Evernote is a go-to tool for a lot of preachers. While it isn’t without fault, the app is a great way to capture bits of information and store them until we need them. On top of that, it’s a great place to write, brainstorm, and even preach directly from.
Different preachers use Evernote differently. From the way they organize notebooks to the way they use it to write sermons and store information, there’s really no wrong way to use it. The key is to have a place to store and organize content that’ll be available when you need it.
I’ve been an avid Evernote user for 6 or 7 years. I’ve loved the app and have thousands of ideas, plans, and documents stored in it. I have resources I’ve clipped from websites, tax documents in a shared notebook with my wife, and tons of thoughts and ideas. I used it heavily and wrote my entire first book with it. Over the years, I’ve come up with somewhat of a system to use Evernote to prepare and preach sermons as well.
There are 4 notebooks that are key to me using it as a tool for sermons and preaching…
Illustrations
I have an Evernote notebook in a “Speaking and Preaching” stack called Illustrations. Within this Illustrations notebook, I have countless illustrations from my personal life and from things I’ve read or heard about. I tend to think in Illustrations a little bit. By that I mean, something can happen and one of my first thoughts is, “That’d make a good illustration.” When I have these ideas, I immediately type them into my Drafts app on my phone or iPad and then later send it to my Illustrations notebook. If I hear a podcast or see a documentary or read something in a book that I think may be useful down the road, I capture it here.
When it’s time to prepare a sermon and I feel like I need an illustration in a certain place or if I know of an illustration that I think would help make my point come to life, I’ll pull it from this notebook and copy it over. I never remove these illustrations because they may be useful again in the future.
Outlines
This is pretty simple. After I’ve preached a sermon, I file it away. I don’t create different notebooks for different sermon series, instead, I tag the outline with the series title and the tag “series.” This way, I can easily search for things I’ve done as stand alones but can also search by series.
Ideas
Do you ever hear something or see a theme or have God speak a word into your heart during your time with Him and think, “Man, that’d be a good sermon!”? This is where I store those ideas. Now, do all of these become sermons? No! Most never get developed, but some do. It’s a great place to go to when you need an idea or you’re planning at the beginning of the year.
Research
As I’m preparing a sermon, I dump the research into this notebook. The notes in this notebook are titled by series/sermon and all my research goes here. It’s that simple. I never throw this stuff away or dump it. I find myself often coming back to it in the future when I revisit a topic, passage, or idea.
Bonus: Working
As a bonus idea, keep a “Working” notebook. This isn’t just for sermons, this is for anything that I’m currently working on that is inside of Evernote. This is my catch-all and a quick locator for something I’m coming back to a lot. It has sermons, writing, meeting notes, phone call notes, weddings, and everything else that isn’t finished yet but will be within the next month or so. This has been really helpful to have all of this in one notebook.
Whether it’s Evernote or another resource you’re using to organize data and ideas, it’s important that we organize them in a way that makes sense to us. These notebooks are just for idea generation. You do you and preach and teach great sermons!
Jonathan Pearson is the Connections Pastor at SpringWell Church in Taylors, S.C. Jonathan is the co-host of the Next Up Podcast and author of Next Up: 8 Shifts Great Young Leaders Make (June 2014) and the upcoming book Be the Switch. He is married to Melissa and has a son named Riley. They live in Greenville, S.C. Find Jonathan online at JonathanPearson.net.
