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App Review: “Sermon Design” by Steven Hovater

sermonappiconSermon Design: A New App for Mac Loving Preachers

In the Apple app store a new gift for preachers has emerged. “Sermon Design” is an app designed to help you work throughout he process of planning sermons digitally. It helps you keep track of your notes in color coded organic form as you go. It even helps you turn those otherwise scattered notes into typical sermon forms.

Here’s what you might love about it:

  1. The app comes pre-loaded with multiple sermon forms including point based sermons, narrative sermons, theologically structured sermons, etc. By giving you widgets in which you place blocks of sermonic material, it allows you to easily restructure those sermon forms with swipes of your finger or to populate different sermon forms quickly and easily. For those moments when your gut tells you “this just isn’t flowing” sermon design can give you quick and easy options to help it flow better.
  2. Your preaching notes and presentation notes can be in the same program. Instead of having to rewrite your sermon into a different format, just toggle over to “preaching mode” from “compose mode” and take your ipad or iphone up into the pulpit with you.
  3. It syncs with the cloud. If you have ever lost your sermon notes, or had your computer crash when you were counting on it, you will be glad for this feature. You do not have to remember to back this up, just set it up to sync with the cloud automatically and rest at ease. If your ipad crashes or your iphone falls into the toilet, just borrow someone else’s tech and download your work quickly and easily.
  4. Time and record your sermons. If you time them your sermons in order to make sure you aren’t the long winded preacher everyone dreads (hint hint) then you will love this feature of the app. Time your sermon with your notes right in front of you. Record your run through of it, and listen to your sermon back while on the way to church or in your living room with earbuds in. One of the best ways to prepare for the verbal event of preaching when you cannot preach out loud is to listen to yourself again. You can even rate your own sermon and keep it on the cloud for some day down the road when you need to pull a sermon from your guest preaching barrel.

Downsides:

  1. It’s for apple tech users. Sorry PC peeps.
  2. It won’t work on a jail broken ipad or iphone. Sorry hackers.
  3. It’s $4.99, sorry cheap skates.

Here’s a direct link to the app if you like it:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sermon-design/id667104446?mt=12

Wesleyan Sermons has no relationship with the creator of this app and receives no benefit for reviewing or suggesting it’s purchase. Let us know how you like it!

– Dave Ward

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