Software for Church Education

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Church presentation software is a necessity for every church that has a projector or LCD screens. Choosing the right one still can be a challenge for many churches, even in this Internet age. Different churches have different requirements and is always necessary to choose the best software on their own. Still it’s better to get some information and use free church projection software guide when choosing the right option for your church).

Have you ever wanted to learn software for church presentation? Or, have you heard that there are great software systems raising your attention? You’re not alone. The truth is that the software market is very diverse, and has the power to be complex — which means it can be difficult to select one or determine if it’s right for you .

Proclaim

A presentation software made just for churches, Faithlife Proclaim blends specialized features with intuitive design for seamless church presentations. Create your services quicker each week with automatic formatting, streamlined service layouts, and thousands of graphics. Don’t double-up on work, import items from PowerPoint, Planning Center, and WorshipPlanning.com with a just few clicks. Proclaim is designed to leverage the power of your entire team. Work together, wherever, whenever on Mac, PC, or both for no additional charge.

OpenLP

One of the most popular open source worship presentation program out there, OpenLP packs a ton of features for managing and displaying songs, Bible verses, images, videos (not video backgrounds though) and more.

It facilitates custom alerts, Bible import through CSV files, CCLI/SongSelect integration, PowerPoint file import etc.

Managing worship songs

  • OpenLP can import songs from a wide variety of sources like Easyslides, Opensong, Videopsalm, Zionworx, DreamBeam, MediaShout etc.
  • You can tag verse types, preset verse sequence, add formatting and manage songwriter information
  • A quick song search is also available

Managing Bible verses

  • Bibles can be imported from OSIS by the CrossWire Bible Society, any CSV file, OpenSong, Zefania etc.
  • You can even download a few selected verses from a Bible site, display verses in many custom formats, easily search verses by scripture reference (e.g. John 3:16-17) or by a search phrase to add into your set list

Media

  • OpenLP integrates with one of the most popular open source media player of our times: VLC!
  • This means you can use almost any video / audio file format in OpenLP that is compatible with VLC
  • Slides and templates
  • OpenLP can be used to set up custom liturgies/set lists as per your church’s needs
  • Announcements, alerts or custom slides are also possible—custom slides can also be looped if required
  • OpenLP also integrates with PowerPoint, PowerPoint Viewer, LibreOffice Impress on Windows and LibreOffice Impress on Linux/FreeBSD. Imported presentations (sermon slides for example) can be controlled from inside OpenLP
  • Support for video background is under development. However, you can use a transparent theme as a workaround for now until this feature rolls out

Extra cool features

  • OpenLP also has a FREE Android remote app to control the presentation from anywhere inside your church using an Android device—as far as I know, this is a first of its kind app!
  • Built-in stage view accessible from any device with a web browser. Use any device on the local network as your stage monitor, meaning unlimited stage monitors without any extra hardware constraints.
  • Ability to add backing tracks to songs

Platforms

  • OpenLP is available for Windows, Linux, Mac or FreeBSD

OpenLP is a fantastic option for anyone looking for a free and feature-packed church presentation software.

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!

FreeWorship

FreeWorship can be used to display worship songs, Bible passages, videos and more.

This church worship software supports themes, slide transitions, quick search, import of a variety of lyrics and Bibles etc.

FreeWorship is a solid free worship software that should cover most of your church presentation needs.

Managing worship songs

  • For quick setup, worship songs can be imported many, many sources!
  • FreeWorship accepts songs from CCLI SongSelect, Easy Worship (2009 & 6), DreamBeam, Mission Praise, OpenLP, OpenLyrics, OpenSong, SongPro, SongShow Plus and Words of Worship
  • So if you’re switching from some other software, FreeWorship makes it incredibly easy to migrate your existing song base in no time

Managing Bible verses

  • FreeWorship can import Zefania and OpenSong Bibles, which should take care of most of your scripture projection needs.

Media

  • All popular image formats can be handled in FreeWorship
  • Like OpenLP, FreeWorship also integrates with VLC for video playback—so any file format supported by VLC can be run here!
  • This free presentation software also handles PowerPoint files (versions 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016)
  • The presentation slides can also be spanned across multiple projectors.

Slides and templates

  • Songs, bible passages, images, videos, PPTs, webcams, clocks and timers can all be setup to display on screen just a few minutes
  • There are flexible slide customization options too with the ability to tinker with the fonts, colors and backgrounds

Extra cool features

  • There’s a really cool auto verse feature, using which FreeWorship finds a related Bible verse when you search for a song!
  • Stage/foldback display to give your worship team and speakers on stage more information about the current slide and what is coming up next
  • You can use a file synching service like Dropbox to edit songs on one PC while presenting on another

Platforms

  • FreeWorship is Windows only at the moment

FreeWorship is feature-rich, provides terrific import options and flexible enough to fulfill even demanding church presentation needs—this is a keeper!

EasySlides

EasiSlides is a free worship song projection software designed for projecting lyrics and Bible texts—basically, it’s designed for church worship.

With over 80,000 downloads and counting, EasySlides is a very popular option for anyone looking for free church presentation software.

Managing worship songs

  • EasiSlides installer (version 4 onwards) comes with built-in worship song lyric databases from the public domain in multiple languages apart from English
  • If you want to migrate your existing song base from another church presentation program, you’re out of luck though—you’ll have to recreate your worship song data all over again
  • Similar to OpenSong, worship song lyrics can also be stored with chords

Managing Bible verses

  • Bible versions are limited as there’s no native ability to import Bibles from third party sources
  • However, EasySlides offers 3 English translations and a few more in other languages. Plus, there is a third party tool to convert Bibles from Unbound and XML versions into a format that can be imported and used in EasySlides

Media

  • EasySlide shines in media playback—it can play audio and video files including live video backgrounds through feeds from an attached camcorder
  • The usual features to edit slide backgrounds, add gradients or usage of custom images are also available

Slides and templates
There’s another third party transfer tool to work on one machine and then migrate the presentation including the underlying files to the church computer that will be used for the actual projection.
Extra cool features

  • Project lyrics in two different languages at the same time for multi-lingual services
  • Generate worship song books to print customized praise and worship song books
  • HTML Generator to output all the necessary files to publish worship song lyrics on your church website

Platforms

  • EasySlides is Windows only at the moment

EasySlides is an actively developed software with a huge user base—its ample set of features is sure to satisfy worship teams and Church tech enthusiasts.

Conclusion:

Church presentation software has come a long way since the guy with the microphone. Church software is something that should be tried and tested to check if it works well. I’ve been involved in my own local church and tested different software to see what works best. This has led me to create my own list of church presentation software which I hope will help you in your search for church presentation software.

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