Once WorshipBoard is paired (see Getting started with WorshipBoard if it isn't yet), there are two things to have ready before your first live service: a theme and a plan.
Theme — how it looks
A theme is your on-screen look: background color or image, font, text size and color, and where your church logo sits on the slide. You build and edit themes inside WorshipBoard itself, on the presentation computer — not in the ECA web admin. Once created, a theme syncs to your church account, so any other paired device picks it up too.
Most churches start with one theme and only add a second (say, a lighter one for a Sunday-morning outdoor service) once the first is working well.
Plan — what you're presenting
A plan is the order-of-show for a service: the songs, scripture, and announcements you'll click through, in order. You can build a plan two ways:
- In WorshipBoard, on the presentation computer, right before or during rehearsal.
- Ahead of time, from the ECA web admin. Open WorshipBoard settings → the Songs tab to add songs to your library (title, artist, key, CCLI number), and the Plans tab to create a service plan and see what's on it. Both sync to WorshipBoard automatically — nothing to re-type when you sit down at the presentation computer. (Songs and Plans need a paid church plan — see Getting started with WorshipBoard for the free-vs-paid breakdown.)
Building your song library from the web admin during the week, then finishing the plan in WorshipBoard closer to Sunday, is the smoothest way to run this — you're not typing lyrics live on a laptop in the sanctuary.
Putting it together
With a theme built and a plan in place, open that plan in WorshipBoard and you're ready to present — click through songs and scripture in order, with your theme's look applied automatically to every slide.