PowerPoint Preaching (viii)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the eighth  posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches.  The series began (here).  At the moment, we're looking at Mars Hill's third criterion, "The church regularly gathers to hear God’s Word rightly preached and to respond in worshipful ways."  And I'd like to digress for a minute to briefly consider the use of modern digital projection technology (i.e. PowerPoint) in preaching.  I served a congregation in Lansing, MI—Delta Presbyterian Church—that has an excellent projection system, and I used it for preaching every Sunday.  Now, I'm serving FPC, Lowville, which does not have the technology.

I can do both and feel I've learned some important lessons about the use of projection technology with preaching, which is in a nutshell: don't generalize.  Some years ago I attended a worship workshop at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, which included a "unit" on PowerPoint & preaching.  The instructor made all sorts of sweeping generalizations that are largely useless—because you can't generalize.  Using PowerPoint in preaching depends largely on the church, the sanctuary, and the pastor.

At Delta PC, the congregation had used its projection system for several years although it wasn't used creatively for preaching.  They had by my time generally accepted the technology.  I also was comfortable with it to the point of enjoying it.  Delta's sanctuary, moreover, is a large room originally intended to be a social hall, which means that the technology fits.

A typical sermon slide from my days at Delta PC, Lansing

As for the process of preaching, I found that while I spent a good deal of time each week preparing slides for the sermon, I spent less time having to learn the sermon because I had a ready made visual outline in front of me as I preached.  On the whole, I didn't spend more or less time in sermon preparation at Delta than I do now at FPC.  It was just different.  Delivery is also somewhat different.  I used fewer gestures, for example, and I tried to focus the congregation on the slides rather than me personally (I liked that).  In spite of what you might hear, the slides were not a distraction from preaching and, in fact, added a helpful visual dimension to it.  I should hasten to add that I generally avoided bullets, lists, and slides with a lot of words on them.  I used the slides more as an artistic aid for illustrative purposes than anything else.  That worked best.

While I was in Lansing, I did a couple of simple questionnaires to test the congregation's attitude about using PowerPoint for preaching, and the results were that a large majority of the church liked it and found it helpful.  More generally, when parishioners mentioned a previous sermon, they would often refer to it by a slide they remembered from it. During my three years at Delta PC, I learned a lot of do's and dont's about PowerPoint preaching, and it was very much a positive experience.

Not using PowerPoint, however, is just as positive.  Here at FPC, Lowville, we have an old, traditional, stained glass windowed, and well lit sanctuary that does not lend itself to the technology.  The church is not used to that kind of technology for worship.  So far as I can tell, there is no pressing desire to have it, and I believe I can preach just as well without as with it.  Lacking a compelling reason to introduce it, there is no reason to try to do so.  The quality of preaching (and of worship) is not dependent on it as such, and the church has other more pressing priorities.  Were it not for the nature of the sanctuary and less importantly the cost, I might be inclined to recommend that the congregation consider a projection system.  But the point is exactly this: PowerPoint technology for preaching works well where it is appropriate but is not the be-all-and-end-all of 21st century preaching.  I guess that's a generalization, but it's just about the only one to make regarding PowerPoint preaching.