HOST Alternative Worship
worshipping with honesty | integrity | creativity

using overhead projectors in worship

Although a little out of vogue - probably because of it’s shoddy use in churches and school assemblies - the simple overhead projector can actually be very effective.

For a start, most churches have one lying around, and OHP’s are far more powerful and can project over a larger area than most slide projectors. With a cheap home PC printer you can create colour OHPs very easily. What you have to avoid is that fingers-scrabbling-for-the-transparency-damn-I’ve-put-it-on-upside-down-and-back-to-front effect. So, either use your OHP to project a constant image (and mask off the bright white edges with strips of card), or if using it to project words or a series of images switch off the lamp whilst changing the transparencies.

You can achieve effective visuals with a simple OHP and a little imagination. If you can get coloured tranparency sheets that create mono-colour text from a photocopy (we’re talking 1970s technology here) they actually provide vibrant colour - those printed from computers aren’t nearly as strong. Best bet is keep it bold and simple.
You could cut up different colours and stick them together with black electrical tape to make psuedo-stained glass to project - why not do it as an activity before/during the worship to use in the worship.

We’ve projected stuff onto the inside of the church roof, over the top of dancers, onto uneven surfaces like curtains, over the top of projected video etc.