.. title: openlp.org to the Rescue!
.. slug: 2008/03/23/openlporg-to-the-rescue
.. date: 2008-03-23 18:03:01 UTC
.. tags: 
.. description: 

This morning I was not on sound/data projector duty at church, so my
wife and I decided to take it easy and arrive just before the service
(instead of an hour or half an hour beforehand, as usual). However,
unbeknownst to me, but beknownst to my pastor, the people on duty didn't
rock up. So on our way to church, my wife gets a phone call from said
pastor.

"There's no sound coming out of the speakers... how do we fix  that?"

So I had to trouble-shoot remotely via my wife. Of course this never
really works (at least not in my experience) and so I had to hurry to
church (while keeping to the speed limits along the way of course),
instead of taking a leisurely drive. Somehow I knew that if there was a
problem with the sound system, then chances were that there would be a
problem with the data projector as well.

We got there 10 minutes before the service was due to begin, and I saw
that not only was the person on sound duty not there, but the data
projector was unattended as well. Thankfully, a friend who operates the
sound from time to time had stepped in and was helping out there, so I
quickly hopped in at the computer, opened openlp.org, and started
setting up the service.

Unfortunately the service started before I had selected all the Bible
readings for the sermon (our pastors like having the verses up on the
screen while they're preaching), but I wasn't worried about that.
Whenever I got a chance, I'd just add the next verse selection. No
problem with openlp.org's everything-in-one interface.

The part which took the longest was not setting up the service, but
rather finding the correct verses. Our pastor that was preaching this
morning has a habit of saying he's reading one verse, when he's actually
reading 3 verses on, or in a different chapter altogether!

This reminds me of another service, where the preacher had not given me
a list of all the verses in his sermon, and I was pulling verses on the
fly. Wow. I would not have been able to do that with another projection
application. openlp.org's interface makes it easy to show adhoc things
on the fly.

Have you got a story to tell? Why don't you comment on this post and
tell me your story.
