Shout Tip: Insert Bible Passages in Lyric and Text Cues

The simplest way to include a Bible passage in a presentation is to insert it as a Bible cue. But what if you want the passage to appear within the body of a Text cue, or even in the middle of a Lyric cue? You can do that too, following these steps:

1. Insert the Lyric or Text cue first. Don't do any custom formatting to the cue yet - just leave it there for a moment.

2. Choose Insert > Bible to open the Select Bible Passage dialog box. Select the passage you want, just as if you were inserting it as a Bible cue ... but don't click the Select button. Instead, click in the text preview box - it's the tall one above the Template field - and press Ctrl+A to select all its contents. Now press Ctrl+C to copy the selection. Click Cancel to close the dialog without inserting a Bible cue.

3. Open the Lyric or Text cue into the cue properties box, with the Foreground tab selected. Navigate to the place in the cue where you want the passage to appear, click in the text to establish an insertion point, and press Ctrl+V to paste the passage. The pasted text may be too small to be visible, but it's there. To make it match the rest of the cue's text ...

4. Select the Content tab. Click the Template button and choose Reapply Template from its menu. This will format the pasted text to match the default font for the template.

You'll notice that each verse in the pasted passage is treated as its own paragraph, beginning with the chapter and verse number in parentheses. If you like it that way, leave it; otherwise, reformat the text as you would any other text in the cue. Also note that the passage's reference is not included with the text. If you want it to appear above or below the passage, you'll need to enter in manually.

By the way, this same trick can be used within a Bible cue, allowing you to display, say, a passage in two different versions on the same screen.