So you are the new church tech guy. You were hired to replace the stage light guy or the keyboardist, and now someone has finally handed you church worship software. They told you it was free, but you aren’t sure if something is missing. What does this mean? Do you get to choose which songs to play? If not, why would they call it free software for church worship?
Your church software is most likely one of the most important pieces of “technology” you have. If you are part of a church that has an integrated worship platform, then I would suggest that you pay close attention to your church software. The last thing you want is for any part of that system to fail with members in the middle of their worship time. It would be pretty bad if they were halfway through praising the lord when the WorshipXML platform craps out.
OpenSong
If you need a super simple, free and easy worship presentation software, then look no further than OpenSong.
It may not have all kinds of bells and whistles when it comes to features, but it does just enough to meet the most important church projection software requirements.
Managing worship songs
- OpenSong can easily double up as a worship song management tool—you can type in songs yourself or import them from CCLI’s SongSelect
- Or you can always go to any site providing lyrics and chords for worship songs and just copy paste from there
- Songs can be stored with chords, which of course won’t appear in presented slides. There’s a quick song transpose option also if you want to practice a song in a different key—it’s extremely convenient for musicians
- OpenSong also provides many free song packs in various languages to help get you started
Managing Bible verses
- OpenSong’s website hosts a wide variety of Bibles that you can download for free and import into your system.
- Zefania XML Bibles, NRSV, NIV, KJV and more are available and supported for import apart from Bibles in other languages (French, Filipino, Portuguese, German etc.)
Media
- Any image file can be set as a background for songs and Bible verses
- Fonts, colors etc. can be custom formatted separately for song slides, scripture slides and alerts
- While video backgrounds are not natively supported, it’s not completely impossible either if you can learn this workaround
Slides and templates
- With OpenSong, you can present songs, Bible verses and alerts specifying the order of slides, such as verse 1, then chorus, then verse 2, then bridge, then chorus again and so on
- You can also present a preset timed loop of defined slides, create custom set lists in just a few minutes, search and find any Bible verse or song in seconds.
Platforms
- OpenSong can be installed on Windows, Mac and Linux machines.
OpenSong is great for anyone switching from PowerPoint—its simplicity and ease-of-use (I’ve taught people to use it in like 10-15 minutes flat!) make it a standout option!
Holyrics
Holyrics is a free Church presentation software developed with the objective of facilitating the presentation of lyrics and verses in worship and other events.
Managing worship songs
- Save song lyrics and use custom themes to display.
- Search and add a song quickly using the available search options.
- Holyrics has an offline database with more than 15 thousand songs!
- We can separate the song lyrics of different groups or singers using groups
- Allows to save the time and date of each song played
Managing Bible verses
- Supports display of Bible verses and transmission to other devices
- Facilitates access to any Bible verse with just 3 clicks
- Can save lists of favorite verses to bring them up quickly
- Visualize the Bible in different versions simultaneously
- Change the version of the verse on the fly in real time
Media
- Has stage view support—we can use return monitors with unique settings. Slides can also be customized for the Holyrics app
- Show messages and alerts only on return monitors
- Colors, images or videos as background with opacity control
- Can show alert messages at any time, even during a presentation
Slides and templates
- Create various themes and use in any song lyrics and verse
- Schedule the songs that will be played and the media that will be performed in each service
Extra cool features
- Access program data and control presentations by mobile through the Holyrics mobile app
- We can register our worship team members in the system and create schedules for the services
- Play audio and video through the program without dragging windows (needs VLC media player to work)
- Use videos to create Themes with animated background
- Mobile app can be used to remote control presentations of songs and verses
- Clock
- Countdown
Platforms
- Windows, Mac and Linux machines
- The mobile app is available for Android and iOS
Holyrics is a well-designed free church presentation software with excellent features and functionalities—highly recommend you to try it out!
Quela
Free and well maintained open source projection software for churches with a variety of import options, meaning you can easily migrate your existing content to Quela from other software such as EasyWorship, OpenLP and OpenSong. Multilingual user interface offering out of the box support for a separate stage/presenter view. Offers video background support in addition to static colors and images. Comprehensive manual and good support for setting up projectors. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux.Price: Free and Open Source
Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
Screenshot: application window
Webpage: quelea.orgCapabilites:
– Presentations (PPT, PDF, Impress)
– Video & Audio (VLC Integration)
– Song, Bible & Pictures import
– YouTube & DVD
– Stage View (Android app)
– Video Background support
– Confidence Monitor
– Multilingual user interface
– Live quick edit of text/songs
– Recording of sermons/services.
OpenSong
Well maintained open source software application that focuses on management of lyrics, chords, lead sheets, bible verses and scriptures. Supports timed loops of slides with text and images. Allows you to keep track of a song’s title, author, copyright, ccli #, tempo, time signature, theme, focus, capo position, user defined fields, and more. Available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems and translated into several European languages. Has a dedicated companion desktop application for song importing from various formats.Price: Free and Open Source
Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux
Screenshot: application window
Webpage: www.opensong.orgCapabilites:
– API automation interface over HTTP and WebSocket
– Song, Bible & Pictures import
– Confidence Monitor
– Built in slide editor
MediaShout
Mediashout is a feature rich church presentation software solution and comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a market leader in this space. It is available for both Mac OS and Windows and the user interface has a lot of options for customization, such as layout setup, light/dark theme and interface language (French and Spanish, in addition to English, is supported). A nice feature, if you have volunteers running the show, is that you can enable “Voulenteer Mode”, which offers a simpler interface mode, hiding the settings and edit content controls. Mediashout offers an iOS app (why no Android app?) for remote control in addition to supporting USB wireless remotes. It has built in integration support for Dropbox (file sharing), Planning center (worship planning tool) and SongSelect (song database) and offers some additional tools for printing and reporting. The documentation on their website is good, with comprehensive articles and videos, and they even have a dedicated knowledge base app for iOS and Android that can help you out with common technical issues.Price: Starts at $399 USD, one time fee
Supported OS: Windows, Mac
Screenshot: application window
Webpage: www.mediashout.comCapabilites:
– Presentation editor & Sermon builder
– Imports PowerPoint as static slides
– Public and copyrighted bibles
– SongSelect integration
– Announcements
– Stage display
– Confidence Monitor / Presenter View
– iOS Remote Control
💰 Faithlife Proclaim
Proclaim is a major player in the church presentation software space. Their license model is subscription based and unlike others they will allow you to create an unlimited number of team accounts and install the software on as many Mac or Windows PCs as you want. This also means your team can edit and run several concurrent presentations using the same license. Proclaim integrates with the usual providers (SongSelect, Planning Center, Logis Bible Software and more) and any changes made to your service is saved to your teams cloud account. Their (and their partner) media library contains over 16 000 motions, stills and mini-movies, but you have to pay an extra fee to get access. Proclaim have implemented Polls & Surveys in their software, making it easier to interact and engage with your congregation. They have their own Proclaim Remote App for iOS and Android that works over local WiFi (no Internet connection required). Proclaim is probably the most complete church presentation tool out there. It has features and functionality that moves beyond the Sunday worship service, such as Digital Signage, Slide Sharing and Sermon Recording and Publishing.Price: Starts at $204 USD, yearly fee
Supported OS: Windows, Mac
Screenshot: application window
Webpage: proclaim.faithlife.comCapabilites:
– Presentation editor & Sermon builder
– Imports PowerPoint as static slides
– Public and copyrighted bibles
– Announcements and bulletins
– Songs and music integration
– Stage display
– Video backgrounds
– Audience interaction features (Live surveys / trivia)
– Digital Signage support
– Sermon Recording & Publishing
– Confidence Monitor / Presenter View
– Android and iOS Remote Control
💰 ProPresenter
ProPresenter is a cross-platform (Mac and Windows) worship and presentation software for live events. It not only targets worship gatherings, but also sporting events, conferences and trade shows. It has advanced video editing features that allows you to crop and zoom videos dynamically from right within the software. As for slides, ProPresenter offer “A multi-layered architecture allows for backgrounds, live video layers, slides, props, and masks to be controlled independently”. In addition to these multimedia features, the software can be extended with Audio Visual modules (hardware and software products) to further extend its capabilities. As for Worship-specific features, ProPresenter supports Planning Center integration, has a scripture engine which gives access to Bible translations in a variety of langues, lets you import lyrics from SongSelect and has a built in Media Store that lets you add media from their partner media library (Worship House Media). The user interface is multi-lingual and also comes with an iOS/Android remote. It has cloud integration for saving and sharing content and a built in twitter wall feature, allowing you to curate and display Twitter posts.Price: Starts at $399 USD, one time fee
Supported OS: Windows, Mac
Screenshot: application window
Webpage: renewedvision.com/propresenterCapabilites:
– Slide/presentation and video editor
– Telestrator (draw on top of live output)
– Twitter integration (with moderation support)
– Several hardware support modules
– Confidence Monitor / Presenter View
– Android and iOS Remote Control
– Stage display app
– Output recording
Conclusion
Worship presentation software is a type of media tool used in churches. It can be used for presentations, message preparation, worship team management, music scheduling, video production, and podcasting in your church.