Evernote and Online Archiving: Powerful New Tools for the Pastor

A challenge for ministry—particularly in the preaching, teaching and writing obligations for any pastor—is to have a system in place to capture and organize ideas. A pastor reads an article in the local newspaper that he'd like to save to use as a sermon illustration at some point in the future. He doesn't think he could use it this coming Sunday, so how can he save in order to retrieve it easily in the future?

A pastor hears a sermon he would like to use in some way in the future. He's not going to preach it as his own, but the sermon had a good illustration or two that he could see himself using. He wants to save the sermon for future devotional use in a more personal way or to serve as a springboard for his own approach to the text.

The pastor amasses a large file of his own sermons and the exegetical notes that form their background. How can he file these in such a way as to retrieve them later, either to preach a sermon again in a different venue or to use the exegetical notes in some other way?

The pastor has kept notes and would like to have a way of filing them. He has scribbled thoughts that could lay the groundwork for a future sermon or writing project.

Any pastor finds himself doing these things, observing life, reading as widely as possible and gathering ideas along the way. The challenge is organizing these ideas from various sources so that they can be retrieved later. This has been a challenge for me personally in ministry.

The Challenge of Capturing and Organizing

I attended seminary and experienced my first pastorate in the late-1980s, before the digital age really dawned. I began a filing system using 4'x6' index cards, a file box and a numbering system, which entailed literally cutting articles from newspapers and magazines, taping them to a piece of 8½'x11' paper and assigning that paper a number, at least two topic names and a Scripture passage. A card would be started for each topic. A card also would be started for every book of the Bible.

This was a good system in that it was simple and flexible. I did not have to change it as I collected new information to be catalogued. The problem was that it was so time-consuming and cumbersome. I desired a better way but had not found one.

I have colleagues in ministry who use Excel for cataloguing and filing. I recall reading an article in Preaching that extolled Excel as this kind of tool, but I found limitations and did not abandon my old system. Excel never has been easy or intuitive for me. Before I could start using Excel I had to learn it first, and that's where the possibilities stopped.

Now I have found a system for cataloguing ideas and information that is simple, flexible, easy to use and available in multiple platforms (i.e., any computer that has Internet access, as well as a smartphone—in my case, an iPhone—called Evernote.