ProPresenter Deep Dive: Everything Church Volunteers Need to Know
You know that feeling when you show up to run ProPresenter on Sunday morning and something just isn’t working? The center screen is blank, the lyrics are formatted wrong, or worse—everything looks fine in rehearsal but falls apart during the service. If you’ve been there, this training is for you.
Jake walks through everything you need to understand about ProPresenter, not just as an operator clicking through slides, but as someone who actually gets how the system works. Because when you understand the why behind what you’re doing, troubleshooting becomes less stressful and you can actually fix problems instead of panicking.
Start with Good ProPresenter Hygiene
Before we dive into the technical details, here’s something simple that solves more problems than you’d expect: restart your computer every Sunday morning before rehearsal. Not right before the service when you’re already stressed, but early in the morning. ProPresenter just performs better with a fresh start.
If things start acting weird during the week, quit the application completely and restart it. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Think of it like turning your phone off and back on—it’s basic, but it works.
Understanding Your Video System
Here’s where most volunteers get lost. You’re not just running software on a computer. You’re operating a computer graphics machine that’s delivering content to multiple destinations: your LED screen, projector screens, confidence monitors for the stage, maybe a lobby display, and your live stream feed. Each of those destinations needs to receive the right content at the right time.
At Northridge Church where Jake demonstrates, they’ve got a center LED screen, two projector screens (house left and house right), a confidence monitor behind the tech booth for the pastor and musicians, and a lobby display. Your setup might be different, but the principle is the same. You need to know where all your content is going.
The signal path matters too. Most Churchfront installations use a Blackmagic DeckLink video card to send signal from the computer to the video switcher. If your screens aren’t showing content, start with the basics: Are the displays powered on? Is the video switcher on? Then check if the video card is actually connected.
You can verify this by opening Desktop Video Setup on your Mac. If you see a list of connected outputs, you’re good. If those fields are blank, something’s physically disconnected—probably a Thunderbolt cable between the video card and the computer.
Configuring Your Screen Outputs
Inside ProPresenter, go to Screens > Configure Screens. This is where you tell ProPresenter which physical output goes to which screen in your room. You’ll see your screens listed on the left, and under each one, you should see it connected to a Blackmagic output.
If it says “not connected,” that’s your problem. Something came unplugged or the video card isn’t being recognized by your computer.
There’s also a handy “Identify Screens” toggle that will label each screen in your room so you can see which output is which. Use this when you’re first learning the system or if you suspect something’s configured wrong.
ProPresenter has two types of screens: audience screens (for congregation, live stream, lobby) and stage screens (for confidence monitors with notes and lyrics for your team). Make sure you understand which is which before you start changing settings.
Navigating the ProPresenter Interface
The ProPresenter window breaks down into a few key areas. Across the top, you’ve got your standard menu items and some important buttons. There’s a toggle between Show and Edit mode—Show is where you operate during service, Edit is where you modify slides. There’s also a Reflow view that lets you edit lyrics more efficiently by seeing all the text in a readable format instead of clicking individual slides.
On the left side, you’ve got your Library where all your ProPresenter documents live—songs, videos, announcements, sermon slides. Below that are your Playlists, which combine multiple items into a service order. Most churches have a Sunday morning playlist they edit weekly.
The center area shows your slides and song sections. On the right, you’ve got your preview monitor showing exactly what’s being sent to your screens. Many setups use a multi-view that shows all screens at once, which is way more efficient than toggling between individual outputs.
Understanding Layers and Clear Cues
This is where things get interesting. ProPresenter uses layers—think of them like a layer cake stacked on top of each other. At the bottom you might have your media layer (backgrounds), then your slide layer (text/lyrics), then your props layer (graphics for specific screens), and audio at the very top.
The clear cues on the right side of the interface let you clear content from specific layers. The red box means that layer is active with content. If you click Clear All, everything disappears. If you click just the Slide layer, your text goes away but backgrounds remain. If you click the Media layer, backgrounds clear but text stays.
This becomes crucial when you’re using different content on different screens. At Northridge, they use the Props layer specifically for the center LED screen. That way they can have a graphic on the LED wall that’s independent from what’s showing on the projector screens. The Props layer sits on top, so if it’s enabled on a screen, you won’t see the media or slide content underneath—unless you’ve configured your looks to allow it.
Looks: Your Screen Configuration Control Center
Looks are how you tell ProPresenter which layers go to which screens. If you go to Screens > Edit Looks, you can see exactly what content each screen is receiving. Maybe your LED wall only gets content from the Props layer during announcements, while your projector screens get Slide and Media layers.
This is usually pre-configured and shouldn’t need constant adjustment. But when something weird is happening—like “why isn’t my background showing on the LED screen?”—it’s probably because a Look is applied that’s disabling that layer for that particular screen.
Looks can also apply themes that format your lyrics differently on different screens. You might want lyrics centered on your projectors but positioned at the top on your LED screen. Looks handle all of that automatically.
Macros: Multiple Actions in One Click
Macros are where ProPresenter really shines for efficiency. Instead of clicking five different things every time you start a worship song, you create a macro that does all five actions simultaneously: apply the worship look, format the screens, cue the lighting, enable stage displays, and whatever else needs to happen.
You’ll typically have macros for looks and lighting cues. Drag the appropriate macro onto the first slide of a song, and when you click that slide during service, everything happens automatically. You can also click macros directly in the macro bin if you need to manually trigger something on the fly.
At Northridge, they have lighting macros that send MIDI commands to LightKey to change the room lighting. When they advance to a new song, the lights automatically adjust—no separate button presses needed.
Building Your Service Playlist
Start by creating header items to organize your playlist into sections—Pre-Service, Worship Set, Message, Response, etc. You can color-code these headers to make them visually distinct.
When you add a song to your playlist, you’ll need to format it properly. Use the Reflow editor to adjust how many lines of text appear on each slide (most churches do two lines). Apply the right theme so fonts and positioning are consistent. Then add your background—either a still image or motion background. Make sure backgrounds are set to “looping” and “background behavior” so they don’t cover your lyrics.
Finally, drag your macros onto the first slide: the look macro to configure screens, the lighting macro to set the room, and any props if you’re using the LED wall independently. Test it by clicking through to make sure everything fires correctly.
Setting Up Announcement Slides
Announcement slides typically have several actions on the first slide. You might have a Clear All action to wipe previous content, a Welcome look to format screens properly, a lighting cue, and a prop for the center screen graphic. All of these fire when you click that first announcement slide.
You can add actions by right-clicking on a slide and selecting Add Action. Just understand that every action you add is something that will happen when that slide is triggered. This is powerful but can also create chaos if you accidentally leave the wrong action on a slide somewhere in your playlist.
Test Everything Before Service
This is non-negotiable. During the week or early Sunday morning, click through your entire playlist. Test every first slide to make sure macros are firing correctly. Scroll through lyrics to catch formatting issues. Check that backgrounds are looping properly and props are showing on the right screens.
Don’t wait until soundcheck to discover problems, and definitely don’t wait until between soundcheck and service. By then it’s too late to troubleshoot properly. The more comfortable you get clicking through and testing, the more confident you’ll be when something does go wrong during a live service.
The Bottom Line
ProPresenter is powerful, but it’s not magic. Every weird behavior has a reason—usually a look that’s disabling a layer, a macro that’s not configured right, or a video output that’s not connected. When you understand how the system actually works—how layers stack, how looks control what goes where, how macros combine actions—you stop being scared of it.
Take the time to poke around during the week. Show up to Thursday band rehearsal and use it as your own rehearsal to test features. Re-watch Jake’s training and actually click the buttons he’s clicking. The more you understand the why behind what you’re doing, the less stressful Sunday morning becomes.
And remember: restart your computer before rehearsal. Seriously, it helps.
Want more in-depth ProPresenter training for your team? Churchfront offers a full ProPresenter Essentials course with access to group coaching calls where you can ask specific questions. Check it out at churchfront.com.
