St Andrew’s • Cheam
UNITED REFORMED CHURCH
UNITED REFORMED CHURCH
OpenLP: Introduction
What is OpenLP?

OpenLP is an application for displaying the items needed for a church service or other event using a projector. It was developed and is actively maintained by a group of volunteers and is offered at no charge to churches.
The OpenLP library
At the heart of OpenLP is a library of resources, from which you can select items to make a service plan.
The library is divided into 6 sections:
- Songs, comprising the text of the song, the sequence of verses, chorus and so on, the author and composer, the topic of the song and the source from which it came.
- Bibles, from which readings can be added to the service plan. Our library uses the 2011 UK English version of the New International Version.
- Presentations, which are slides in Powerpoint, PDF, Impress or other formats. They can include embedded sound or video files.
- Images, which are single images in the usual formats including JPEG, PNG and others.
- Media, which in this context means sound or video files, again in a wide range of formats including mp3 and mp4.
- Custom slides, which are sets of one or more screens created within OpenLP that might be used for liturgy or announcements.
Creating and using a service plan
You create a service plan by choosing items from the library and arranging them in the order you want.
The person using the plan during a service will then not need to be concerned with the library, but might have to use it if an unexpected item is requested or a last-minute change needs to be made.
OpenLP tutorial
- Introduction
- Creating a service plan:
- The OpenLP desktop
- Creating a new service plan
- Adding songs to the plan
- Adding a new song to the library
- Adding Bible readings to the plan
- Adding slide presentations to the plan
- Adding images to the plan
- Adding sound or video items to the plan
- Adding custom slides to the plan for announcements or liturgy
- Making changes to the service plan
- Extracting song words from a service plan
- Running a service plan:
- Other matters:
External documentation
Updated 24.01.2019