Training pastor to make "good" powerpoints

[Dan Rector]

Saw this:

How to Create Presentations that Don’t Suck

on Lifehacker today and it reminded me of this thread.

[buggyboy]

Nice catch. very appropriate.
Anyone know of a preacher you've seen who had a well done presentation. I might be able to look them up on youtube or something to get an dea of what "good" looks like.

[[Admin] osborn4]

The sample video on the Creative Worship page give a bit of a taste.

Also, Jason and Len have the lecture files for thier Communicating Visually class that they've taught at Northwest Nazarene university. Look towards the right under In This Section.

They give examples throughout the slides, good and bad.

For an example presenter, many look to Steve Jobs with some of his Apple presentations.

[buggyboy]

Thanks Joel, those lectures are quite good. I'll probably be using them to some degree.

As for Jobs, I've watched him, and he is a great presenter...but I couldn't find a way to translate his style into a preaching context.

thanks

[katanna]

Just saw this in my RSS feed. Didn't read it, but thought I would pass it on:

http://lifehacker.com/5810271/how-to...that-dont-suck

Matthew

[Cliff]

I used to pastor and created my own, now I create for the pastor in the church I am at now.

Font size. background, what shows on the computer well my not show the same on the projector.

I make up the presentation, then preview it on the projector to see how it looks there. I will be at the church at 7am to do this. I had a great image of a boxing ring with "Happiness VS Joy" above it looked really good on my computer, but I kinda knew it would not show up well on the projector so I made another one with Boxing Gloves, tried it at the church and yep I was right, had to go with the gloves.

[wogster]

Originally Posted by buggyboy

My pastor has recently begun to make use of powerpoint in sermons occasionally. And though I love the man...he isn't very good at it.

I've given him textbooks on the subject and a few links that I could find, but I'm coming to the conclusion that I'll have to create a tutorial video defining a "good" powerpoint for "bad" ones.

His current habit is to create slides with a blank blue background, slow animated transitions, multiple unnecessary slides (which I end up removing before the service), and perhaps worst of all... reading word for word the slide text.

My post here is to find out if anyone else has encountered this situation and found a good resource for teaching users (pastors) what makes powerpoint presentations "good" and "interesting" and teaching how to avoid "bad" "boring" presentations.

Video would be preferred I believe, as it would make learning easier.

Something that shows examples of bad presentations, then good presentations. hitting on both the slides themselves, and the speech that goes with them.

Any ideas?
Thanks

I know this is an old thread, but if I may make a comment:

If there are problems with the presentation, tell the pastor, and tell them what they are. For example: The dark blue text on the dark purple background, using the 16pt font in the 5th slide made it impossible to read from the back of the sanctuary, is a lot more helpful then, "Powerpoint is not one of your strengths, let me do it". If you get a complaint from someone else, then tell the individual that the Pastor does those, and to go speak to them.

If the Pastor wants you to advance slides during the presentation, there is a simple way to do this, pick a special character like ¶, the pastor inserts one of these in their sermon when they want you to advance the slide, then prints a copy of the sermon for you. You follow along and hit the appropriate button when the character shows up. There is a simple rule here, no going backwards, if they want to go back a slide, they must duplicate the slide. This helps the Pastor in that they can ignore the mark or they can relate to it, while preaching. One additional thing, good Preachers will rehearse their sermon at least once, preferably at the pulpit with nobody there. Having the A/V guy there to rehearse the slides and make comments about the slides, can be really helpful to those who are not professional PowerPoint creators.

Powerpoint is something you either swear by or swear at (even though we try not to use that kind of language in church )

[buggyboy]

Hi Wogster,
Thanks for you input.

A few responses...
My reworking of Pastor's powerpoints was prompted by sheer necessity only. He'd get onstage and click the presentation remote, the expected slide would fail to appear... he'd look at me as if the a/v system had failed, the rest of the room would look at me... etc.
After the first sunday like that I made sure to preview his slides, and without fail they would require fixing to prevent that same debacle from reoccurring.

The pastor does the slide advancing now that we have a presentation remote. In addition, he doesn't print out his sermon, and in fact I don't think the sermon exists as anything more than a few thoughts on a napkin.Which works fine, but disallows the "following along" slides changes you mentioned.

As I'm sure you can guess by now, there is no rehersal of the sermon. It's hard enough to get a sound check that I only manage it after a significant system change that gets me worried enough to warn him of dire things like sound failures, feedback and apocalypse if he fails to do a soundcheck.

The good? news is that my pastor has moved away from powerpoint for the time being. The truth is that they didn't add much to his sermons, and really were more of a distraction for both him and the congregation.

Shalom!

[wogster]

Originally Posted by buggyboy

Hi Wogster,
Thanks for you input.

A few responses...
My reworking of Pastor's powerpoints was prompted by sheer necessity only. He'd get onstage and click the presentation remote, the expected slide would fail to appear... he'd look at me as if the a/v system had failed, the rest of the room would look at me... etc.
After the first sunday like that I made sure to preview his slides, and without fail they would require fixing to prevent that same debacle from reoccurring.

The pastor does the slide advancing now that we have a presentation remote. In addition, he doesn't print out his sermon, and in fact I don't think the sermon exists as anything more than a few thoughts on a napkin.Which works fine, but disallows the "following along" slides changes you mentioned.

As I'm sure you can guess by now, there is no rehersal of the sermon. It's hard enough to get a sound check that I only manage it after a significant system change that gets me worried enough to warn him of dire things like sound failures, feedback and apocalypse if he fails to do a soundcheck.

The good? news is that my pastor has moved away from powerpoint for the time being. The truth is that they didn't add much to his sermons, and really were more of a distraction for both him and the congregation.

Shalom!

Most likely he went to a conference or something, they showed how great PP was, he tried it, it became too much work for too little gain, so he has dropped it. As for sound checks, when I arrive I fire up the sound system, hook up the laptop, turn on the projector. Check all the mics that they are working, reposition everything, because invariably all the mic stands get moved around when they clean the church. Then do a complete sound check. I can do all of this in about 3 minutes, when I hand the Lav. over, it's already been sound checked.

One thing I instruct the pastor (and any visiting preachers), when they go to the pulpit, look at me, if I do a certain motion, they need to turn on the mic. or stay at the pulpit where the pulpit mic will pick them up. I've been working with technology for over 30 years, and in that time have learned one simple thing. You have to be a pessimist as far as technology is concerned. They want me to "tape" the service, I'll probably do it on the computer using Audacity, but I need to test it first, and I have been unable to, so the Pastor knows that this may or may not work tomorrow....

[buggyboy]

You it the nail on the head there wog.
I agree with all of that. I do a mic check to verify the mic isn't dead, but Id still like to get a full on sound check to check eq vs acoustics etc.

I wonder, what hand motion do you use. I've tried several, and none of them are, shall we say, dummy proof. I've probably gotten best results from crossed forearms, like stopping an airplane.

I'm convinced demons have moved out of pigs and into computers... lol. but you are right, it pays to be pessimistic about technology. Either your justified, or pleasantly surprised.

[wogster]

Originally Posted by buggyboy

You it the nail on the head there wog.
I agree with all of that. I do a mic check to verify the mic isn't dead, but Id still like to get a full on sound check to check eq vs acoustics etc.

I wonder, what hand motion do you use. I've tried several, and none of them are, shall we say, dummy proof. I've probably gotten best results from crossed forearms, like stopping an airplane.

I'm convinced demons have moved out of pigs and into computers... lol. but you are right, it pays to be pessimistic about technology. Either your justified, or pleasantly surprised.

Usually it's patting the tie, you know like where the mic would be. Most of the time, you don't need to do much more then make sure the mic isn't dead. My preference though is to replace the battery once a month or so, even if it seems okay, it's an AA battery so they are cheap enough. Shouldn't need to do much with EQ or acoustics, the Pastors voice doesn't normally change week to week, and nobody should be playing with the settings between times. Although if you have different operators they often like things a little different. Although I find that often it's someone who isn't part of the team, and hasn't got a clue what they are doing, wanting to fix what isn't broken, and when they are done fixing it, it is broken.

PowerPoint though, is the 800lb gorilla of media programs, it's amazingly flexible, but all that flexibility makes it very time consuming, it's not uncommon for a pastor to spend 6 hours on research, 3 hours on writing and 12 hours on the stupid PowerPoint making words go in circles on the screen.

I'm not normally up at 2:30 on a Sunday morning, we have a 3 month old, it takes me a long time to go to sleep, if I get woken up in the night and I am up less then 30 seconds, I can go back to sleep right away, much longer and I am up for hours. Snow plow guy just showed up to do the driveway......