The next sentence you read is a fact: Worship software saves you time.
And you have every right to be skeptical about that claim.
There’s this problem with technology when it comes to saving time. It’s become cliche to say that the very things designed to save us time actually end up costing us more time. The innovation of e-mail has turned into a chronological cookie monster that devours hours of our time each day. We had high hopes that Microsoft Word would magically add an hour or two to our workday, but it ends up crashing, or we obliterate eons of time finagling with margin frustrations or pagination issues.
Pastors, worship leaders, and church volunteers are a busy bunch of people. We get that. That’s why anything that offers to “save time” deserves a second glance.
In the remainder of this article, we’ll share seven reasons why worship presentation software saves you time. Keep in mind that not all church presentation software is created equal. This discussion assumes that you are using Sharefaith Presenter.
Here’s why it saves you tons of time:
1. You don’t have to copy/paste or type in song lyrics.
I can identify with the long minutes spent carefully tap-tap-tapping lyrics from a songbook. I thought I was saving some serious time when I discovered that I could copy and paste the lyrics from the Internet. Now, I think about the frustration and agony of doing that, and rejoice in the reality that I can do it with a single click using worship presentation software. Ah. Bliss.
This is not some cruel bit of sarcasm. This is actually what it’s like when you use worship software. With one tap of the trackpad, you can add the stanzas from virtually any worship song to your PowerPoint presentation. Done. This is serious time-saving power.
2. You don’t have to start from scratch every week.
As awesome as presentations are, they do take a lot of time to prepare. All those colors, backgrounds, text sizes, kerning, shadows, graphics, frames, borders, videos, play speeds, transitions, fades, lyrics, text boxes, countdown timers, gradients — yeah, it all takes time.
If you’re trying to recreate such elaborations every time you make a presentation, it’s no wonder you’re thinking about retiring from the ministry at age 29.
The beauty of worship software is that you can create templates. Once you invest the time to create a killer presentation upfront, you own that file for months and years to come. Instead of spending five hours creating the presentation, you literally take five seconds to open your template. Time. Saved.
3. You don’t have to look up song lyrics.
Let’s circle back to the subject of song lyrics for a minute. Do you know how much time it takes to look up the lyrics and to get them right? Let’s say you want to sing “Blessed Be the Name” this Sunday. You can hear it in your head, Tree63 style. Now, try to look it up on the Internet. I’m a fairly quick Internet user, and I timed myself. It took 27 seconds to find the lyrics.
Okay, so 27 seconds isn’t going to throw your schedule into disarray. Besides, I already had Chrome up and ready to go. But factor in the time it takes to transfer those lyrics to your PowerPoint display. Then, add up however many songs you want to sing during a given worship. Then, go ahead and factor in the lost time when you can think of one word of a song but can’t find it on the Internet no matter how many Google queries and YouTube searches you do. Frustration sets in. Time is wasted.
Worship software totally shortcuts these time warps by integrating a complete lyric database directly into the software. In other words, pulling up the lyrics to “Blessed Be the Name.” is a matter of typing “blessed” in your worship software, and picking the right song from the automatic list.
Yeah, you might even have time for a quick nap after that.
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4. You don’t have to create custom slide transitions for every slide.
I’m not huge on slide transitions, even though I have been known to create some vertigo-inducing presentations in my time. It does help to have a nice cut and fade transition now and then. But do you know how many clicks are involved in creating a simple transition on a single slide?
Quite a few. And every click takes time. Worship presentation software allows you to create templates that will automatically place transitions on every slide.
5. You don’t have to copy or paste Scripture text.
This point doesn’t require much discussion. You remember what we said about copying and pasting lyrics? The same thing goes for Bible verses, too. A quality worship software will allow you to automatically add Scripture verses to your presentation.
6. You can easily and instantly add great media.
One powerful way to turn back the clock on your worship presentation creation is to have an easy way to add the eye candy. It takes a good bit of time to hunt down the right background, pay for it, download the right format, open your software, find a way to add it in, track it down on your computer, insert it, adjust it to the right size….all that. With Sharefaith Presenter, all this time-draining cruft is completely excised.
We’ve created an integrated method for adding Sharefaith media to your presentation. In other words, you might be able to leave work early and spend a few more minutes playing with your precious children. Think about it.
7. You can prevent legal missteps by using a CCLI plugin.
I’ve put this last because it’s a bit different. Sad to say, many worship leaders and pastors are accidental lawbreakers. The church music copyrighting field is pretty complicated, so I totally understand the difficulty. Thankfully, there is an organization called CCLI that has tried to simplify things and get you all legalized.
Quality worship software will have CCLI integration via SongSelect to make sure that your licensing is legit. Trying to wade through the licensing jargon and requirements on your own will cross your eyes and waste your time.
Welcome to the time-saving world of church presentation software.
One unique feature of Sharefaith Presenter is that it’s a PowerPoint plugin. In other words, we’ve created worship software built right into the familiar and trusted platform of PowerPoint. How cool is that? Instead of having to learn some massively complicated new piece of software, you get to enjoy the breezy ease of PowerPoint for your worship. This is a serious source of time saving. We suggest you start saving time today.
Daniel Threlfall has been writing church ministry articles for more 10 years. With his background and training (M.A., M.Div.), Daniel is passionate about inspiring pastors and volunteers in their service to the King. Daniel is devoted to his family, nerdy about SEO, and drinks coffee with no cream or sugar. Learn more about Daniel at his blog and twitter.