Article
 The
VL3 Top Ten!
The best features of Visual Liturgy 3.0
1. Instant look-up of the
lectionary and collect for Sunday. Unlike printed lectionaries,
Visual Liturgy 3.0 for Common Worship gives
you the full text to view - an ideal starting point
when you are working on a sermon or looking for other
material to fit with the readings.
2. The lectionary report
offers these same benefits for a whole period, rather
than just one day.
3. Integration with other Microsoft® Windows®
applications. Full clipboard support means you can open a service in Visual
Liturgy 3.0 for Common Worship and copy the full text into another software
program, ready to be formatted as you like. If you have texts on disk which you
want to put into Visual Liturgy, you can also go the other way, and use the clipboard
to copy them in.
4. Fully customizable.
Visual Liturgy is different from many software resources,
in that you can add to, amend or reformat any of the
texts. You can also edit information such as source
indexing, theme indexing, the biblical index, and calendar
entries. Every church is different, so Visual Liturgy
puts you in control.
5. True visual editing.
As you work on a service, for example adding a hymn
or moving a prayer, the text is immediately updated
before your eyes. You can also see the structure of
the service by looking down the service list. The service
list also tells you which items are mandatory and which
are optional, and whether there are pre-set options
for that point in the service. Finally, you can edit
visually, by dragging and dropping items into your service
or from one service to another.
6. Record hymn usage. Did
you use that hymn last week? Or was that in another
church where you take services? What carols were in
the carol service last year? Have you sung And Can it
Be recently? Visual Liturgy lets you see hymns and songs
service by service. You can also inspect the usage of
a particular hymn. Finally, you can print out reports
of your usage, ideal for completing copyright returns
or providing information for discussion of your use
of music in worship.
7. Flexible searching.
Visual Liturgy lets you search by first line, title,
author, Bible reference, or source. You can also search
the full text for a word or phrase. Texts can be gathered
into themes so you can group frequently used texts into
one place.
8. Powerful service templates.
Visual Liturgy service templates have tremendous potential
for assisting your creativity. As you investigate, you
will be impressed by the range of options. You can customize
headings, add and remove rubrics, set your own lists
of alternative prayers or greetings, even add your own
seasonal material to appear automatically at the correct
time. You can also share your templates with others
if they use Visual Liturgy too.
9. Support on the Web.
This Visual Liturgy web site has news, support information
and free updates to fix problems or introduce new features.
You can also join the Visual Liturgy mailing list for
sharing of ideas or help with using the software.
10. Good company. The take-up
for Visual Liturgy has been incredible. The original
estimates of how many ministers and church leaders would
adopt it has been exceeded three times over. A Methodist
version of Visual Liturgy is also available as well
as other add-on modules. You can be confident that you
are a part of a success story, with ongoing support
and investment, new versions of the software and new
texts made available as they are published in book form.
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