Remember that scene in the book of Matthew when Jesus is just starting his ministry and he turns to one of his disciples and says, “What version of PowerPoint are you guys using? What? You’ve never heard of PowerPoint? Oh that’s right, it won’t be invented for a while yet. Hmmm, I’ll just have to use parables to communicate then. OK, let’s do this thing.”
What’s that you say? That didn’t happen? Maybe not, but sometimes when I see the deep, all consuming passion some pastors have for the presentation software PowerPoint, I almost think God ordained its use in church.
I blame corporations, because it definitely is one of those things that migrated from businesses and has now found a new home in church services. But like anything else, when it comes to using PowerPoint in a sermon, there are some important things we all need to remember:
1. Don’t do the “letters slide in one at a time” trick.
I’m happy you figured out that application. You probably feel like I did when I discovered how to use the crop tool in Photoshop. I cropped every photo I owned and may or may not have built a small set for my GI Joe Storm Shadow action figure (it’s not a doll) and registered a now defunct site called word ninja for my portfolio. I went over board and so are you. Please, don’t slide in each letter one by one. Few things are as time consuming as watching O….L…..D…….T…..E……S….T…….A…..M…..E….N…….T moonwalk onto the slide.
2. Less is more.
One of my favorite rules when it comes to writing is that “inside every chubby idea is a thin idea trying to get out.” It’s true. I have to trim and cut a lot from my ideas and you might need to as well. I think you have too many slides. I don’t know how many you have right now, but I promise you, it’s too many. Cut a few.
3. The staple rule.
Print out your PowerPoint presentation. If you can staple it, you might have a short enough message. If your forearm breaks into an angry sweat because you have to be Hulk Hogan to staple through your super thick presentation, you might have a problem. I start to cry a little inside whenever I see someone at work hand out a presentation in a meeting that is so long it needed a binder clip to hold it together. The same goes for churches.
4. You don’t have to use every font.
It’s nice that PowerPoint has a lot of fonts, but please don’t see this as a challenge to use each and every one. You don’t need to incorporate wingdings or any other crazy fonts. In fact, I am pretty sure God hates the wingdings font.
5. Get a remote.
Sometimes, instead of having a remote to control the slide progression a presenter will have someone in the sound booth running the show or controlling the 1’s and 2’s as my DJ friends would say. The only danger with that is that rarely does that person have the rhythm right. (Not the sound booth’s fault. This is usually because the pastor will ad lib.) What usually happens is that the pastor has to say, “next slide please” roughly 54 times. Which is fun.
I’m starting to speak more and might be doing some college gigs this fall. (I used the word “gigs” there to sound young and hip.) Please know that my presentations will be staple thin and you won’t see a single PowerPoint slide. Promise.
