Inspiration Strikes

I woke up this morning thinking about the power points for church.  Specifically, how I could make them more interesting.  I’ve been doing the power points at church for over two years; at first one power point for the Saturday service, then we added the first service on Sunday and then we decided to put the communion hymns on slides at the second service.  So that is three power points a week.  Every week.  I’m not sure if everyone else feels like I do about them but I have been thinking that they are getting stagnant and needed something new.

I woke up this morning thinking about it  We are using “Oh, Beautiful For Spacious Skies” at all three services.  What if I added pictures representing certain lines in the song? When we sing “purple mountains majesty”, a picture of purple mountains would come up. When we sing “amber waves of grain”, a picture of a wind swept field would show.  I started working on it at 5:00 am and I finished at 7:00.  What took so long?  I had to find the pictures that matched what I was imagining in my head.  We generally use IStock Photo to download pictures, which makes it easier because the pictures are already formatted for what we need (in other words I don’t have to worry about the resolution). But trying to figure out what to put in the search bar to get the picture I wanted turned out to be a challenge.  After all, “alabaster cities” doesn’t really come up with anything.  But, after two hours, I had the pictures I needed, I had the slides formatted that as everyone sang the verses, the appropriate pictures would pop up at the appropriate time.

The next step was to e-mail it to my pastor to ask his opinion.  He called me around 9:30 to ask where I came up with the idea and to give me his thoughts.  He loved the concept but he had a few problems with some of the more patriotic images I had chosen only because some people in my church have issues with the separation of church and state (frankly I think that is open to interpretation, as most things are and they may be interpreting it incorrectly…just my opinion). After we agreed to delete a couple of the pictures, he asked me to e-mail to the music director and our associate in ministry.  I did and then called them to see what they thought. They both loved it!! Yeah!!!

So we had a special song during the service tonight. I followed my copies of the written lyrics so I would know when to go to the next slide.  The effect of the pictures popping up gave me chills…..you know….the good kind of chills.  It was just so cool! It was well worth my getting up at 5:00 and being tired all day.  I can’t wait to see people’s reactions at the services tomorrow.  Sometimes inspiration strikes at odd times and I’m really glad followed my instincts this time!