5 Tips to Improve your Worship Service
Sometimes it’s the little things that help to add that extra little piece of professionalism and transparency. Some of these may be common sense to some, but I think they still need mentioned. If you’re working with various still backgrounds, here are five pointers that contribute to excellence:
- I always strive for the “perfect service”. Spend some time in prayer, and think about your transitions and the schedule - all before the service starts. You don’t want people to notice that there is a person running visuals.
- Use the same background image for back-to-back songs. This avoids the distraction of changing images, especially if the images are unrelated to a theme.
- Make your transitions meaningful (and transparent to the worshippers). Un-black the screen revealing the background as soon as the musicians start playing a new set of songs. Reveal the words a few seconds before they are to be sung. This requires that you know the song, but it’s really not that hard.
- Stay on top of the service, especially for the pastor. This should go without saying, but I always tell guest speakers that I don’t want them to request a slide. You should follow along on an outline (which they should provide you), and bring up the appropriate slide as they mention it. This can’t always be done, but it’s certainly something to strive for.
- Understand the flow of the service, and pick your backgrounds accordingly. Most worship services start the music out with outward praise, and then move toward a more reflective, inward worship as people prepare their hearts for the message. Use your bright, busier backgrounds at the beginning, and tone it down as you go along. You don’t want distractions as things slow down and people become reflective. The song often will dictate this as well.
They sound simple and possibly even trivial, but if you don’t purposefully set out to pursue excellence and pay attention to the small details, the flow can seem choppy and the visuals can become a road block to enhancing the worship experience.
keifer said:
I think that, with regard to tip #2 above, it is good and sometimes even fun to stive to strike the proper balance between variety and continuity. Changes, especially drastic ones, that happen for no apparent cause or design can be a little jarring if not downright distracting. Using the same background or perhaps another background with the same visual from another angle or with a different crop or screen placement can be useful. Another way to provide variety while not destroying continuity is to use different color versions of the same abstract image or background when song or verse/chorus transitions occur. Some providers offer the same or vary similar images with variations in color, zoom level, angle, etc. And, some presentation software allows one to “tint” an image as it is being used. Don’t get carried away though or you’ll be back to an unacceptable level of distraction again. Paying attention to and making these transitions with musical changes (that is not just with the lyrical changes in mind only) also helps. Coordinated, simultaneous changes in lighting and complimentary color wash stage lighting changes (if you do that) also can help “seal the deal” visually and give things a put-together and intentionally designed look.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Josh Willits said:
Thanks for the comment, Ken. Good stuff. I’ve asked some of our producers to create packages with the same features you describe. Chose an overall “theme” for the package and create multiple images with the same theme but slight variations. I think most larger churches with dedicated graphic designers do this already; it would be great to offer packages like this to smaller churches to help them improve their visuals.
September 7th, 2009 at 10:06 am