Worship Stage View and Remote Control Software

Ekkli's worship display gives your tech booth one browser tab that runs the congregation screen, a separate stage view for your worship team, and remote control from a phone or tablet — with an offline export so a dropped connection never blacks out the screens. It's the live-presentation layer built into Ekkli's six-month free trial, the same login your church already uses for its website, member database, and rota.

This page is a product spec: what the worship display actually does, how stage view and remote control work together, and how display styling and offline export hold up on a real Sunday. If you're still comparing tools and want the fuller buying-guide treatment — CCLI licensing, how Ekkli stacks up against ProPresenter, EasyWorship, OpenLP, and FreeShow, and a week-by-week switching plan — read the full church presentation software guide first. Come back here when you're ready for the specifics.

What runs on the live display

The congregation-facing screen handles everything a normal Sunday needs to put in front of the room, all from the same running order:

• Song lyrics, pulled from your church's own song library and advanced line by line or verse by verse as the worship set runs.
• Bible verses, looked up by reference and displayed in KJV or WEB — see the Bible verse display page for how verse formatting and lookups work.
• Teaching and sermon slides, built ahead of time as their own deck — covered in full on the teaching and sermon slides page.
• Announcement slides, dropped into the running order wherever they belong — before worship, after the offering, wherever your service flows.

All four content types live in one running order, so the operator isn't switching between separate apps for songs versus verses versus announcements — it's one list, one set of controls, one screen to watch.

Stage view: a confidence monitor for your worship team

Stage view is a second, separate output from the same running service plan — built for the people on stage, not the congregation. Where the main screen shows what the room sees, stage view is aimed at your worship team: singers and musicians who need to see what's coming next without turning around to read the congregation display, and without a printed lyric sheet that's already out of date the moment the setlist changes.

Because stage view runs off the same live session as the main display, it never drifts out of sync — when the operator advances a slide or jumps to a different song, both outputs move together. That matters more than it sounds: a stage monitor that's one slide behind the room is worse than no monitor at all, because it actively misleads the person trying to follow it.

Remote control from a phone or tablet

The running order can be controlled from a phone or tablet, not just the laptop plugged into the projector. In practice that changes who can run the booth and from where:

• The laptop stays plugged in; the operator doesn't have to. Someone can walk the room, stand at the back to judge sound levels, or sit with the worship team, and still advance slides from their phone.
• A borrowed hall or outdoor event still works. If there's no dedicated tech booth — a school hall for a Sunday morning, a marquee for a summer outreach — a phone in someone's pocket is enough to run the display.
• The worship leader can call an audible without waiting on the operator to catch up. If lyrics and controls are both genuinely usable on a small screen, a second person can jump to the right verse or repeat a chorus without a shouted cue across the room.

Remote control runs in the same browser as everything else — there's no separate app to install on the phone, and no pairing step beyond logging in.

Display styling: backgrounds, transitions, countdown, banner overlay

The display itself is styled per church, not locked to one default look:

• Backgrounds — set an image or a plain background behind your lyrics and slides, matched to your church's own look rather than a generic template.
• Transitions — control how the display moves from one slide to the next, so switching between a song, a verse, and an announcement doesn't feel jarring mid-service.
• Countdown — show a countdown before service start, useful for a lobby screen or a "we're starting in five minutes" moment before the room settles.
• Banner overlay — layer a short message across the bottom of the screen (a welcome line, an announcement, a reminder) without interrupting whatever's currently displayed underneath it.

None of this requires touching code or uploading assets to a separate media tool — it's set from the same interface the operator already uses to run the service.

Offline export: the safety net when the connection drops

Because the display runs in a browser, the honest question every church should ask is what happens if the Wi-Fi drops mid-service. Ekkli's answer is offline HTML export: a self-contained export of the week's service plan — songs, verses, and slides — that runs locally with zero live connection needed once it's loaded.

The practical workflow is straightforward: export the service plan before doors open, the same way you'd do a sound check. If the connection holds all morning, you never touch the exported file. If the router drops mid-worship-set, the screens keep running from the local export instead of going dark. It's a five-minute step during setup that removes the single biggest operational risk of browser-based presentation software.

How it fits with the rest of Ekkli

The worship display isn't a standalone projection tool bolted onto a church platform — it's built on the same song library, service plans, and login as the rest of Ekkli. Your song library feeds the lyrics, your teaching and sermon slide decks feed the sermon portion, and Bible verse lookups feed the Scripture references — all assembled into one running order that stage view and remote control both read from. It's free on Ekkli's six-month free trial for churches up to 50 people, no card required, alongside the website, member database, rota, and giving tools that live under the same login. See pricing for what's included at every size of church.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between the main worship display and stage view?

The main display is the congregation-facing screen — lyrics, verses, sermon slides, announcements. Stage view is a separate output from the same running service plan, aimed at the worship team on stage rather than the room, so singers and musicians can follow along without watching the congregation screen.

Can I run the worship display from my phone instead of a laptop?

Yes. The running order can be controlled from a phone or tablet in the browser, no separate app to install. That's useful whenever there's no dedicated tech booth, or when the operator wants to walk the room instead of standing at a fixed laptop.

What happens if the internet drops during a service?

Export the week's service plan to a self-contained offline HTML file before doors open. If the connection drops mid-service, that exported file keeps the display running locally with zero live connection needed — songs, verses, and slides included.

Can I change how the display looks — backgrounds, transitions, that kind of thing?

Yes. Display styling covers backgrounds, transitions between slides, a countdown for before service starts, and a banner overlay for short messages layered across the screen — all set from the same interface used to run the service.

Is the worship display part of Ekkli's free trial?

Yes. Live worship display, stage view, remote control, display styling, and offline export are all included on Ekkli's six-month free trial for churches up to 50 people — no card required on the free trial itself.

Do I still need a separate presentation tool alongside Ekkli?

No — the worship display, song library, Bible verse lookup, and sermon slides all run from the same Ekkli login as your church's website, member database, and rota, so there's no separate projection tool or license to manage.

This page is maintained by the Ekkli team, who build and run the worship display described above. For the fuller comparison against ProPresenter, EasyWorship, OpenLP, and FreeShow, see the complete church presentation software guide.