29 Worship Tools for Under $29, 9

By Jon Nicol

#17. Proclaim Presentation Software
I don’t have a Small Church/Big Worship awards show, but if I did, it’d have a crummy pronunciation: SCBW - “The Ess-see-ba-wa’s” Not quite as catchy as "the GRAMMYs." But despite the acronym, if I did have Small Church/Big Worship award show, I would give Proclaim the “coolest presentation software for volunteer-driven ministries.” (That’s another reason why I don’t have my own award show: overly long category names).

If you don’t know, Logos Bible Software has developed a new presentation program called Proclaim. Let’s face it: ProPresenter and Media Shout are the reigning royalty in this fairly saturated playing field. But Proclaim has just found a niche for itself. And who knows how big that niche could get.

Every product needs a USP – a unique selling point (or proposition). Proclaim has it, and it’s in the cloud. That means no packing and flash drives - it all stays centrally located online. And don’t worry about trusting your internet connection. It’s all run locally when you’re ready to go “on air.”

Having just endured almost three years as a solo worship pastor at a multi-campus church, I can tell you that this would have been handy. I made many last minute trips to “the other campus” with flash drive in hand to load or reload a packed MediaShout script.

Having just spent a few hours playing with Proclaim, I can see the possibilities it could offer larger churches, especially multi-campus ones. But I love what this could do for smaller ministries.

First of all, check out the price point - squarely in our $29 range for a churches up to 499. But a church of less than 100 could use this program for only $10 a month (for the first year, $20/month after). Having served in a smaller church, this would have been far easier to handle than the $500-$600 price tags of the other programs.

And for the volunteer-driven worship ministry, the ability to collaborate is a huge part of Proclaim’s attractiveness. The “weekend warrior worship leader” is free to work at home after she puts the kids to bed. And the pastor’s still free to load his sermon slides in anytime he wants. And get this: your video tech for that week could log on at home and look over the flow of the service. How nice would that be to have your tech showing up actually prepared to run the graphics?

I'd say that's worth checking out. Here's a page that tells you more about it, and gives you links to Proclaim.

March 21, 2012