Using Technology in Worship Using Technology in Worship

Less is moreBecause in some ways the technology is relatively simple, there is atemptation to overdo it all. Already people in the business world arebecoming bored or distracted by some of the fancy transitions andanimations offered by presentation programs like PowerPoint. Songwords don’t need a picture behind them in every situation, andvideo clips don’t always need to incorporate every fancy effect thatthe software will allow. ‘Over the top’ just distracts and pullsattention away from the real message. We sometimes see this inposters designed by people who have just discovered they have 40fonts on their computer! Technology is working best as a tool whenit is virtually transparent and unnoticed. Just because you’ve investedin a video projector for your church doesn’t mean it has to feature inevery aspect of every service. If the medium (in this case thetechnology) becomes intrusive, it will be obscuring the messagerather than assisting or enhancing it.PracticalitiesCreating image slidesA simple way to show images on a projector isto connect it to a PC and use presentationsoftware such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Thisprogram (and others like it), works in a similarway to word processing programs but insteadof the result being printed pieces of paper, theresult is a ‘slide’ composed of the PC’s screen.So, slides are made up – text is typed in, andpictures are inserted, etc. as with a wordprocessed document. Several slides are created and then can be runthrough automatically or at the operator’s command. When runningthe slide show, all that appears on the screen are the slides themselves.No part of the Windows program is visible.Presentations can become quite sophisticated by inserting sounds ormusic into the slide, making text appear one line at a time and evenadding video clips into the slide.Page 8 ❘