Christians are blessed with knowledge about the Bible. In a sense, we have never known more about the Bible. We live in an unprecedented era of access to great Biblical research. Millions of books have been written about the Bible – which was the first major book printed on the Gutenberg press in 1455. There is more information available about the Bible than any other ancient book. In a sense, Biblical research has peeled back the darkness of the Middle Ages to take us to the earliest sources. We are blessed by this knowledge.

Also, we have remarkable Bible study tools available. Gone are the days when you had to depend on Crudens Concordance for study – useful though it was! Now you can have the Bible on your smart phone – i.e. in your favorite translation. (It works great for a sword drill!) And you can search the Biblical text for any word combination in any set of books that you can think of. It really makes the Bible a “lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105 NIV).

With all of this great Biblical research available to us, you would think that our knowledge of the Bible as individual Christians would be awesome. Yet there are studies that suggest that Biblical literacy is on the decline. Stephen Prothero even has a test for it, and finds most Americans sorely lacking in this day and age. I suspect that this reflects the shift away from talking about religion in the public arena. The Church needs to do a better job of teaching the Bible. How is your Church increasing Bible literacy in your community? Are you using all of the tools, both in print and software? Or are you just sticking with an emphasis on good preaching?

Which is better for the video projection of lyrics, a moving background or a beautiful color? There is a technical challenge with producing an image of the lyrics that has movement on the screen. While many video switchers have the capability to key an image over a specific color – e.g. dark blue – it can be difficult to put a moving image up. Some presentation software (see our review entitled “Presentation Software Review”) makes this a bit easier to generate. However, does movement add to the worship experience, or detract from it?

Some people find movement distracting – especially if the words blend into a background of the same color. Others find it easier to pay attention to the slides if there is movement behind the words. Feel free to share your comments on this question. It seems likely that larger Churches have an easier time generating moving images, and perhaps they also have more of a demand for this feature.