In detail

WorshipSession has been developed
for worship leaders, by worship leaders,
to support the requirements of spontaneous worship services.

Quick links to items on this page:

• Single-screen style
• Songs are displayed on a single page
• Worship Sessions can be pre-planned or spontaneous
• Designed to be operated by the worship leader
• The formatting of songs is completely variable
• Sound, video and other elements are fully supported
• Projection of Scripture facilitates corporate Bible reading
• Search feature for song and Scripture look-up
• New songs can be downloaded, added as text, or HTML
• Messages can be displayed over songs
• Preachers can use interactive features to support teaching
• WorshipSession helps with reporting song usage to CCL
• Computer requirements and software licensing
• Open Standards - HTML, CSS, and XML

Single-screen style, even in dual-screen mode!

WorshipSession works on ordinary computers that don’t have the ability to drive multiple screens. The system does not have two different views, where one screen shows various menus, lists, etc, and the other shows the ‘pretty view’ that the audience sees. With WorshipSession the operator sees the same ‘pretty view’ as everyone else, and the User Interface is extremely minimal.

The system can be used in a dual-screen mode, which enables it to show guitar chords on the musician’s screen, in addition to the song words. The main display screen does not show the chords, but in other respects the two screens are the same.

A mouse is not required to operate the system - all the powerful features are accessed through keypresses.
 

Songs are displayed on a single page

WorshipSession displays songs in Web pages, and if they are too long to fit onto one screen, they naturally scroll vertically, just as this Web page scrolls. This behaviour is different to PowerPoint™, which divides presentations into a number of separate slides, each of which fits within the screen area.

Keeping a song together on one ‘electronic sheet’ is more natural, helps the flow and makes better use of the screen area. It also means that split-second timing is not required of the operator.

WorshipSession scrolls songs verse-by-verse, and uses an intuitive ‘slow to stop’ feature. To see what this looks like, check out the Try out page.

The user can scroll directly to specific points (verse 3, chorus, etc) using keypresses.

Worship Sessions can be pre-planned or spontaneous

..or a mixture of the two. Songs and other items are added to a ‘Session’, which is simply a file on your computer’s disc. The software steps through the Items in the Session one after the other, but new items can easily be added mid-session, supporting spontaneous and free-flowing worship services. Selection of songs is exceptionally fast, and is achieved with a minimal User Interface (so that when used in a single-screen setup it won’t be distracting). You can easily choose new songs, Bible pasages or other elements ‘on-the-fly’.

Designed be operated by the worship leader

WorshipSession has been designed ‘from the ground up’ to be operated by a worship leader, singer. or band member. Its single-screen, single-page style means that a notebook PC can serve as ‘visual foldback’, free of any distracting technical details. The User Interface is minimal, and does not require a mouse. All the functions of the system are a few keypresses away.

The on-screen guitar chords can replace the songbook in many cases, and the optional foot pedal enables worship leaders to control the presentation, even while they are also singing and playing guitar.

Pressing the bottom part of the pedal scrolls the song to the next verse. If the pedal is held down, the song is scrolled to the bottom (songs usually have a blank space at the end). The top part of the pedal serves to scroll the song backwards, and can be held down in the same way to show the top of the song. In this way a worship leader can go right through a service using only the pedal.

The system also works well “from the sound booth”. It’s so easy to operate, the operator doesn’t have to “sit out”, but can take part fully in the worship.
 

The formatting of songs is completely variable

The HTML format is fundamental to the display of guitar chords along with song words, and it allows complete flexibility in terms of fonts, colours, backgrounds etcetera. Items can easily include foreign fonts, or graphics - even consisting entirely of graphic elements. Any type of element that can be included on a Web page can be handled by WorshipSession.
 

Sound, video and other elements are fully supported

Sometimes it’s convenient to learn a song from a recording, or to use a midi file where there are no musicians available. WorshipSession can play music – either CD tracks or audio files – independently of the projected items. Alternatively soundtracks can be linked to individual songs, so that when these are displayed in WorshipSession, the sound is immediately available.

Video clips are increasingly being used as teaching aids - if your computer is fast enough you can use full-screen, high resolution video. WorshipSession is a convenient way to present your video clips, whether in a pre-planned sequence or ‘on demand’.

If you have a digital camera, WorshipSession can display your images with the minimum of fuss, even directly from the camera’s memory. Images can be shown individually or as a slide show. You can zoom-in to images to show details. Slide shows advance automatically or manually, and can be controlled with the pedal.
 

Projection of Scripture facilitates corporate Bible reading

Using WorshipSession, it is fast and convenient to display any portion of Scripture, from a single verse to a complete book. Several Bible versions are available, including the popular New International Version (Anglicised), and it is very quick and easy to switch versions.

Sounds, images, video and Scripture verses are all noted in the Session in the same way as song items, so they can be pre-planned, or spontaneous. You can prepare the Session on one computer, then transfer it to another PC for projection.

Search feature for song and Scripture look-up

The songs supplied with WorshipSession are indexed by first line, chorus, and title, You can add additional names (such as its number in your songbook) for any song, so you can easily find a song whatever you call it. But if you can only remember a few words from the third verse, you can use the search feature. Just type in the words you remember, and WorshipSession shows all the matches. You can also use this feature to show all the songs by a particular author.

If you want to display a particular Bible passage but can’t exactly remember the reference, type in a few words and WorshipSession searches the entire Scripture and shows ‘chapter and verse’ for all matches. For example, typing ‘in very nature’ matches Philippians 2:6 (NIV).

New songs can be downloaded, added as text, or HTML

Registered users of the software have free access to a library of songs on the Web, with more being added all the time. Just click on the songs you want, and they are automatically added to your library. Songs include guitar chords, so you’re ready to go right away.

(To download songs from our library, you must hold a valid copyright licence.)

Click here to see the list of songs currently downloadable from the server.

You can also add your own songs, using the built-in text –> HTML converter. Or if you prefer you can use your favourite HTML editor.

Messages can be displayed over songs

At any time you can display a Message in addition to the song. Messages can be utilitarian, like  Sally go to creche  or fun, like  Happy birthday Frank! . One Message format is huge, enabling “on the fly” titles. While a Message is displayed, you can continue to display songs and other Items in the usual way.

Preachers can use interactive features to support teaching

Preachers can produce Web pages as teaching aids, and using trivial enhancements to standard HTML, WorshipSession provides interactive features such as appearing items and page transitions. Timers can also be added to create self-running presentations.

For interactive teaching, WorshipSession supports an intuitive ‘write on the screen’ feature, to collect input from students.

Many preachers are familiar with Microsoft’s PowerPoint™, and use it to prepare teaching aids. PowerPoint presentations can be included within WorshipSession.

For simpler ‘just the main points’ presentations, WorshipSession provides pages that can be edited “on the fly”, suitable for instant projection.

WorshipSession helps with reporting song usage to CCL

Every Item displayed by WorshipSession is added to the Session, whether the presentation was pre-planned or spontaneous. When copyright Items are projected their usage is logged, and usage reports can be generated to prepare the information required by the CCL licence authority.
 

Computer requirements and software licensing

WorshipSession depends on Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s free Web browser, and requires version 6.0 or above.

Because of differences in the various IE implementations, WorshipSession currently only works with Windows. All variants from Windows 98SE are supported.

For basic song display, WorshipSession has very modest system requirements, occupying less than 1MB of disc space. A complete Bible text requires about 6MB.

The ‘smooth scroll’ effect used in the song display works well on machines running at 800Mhz or above (1GHz on a dual-screen setup). For slower machines, the scrolling effect can be adjusted or disabled.

The ‘Background Sound’ and Audio CD playing facility depends on Windows Media Player, v9 or above. (The Media Player is a free download from Microsoft, and is included on the WorshipSession CD).

If you want to use the system to display graphical presentations or video clips, you will need a more powerful machine with lots of disc space - as an example a 7-minute video at full-screen resolution may require 100MB, depending on the compression used, and will look terrific played on a 1GHz Pentium 3 machine.

See our Showing Video Clips article in the User Guide.

WorshipSession is offered for download on a ‘try and buy’ basis. The free download is fully functional, but includes only a small number of Public Domain songs. Registration is free, and registered users have access to the server to download a limited number of songs.

If you decide to use the software on an ongoing basis, you should purchase it, to support our development efforts, and to gain unlimited access to our library of songs. Click here to see the list of songs currently downloadable from the server.

The licence is on a ‘per user’ basis, but it is not restricted to one computer, or even (necessarily) one site, although generally only one email address will be registered for support purposes, and only one user should access the database to download songs.

The name of the licence holder is displayed continually on the screen. In a typical case where the software is used by a church, the licence covers any presentation sponsored by that church, including Sunday services, Bible class, music practice, midweek meetings, homegroups, etc.

Registered users are entitled to free ongoing updates and technical support.

See the full Licence Terms.

Implemented using “Open Standards”

The fact that WorshipSession is based on Web standards means that it is uniquely flexible and expandable. Most users need only the “out of the box” functionality and don’t want to know how it works, but experts can tweak its appearance and behaviour, even adding whole new areas of functionality.

The main functions are hosted in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) - the language of the World Wide Web. This means that WorshipSession can display anything that a Web browser can handle, and expert users can easily make engaging presentations.

The display style is determined by CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) rules. These rules allow very detailed control of the appearance of text Items, on a global, local, or individual basis.

The index and Session data is held in XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Expert users can “add value” to their XML databases without adversely affecting the operation of WorshipSession. Also the information in these databases can be easily extracted.

The programming code is written in Javascript. One surprising effect of this is that HTML pages hosted in WorshipSession can make calls into the program functions, and actually take control of the program. Conversely, WorshipSession makes calls to Javascript functions in client pages, to perform initialisation, persistance, etc.