ways of organizing Sermons

[Kit]

Dear Users,

may you share how you organize your sermons?

And what software are you using?

Your ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Chris

[Tim Hall]

Kit,

 

I simply use Finder. I have a folder for every year, with a sub-folder for months and special occasions (Christmas, etc.).

 

Not very advanced, but has worked so far.

[Levi Durfey]

I also use the Finder to store/organize my sermons.

 

I have a main folder named "Sermons". But I don't like burying my sermons in folders, so I use the file name to organize the sermons within the sermon folder.

 

For most expository textual sermons, I put the book of the Bible it's from in the file name. Example: "Text - Rom. 1 8-15" I may also put other details like the sermon number if it's in a series, or a title.

 

If it's topical, I put "Topical" in place of "Text" and put a title instead of a book reference. I also use "Funeral" or "Wedding" in place of "Text or "Topical" as appropriate.

 

This way, I can scan through all my sermons without digging in other folders. Quick Look is an awesome tool to use when doing this!

 

--

 

I also copy all my sermons into a User Tool file in Accordance. I link any scripture references in the sermon. Then whenever I search in Accordance, I also find my old sermons that reference the text I'm currently working on.

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

I have a similar system, using Finder.

 

Most of the time I use the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for my preaching texts. The RCL is a three year cycle. So I have folders labeled "Year A", "Year B" and "Year C". Inside of each year folder is a series of numbered folders, one for each Sunday of the Church Year. i.e. "(42) Proper 09B" is the name of the folder that stores resources for this coming Sunday. The numbers are designed to keep the folders in chronological order.

 

In that folder I store my sermons (currently written in NeoOffice), a custom Accordance workspace for that Sunday, and any resources I have downloaded from the internet related to that week.

 

In Accordance I have a User Tool for each Year of the RCL, and I use the User Tool to store the notes I take while studying my preaching text.

 

There are times when I go off lectionary and preach a sermon series. In those cases, I have a master folder for the entire series, with subfolders for each week. I also create a User Tool in Accordance for the sermon series.

 

Every funeral and wedding has its own folder, inside a master Funerals or Weddings folder.

 

Lorinda

[David Martyn]

Dear Users,

may you share how you organize your sermons?

And what software are you using?

Your ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Chris

 

I store my on my website, so I use Dreamweaver.

[Brance]

I use Pages to write my sermons and them store them in the finder using a method similar to those described above.

 

I don't organize by year, maybe I should...

 

I simply organize by series, be it topical or book ("I don't mind topical preaching as long as it's done exegetically." Mark Driscoll)

 

Take a look at the attachment to see my sermon folder and it's organization.

 

[Outis]

I sort them in the finder according to: ~/Documents/Church Year (A,B, or C)/year/week within the church year. (don't forget to label the folders with colors, it's pretty and it helps you move through the layers quickly)

 

in this folder I place:

 

1) Accordance workspace

 

2) OmniOutliner sermon outline

 

3) LaTeX files.

 

It's organized and easy to find.

[Timothy Jenney]

Once you have your sermons organized the way you like, you can insert the specific file path into a user note at the appropriate verse reference. At Gen. 1, for example, I could have "See ~/Documents/My Ministry/Gen 1.docx." This would make indexing them a breeze, as they'd always be at your fingertips in Accordance [believe me, after 20+ years of exegesis and ministry, you won't be sure if you've ever spoken on a specific passage or not either!

 

I tried making the phrase a hypertext link using the "Link" command, but it didn't work [Actually, I suspected it would not, as the links in User Notes are all supposed to be Scripture, but I thought I'd give it a whirl anyhow. No joy.]. It would be a cool feature if it would automatically open the document using the correct application, but someone more accomplished than would have to write the code/script. Any takers?

 

Wouldn't that be a cool feature?

[Sean R.]

While we can't currently link to tools and external documents in User Notes, we can in User Tools. I have a User Tool that serves as an index of my sermons with clickable links to external documents that contain my notes, Keynote presentations, etc. By including keywords and texts for each sermon entry in my User Tool, I can easily search to see if I've preached on a particular text or topic before—and quickly access the pertinent documents.

[R. Mansfield]

I wish I could make Accordance a one-stop-shop for sermons and Bible studies that I teach, but nearly all of my manuscripts are a combination of text, graphics & tables.

 

For instance, I preached a sermon in June, and in my preparation, I was working on a draft of the sermon AND putting together Keynote slides at the same time. Three of four times, I simply grabbed a screen shot of the Keynote slide and dropped it into Word rather than typing information twice.

 

I also have years and years worth of class notes typed up that I'd love to create user tools in Accordance out of. But most of them not only have graphics, but tables as well.

 

I have begun using DEVONthink for some of these kinds of files, but if I had my 'druthers, I'd much rather have it all in Accordance.

 

But I'm not a programmer, and I've been told this kind of implementation in user tools would be difficult. Nonetheless, I keep on hoping... one day...

[Michael Cochran]

Has anyone tried MacJournal? I'm actually using it for it's intended purpose, but it could work really well for organizing sermons.

 

It works like an online journal, except better (and on your computer). It has tags, sorts by date, topic. It's a simple text editor but supports most everything in a normal word processor. It also has a full-screen mode which turns everything black with green text so you can just focus on writing.

 

Lastly, it also supports multimedia - I put in a video of myself recorded via the iSight and it can accept audio also. It also can actually post to a blog and supports Apple's "Smart Folders". I don't have a lot of sermons to organize but if I did, I'd be hard pressed not to use MacJournal. Anyway I've attached a screenshot showing a recent post - which is a video "blog" entry that I embedded. My son's name is Fox - which is the baby journal my wife is keeping (FYI).

 

Anyway, the company is Mariner software.