What settings do I need for Inside a church on my nikkor 17-55 lens?

I just bought this lens with my d7000 and was hoping to take indoor pics without flash.
My settings seems to be off bcuz the shutter seems to be too slow and there's motion blur.
When I increase shutter the pics seems to be dark… I then blast up the iso and its still not bright enough.

Any advice?

You need to increase the ISO to 1600-3200 and shoot in 'A' mode with the lens wide open (smallest f-number).

You need to use the light meter in your camera to balance the exposure.

Read the user manual if you want to know how to use the light meter.

Read your light meter - we can't tell you what the settings should be, we're not there! It could be incredibly gloomy in the church.

Having fast glass will help some, but it doesn't get away from the fact there's very little light & you need enough light for an exposure.

You Really need to read up on the "Exposure Triangle".

3 things affect expsore (other than the ammount of ambient light).
1- Aperture
2- Shutter Speed
3- ISO

Aperture is the opening of the lens and it is actually a ratio of the opening of the lens when compared to the focal lenght. The lower the number, the wider the opening. So a lens at 50mm set at f4 has a opening diameter of 12.5mm. 50mm at f8 = 6.25 diameter.

The wider the opening, the more light spills in to the sensor.

Shutter speed is the length of time it takes for the curtain to pass over the sensor usually expressed in a fraction of a second (1/50th). The slower the shutter the longer the sensor has to absorb light… Of course, light moves so if your sensor is exposed for too long (based on motion in the scene or your own body motion) then the picture will be blurry.

Finally ISO.
ISO is a measure of how sensitive to light the medium is (well, not exactly but that's close enough). The higher the number the more sensitive to light the sensor is. The drawback to this is that it also introduces noise or grain into the image. The amount of noise/grain depends on the ISO and on the camera itself. My old Rebel XSi has as much noise at ISO 400 as my 5DMkII at ISO 1600.

There's no way for us to tell you EXACTLY what settings to use since that will depend on the amount of ambient light in the church BUT your CAMERA can tell you. It has a built in light meter.

start by setting your aperture to it's widest setting (lowest number), set your ISO to the highest you dare (for my XSi that's 400 my 5D MkII I don;t like going over ISO 3200) and then look at the light meter and adjust your shutter speed until you get a proper exposure (check your manual for this). Hopefully you'll be able to get a shutter speed of at least 1/60th of a second since anything slower will result in motion blur from your own, minute, hand movements.

If you STILL can't get a fat enough shutter speed then you just CAN'T GET THE PICTURE.

There's a reason wedding photographers (like myself) are equipped with several 1000$ - 2000$ lenses and 3000$+ camera bodies.

Learn how to use your camera's internal light meter…