Paul Clifford

Power can sometimes come with a cost. This even applies to worship software. ProPresenter, for example, is a very powerful tool but it is not simple to master. Learning how to use this tool to run a presentation can happen in a few minutes, but mastery takes longer.

Each week, hundreds of churches convert school auditoriums, movie theaters, meeting rooms, and various other spaces into temporary sanctuaries. That’s a huge effort. On a daily basis, professional audio-video companies put on thousands of shows, many on similar schedules and often with much larger technical sets.

While live streaming was once a novelty for churches, today, it has become something many churches consider a viable part of their ministry. While...

ProPresenter is worship software that sits at the conjunction of "powerful" and "easy to use." That doesn’t mean that everyone who sits down in front of it will immediately know how to use it, though. In fact, it’s so powerful, that you might not know where to look to do what you want, s

You’re called into the pastor’s office. You’re assured it’s no big deal and you have no reason to doubt that, that is, until you hear the words, “I want us to start live streaming.” In your pastor’s mind, it’s maybe another five minutes of work and you’ve already got everything you’ll need. But you know otherwise.

How many types of media does your church store? Just in my office alone, I have eight types, not counting hard drives and an solid state drive (SSD) or two. VHS, S-VHS, 8MM, DVD, Mini-DV, DVC-Pro, Zip disk, and SD cards. I might even have a VHS-C tape around here somewhere, if I looked hard enough. You might have more. Maybe it’s BetaCam, 3/4”, or even various film stock.

One of the hallmarks of great software is that it's easy to use at first, but when you need it to do more, you can find more capability than you just hadn't discovered before; it grows with your needs. ProPresenter 6 is like that. I initially thought it was so simple that anyone could learn it in a few minutes. Now, 93 videos into creating a tutorial series and courses on it, I know that it's easy to get the basics, but there's so much that people don't initially discover that it can do.

Worship software has been around since the end of the last century, but with many churches still using PowerPoint, Keynote, or other business-centric presentation software, you may think, “What’s the big deal? Why shouldn’t we stick with what works?” ProPresenter 6 answers with features that should stop people from asking that question and make business leaders ask, “Why should I stick with PowerPoint when there’s ProPresenter?”