Last week I was on vacation with my family. We packed the family vehicle to within an inch of its life with groceries, clothes, gear, and kids (not necessarily in that order) and headed off for a week of wilderness fun! Upon arriving at the campgrounds it fell to me, of course, to set up our tents. Feeling quite the outdoorsman and ready to teach my children the joys of living in commune with nature, I encountered the only real setback of our otherwise idyllic trip. In all our frenetic packing, I had failed to bring a hammer, an essential in staking down the tents. Well, I was not about to be deterred by such a small detail, so after a little searching, I found a fairly hefty piece of wood that I thought would work out pretty well and commenced a-hammering. And in the end it all worked out, but not without several sore fingers, a cramp in my right forearm, and a caustic look from my wife about the “new words” that our 5 year old twins had learned. Just kidding!

It was during one of the more painful moments of this adventure that I began to think longingly of the hammer that I knew was in my tool chest back at the house, which is undoubtedly the right tool for hammering tent stakes into hard ground. As I see it, the right tool gives us three major advantages in any job;

1. It makes the job easier

2. It makes the job faster

3. It provides a better finished product

This brings me to the subject. Worship Presentation Software has become, if not a necessity, at least a trend in the church and worship world, and for good reason. Almost regardless of which product a church or ministry might choose, the advantages and benefits over a regular slide show creation program like PowerPoint™ are marked and numerous. Now this is not to knock PowerPoint™. It’s a great program and it does exactly what it was designed to do, it goes from slide to slide to slide with tremendous reliability. It’s just that most of our church services don’t go from slide to slide with anywhere near the same kind of reliability! There is a lot more spontaneity built into even the most programmed church service, than in any sales or corporate presentation (which is what PowerPoint™ is specifically designed to do).

Ideally, the church will look at the biggest Worship Presentation Software players in the market and decide which feature set is right for them THEN purchase a computer that runs that software well. This seemingly backwards approach is because, arguably, the top two competitors run on different platforms; Windows and Mac. As of right now, EasyWorship runs in Windows only and ProPresenter runs on Macs only. They both do a fantastic job of serving up song lyrics and Bible scriptures on demand but they each have some defining features. By choosing the features your church needs, then choosing the computer to run it on you will generally be better served in the long run.

EasyWorship includes a rich feature set, with motion backgrounds, built in scripture database, and support for running PowerPoint™ files directly from within the EasyWorship interface being some of the most popular. It is very easy to operate and volunteers can be quickly trained to operate it.

ProPresenter 4 has a beautifully designed, very graphical user interface, which provides an intuitive working environment for beginners while maintaining an outstanding set of advanced features for power users. If your church does a lot of live video production, ProPresenter has some features that help it to fit into that environment more seamlessly.

Fowler Productions provides monthly training classes for EasyWorship and ProPresenter to help anyone from the first time user to the old pro to better utilize either of these tremendous tools to the greatest advantage.

* Upgrade license price
Visit the online store for details on this continuing special!

EasyWorship and ProPresenter training dates will be changing starting in January 2010. Instead of being on Tuesdays, they will be on Thursdays.

Dates currently listed for EasyWorship:
January 14th, March 11th, May 13th at 6:00-7:30 pm

Dates currently listed for ProPresenter:
December 8th, February 11th, April 15th at 6:00-7:30 pm

Fowler offers training on every product we sell. Just ask your sales representative to include it in your system recommendation. If you would like a more customized training program for your staff and volunteers, our trainers will also make house calls. If you need something more specialized, call us – we want to help your church do multimedia better.

EasyWorship Training Fowler offers LIVE online training for your EasyWorship presentation software. This class is FREE for 90 days with the purchase of a projection system, and is good for one session with two logins. Standard training starts at the low price of $99.00. Group discounts are available.

The Future of Visual Technology is Here.

EasyWorship 2009 introduces custom video support for the stage and Video Jockey mode. And with full web and audio integration, it’s now the easiest way to use websites, YouTube videos and audio file in your next presentation.

Display Foldback (Stage Display)

Custom Stage Support

Your audience is first, but your stage needs support, too. While the audience sees the presentation on the main display, Display Foldback lets the stage see a custom display with the current presentation, a preview of the next scheduled item, a clock and private alerts.

Customize the way the stage sees PowerPoint presentations with variable thumbnails for previous, current and next slide.

VJ Mode (Video Jockey)

One-Click Video Switching

This is the perfect place for planned spontaneity. In VJ Mode, switching backgrounds during a live song or scripture takes one click.

The option to view your media library in the Live Area makes it easy to fade between backgrounds on the fly while keeping up with song lyrics or scripture changes

Web Integration

Full Screen YouTube Videos

With URL scheduling and full screen YouTube video playback, EasyWorship 2009 helps you connect your audience to the web. Use the online feature to show your church’s new website or latest YouTube video.

EasyWorship 2009 also provides access to the online media store, which includes integrated downloads so media is automatically placed in the correct library in EasyWorship.

Audio Integration

Scheduled Playback

Import and organize your audio files for scheduled playback during a presentation, or assign a single audio file to multiple lyric or scripture slides. EasyWorship’s new media player displays total and elapsed time with controls for volume, mute, play/pause, repeat and seek.

Updated User Interface

Cleaner, More Intuitive Design

Now theme-aware for XP, Vista and Windows 7, EasyWorship 2009 introduces updated buttons and icons throughout, modernized look and feel, general layout improvements and updated interface controls for video, DVD and feeds.

Interseted? Check it out on our store!

When purchasing a projection system for a church this question inevitably comes up, “Can we install this ourselves?”  The answer -Yes you can!  We did!  Our church worked with Fowler Productions who designed and ultimately sold us a full 16:9 projection system along with a choir/confidence plasma.

The screen that was designed for our sanctuary is a 12ft wide electric screen in the widescreen format and we went with a 6000 lumen widescreen projector. Fowler agreed that with the staff and volunteers we had in place our church would be fully capable of a sell install. They provided us with complete drawings and all the information needed to get the equipment in the right place. We hired an electrician to run power to the screen location as well as the projector and plasma locations. We arranged a couple of Saturday “workdays” at the church. Several of us had absolutely no installation experience but we were there and ready to help. We did have a professional carpenter on the volunteer team. Other than that, the rest of our “crew” were only experienced with a “honey do” list … handymen around the house.

The first thing we did was install the screen. We set up scaffolding in order to get to the height we needed to be safe. Once the screen was in place, we pulled cable through conduit that came out above the ceiling tile. We then had to pull it along the ceiling tiles and position it above where the projector would be located. That seemed to be the part that took the longest, since we had to move the scaffolding a few times to get from the back of the room to the proper mounting distance from the screen. Once we had the cable pulled to the projector and plasma locations we installed the mounting hardware. The projector mount was a little tough because we had to drill through a steel beam; we went through a couple drill bits but we ‘got er’ done. We then mounted the projector and connected all of the cables. After that we hit the power button to make sure it fired up (Just a suggestion, but it might be a good idea to test the equipment before you’re on the scaffolding.), but everything worked great. We then connected a computer to the VGA cable to make sure we had an image and lined up the projector with the screen. At that time we adjusted the screen drop; The screen has an adjustment that allows you to drop it to the correct point each time so we took care of that while the scaffolding was in place. All that was left then was hooking up the equipment at our control booth.  Since only a few were needed in the control room, then rest of the crew were in charge of clean up duty in the sanctuary, which took the remainder of the day.

With the control room equipment install, the Design Drawing and Handbook that Fowler provided was fantastic. We’d used it for the pulling of the computer and control cable, but for hooking the rest of the equipment it came in big time. The connections were all laid out telling us exactly what went where. If you can hook up a computer or dvd player at the house you’ll be fine.  I did have a question though during the installation that day, so I tried Fowler’s emergency 24/7 support number and someone actually answered the phone! The technician walked me through a setting adjustment and we were up and running. Later that afternoon, I called the technical support line with another question and again they took care of me. We got our system up and running and it looked great.

The following weekend we used it for the first time in our service and it’s amazing the response we’ve had regarding the use of media. I am responsible not only for putting the slides together for announcements, as well as the songs, but for running it. I use Easy Worship and let me tell you EASY should be in BOLD! So many people in our congregation have made it a point to tell me how adding the backgrounds and images to the songs have really enhanced worship and the videos that we’ve used for sermon illustrations have really impacted them. Our Pastor is getting the same response and is thrilled with what this investment has done for our church and ministry. Big thank you to Fowler for the design of our system and the support they’ve provided for us to help minister through multimedia.

Thank you again,

Jon
First Church of God
Shawnee, OK

The next date for EasyWorship Training is coming up, be sure to register for June 9th!

Click here to register.

The EasyWorship training date for May 11th has been moved to May 19th. We have emailed those who currently signed up for the 11th over this matter.

For those who possibly signed up for the next time time (June 9th) please call or email us and we will get the date moved to May 19th if you wish to attend that time instead.

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.

EasyWorship training dates updated!