Joe Chase

Preacher for the North Loop Church of Christ [NorthLoopcoc.com](http://www.northloopcoc.com)
#Director of Four States Praise Camp [fourstatespraise.org] (http://www.fourstates.org)
##PowerPoint


I use powerpoint almost every week for Announcement Slides, bible classes, Song projection, and Sermon Slides.

I use an antique version of Photoshop elements to make backgrounds, illustrations for sermons, charts, various other graphic needs both for the bulletin and for the announcement slides

We project our music with PowerPoint (moving to Keynote), Brother James Tackett has done a wonderful service to the brotherhood in creating the Paperless Hymnal.

I don't like projecting just lyrics. It promotes rogue part singing, it is not really good to have 12 differing bass parts for one song.

In my mission work I use Paperless hymnal and for news songs that have not made into Paperless Hymnal I notate the songs in Finale which is a music notation program. I will often make a self playing slide show having recorded each voice part of the song and scroll the PowerPoints kind of like a Karaoke Player so congregations can learn the songs.

**I use finale for *click* tracks for recording too.** It helps singers to learn the song and stay on pitch while recording. As a recording engineer I like to record each part individually and over-dub it several times **I don't have a Choir** to sing all the parts, sometimes it is just me and my wife. And yes I get very tired of my own voice when doing one of these projects.

Songshow Plus is a great program if you use video, images, sermon slides, timers, countdown etc. The learning curve is difficult, especially if you import every song from powerpoint or finale into a SongShow Plus file.

It is great in that it allows you to set various parts of a "show" to play automatically and repeat then give the speaker control of changing their own slides, then go back to a repeated section.

For example most churches that scroll announcements will repeat the same 20 or so slides for about 15 minutes before a service begins. Then at 5 minutes before the service you can set a timer to fire a countdown that lets people know you are about to begin. Then at Start Time the 1 or 2 most important announcements and play while someone talks about the event or special announcement.

It is at that time that SSP can fire a pre-recorded video of a mission report, a child giving an announcement about Trunk or Treat or something like that.

I almost always make slides of the Scripture Readings, I make a slide that announces each section of our worship (A slide that says, Let us Pray, I put up a graphic appropriate for the Lord's Supper sometimes with Scriptures sometimes not, I put up a graphic showing it is time for the offering)

Even though we project our songs I also make a slide that gives the song title and number from the book for those who like reading from a book. I also put the song number on each slide. (Sadly, we changed books about a year ago so I've had to go back and change the numbers on the songs)

Here at North Loop we don't use SSP but instead use Keynote, Apple TV and iOS devices, So there is an awkward change between each portion of the service as we have to change from Announcement Slides to Song Projection and Sermon and then if we show a video or something where we switch devices or program. This could be solved with a switcher or by purchasing SSP, ProPresenter (if you are use Mac, ProPresenter is much smoother and easier to learn than SSP)

I've heard Proclaim is seamless and does everything that SSP and ProPresenter does plus more.

The sermon slides are controlled manually by the preacher. (Me) I preach from my iPad and use Presenter's Notes view on most of my sermons. Again there is an awkward transition if I have to switch to show an external video or at the close of the service when we switch back to the Announcement Scroll.

**[Four States Praise Camp and Singing School](http://www.fourstates.org)** is a school for training Worship Leaders, Song writers, Poets. We have a track that deals with Christian Art, Photography, and Technology.
*June 14-19 2015

It is a week long and is held in Canfield Arkansas. I've been associated with the School for more than 27 years either as an instructor, counselor and now Director. It is our hope to train young and old to worship God in a Biblical yet contemporary way. I believe we need more song writers, and more worshipers who know how to read new music. Each generation of Christians should praise God in the voice of its generation. Our Hymnody should reflect Bible Principles in modern terms. We have trained hundreds of young men to lead singing, and hundreds more to read music.

Our Faculty and Staff take 12 to 18 songs that are current, (usually what people have heard on the radio) arrange it for a cappella singing and we teach those songs to be sung congregational. We emphasize ease of singing and appropriateness in arrangement. So our 80 to 100 students can take these songs home and teach them to their congregations.
I usually post our recorded music to soundcloud.com
[4 States Praise Camp Sound Cloud](https://soundcloud.com/joseph-chase-4/sets/4-states-praise-camp-2014)

**One Room Music** is my home recording studio. I use it to make learning tracks for new songs. Each year we record the singers from the praise camp after we've learned the songs. I then mix the recordings and post them for download or burn them to CD to be used by our campers to teach the songs at their home congregations. These are not polished recordings we usually just get 2 takes per song. But the recording is usually good enough to learn each part.

In my mission work I record learning tracks for songs that I teach. Most of my mission work has been in Jamaica. I send CD's of songs to a few preachers and members in various churches on the island. They use these learning tracks to increase their repertoire of worship music.

**ProTools is the software that I use for recording.** It is an industry standard. It allows me to capture, mix and master music and collaborate with bigger studios. Several of the staff members of 4SP have small studios that they use for the same purpose so I can shoot them a multi-track recording and they can add to it or tweak it.

To cover all I do with ProTools would take hours to explain and only the nerdiest of nerds would get excited about compiling of tracks, setting eq's compression, delays and such to polish a recording. Suffice it to say it is a lot of fun but has never made me any money when you consider the cost of the software and equipment.

**BLOG** I have a few blogs sadly, I don't post to them often enough One is a Worship Leading Blog called ([acapellaworshipleader.wordpress.com](http://www.acapellaworshipleader.wordpress.com) I use it to talk about tech and techniques involved in the life of a worship leader.

I also have a blog of devotional reading material and teaching called "Words from the Heart" [www.northloopcoc.com/from-the-heart](http://www.northloopcoc.com/from-the-heart) Most of the time I'll add my weekly bulletin article to that blog.

I used to do a podcast called "The Great Change Podcast" I hope to relaunch that project after the first of the year. If I was a beautiful man I'd make it a video podcast, but for the sake of the world I will keep it audio only for the time being.