PowerPoint – that ubiquitous program we’ve all learned to love or hate – can make or break the worship experience for your audience. Quite frankly, there are few organizations – churches included – that really know how to use PowerPoint well. [NOTE: I'm referring to "PowerPoint," however, I prefer using Keynote (yes, I'm a Mac Addict), and I know many of you may use similar programs for presentations; but for the sake of this discussion, we'll say PowerPoint.]
I’ve seen corporate presidents, world renown scientists, and a few pastors read their notes directly off their PowerPoint presentation. They would’ve been better off – and the audience much happier – had they skipped the talk, printed the presentation, and sent everyone home to read it themselves.
Having said that, I’ve also seen very good use of PowerPoint – mostly in churches, if I may add, kudos to those creative directors and graphic designers. However, there are those times when the misuse of PowerPoint just makes me cringe. So, without further ado, here’s the first FIVE from my TOP TEN list of worship PowerPoint Pet Peeves:
1. Boring backgrounds. I’m sorry, plain blue is boring. If you’re not a graphic designer, find a volunteer who is and let them design your worship backgrounds; they will thank you, and so will the audience. But be sure to keep it subtle though, don’t over-design so that it distracts from the main text/message.
2. Different backgrounds for every slide. – You’re confusing the message and your people. Stay consistent. Your worship background themes should at least be in the same family for an entire service.
3. Whacky fonts. Oh yeah, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Stay away from those swirly deals, use mostly Sans Serif fonts. The little tails on Serif fonts like Times and Times New Roman can cause annoying jitter on some video screens. And please, for the love of good design, DON’T use Comic Sans MS, it’s the most overused font in all of Christendom!
4. Using photos and video “stolen” from the Internet. I say stolen, because if you haven’t paid for it and you don’t own the copyright, it is considered stolen – unless it’s a public domain image. I admit I’ve used my share of photos from the internet in worship presentations – that “save as” function was just too easy – but over the years I’ve come to believe that churches should lead the way in using legal images in all their worship presentations – on screen and in print.
I’ve become a huge fan of iStockphoto.com for my photo purchases, and Pond5.com for video purchases. If your budget is limited, check out publicdomainpictures.net or public-domain-image.com.
The best option is to put together a team of photographers in your church to build your own catalogue of stock images. Give them assignments, be specific or general, you may be surprised by what you get. Oh yeah, this means you have to plan ahead…but that’s a subject for another day.
5. Bright Yellow Text. Let me tell you how much I hate yellow text; it may just be a personal thing, but I doubt it. Come on, you have a gazillion colors to choose from and you pick bright, blazing yellow? I know it stands out, believe me, it does! But have mercy on our eyeballs, be creative, pick something else. Anything else!
Well there you have it – the first five of my TOP TEN Worship PowerPoint Pet Peeves. Tune in next week for the rest of the list, and as always, is you have a comment or question, please put it in the comments section below.
Conrad
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