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The call came from a secretary for a church that uses The Paperless Hymnal. She was given, maybe even sought, the job of putting the service together using The Paperless Hymnal. The church has several song leaders used in rotation who decide which songs they wish to include in the Sunday's song presentation. The secretary is left to find the correct songs and build Sunday morning's presentation file. The song leaders were given the indexes.xls file to pick songs from. That was a main issue, because that file contains some 3500 songs, not just the 770 songs found in The Paperless Hymnal. Make that 771 songs with the one in this month's update. The song leaders were picking out some songs other than the ones in TPH. The solution was to give them the TPH_indexes.xls file instead. That file only contains songs in TPH. Just that resolution alone helped, but there was more. Song leaders are an independent lot. We are more than just "song" leaders, we are "worship" leaders in that we are responsible for connecting together the elements of the service. Each leader's personality and ability is seen through what they do, don't do, say, don't say, how and how well they do it. There's a lot of personal responsibility while "up there". Up until the time of overhead and video projectors, most leaders just used the book and sang the songs from the book using what talents they had. With the advent of the afore mentioned devices, song possiblities expanded greatly. Now leaders have greater choices, if they are allowed to use more than the song book. This large base of choices can be a problem. When putting the song service together, the song leader may have one song in mind, but his desires may not be correctly interpreted by the one putting the presentation together. There are two answers to this problem. The first option is to have the song leaders put the presentation together at home or on the computer at the church building. For most of us, that is the way it is done and with great success. If things don't work right, the finger can only be pointed in one direction, just as was always done when we only used song books. The leader decides which songs to use, selects and checks the song file, decides which stanzas are to be sung and in what order and arranges the songs in the order he will be singing them. If he changes his mind, he must change the file. The responsibility is all his, just like in pre PP (PowerPoint) times. The Paperless Hymnal has multi-user licenses that allow a church to load TPH on multiple song leaders PCs. See last month's newsletter for that discusson. And - the leader doesn't have to put the entire service together, just the songs. Someone else can still be responsible for putting in slides for the Lord's Supper, prayers, announcements, sermon, etc. The second option is not as easy to impliment. It takes co-operation between the song leader and the one actually putting the presentation together, such as our secretary. The leader must not only give a list of songs to the secretary, but that list must also list the stanzas that are to be sung. Care must be taken to ensure that the leader's songs match the songs used by the secretary in making the presentation. The leader shouldn't just assume that the version in TPH matches the version in the book. We are trying to eventually include the song versions for the must used song books, but it is an impossible task. Song books, especially "Songs of Faith and Praise", change from printing to printing and we chose NOT to include versions of songs with obvious mistakes in them. Many times that is the reason the book was changed. To make sure the song leader's version is the same as the one in the presentation, the song leader should use the FullSong version of the song only. Some secretaries make a print out of the songs for the leaders. Not using that printout can lead to a different version being sung by the leader from the one being shown on the screen. As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. Having done this longer than anyone else, I pick the first. But it doesn't have to be one way OR the other. Some song leaders feel qualified to do the work themselves while others will not. My suggestion is to supply the amount of help needed for each leader. If a song leader wants to do all the work themselves, let them. If another leader doesn't have a clue how to use a computer, then don't give that responsibility to them. And leaders, leave yourself plenty of time to check your work. Don't expect the people who actually work the computer on Sunday mornings to welcome you with open arms when you decide to change things right before the service. It is worth spending time to do something well, and using something like The Paperless Hymnal takes forethought and some time. If your congregation has a song leader who for one reason or the other doesn't like using TPH or will not put in the work necessary to use it, allow them to use the song book if necessary. There is nothing wrong in doing that. It is better that way than to have a song presentation with slides out of order, wrong verses being sung from what is being shown or the wrong version being displayed. It is better for technology to be set aside than for it to get in the way. It is just a tool. |