Many people ask me to post about projection software for their churches. I have been hesitatant because a lot of the software out there is $400-$1000. For smaller churches, this kind of budget is unfeasible, and I love free stuff. Enter OpenLP. This software is open source, which means if you have a programmer in your church, they can even tailor it to your specific needs. Another great thing about open source is it’s free! This seems to be an easy fix for churches without a budget. This is a list of features I found from Christian Tech:
- Add and edit songs.
- Preview songs, Bible verses and images.
- Comes with two translations of the Bible - KJV & ASV.
- Import a Powerpoint presentation (PowerPoint XP/2002 and up required).
- Present your presentation from within openlp.org.
- Show videos.
- Show images.
- Slide themes, with gradient, image and color backgrounds, fonts & font effects.
- Import and export of themes.
- Saving and opening of Orders of Service.
- Announcement pop-ups.
- Custom slides.
- Multiple Bible verses per slide.
- Themes set either globally, per Order of Service or per song.
- Import Bibles from CSV files.
- Search through all words in every song in database for a certain word or phrase.
- Search through all words in a book of the Bible for a certain word or phrase.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I’ve found openLP to be buggy on my Vista Laptop. It doesn’t support the video but I’ve found OpenSong to be a very useful open source projection program. I’ve used this when one of our groups was playing worship away from church and needed a quick solution. Check it out– http://www.opensong.org