I have several friends and acquaintances who attend Christian churches, I have even gone on several occasions to accompany them in their services, my brain automatically associates any event with free software, so I have proposed myself as a goal: «to gather free tools that allow churches to be more efficient and to achieve their objectives in a better way«.
There is a distribution based on Ubuntu that groups several tools, but its development is totally abandoned, probably if time helps me and I manage to get some collaborators, I also dedicated myself to updating it.
In the same way, I am preparing some material to do some talks dedicated to technology in the churches (If something good comes out, at some point we will share it).
Thanks to that goal, I have met and tasted an excellent tool for worship presentations called OpenLP, which has many functionalities and features, as well as being easy to use and install.
What is OpenLP?
OpenLP is a tool of open source, Multiplatform (Linux, MAC, Windows, FreeBSD among others), which allows to make presentations for worship, incorporates templates and files of Songs, Bibles, slides, Images, presentations, audios, videos, also gives us the possibility to save our history and import new files.
Likewise, this tool allows remote access, from its mobile application, its wide community and the experience accumulated over years, makes it: «the best free tool for churches«, Its ability to project Bible verses, sermons, song lyrics, etc., has made it a fundamental tool in modern churches.
OpenLP features
- It can be installed on any operating system: Linux, Windows, OS X and FreeBSD, including versions for Android and IOS.
- Display songs, Bible verses, presentations, pictures, and more.
- Availability to control OpenLP remotely through the remote browser, or mobile applications.
- Allows importing songs quickly and easily, from other presentation packages or sources.
- Possibility of editing, classifying, ordering and producing the musicalization of your cult.
- Quick Verse Search, in addition to the possibility of incorporating various Bibles.
- Incorporates VLC so it supports a large number of multimedia formats.
- Integration with PowerPoint, PowerPoint Viewer, and LibreOffice Impress.
- Slide Customization, incorporates a presentation editor and the possibility of storing it according to the structure you want.
- It imports images and allows to organize them in folders, they can be used to create presentations, simply selecting several songs and images, and then drag and drop them in the presentation.
- Possibility of incorporating views of the stage, thanks to any device incorporated in the network.
- Easy to install and use.
How to install OpenLP?
Install OpenLP It is extremely simple, the steps to do them in the various distributions you can get below:
Install OpenLP on Ubuntu and Derivatives
sudo add-apt-repository ppa: openlp-core / release sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install openlp
Install OpenLP on Fedora and Derivatives
You can download the corresponding packages from here.
Install OpenLP on Debian and Derivatives
You can download the packages corresponding to each Debian version from here.
Install OpenLP in Arch and Derivatives
yaourt -S openlp
Initial OpenLP Configuration
Once we have installed the tool, in its first execution OpenLP allows us to carry out a series of initial configurations and imports, among which we highlight:
- Allows you to choose the add-ons you want to activate: (Songs, Slides, Bible, Pictures, Presentations, Media, Remote Access, History and Alerts.
- It offers us the possibility to select the versions of the Bible that it handles by default (they are classified by Language), once chosen they are automatically downloaded and installed.
- Possibility of downloading free songs in different languages.
We can select and download themes that will be used in the presentations.
In other words, this powerful tool gives us the possibility of entry, to have a presenter for churches quickly and easily.
I hope that OpenLP is very useful for all those who offer their collaboration to the various churches of the world. It is also worth noting that free software covers almost any type of sector, in addition to giving you the opportunity to know and fully improve the applications.
Thank you very much for the contribution. At my church we use EasyWorship, and I had no idea this free software alternative existed. EasyWorship has been failing quite a bit lately. Do you know how stable OpenLP is?
Thank you.
The tests that I have carried out and the questions to users who use it (on the various platforms), result in that the tool is quite stable, however, a pro of this tool is that it is constantly being updated, so the problems they are solved quickly.
There was a KDE application for studying the Bible a few years ago, but I think it no longer exists.
There is also BibleTime http://bibletime.info/ which is cross-platform.
Thank you very much for BibleTime probably in the immediate future, let's also talk about that application here on the Blog
I wanted to use openlp but the problem is that I don't know how to put animated backgrounds and poems, I hope the team takes it into account, thanks for the information.
Good morning, you know that I have a problem to project the image, everything seems to be fine until I configure the projector and put on the extend screen, and there the only thing that projects is the computer screen background, not even the program. but if I put duplicate it shows me everything I do on the computer. the problem is when I put extend so that it only shows the development of the service. which may be? help !!!