Mister Nifty

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.

This is great site to get backgrounds for your screen ministry.  Also, these are high enough resolution for print design as well.  There are over 600 free textures to use for free!  Have fun!

Free Range Stock is a community of photographers that supply free photographs to anyone who wants to use them. Their limitations are extremely loose for usage rights. You don’t even have to put a credit on the photos that you use. If you don’t see what you need, they can post your topic or theme on a board for photographers to submit photos for that category. It’s really a great site that frees up churches from ‘stealing’ (did I say that?) photos from high priced stock websites.

Copying images from the internet without permission is STEALING. If you don’t know where your creative team is getting their images, check them out. Find out of they are using a pay site, or just scrounging images anywhere they can get them. If it is the latter, get them to stop, and do that by giving them this free resource and a good lecture. Your church could get in serious trouble if you are using someone else’s image without their permission. There have been multi-million dollar lawsuits over single images. For example, three years ago, our local Walmart was sued for 1 million dollars because they duplicated a professional photographers work. The photographer won hands down. Don’t think this can’t happen to a church. Use this free resource until you can get a photo budget for your creative team. Here are some stock sites I use (pay sites) that are extremely cheap. bigstockphoto.com stockxpert.com

Worship Graphics has over 80 images that you can use for your sermon titles and worship services. Create a free account and start downloading all your heart desires!

I know the name is a bit scary, but these guys stock free high-resolution imagery for you to download and use. Make sure you adhere to their legal specs. Other than that, have a blast downloading free photos and images for your screen and promotions ministry!