat lines.

Another benefit is the ability to change the background from white to something that relates to the theme of the song, season, or sermon title. For backgrounds, the sky is the limit, although remember that the slides should never look cluttered and the words should be easily readable.

Sermons:

PowerPoint® can also help capture the attention of the congregation during the sermon. So many people are visual learners that when someone speaks without using a visual stimulus, they begin to nod off. By creating a series of slides for the sermon notes, people will be drawn to participate in the sermon, and in the process, learn a lot more.

Again, different backgrounds can be used including, seasonal, solid colored, sermon themed, or abstract. Each will add background interest for the sermon notes and will make it “pop.” You can also add special effects within the notes like leaving a fill-in-the-blank in which the answer will appear, fly-in or type-in with another click of the mouse. Adding an element of fill-in-the-blank will create audience participation and keep everyone interested during the entire sermon.

Announcements:

Keeping your members and visitors informed about what is happening at the church is critical to getting a high-level of participation at events and service projects. This can be difficult to achieve if your congregation is not fully aware of what is going on at the church. Some people will find out all that they need to know by reading the bulletin from cover to cover, but some won’t read it at all. Some will find out information about events on the website, but may not look at the website unless they already suspect something interesting might be happening.

By using PowerPoint® for announcements during your worship services, you can help your congregation become more aware of what is happening or at the very least, that things are happening. Announcements can scroll automatically before or after the worship service, or they can be used as a visual aid when a pastor makes special verbal announcements to the church.

The keys to creating great visual announcements for PowerPoint® are:
1. Add interest to slides with pictures, graphic elements, and color
2. Limit the information on the announcement slide to what people can easily read in 6 seconds—these should be teasers, not every detail.
3. Limit the number of announcements to 10 or fewer, so they won’t have too much to remember.
4. Create enough visual difference in each of the announcements that they stand out from each other.

Using PowerPoint® is something that nearly every church already has the ability to do, but not every church is taking advantage of this tool. It can help create a fresh look for the worship experience each week, can help teach worshippers new songs, and can help build excitement for upcoming events at the church.

Sharon Westerfield (swesterfeld@sugarcreek.net) is Director of Communications for Sugar Creek Baptist Church (www.sugarcreek.net) in Sugar Land, TX.