OpenSong Worship Software
OpenSong is free, open-source, worship software for managing and displaying song words and the Bible. We use it every week in the Church and all the ‘tech crew’ love using it!
You can download the full program for free from: www.opensong.org/d/downloads/. You can get OpenSong for Windows, Mac and Linux. Also on the OpenSong downloads page are more song packs, background packs, Bibles and a program to help import songs into OpenSong.
But, to save you some work, we’d also like to share some of the resources we use with OpenSong, such as more songs (Songs of Fellowship Books 1-4), some different backgrounds and a UK version of the NIV Bible.
If you’ve got any questions about OpenSong, the OpenSong sourceforge forums are a great place to start.
There’s a simple manual on the main OpenSong site.
Songs - Songs of Fellowship
Sadly, due to copyright issues, we can’t just offer the SoF files as a simple download. However, if you can prove you’ve got a book (as that’s basically what the SoF copyright notice says), we’ll be happy to email them to you! I understand this might be a bit of a pain, but I hope you understand.
If you’d like a copy of the SoF words (all of Books 1-4) please email: opensong at minehead-baptist dot com and give the scripture references of at least two of songs listed below (from more than one book if possible please; and if you can give them all you get a gold star! ;-). If you can find these references (they’re on the top right of the Song number/title), then you/your Church will have at least one copy of the book(s) and thus the CD as well!
The Songs:
SoF Book 1
164: He is exalted
475: Purify my heart
SoF Book 2
671: Be still and know
1109: What a Friend I’ve found
SoF Book 3
1289: How can I repay You?
1498: Over all the earth
SoF Book 4
1846: Holy One
2114: We stand and lift up our hands
When we recieve a request with the right references, we’ll email them to you asap!
Thanks for your understanding.
If your Church still uses the (brown) ‘Song and Hymns of Fellowship’ book, we’ve created a conversion chart for Song and Hymns of Fellowship/Song of Fellowship Book 1 (pdf)!
There are other OpenSong import tools at: http://ricepudd.googlepages.com/opensong/ and www.opensongutils.tk
Backgrounds
The Shared Worship Background Graphics Group on Flickr has some great backgrounds for use with OpenSong and other worship software.
James, one of the ‘tech crew’, has got some of his own backgrounds that we use on Flickr as well.
For our ‘default’ settings, we use two simple backgrounds that you can download and are free to use (zip).
The font/sizes we use are (Songs white text/Bible black text):
Trebuchet MS (it’s on most computers and is designed for large screen use)
Song Words 35pt bold (top left alignment)
Song Title / Bible Reference 22pt bold (bottom left alignment)
Song Subtitle / Bible Book Reference 14pt bold (bottom left alignment)
UK NIV Bible
The Bibles that have been released for OpenSong use USA English. So with the help of Richard Bradley, a fellow UK OpenSong user, we’re making a UK English version of the NIV for OpenSong. We’ve changed all the ‘obvious’ things, but expect there are still some American-isms in there! So if you’d like the Bible, you can download the UK NIV for OpenSong here (zip).
If you find anything that needs changing/updating in the Bible, please email opensong at minehead-baptist dot com and we’ll add the changes to the downloadable Bible!