How To Set Up Countdown Timer For Church Services

Church services are great worship experiences as they draw and uplift us into the presence of God. In this state of worship it is pretty easy to loose track of time, hence, the need of a countdown timer for your church service.
Time usage in our churches must be regimented. Though we would all love to dwell forever in God's presence, however, Paul lets us know this:

The spirit of the prophet is subject unto the prophet
Not the other way round.

What do you need to set up a countdown timer for your church service?

A laptop:

The entire goal is impossible without this.
A dedicated 2 Gigabyte RAM to the countdown timer only will be serve you well.
If you intend to use the same laptop for other purposes, get a 4 Gigabyte RAM system.
Luckily, memory is now relatively affordable today, hence, this should not really be a big hassle financially.

Software:

Without software the Laptop has nothing to work with. We have built the best and affordable countdown timer software for you to prepare the service schedule before hand as well as analyse time usage after the service, get it - Schedular countdown timer.

Display:

If you have a small congregation or are working with a small budget, you can set/position your laptop such that the person on the pulpit may see the timer. Ensure that you still have access to control the timer if you follow this route.
A better option is to get a monitor and a long enough connection cable to connect your laptop to the display monitor. This is more comfortable as it gives you (the media personnel) control over the timer while the person on the pulpit will not have to strain themselves in any significant way to see the timer.
If you have a large congregation, and have multiple groups that need the timer( the choir, ministers ...) or you just want to show the timer in several locations in the church, then you will have to get a splitter, multiple external screens and multiple connection cables that will run from the splitter to their screens.

Position:

Your external displays can be at 90 degrees, flat on the wall for all other groups in the church, but it must be tilted (30/45 degrees) for the person on the pulpit and placed to the side, a slight tilt of the head should be sufficient to see the timer.
Never let the screen position hinder the congregation from a direct view of the preacher or person on the pulpit.

Connection Cables:

If you will be displaying the time for several groups or want the timer shown in several positions in the church, the countdown timer running on your laptop has to be connected to the several external screens (TVs or monitors can serve) you want via a splitter. The splitter will take input from your laptop and the several screens you have can take their respective inputs from the splitter's output.
To avoid the extra expense of a converter, ensure you take note of the ports your laptop has before purchasing a splitter, you want the ports to be directly connected via readily available cables in the market. If your laptop uses a VGA port, purchase a splitter with a VGA port as input. The same applies to the input ports of your external screens and the output ports of the splitter.
For example, the splitter image below shows four outputs with HDMI connectivity, if you will follow the advice we have here, then you should also purchase external displays than can take HDMI input. You can surely ignore these advice and purchase VGA displays, than have HDMI to VGA cables, our experience with these cables have not been nice, if it is not an issue with their durability it is noise that gets introduced to your display.
You could also use converters to connect the displays, but aside from the expense, converters add an extra layer of potential failure you have to investigate when you have problems, so you should avoid converters as much as is within your power.
One more thing on connectors, if you already have one side of the equation, say you already have your external displays, you can use the port available on them to decide the other ports on the subsequent devices you will purchase.

A sample 1x3 HDMI splitter

Conclusion:

Keeping your church services to time will go a long way in increasing the satisfaction of your members with the organisation of the service.