Yeah, I'm a geek.
But ministry life requires managing so much information, in so many different modes, you just need to have some good tools to keep on top of things. The right "geeky stuff" gives me freedom for the essentials of ministry: relationships with God and others. I'm starting a new blog category, "Pastor Hacks," to share some of the stuff I've found to help make ministry more fruitful & balanced. Disclaimer: these are "techniques," and as such are profoundly superficial, even if they may be quite helpful and useful. Faithful ministry isn't about using the right tech or geeking out productively. But as long as "productivity hacks" or "life hacks" are recognized as tools, not ultimate solutions, there's no reason to flee from them.
First Pastor Hack is a techie one: a Mac Pastor Hack. Lots of people have complained about Spotlight, a new feature with Mac OSX "Tiger," being an immature technology. Sure. But it's still an incredibly powerful search tool, especially when combined with tagging. The Mac Finder allows you to add "spotlight comments" to files, tagging them so that they can be easily found with Spotlight's quick search.
Spotlight & tags are becoming huge parts of my sermon preparation. One of our services, in addition to my twice-monthly confirmation class, make use of PowerPoint/ Keynote slides projected. Now, I try to keep the slide stuff simple. I shoot for "elegant," and with practice, I'll get there. But uncluttered; not a lot of text, and a few, high-quality images. See here or here for the idea.
Continue reading "Pastor Hacking - Keeping Track of Images & Illustration Ideas" »


