Low-Teching Your Lyric Slides

I realize with programs like Media Shout on the market, this is going to sound like the most ridiculous idea you’ve ever heard. While Media Shout and the like display very dynamic presentations for your lyrics, there are settings where you may not have access to the program and you are end up using Power Point. Our church has been using Power Point for years and has looked at making the switch to something more cutting edge, though we’re not to that point yet.  My personal frustration with PP is that there is no way to pull from a different slide if things go out of order. For example, there are times that we may, in the moment, go back to the bridge instead of doing the chorus again, which would be the next slide. This leaves the person monitoring the slide show to start clicking around to find the appropriate slide, which becomes incredibly distracting to the audience. I quickly tired of having situations like this arise. I realize that there is something to be said for deciding on a song structure and sticking to it. There also is the issue of the person at the computer having an itchy trigger finger and advancing to the next slide too quickly and cutting off the words as people are still singing them. At some point, I decided to eliminate the clicking from PP altogether. This led me to putting all of the lyrics for the song on one slide, which gave me the freedom to not worry about deviating from a particular song structure and breaking the atmosphere in worship with frenzied clicking through slides. It also solved another dilemma that I have when leading worship in a small group where there may not be someone familiar enough with the songs to feel comfortable clicking through the slides. The song is up there and the only time we click is when we move to the next song. This is obviously the polar opposite of the Media Shout experience, but it has become invaluable for my worship setting. Now, this is not for everyone and may be a terrible idea for your setting and your audience. Just something a little different that you may not have thought of before.