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** Preachers *** What do you use to prepare your sermons?

zipur

zipur

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 3, 2011
588
84
The great state of Texas
My church is very large and active. We visit many churches around the area. I have noticed that IPAD are becoming very common as a preaching tool. So I was wondering what you use to prepare your sermons. Do you write them with the IPAD or just use it as a reference device. What Bibles and Commentary's do you use. Is the a "Gold Standard" set of apps a preacher would need.
 
I don't think that there's likely to be that many preachers here. It's not that common a profession. You'll probably find more iPad users in a preacher forum than preachers in an iPad forum.
 
zipur said:
My church is very large and active. We visit many churches around the area. I have noticed that IPAD are becoming very common as a preaching tool. So I was wondering what you use to prepare your sermons. Do you write them with the IPAD or just use it as a reference device. What Bibles and Commentary's do you use. Is the a "Gold Standard" set of apps a preacher would need.
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Hi there, I'm a pastor here in Scotland. I use my iPad pretty much exclusively for all prep and the various other tasks.

For research I use accordance bible software (it has iOS, windows and Mac) it has loads of resources and over time I have built up a fair library.

For writing and presentation, there is pages which is beyond adequate but I use something called notebooks 7, this is a great app that has great file management but saves everything in html or txt so file sizes are tiny.

These are my two key apps for research, notes and then preaching from the iPad too (simply reformat the writen sermon by laying it out how I like, double space it and increase the size)

All this I do on my iPad mini and find that it works really well.

Accordance resources that I find useful are the Greek resources, the Ivp bible background commentaries and the Tyndale commentaries (it has word biblical and the new international commentaries but I don't have them yet).

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joeblow7777 said:
I don't think that there's likely to be that many preachers here. It's not that common a profession. You'll probably find more iPad users in a preacher forum than preachers in an iPad forum.
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We lurk everywhere.....
 
zipur said:
My church is very large and active. We visit many churches around the area. I have noticed that IPAD are becoming very common as a preaching tool. So I was wondering what you use to prepare your sermons. Do you write them with the IPAD or just use it as a reference device. What Bibles and Commentary's do you use. Is the a "Gold Standard" set of apps a preacher would need.
Click to expand...
The iPad is becoming more common for church use in many ways. Check out Planning Center Online for more resources, including projecting sermon notes or scripture references using the iPad and an Apple TV.
 
[MOD NOTE]
Lets stay on topic and remember, that PRSI type content is not allowed in the open forums, so lets stay on topic with what the OP is asking.
 
I'm a speaker and I have many friends who are preachers. Honestly, most of them use MS Word or Evernote. Evernote is what I use when preparing my content, then I move to PowerPoint and put my notes in there when preparing slides.
 
There is a sermon app for iPad called Sermon note designer.

Edit: Seems to be gone, but there are a few others. My backup is Pages backed up to Dropbox. Notes isn't robust enough.
 
joeblow7777 said:
I don't think that there's likely to be that many preachers here. It's not that common a profession. You'll probably find more iPad users in a preacher forum than preachers in an iPad forum.
Click to expand...
There are more here than you know. ;)

To the OP:

As you know, sermon prep is a highly personal process and obviously what works for one teacher won't work for another. But I'll share a little of what I do on the iPad:

First, I never have, and most likely never will preach directly from an iPad. It isn't a technical issue, it isn't a spiritual issue, it's simply my personal preference. I prefer the freedom of having my sermon notes (8.5"x5.5") tucked in my Bible and being able to easily put it down and pick it up. (I tend to wander away from the pulpit)

I have a full-time job in addition to my pastoral responsibilities so while sermon prep primarily happens at my home office, I always have a device with me that allows me to "move things along" throughout each day during the week. So virtually all the software that I use is cross-platform in some form or another.


Having said that, here is a list of the apps that I use and why I use them....

SimpleMind (iOS/OSX/Android) - Cross-platform mindmapping software. I use it to capture my thoughts and supporting verses for the central verses that I'll be teaching on. The central node is the scripture reference (the text annotation is the text of the verses). From that visual, themes and points of interest pop out.

SimpleMind supports Dropbox so my mindmaps are stored and synced there.


Notesy (iOS), nvAlt (OSX), Draft (Android), ResophNotes (Windows) - all with DropBox. I find plain text (with occasional markdown) to be ideal for distraction-free note taking. This is where the preaching points are taken from the mindmap and expanded with greater detail. All of these files are stored/synced in Dropbox. I used to use EverNote, but it has become bloated over the years.

LOGOS (iOS/OSX/Android), eSword(OSX/Windows), iBible-Study HD (iOS), Bible (LifeChurch.tv) (iOS/Android): I use a variety of these tools because I have many resources for each that I've received over the years for free or at significant discounts. I still find eSword version 8 t be the best tool for me.

Pages '09 (OSX). I use this to create my final set of notes that I teach from. I prefer to have a mix of printed and handwritten notes so I took the effort to create a font of my handwriting. This allows me to type everything and then manually add last-minute notes that are consistent with what was already written.

I also use Pages '09 for the teaching outline that is handed out to the congregation.

If Apple was to ever upgrade Pages to anywhere near the functionality of Pages '09, then I would upgrade to that and take advantage of Pages for iOS.

As it is, I have created some nice templates that I use for both teaching notes and outlines and with custom styles, it is pretty simple to roll them out.

there may be another app or two that I use that I've forgotten to mention, if so, I'll update this post.

hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
Zeos said:
What is PRSI content?
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Sorry, we have a forum dedicated to Political, Religious and Social Issues. That being the case, we prohibit content that contains that sort of stuff in the open forums. Access to that Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum occurs after 100 posts.
 
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