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If you have agreed to speak at Crescent Church, we would like to thank you for your help in this ministry. We trust that the Lord will guide you in preparing and in giving your message.
This page is to give some practical information which may help you in advance, in case you aren't familiar with arrangements.
Morning Service
* Our Breaking of Bread service is at 10.30, and we aim to finish by 11.30. Visiting speakers are most welcome to join us for this.
* The Morning Service is scheduled to start at 11.40, and to finish by 12.25.
* The chairman will start with a hymn, a prayer and a few announcements.
* The meeting should be handed over to you by ten to twelve, so you will have around 30 minutes for ministry, with time for a closing hymn and prayer from the chairman.
* We use a lectern on the lower platform, rather than the pulpit.
Family Service
On the first Sunday morning of each month we have a family service, when the Sunday School and Bible Class join us for the entire service. The format of this service is slightly different:
* After the Breaking of Bread, we have a longer interval during which coffee is served. The family service then starts at 11.50, with a finishing time of around 12.25. We recommend about 15 minutes maximum for your talk.
* The chairman will chair the programme, which may have a number of different items.
* The children from the Sunday School usually sit near the front, though others sit elsewhere with their parents. We use the ground floor platform. You can have a radio microphone, so you can walk around if need be. An overhead or PC+data projector are available, if we know in advance (see below for details).
* We appreciate that giving a talk suitable for such a wide age range is practically impossible! However, we find from experience that it is best to pitch the talk at the children (say, 10 year olds), but with an application that is relevant to the parents too. Parents tell us that your talk will probably be what the family talks about over lunch.
Evening Service
* Evening Service starts at 7.00 pm, and finishes by shortly after 8.00.
* The chairman will normally start with a hymn, a prayer, a few announcements, and a praise time. There may be one or two other short items.
* The meeting should be handed over to you by 7.30 at the latest, so that you will have around 30 minutes for preaching. There will then be time for a closing hymn and prayer from the chairman.
* We normally use the ground floor platform rather than the pulpit.
* We like the evening service to have a gospel application, where the passage or subject permits.
* A data projector and PC are available (see below for details).
Subjects and Titles
When we are doing a series on one of the books of the Bible, and have allocated a particular passage for you, we usually also put a title or subject on the passage. This title is just for publicity purposes, and is not meant to direct or constrain you. So please note that the real subject is the passage – not whatever title phrase we may have put on it!
Chairmen
There is a chairman for each service. Your chairman may contact you in advance of the service to see if you have any hymns you would like sung. We use the book 'Always Praising 2' and our own Supplement. If you have any other requirements, please let him know.
Guidance on using Powerpoint
We have a data projector and a PC which we use for projecting the hymns and other presentations (operated from the back). The PC has CD-ROM, DVD and floppy disk drives, and runs Windows XP with Office XP. Alternatively, we can connect your laptop at the lectern if you want to control the presentation yourself. The projector can also take input from a video player (which is also available).
You are welcome to make use of these facilities if you have your own Powerpoint presentation, but our past experience has led us to insist on a number of ‘house rules’ to keep things simple and reliable!
* You should bring your own finished ready-to-run presentation as a single file, on a floppy disk, CD-ROM or USB memory stick, in PC format. We can’t do format conversion, and we can’t read ZIP disks.
* Alternatively, you can bring your own laptop, for you to operate yourself.
* Our house style for text is Arial font, with a preferred font size of 36 pt. Text should definitely not be less than 24 pt.
* Beware of using non-standard fonts if you are using our PC to run your presentation – they may not come out correctly (e.g. Hebrew!)
* If you are using your own laptop, set the Power Settings to Full Power and use the mains power adapter (power saving options can turn off the video output at the back!)
We can’t provide help with putting together or tidying up a presentation, unless by special arrangement.
Nightmare scenarios we’ve had in the past include people who:
- came with their own laptop, but the actual presentation wasn’t on it!
- had such a large presentation it wouldn’t run on their laptop
- brought a Macintosh presentation copied on to a PC disk, thinking it was
thus in PC format
- brought a presentation on a faulty disk, or on one with a virus on it.
We thus recommend that naive users think twice before taking this route!
If you have any questions, please contact the church office (028 9024 4026, reception @ crescentchurch.org).
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