The Joys and Challenges of Being a Guest Speaker (Part 3)
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Read the series.
It’s always a great privilege to speak in a new church, but it’s a privilege that also requires precise preparation!
As I have written previously in this series, I strive to ask the following questions before I go into a church to speak for the first time:
- Does the congregation have a strong preference regarding dress in the pulpit?
- Does the congregation have a strong preference regarding Bible translations?
- Is the congregation used to having a media slide presentation (i.e., PowerPoint, Google Slides, etc.) during the sermon, and how is that system set up?
In this article, we’ll examine the third of these questions—a very practical one, indeed.
Media Slide Presentations
I have seen virtually every kind of setup used to run media slide presentations in churches of all sizes and shapes.
On the low end, there is the woefully outdated projector, seated precariously on a stack of hymnals—forming a tilting picture. You can probably visualize the cords coming out from it, forming a pile of electronic spaghetti. And when I show my prayer card, it turns my face into a beautiful shade of green!
On the high end, there are state-of-the-art systems controlled by a team of techies in the audio-video booth—who appear to have enough equipment and manpower to guide us safely through the next moon landing
However, you might be surprised to know which of these systems might actually work the best for teaching the Bible.
But first, let’s back up. How does one use tools like PowerPoint or Google Slides in teaching or preaching? The answers to that question will be as varied and diverse as the number of people supplying them.
Some preachers, for instance, will preach an entire sermon using five or six slides—a cover slide, a photo or chart or map, a quote, a verse, and that’s about it.
This is not my style. For me, I tend to go all or nothing. I can easily preach or teach with no slides at all. But when I use them, I usually make it a slide-based presentation—and seldom use additional notes. That means that I could have up to 100 or more slides for a single message. Keep in mind that this will include lists and outlines, where I am building on one basic slide multiple times. Also, it is vital for me to be able to see and advance my own slides, and I really want to be able to read them clearly, and view the slide that is coming next, as well.
So, in that light, there are some setups that simply do not work well with this kind of presentation. Sadly, some of them are the most expensive, high-tech arrangements out there. Sometimes the church has designed the entire system to be run from a sound booth in the back of the auditorium—with no ability to connect near the pulpit (and thus no opportunity to see and control the slides). In essence, the church has put in place a wonderful video projection system—great for showing movies, but of little use for actual Bible teaching.
There is one thing that makes it even worse, however. That is when there is no screen on the back wall which allows me to see even the current slide without turning my back to the congregation. Depending on the size of the auditorium and other factors, sometimes this situation can be overcome if I can connect my laptop to run the presentation from the sound booth, and set it up in the back of the church where I can see it as much as possible, and also control it myself.
Remember, it always works best for me to run my own presentation off of my own laptop. Putting my presentation on a thumb drive to run through the church’s computer entails the added risk that fonts and graphics will become corrupted in translation.
If the presentation must go through the church’s computer without the ability for me to run my own remote clicker to advance the slides, I will usually just forgo using slides at all. (Although, if the problem relates to the placement of the USB connection for the clicker, this challenge may be solved through the use of a USB extension cable.)
Oh, the tales I could tell about the predicaments I’ve encountered trying to use media slides in churches! As Dr. Whitcomb would say, “These are troubles the Apostle Paul never experienced!”
One additional note: I am certainly not a techie, but there is one piece of advice I always try to spread far and wide. Sometimes someone in a church (usually a small church) with one of those antiquated projectors sitting on a bundle of hymnals will say longingly, “We just have to get a new projector!” In my mind, I can visualize them spending a huge sum of money on a system that may well end up being impractical for preaching and teaching. I always tell them not to do it. Instead, I say, just go buy a big-screen television and a nice cart, so the speaker can plug into it right where he stands, and the small congregation will be able to view a perfect picture with ease.
And here’s my advice for the guest speaker: If you plan to use media slides, set it up ahead of time—the day before if at all possible. There is really no such thing as being too early.
What have you learned from using presentation slides in a new church as a guest speaker? I would be glad to know of any lessons you can share.
Paul Scharf 2023 bio
Paul J. Scharf (M.A., M.Div., Faith Baptist Theological Seminary) is a church ministries representative for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, based in Columbus, WI, and serving in the Midwest. For more information on his ministry, visit sermonaudio.com/pscharf or foi.org/scharf, or email pscharf@foi.org.
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I was filling pulpit at one church where they felt very strongly that there needed to be PowerPoint during the message.
I had planned on controlling my slides from the pulpit—and I think we discussed that so it was their plan also. But when we got it set up, it just wouldn’t work remotely. The distance from me to my laptop was not greater than other environments I’d presented in, so this came as a surprise. The ‘clicker’ batteries weren’t low.
It made for a lot of stress right before the service started. I ended up having to deliver the message verbally cueing the slide guy for every transition. This was very distracting (not quite as bad as preaching with an interpreter, but near enough!). We would have been so much better off with no graphics at all on that occasion.
Another surprise I remember vaguely is having a PowerPoint all polished and ready to go, but on the host computer it changed and looked terrible. If memory serves, the issue was that I’d used fonts that the host computer didn’t have. Maybe it was a Mac or just an older Windows PC… or I’d gotten too creative with my fonts.
So I learned a few things…
- Leave a lot more margin in your slides than you think you need. If the PowerPoint is going to be played back on a different computer than your own, it may substitute fonts, and the replacement font may be wider or taller at the same point size.
- Slides are usually more effective with less on them, anyway, so… two birds with one stone there.
- Seems like I also remember once that the slide aspect ratio changed when I connected to the projector at some venue. A few titles/text blocks would no longer fit without wrapping. So… margin is good.
- You can choose fonts that are likely to have very close equivalents on any computer. It’s boring, but Arial, Times New Roman, Callibri are usually going to work out fine.
- There might be an option in PowerPoint to embed fonts. I do PowerPoint presentations pretty regularly, but haven’t looked for that feature. (Edit: Yes, there is. File > Options > Save, then look for ‘Preserve fidelity when sharing…’)
- It’s probably not a terrible idea to print your PowerPoint to PDF and bring a copy of that also. If the PowerPoint goes bonkers on a different PC, the PDF can be a backup. It’s very unlikely to change at all.
- In most versions of Adobe Acrobat, you should be able to go into the View menu, set your Page Display to Single Page View, set your zoom to Fit Height, then go to Full Screen Mode (also View menu).
Then you can advance one page at a time just like a PowerPoint. (Not sure a remote ‘clicker’ works, though… but a mouse does: right click to go back a page. Or keyboard: arrow keys forward and back. My guess is that a remote would work just as well.)
- In most versions of Adobe Acrobat, you should be able to go into the View menu, set your Page Display to Single Page View, set your zoom to Fit Height, then go to Full Screen Mode (also View menu).
A non-church story…
Recently at work I participated in a three-person presentation where I had a PowerPoint segment. The team decided to combine everything into one PowerPoint file running on a laptop that wasn’t my own. When I plopped my slides into the shared file, my ‘beautiful’ painstakingly prepared slides got all ugly and messy. I don’t think I had used anything special for fonts… but settings within the shared file (for things like fonts, text box margins, etc.) must have overridden a lot of what I had configured on my own PC. Fortunately, there was time to re-edit it in its new home and also tidy up a few of the other slides in there a little, so it all looked pretty spiffy by the time we went live.
Long story short, whenever you can show your own PowerPoint on the same PC you prepped it on, and use your own ‘clicker’ to advance your slides yourself that’s definitely the ideal. For most people, a bit of practice is necessary, though.
Tip: use a symbol or something in your notes to remind you where to advance slides/what slide should be up during that part of your delivery. In the story I started out with above, much of the awkwardness might have been solved if I had a copy of my notes in a form I could hand to the multimedia guy—with flags in the notes for where slides should advance.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron, this may not be related to the issues you have experienced, but we discovered once at our church that the issue with the remote not working was interference from the HDMI adapter plugged into the laptop.
For the reasons you expressed above, we already had a setup where visiting speakers could attach their own laptop to the video, so they could control fonts, formatting, slide-advance, etc. What we did not know, however, was that our HDMI video adapter was causing issues with various Bluetooth remotes. (Many laptops have only USB 3.0/Thunderbolt ports, or mini-DP, etc., so we keep an adapter around.) It didn’t occur to us that there might be RF interference from a non-wireless, non-Bluetooth device. Replacing that HDMI adapter made all the difference for us with regard to remote issues. Lesson learned. Churches don’t have infinite funds, but some things are worth spending more on to get a better device.
Dave Barnhart
I have thought of getting one, but a few years ago we purchased a Lenovo Flex laptop that allows the keyboard to fold back against the back of the screen and essentially turn the computer into a tablet. This gives a low profile as I prop it up on the pulpit, and thus just use my mouse as a clicker.
There are many options, and it appears we are more and more expecting technological tools, so it is worth investing in your equipment to facilitate communication.
We encourage our young people to become note-takers and the lobbying of my wife got me to using Powerpoint in every service to help the kids grasp the points as I work through them. It seems to help their understanding and we keep working on getting better at it.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
our HDMI video adapter was causing issues with various Bluetooth remotes.
Good to know! I wouldn’t have thought of the possibility of “leaky” cables/adapters. Do you know if there is a device to detect stray RF? That would be handy. I think we’re sorted out at our church now (a lot more of the system is fiber now and some more of the rest is cat5), but it would have been handy to have a RF leakage detector a few months ago… and maybe in the future.
@Don re laptop: I do love ‘convertibles’/”two in one” laptops! I tried Microsoft Surface Pro for a while but the floppy detachable keyboard option proved to be too limiting (you really can’t ever use it on your lap with the keyboard, for example). And the Surface Pro also still manages to be really bulky and heavy.
So I much prefer the “thin and light” convertible approach with a non-detachable ‘stiff hinge’ keyboard. My current favorite is an Asus ZenBook Flip. Thin, light, and surprisingly good for typing.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
>>Good to know! I wouldn’t have thought of the possibility of “leaky” cables/adapters. Do you know if there is a device to detect stray RF? That would be handy. I think we’re sorted out at our church now (a lot more of the system is fiber now and some more of the rest is cat5), but it would have been handy to have a RF leakage detector a few months ago… and maybe in the future.<<
That’s a really good question. We didn’t have such a device and haven’t looked for one. (We certainly could have used one when we were trying to figure out the interference to our wireless microphones that speakers use.) We figured the remote issue out by trial and error. Once we determined that wifi and other Bluetooth wasn’t the issue, it had to be something like the cables/adapters. One of the steps we did was just trying the BT remote with the laptop when it wasn’t connected, and then it worked perfectly, even when we put the laptop at the back of the room.
Since PowerPoint remotes are usually not wired, RF interference can still be an issue, unless you are using IR, and that has its own issues. However, I definitely agree with making as much as possible cabled vs. using any wireless technology. That’s what I do at home, and in a church it will be even more helpful, since there will be multiple devices in the congregation using wifi and BT during any sermon/presentation, not to mention nursery baby monitors, etc.
Dave Barnhart
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