Blog | Preparing Your Church’s Media for Palm Sunday and Holy Week

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Hey, let’s talk about Holy Week.

If you’re on a church media team — or if you’re the worship pastor who also happens to run the slides because, well, that’s just how it goes sometimes — the stretch from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday is the most important week of your year. It’s also the most demanding. And if you’re not thinking about it yet, now’s the time.

I want to walk you through how to approach this week not just technically, but thoughtfully. Because Holy Week deserves more than just getting the right files loaded in the right order. It deserves intentionality.

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Start With the Emotional Arc

Before you touch ProPresenter, before you download a single background, I want you to think about the journey your congregation is going to take this week.

Palm Sunday is joyful and loud. Maundy Thursday is quiet and heavy. Good Friday is dark — the darkest service of the entire year. And then Easter Sunday morning hits and everything flips. It’s the most dramatic emotional arc in the entire church calendar, compressed into six days.

Your media needs to follow that arc. If you use the same bright, energetic motion background on Good Friday that you used on Palm Sunday, you’re sending the wrong message — even if nobody in the room could articulate exactly why something feels off. They’ll feel it. Your visuals are the emotional language of the room. Use them on purpose.

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Palm Sunday: Set the Table for the Week

Palm Sunday is a celebration — Jesus riding into Jerusalem, the crowd waving branches, the whole thing. The visual language here is warm, festive, and expectant.

Think golden tones. Deep greens. Rich purples if your tradition uses liturgical colors. Motion backgrounds with organic, flowing movement — light through leaves, slow golden light, soft fabric. Nothing too busy, nothing too clinical.

One thing to think through ahead of time: a lot of churches do a processional on Palm Sunday, especially with kids carrying palm branches into the sanctuary. If yours does that, make sure your screens aren’t competing with the moment. Pull back to something simple and slow during the procession. Let the people in the room be the thing everyone’s watching.

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Maundy Thursday: Get Out of the Way

Maundy Thursday — the Last Supper, foot washing, the beginning of the end. This service is intimate. Close. Heavy with meaning even before anyone says a word.

Dark, candlelit aesthetics work really well here. Deep navy, charcoal, warm amber. Keep your motion backgrounds slow and minimal. Clean, simple typography — nothing decorative or celebratory. And honestly? During communion, consider going to a full black screen or a single still image. Sometimes the most powerful thing your media team can do is nothing.

That’s the big lesson for Maundy Thursday: less is more. The service carries the weight. Your job is to not get in the way of it.

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Good Friday: Honor the Darkness

Good Friday is the hardest service to get right, and it’s the one where media choices matter most.

This is the crucifixion. The arrest, the trial, the cross. There’s nothing to celebrate here — not yet. Your visuals need to honor that gravity.

Dark, desaturated palettes. Black, deep grey, muted burgundy. Still or near-still imagery — a single cross, a crown of thorns, a dimly lit doorway. If your church does a Tenebrae service where candles are extinguished one by one, talk to your lighting director ahead of time and coordinate your screen content with those moments. The whole room should be telling the same story.

A couple of things I’d strongly recommend avoiding on Good Friday: bright colors, anything floral, and — this one’s important — skip the pre-service countdown timer entirely. Nothing undercuts the weight of a Good Friday service like a countdown clock with upbeat music ticking down to when things start. Just don’t do it.

Also, turn your screen brightness down. Physically dimming the room and dimming your screens at the same time reinforces each other in a way that lands in people’s chests. It’s a small thing with a big impact.

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Easter Sunday: Let It Rip

Okay. After all of that — after the darkness of Good Friday and the strange quiet of Holy Saturday — Easter Sunday is your moment.

This is the resurrection. The whole point. And after what your congregation just walked through, the contrast should be dramatic. Bright, luminous, full of energy. White, gold, sunrise colors. Motion backgrounds with real movement. Bold, celebratory typography. If you have an opening video, this is the Sunday to use it — and to use it well. Nothing sets the tone for an Easter Sunday service like a great opener video at full brightness before anyone even takes the stage.

Don’t be shy about how different Easter Sunday feels from Good Friday. That contrast is intentional. That’s the story.

One more thing about Easter Sunday: it’s probably your highest attendance Sunday of the year. There are going to be people in your seats who haven’t been to church in a long time, or maybe ever. Everything your media team does that morning — from the countdown video to the final song background — is part of the first impression your church makes on those people. Make it excellent. But more than excellent, make it warm. Excellence without warmth just looks like a performance. You want people to feel like they walked into something real.

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A Quick Checklist Before the Week Starts

I know you’re busy, so here’s a simple checklist to run through before Palm Sunday:

Content

• Motion backgrounds chosen for each service — and different enough from each other to reflect the tone shift
• Song lyrics imported, formatted, and proofread
• Scripture slides built and double-checked
• Sermon outline slides ready if your pastor uses them
• Countdown videos in place for Sunday services (and pulled for Good Friday)
• Any video clips downloaded, tested, and in the right format

Tech

• Full dry run in your software before Palm Sunday weekend
• Backup files saved somewhere other than your main machine
• Fonts rendering correctly on the confidence monitor
• Screen brightness levels adjusted for each service
• Conversation with your lighting and audio teams — this is a whole-room experience

Team

• Volunteers confirmed for every service
• Someone doing a walkthrough 30–60 minutes before each service
• A simple one-page cue sheet for each service so anyone can step in if needed

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You’re Doing More Than Running Slides

I want to leave you with this.

The work you do this week — the media director who quietly dims the screens at exactly the right moment on Good Friday, the volunteer who fires the Easter opener at full brightness with perfect timing on Sunday morning — that’s not just technical work. That’s pastoral work, even if you’d never call it that.

You’re helping people enter the most important story in their faith. Take that seriously. Prepare well. Take care of your team. And have a meaningful Holy Week.