I Preached from My iPad this Morning

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I tried preaching from my iPad this morning using Keynote (ref. this post). Two thoughts:

  1. I'm pretty sure no one could tell. This was a huge deal for me. I don't want others to be distracted by it and I didn't want to be distracted by it. I'd rather people say, "That guy talks about Jesus and the cross a lot." rather than "My pastor uses an iPad." I liked that there were no shuffling pages and that it was easy to keep track of where I was in my notes. I think it was one of the better sermons I've preached both in content (iPad had nothing to do with that) and delivery (it aided me).

  2. White text on a black background was a winner. Wow. I'm actually surprised at how well my eyes could pick up text with a glance instead of a stare. If I'm not using just one Post-it note in my Bible (my normal source of notes) I usually try to keep them all on one page of paper so that I don't have to shuffle multiple pieces of paper. Since I didn't have to shuffle pages of paper I made the font bigger which made the notes easier to see, too.


Preaching with an iPad actually turned out better than I thought it would so I'll probably do more of it in the future provided point #1 remains unviolated.

Your To Do List Just Got Awesome

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Here’s what you need to do today. You need to go to this web page, download those four mp3s, and listen to them. Sooner rather than later. If you’ve only got time for one today, listen to the second one.

For reasons I’m not going into here - for today at least - I nearly started hyperventilating in my truck yesterday while listening to that second talk. I believe the topic of gospel wakefulness to be a pretty significant one. We’ll talk more about that later, though.

For more information just read Jared’s blog and pick up his book which comes out this fall.

The iPad and Preaching

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Jonathan Dodson wrote a great post about preaching with the iPad. My preparation and use is different so I wanted to write a bit about how I do it. I have not used my iPad to preach from yet. I mostly have a Post-it note next to the passage from which I am preaching and that’s the extent of my notes. It probably shows if you watch our video, but I’m just too awkward walking back to the lectern and looking down at notes. It’s uncomfortable for me.

So, here we go:

  • Research: I don’t use my iPad for this very much. I do have both Accordance Bible and Logos on the computer and the iPad. Occasionally I will look something up in one of these two apps (primarily Accordance) and I might read one of the books from the Logos library like I would with the Kindle or iBooks apps, but that’s about it. I mostly use Accordance on the desktop. Also, I will sometimes copy and paste my Kindle clippings into Evernote, but I rarely go back to those and look again.

  • Outlining I’m just using Jonathan’s designation here. I don’t outline very much. If I do use an outline for something, it’s usually a blog post, an article, or an idea for a book. But, for workflow purposes I start out with iThoughtsHD on the iPad or iThoughts on the iPhone. I always save these files in OPML format on DropBox. I do this because I can then open the map in Mind Manager or OmniOutliner. I might use Mind Manager to finish up a map and keep it saved in OPML so that I can then open it in my primary outlining tool which is OmniOutliner. I also use Outliner on both platforms but it’s file saving system is just dumb and really needs DropBox support. After my outlines are done, if it is a big writing project, I send the OPML file to Scrivener for the final draft.

  • Manuscript Again, I don’t take a manuscript, but if I have to write paragraphs of stuff or copy in quotes from another source that I want to share, I only ever do it in TextMate. I am a TextMate kindergartner, but this text editor is so good. I write all my blog posts (including this one) in Markdown and nothing supports systems like Markdown the way TextMate does. My life is basically a bunch of text files (.txt) right now and I love it. No more worrying much about .docx unless someone sends something to me in Word. I. Love. TextMate.

  • Preaching I haven’t done this yet, though Jonathan’s post makes me feel better about trying it out. I didn’t want to be that guy but Jonathan’s post and this one from J.R. Vassar have convinced me that I either need to quit worrying about it or just go ahead and embrace the brokenness of being that guy. I think I would differ from both of these guys in that I’m almost 100% sure I will import my notes into Keynote instead of a document. I tried showing some Bible passages and pictures in Logos a couple of weeks ago in a class I was teaching and the iPad kept going to sleep. I don’t think I want to be distracted by having to turn on my iPad every two minutes.


I can’t believe I wrote that much, but it was a good exercise for me. Anyone else have a preaching workflow they use on the iPad?

Very Proud

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My sermon this morning began with me telling about a Jehovah's Witness lady who rang the doorbell at the house and handed me a tract - nice lady and she didn't stay long which was a plus. After she left I started to read through the tract she handed me. The paragraph contained one truth and one untruth. The truth was that John the Baptist did say that Jesus came to take away the sin of the world in John 1:29. The untruth was that Jesus died to rescue "obedient mankind." There really is a logic problem in combining both statements. If humanity were obedient, we'd have no need for anyone to take away our sin. Also, we are sinners - our genus and species would be better described as homo peccator rather than homo sapiens.

I read the two sentence paragraph to those gathered in worship this morning and asked the question, "What is wrong with that statement?" Several, at the same time, called out "obedient." It didn't strike me until later this evening, but they get it! They are getting the gospel! They know that we can't rescue ourselves, that we are lost sheep (Isa. 53:6), that we are sinners (Rom. 3:23)! I am so proud of my church. I pray our the depth of our gospel understanding continues to grow.

P.S. I may have to write up our Sunday School discussion which diverted away from Ecclesiastes toward evangelism and why we are so hesitant to strike up a gospel conversation, knock on a door, or proclaim the gospel in a public place. That was awesome, too.

Sunday Links 4.3.2011

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Sunday links are back again. I know it’s been a few so I’ll stock this one with a lot of them!

Shot to the Gut

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Sunday afternoon, after returning from church, I took out my iPad and checked my RSS feed. Not a great way to start out my afternoon recovery. I read a post about a pastor that broke my heart. I have read this guy's blog posts. I've purchased administrative documents from him that we tweaked and use at the church. I enjoyed learning from him. His evangelistic heart showed through everything that he did. He was close to my age and pretty much everything I thought of when I thought of success in ministry.

He is out of the ministry today because of an affair.

I was sick to my stomach when I read about it. I didn't even know the guy personally, but I took his fall personally. All I could think was, "This guy preaches like me, teaches like me, and from where I sit he looks like a better Christian than me." I was pretty angry about the whole thing, but then it turned to sadness and introspection. I've strutted around the last ten years believing I'll never do something like that - pure arrogance. We learned in Sunday school the last two weeks from Ecclesiastes 5 that we should _never_ speak rashly or promise things like that because our perspective is so very limited and, in my interpretation, we are unaware of how perilous our spiritual situations truly are. I repent of that pride and arrogance.

I woke up the next morning feeling so overwhelmingly weak. I think I'm so strong and stike out on my own, apart from God. The reality is that I'm not strong but weak and I've spent a lot of time confessing my prayerlessness and my reliance upon myself rather than Jesus. I pray that's the proper response to news of another pastor's infidelity. I pray that's the proper response because you can bet that there will be a lot of blog posts and talk about how to affair-proof your marriage. I'll tell you this - it's all a bunch of moralizing nonsense if you or me don't stick close to Jesus. I realized just how weak I am, just how much I need God's grace, and just how much of a weak lamb in need of a strong Shepherd I am.

It also brought me to realize that I need my church, my wife, and my friends - more than ever - to pray for me. Not for success. Not for thanksgiving, or anything like that - pray for my prayer time, for my time in the Bible, and most of all for my marriage. I love my wife and have been faithful to her and my intention is, barring death, to make it as long as my grandparents did, but it'll never happen without a total dependance upon Jesus.

Ministry and Miscellany

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I haven’t spent much time writing during the last couple of weeks. We have been working hard at church to finalize plans for a mission project during Spring Break. That project began with our group yesterday afternoon and continues on through the end of the week. I’m so very proud of them and am proud to be in ministry with them. Here’s a video I took this morning of a wall going up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLjMG2wpSn4

I’ll update some more during the week. For now, here’s some of the links I found interesting last week:

I might write an iPad 2 review, but for now, let me just share one great moment with it (I’ve had it 9 days). Yesterday, I was in the home of a 91 year old lady who lost her husband three weeks ago. The Sunday after her husband’s funeral I baptized her great-grandson. She wasn’t present for the baptism and mentioned how much she would have liked to have been there. I took out the iPad and showed her the video I had uploaded to Vimeo and so we sat in her sitting room and watched it. At the end of the video I looked at her and saw a single tear roll down her cheek.

Sometimes I really hate that I’m so drawn to technology and gadgets, but that moment made me happy.

Triumphant Return

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Well, not so much. We were in Dallas for a few days and transitioned into Daylight Savings so I didn't have much in the way of posting these last few days. I didn't even open my computer on Thursday. No Sunday links, either, but I might try to get some of the good ones from last week in the middle of this week. I promise, they will be Rob Bell-free.

If you are curious, I was in Dallas to attend the first day of the Acts 29 Boot Camp. If you're wondering, 1) I haven't become a Calvinist and 2) I'm not intending to plant a church because God has not (to my knowledge) called me to that. I've got a lot of reasons for wanting to attend this event and I am writing about it for a longer blog post. If you're looking for an exposé or anything like folks who infiltrate churches, colleges, or groups pretending to be one of them, you're not going to get it. I went with a clear purpose and it had nothing to do with uncovering anything. In fact, if anything was uncovered in those 8 hours it was my wicked heart and I'm grateful for the teaching, the conviction, and the opportunity to pray and repent. More on that later.

Here's last Sunday's sermon if you're interested.

http://vimeo.com/21026849

The Cross is Your Salvation from FUMC Prairie Grove on Vimeo.

Ash Wednesday 2011

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We had a great turnout for Ash Wednesday tonight. This is the third one we have done. I preached my first sermon here 3 years ago today and the following year was the first Ash Wednesday service that anyone could remember. It's such a privilege to lead these people in worship. I love them a lot.

As a part of our worship tonight, I imposed ashes on the foreheads of those who came forward. It's such a sobering thing to smear ashes on the forehead and say, "You are dust and to dust you shall return." to a man who just had a brain tumor removed.

Or to a man whose health is failing.

Or to my 6 year-old daughter.

Thanks be to Jesus, who makes all things new.