Powerpoint with Singing

Make enough slides so you don't need to go back and forth. You should always be going forward. When you are done singing one slide, move on to the next slide--even if it's exactly the same (like repeating the chorus). It's just too easy to get messed up when you stay on one slide to sing it twice, but not on others.

Use line breaks where they come naturally. When there is a pause (or a note being held out), that is a great place to put a line break.

When you have two slides in a row that are exactly the same--for instance, you're repeating a chorus--put the second slide in italics. That way, the worship team singers will know that you're on the next slide, rather than wondering if the person running the PowerPoint is behind.

Between songs, use a blank slide with a solid background (or a logo slide).

White on a black background has the most contrast; most people prefer a dark blue for the background, which works great, too. Yellow on black has less contract, red even less, green less yet, and blue almost no contrast (unless it's a very light blue). You could use light yellow for the title, white for the words.

Instruct the person running slides to advance to the next slide at least a few words before the slide is done. That will help the worship team singers remember what's coming next (if they use monitors).

Nearly everyone centers the words to slides. There are arguments for left-aligning the lyrics, but it probably doesn't matter a whole lot.

Write down the slide number of the first slide for each song. That way, you can get to the beginning of any song just by typing in the number. You could also write down the slide number for the chorus, in case the worship leader decides to repeat the chorus.

When one line for a song stretches to two on-screen lines, use shift-return to create the second line. That will keep the two lines closer together. A regular return puts more space between the lines.

At the bottom of the slides, there are three things that might be helpful to include:

The name of the song.
The slide number for that song.
Some kind of symbol on the last slide to let singers know it's the last slide of that song.

So, the information at the bottom of the last slide might look like this:

Lord I Lift Your Name on High - 2~

If a key change occurs on the next slide, you could use a carat mark to warn the singers:

Lord I Lift Your Name on High - 2^

Ideally, your worship team members know the songs so well that they don't need to refer to monitors or music on music stand. But not everyone is at that point.