Now for Something Completely Practical.

One of the most important aspects of Pastoral care is the home visit.  I remember old time pastors telling me “A home going pastor makes a church going people.”  While I reject the idea from a theological standpoint (only God working through the Spirit in Word and Sacrament makes peoples’ faith grow) it is true enough from a sociological view.  A congregation whose pastor is regularly in their homes is a congregation who knows the pastor loves them and is concerned for their spiritual welfare.

The problem with home visits?  Scheduling.  Phone call after phone call yields little in the way of appointments.  Cold calls most often fall on empty houses.  Society isn’t just mobile in the sense that people move from community to community, people are active outside of their homes many nights (especially if they have children at home).  I don’t have a solution for the busyness of people.  I do have a simple way to help you plan, schedule and keep track of your visit schedule.  Once again we turn to a free web service “Remember the Milk”.  (http://www.RememberTheMilk.com)

One of the great things about RTM is its simplicity.  As far as to-do lists programs go, this one works the way I use a to-do list.  (Frankly before RTM, I used about a hundred slips of paper shuffled about my desk, this was not organization this was chaos).   It is a testament to RTM’s flexibility that I have found ways to use it that I hadn’t planned.

Scheduling Home Visits with Remember the Milk.

I’m going to outline three steps here to help you create and maintain a visit schedule using the free web service Remember the Milk.

Step 1: Generate a list of the households to visit.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this.  If you have a membership database you can export it to a text file.  You could create the list in a spreadsheet and export it to a text file.  (as an alternative you can enter the data directly into RemembertheMilk.com, but my list is quite lengthy and I prefer an electronic solution if possible).  The list should have everything you need to contact the household you want to visit.  It is important to note that the first item is how the list will be sorted in Remember the Milk.

Here is the data in the list that I use.

• Household name
• Label Name (name that is printed on labels)
• Address Line 1
• Address Line 2
• City, State, Zip
• Phone Number
• eMail

Along with Remember the Milk, at Trinity (Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Creston, IA) we use Shepherd’s Staff from Concordia Technology Solutions for our membership data.  It is an easy prospect to get a list of members households from the program.  My goal has been to visit every family in the congregation about once each year.  I do this process when the list in Remember the Milk is all complete.

Here is the process I use to create the list in Shepherd’s Staff:

In Membership select Reports – Mail Merge

Set up the merge like this:

1. Select Members for Subgroup
2. Merge Type should be Household
3. Use the primary address
4. Uncheck Field names (removes headers) and make sure to include unlisted phone numbers
5. Export with “User-defined” separated.  Clear the “Wrap text with” (should be a space not a “)
6. Select the fields you want in your list.  (Remember the first field is how they will be sorted in Remember the Milk

Click on Merge and save the file to the desktop.

Here is an example of what my file looks like.

Step 2: Send the list to RemembertheMilk.com via eMail.

Now it’s time to send the data to RemembertheMilk.com.  The best way I have found to import a large number of tasks in to a task list on RTM is to send it via eMail.

In the RTM Help FAQs you will find this list of instructions on how to set up the eMail.

To import a list into Remember The Milk via email, first you will need to find out your import email address.

Click on ‘Settings’ at the top of the page.

Click on the ‘Info’ tab.

Your special email address will be displayed under Import Email Address.

Emails sent to this special address are automatically converted into tasks.

How to format your email

The subject should be the list where you want tasks to appear (if left empty, tasks will appear in your Inbox).

The body should contain a list of tasks (one task per line). If you include bullet characters (e.g. * or #) at the start of each line, they will automatically be removed.

Note: If your email client is set to automatically wrap lines (a common setting is to wrap at 72 characters), tasks that are longer than 72 characters will be split over multiple lines, and will import as multiple tasks. If this happens, try disabling wrapping in your email client.

Example email

Subject: Personal
To: [Your Remember The Milk import email address]

Buy birthday present for Mike
Pay the phone bill
Make dentist appointment

(See: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/help/answers/sending/importemail.rtm )

Here are a couple of important tips for using eMail import for RTM

1.       Don’t try to import more than about 40 items at a time.

2.       Don’t use Gmail.  It is necessary to send your email without automatic text wrapping.  Gmail does not have a way to disable text wrapping.  (I created a hotmail account just for this purpose. It’s free, and the default setting is “no wrapping” See: http://www.hotmail.com ).

3.       Remove any “ marks using Search and Replace in a text edior (the resulting list looks much better without quotation marks).

4.       Insert a ~ at the front of every line in the body of the email.  (This prevents “Smart Add” features from being interpreted in your text. See http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/smartadd/ ).

5.       Leave the Subject blank.  I’ve found it is easier to move the tasks to your desired list out of Inbox.  Please note, make sure you Inbox is empty before you begin.

It takes several minutes for all the sent items to appear in you inbox.   Your list will look something like this.

Click on Select:  All to select the whole list.  Click on the “More Actions” drop down list and select your list destination  (i.e. below).

Your visit list now ready to use for scheduling, tracking etc. in RTM.

Step 3: Managing the List

Remember the Milk gives you many tools to help you manage your list.  First and most important is the ability to add a date and time to a task.  Use the date and time to record your visit appointment.

First select the family you plan to visit by clicking anywhere on the item.  The item will show selected by shading it yellow.  (Don’t use the check box on the item as it is used to select multiple items).  Use the contact information in the selected item to place your call and schedule an appointment.  If you don’t find anyone home, simply select a new contact by clicking anywhere on the item (except the checkbox).

When you reach someone at home and are ready to set an appointment date and time find the task details on the right hand side of the screen toward the top.  The details for your selected item are in the Task tab there. To set a time and date, click on the calendar and enter the date and time.

The date will appear in standard RTM format.

(Incidentally you can enter the date in a variety of formats see: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/help/answers/basics/dateformat.rtm for more information)

Repeat this process for as many appointments as you’d like to schedule.

Now you have a list of scheduled and unscheduled visits.

Your scheduled visits appear with a date at the right most end of the line.  (Unfortunately you can’t see the time unless you select the item and look in the detail box).

Use RTM’s reminders features to send your reminders using SMS messages (to your cell phone) or eMail.  To setup reminders click “Settings” in the menu across the top right hand side of the RTM screen and then select the “Reminders” tab.

When you return from you visit simply mark the item as completed by selecting it and clicking on the “Complete” button.  You can see all your completed visits by clicking on “Completed” list in the List tab on the upper right hand side of the screen (when no items are selected).

New families can be added one line at a time by entering the information to the left of the “<< Add a new task” field.

There are many other features you may want to use to help you manage your list: Priorities, tags, location, notes and many more.  I’ll leave those for you to explore on you own.

My brother pastors, home visits are a critical part of your ministry.  They can be difficult to arrange but every minute you spend with your people in their homes connects you closer to the people your Savior has given you to serve (not to mention making you a better preacher).  Take the time to visit.  Use whatever tools you find to help you manage the task.  I suggest that RTM could be a valuable free tool to help you out.  God will bless your efforts.

Rev. Jonathan C. Watt

Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church

Creston, IA

For comments or questions please email me: Pastor@TrinityCreston.org

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My computer is a nearly indispensable tool for me in writing my sermons on a weekly basis.  I don’t use it for absolutely everything, but I’m sure that 70% of my regular preparation and writing happens in from of my trusty computer.  While I intend to expand on this and unpack each step along the way, I thought it would be helpful to get a sense of the workflow on writing sermons on a weekly basis.  I use a Mac, but I expect that many of these steps would have equivalent versions in Windows or Linux.  Here goes:

1. Manage the sermon project in Omnifocus.  I am a huge Omnifocus fan.  It allows me to track multi-step projects, assign deadlines, make them repeatable, and generally helps to keep my sermon writing on track every week.  So I will have multiple steps and little tasks assigned for each day of the week.  This insures that my sermon writing doesn’t come down to “what am I going to talk about” on Saturday night.  We would like to avoid that as much as possible!

2. Keep all of my research and do my actual writing using Scrivener.  Scrivener is the ultimate writing tool.  I can hardly describe how much I love it!  It allows me to keep all of my sermons for a season in one project, as well as my  notes, links to web sites, snippets from various places that I’ve gathered, references, past sermons, and to manipulate all of this in a beautiful and simple interface.  It makes writing fun!  I’ll be writing a more thorough review of Scrivener later, but this is really the linchpin of my writing work.  I can hardly believe I worked without it until a few months ago.

3. Textual and Commentary work in Accordance and Logos.  Accordance (imo) is really outstanding for textual study, keeping notes on the fly, and working with the myriad of translations.  Logos has the most Lutheran resources from CPH & NPH & Augsburg/Fortress.  They overlap, but they are both great programs that are only improving as the years go by.  Logos, incidentally, also has an iPhone app so that many of your resources really can be had on the fly.

4. Greek/Latin New Testament audio.  This is the newest part of my sermon preparation regimen.  This amazing site has mp3 files of the entire New Testament read in both Greek & Latin.  It is amazing!  And free!  It is helping me to grasp the original texts in a whole new way.

5. Lutheran Service Builder.  I wouldn’t say that this is a part of my weekly workflow in terms of preparation, it is certainly worth mentioning.  Having all of the texts of the pericopes, introits, graduals, and hymn texts right at hand is really really useful for the liturgical types.  I find myself using it that way pretty often.

6. Apple Pages.  If I am making my sermon available in a printed form, I will format it in Apple Pages.  This is my “go to” word processor.  It’s elegant and beautiful, has a wonderfully intuitive interface, and is easy to use.  Unless you are doing lots of tables work where you are importing complex formulas from Excel or something, Pages is a great option.  Don’t get my started on Microsoft Word…

7. iTalk, GarageBand, iDisk, and WordPress.  I podcast my sermon over at Lutheran Logomaniac pretty much every week.  The way I do this is fairly simple: I record the sermon on my iPhone using iTalk.  I then edit the audio using GarageBand, export it to mp3 and save it in my public documents folder on iDisk (you could also do this easily with the free Dropbox), and then publish it in both text and audio with WordPress.  While that sounds like a complicated process, the whole thing actually takes about ten minutes or so.

That’s it on the first pass.  How do you use your computer for writing sermons?

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I’m not really a list keeper.  Well, at least I never was before.  But put a guy in a church with no secretary and you have to keep lists; prayer lists, visit lists, board agenda items, thank you notes to send, “to dos” for everything from newsletter article ideas to sermon illustrations to remember.  So, what’s a forgetful pastor to do?  I’ve tried them all.  Post-it notes are great but they don’t always stay where they are put.  And you can’t haul your computer monitor with you to a meeting.  The paper to-do note pad works but it’s either too large to carry everywhere or small enough to get lost, and a forgetful pastor like me often forgets where he put it.  Oh and don’t forget, you actually have to look at the paper list to remember what’s on it.  I’ve tried PDAs. They work well but good ones just cost too much.  And if you have a cell phone who wants to carry two devices?  It doesn’t take long to feel like Batman with a utility belt.  Now I must admit new cell phones look to be merging into very useful tools that will do a lot for the forgetful pastor.  But again the cost can be a factor.  Here’s one solution that I’ve found that is actually free (with internet access).   It doesn’t solve all the portability problems but there are some slick features that make it work well for me.  The answer http://RememberTheMilk.com

Remember The Milk is an online web service for managing your “to do” lists and more.  Here’s the description of the service from the provider:

Managing tasks is generally not a fun way to spend your time. We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.

One of the strengths of RTM is that it is available wherever you have access to the internet.  (BTW that includes access from your cell phone browser at http://m.RemembertheMilk.Com).  But even more than that is the feature rich, easy to use interface.  Oh, did I mention that a basic account is free!  I’ve been using the service for years.  The basic free account does all that I need and more.

Here’s just a sample.  I use Remember The Milk to track my Sunday morning prayer list.  I make an entry for each prayer request using a label at the beginning (i.e. “Cancer: John Doe”).  That way all the requests for “cancer” are sorted together.  I set the due date for the Sunday the prayers will be done.  Now I can easily list the prayers for Sunday by searching by due date.  But even more than that, RTM has a very rich natural language way of setting how you items to repeat.  Usually I set prayers to repeat “every Sunday for 3 times” or “every Sunday until 1 Dec 09”.  After the Sunday list is printed I mark the prayers a completed and they repeat the next Sunday as I have specified.

Sunday morning announcements are done in a similar fashion.  For example I can remember to put an announcement in the bulletin that the Youth Group meets the third Wednesday of the month by having an announcement repeat “Every month on the 3^rd Sunday”.

Here is a list of a few other things I track with RTM.  Items I want to discuss at meetings.  Books I’ve let out.  People I need to contact.  Shutins I’ve visited with communion.

Here’s a short list of other features in Remember the Milk.  You can have an unlimited number of lists.  The user interface if very intuitive.  Items can “tagged” with keywords to make searching and sorting easier.  The system can remind you via eMail and SMS messages of due items.

There are many more features that make Remember The Milk a very useful program to use and one that I depend on every day.

Pastor Jonathan Watt.

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