Sunday shouldn't depend on everything going right the first time.

An actual Sunday

The problem is rarely the software. It's everything around it.

The person who knew how to run it didn't come this week. The hymn someone asked for last night isn't in the library. The pastor changes passage halfway through the sermon. The projector went off, and when it came back the screens were rearranged.

And all of it happens in front of the whole congregation, with the music playing, with no way to say "hold on, I'm restarting".

The worst case isn't that it looks bad. It's that people notice.

A blue screen while the congregation sings from memory. A slide stuck on the previous verse. Software that decides to update itself at nine on a Sunday morning and asks to restart.

Nobody remembers the forty times it went fine. Everybody remembers the minute people stopped singing to look at the screen.

Why this is different

It's written by someone who knows what a failed Sunday costs.

We don't just say it — it shows in the decisions, and each one is written down with why.

• The phone remote ships turned off.Opening a port on a church's network has to be somebody's decision, not something that happens on install.
• Updates don't install while anything is running.With something projected, NDI sending or a phone connected, StagePaz doesn't check, doesn't download and doesn't nag. And if the new version won't open, it rolls back by itself.
• Saving can't lose your work.If the file fails to write, a rescue copy is made and you're told where it is, instead of closing as if nothing happened.
• 1,304 automated tests run before every release, performance ones included: moving between slides with a warm cache does zero drawing work, and a still frame of the stage monitor went from 4.93 ms to 0.90 ms.

The solution

A console built for the booth, not for a boardroom.

• 🖥️
  Audience and stage, each on its own terms

  Its own theme and its own group of screens. The stage monitor also shows the next slide and the leader's notes, so nobody has to turn around and squint at the projector.

• 📖
  A real Bible, not screenshots

  Type "John 3:16-18" and project it. 1,294 versions across 1,024 languages to download from inside, each with its licence and attribution.

• 📥
  Bring the library you already have

  ProPresenter, OpenLP, OpenSong, Holyrics, ChordPro, Word and plain text. The format is recognised by content, not by extension, so a folder of mixed things imports anyway. And what comes in never overwrites what you had.

• 🔎
  Search the lyrics, not just the title

  Someone asks for "the one that says amazing grace" and it comes up. Accents ignored, words in any order.

• 📋
  The order of service as a list

  Songs, passages, images and videos mixed together. Arrow keys chain from one item to the next without letting go of the keyboard, and it saves itself on every change.

• 📱
  The remote on your phone — a browser, nothing to install

  StagePaz runs a server on your local network, protected with a PIN. Open the browser on a phone or tablet and you're changing slides, going to black, picking a song or a passage — from the lectern, from the sound desk, from wherever you need to be. It never goes out to the internet: if the church connection drops, the remote keeps working.Native iOS and Android apps are on the way.

• 📹
  Cameras and NDI for streaming

  Camera boxes inside your themes, and several NDI outputs at once, each with its own. A still output keeps sending: to a switcher, a source that goes quiet is a source that died.

• ⏱️
  Countdowns and notices

  Projectable timers — including "until a time of day", to start on time — with a blink and a colour change when they run out.

Audience and stage

Two screens that don't show the same thing — that's the whole point.

Almost everyone starts with one: the projector. The second one is what changes how a service is led.

And both clear together: going to black is one key, and it never leaves one screen dark and the other stuck on the previous verse.

How it works

Half an hour on a Tuesday, and Sunday is set.

1. Bring your library. File → Import folder, and point it at whatever you used before. It works the format out on its own.
2. Say which monitor is which. Which one is the projector and which is the stage display. With only one, leave stage unassigned.
3. Download a Bible from the catalogue, in your language and your version.
4. Build the order of service by dragging songs and passages in.
5. On Sunday, arrow keys. And the phone from the lectern if you need it.

Compared with how it's done today

What we guarantee

• Your work is yours. Songs, themes and playlists live inDocuments/StagePaz, on your computer. No accounts, no mandatory cloud.
• It works offline. The service doesn't depend on the church wifi. It only goes out to the network to fetch a Bible or an update, and always because you asked.
• Leaving is easy. A backup is a single file, and if one day it isn't for you, delete the folder and nothing is left behind.
• If something breaks, we answer. During the beta you write tohola@stagepaz.com and the person who writes the code answers — not a form.

Proof

No churches are using it yet. That's what the beta is for.

This is where others would put three testimonials. We don't have them and we're not going to invent them: you'd be trusting your congregation's Sunday to this, and you deserve to know exactly where it stands.

What we can show is the work:

When churches are using it, this gap will be filled with their words, not ours.

From here

And if you think it through

Joining costs an email. The beta costs nothing. Bringing your library is pointing at a folder. And if it doesn't convince you, delete it. The risk is zero and what you gain is not improvising on Sundays.