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?