Do Pastors Dream of Electric Sheep?

By Pastor Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

In my last post about using a computer for workflow, I mentioned that I do my actual sermon writing in a program called Scrivener.  Scrivener, by company Literature & Latte, is a writing tool.  It can be used by everyone from novelists, technical writers, journalists, non-fiction writing, and beyond.  It is an almost perfect solution in my opinion for working with sermons and sermon texts.

Here’s why.

My workflow for sermon writing is fairly consistent. Here is a screenshot of my workflow in Omnifocus:

So the first thing I do in my workflow is setup my electronic resources (Accordance and Logos). Part of what I don’t have in my formal workflow is the gathering & reviewing of previous sermons and other online resources (e.g. historiclectionary.com). Because I use the one year series, this allows me to gather a great deal of materials from various sources on these sermons. Sermons I have written. Sermons I’ve collected from others. Snippets from Luther, Gerhard, the church fathers, artwork, Pius Parsch, and the like. Depending on the week, the amount on any given week may vary. It’s great to have and find all of this stuff, but it’s frustrating if you can’t find that one quotation or insight that is holding you back in your process.

So this is what I do with all this stuff.

Scrivener is divided into two sections in the left binder: the draft section and the research section. Under research I create a folder for each Sunday. I make these Scrivener projects by season, so that I have everything for Epiphany (or whatever season) all in one place. In this case I’m looking at the Gesima/Pre-Lent season. In each of these research folders, I can keep all of my previous sermons, snippets, graphics, audio files, web sites (or at least addresses), and then have it all in one place. So a typical Scrivener sermon project for me is going to look something like this:

So you note in the example above that the DRAFT section above has the current year’s sermons in it. Then under research you see a folder for the season as a whole, then each of the Sundays in the season. I have it open to Sexagesima. In there you can see 7 sermons by date, a web page, an extended Luther quote, and then the notes I’ve gleaned from historiclectionary.com. Below the Notes section you’ll find some general sites. I just have one in there right now for Luther’s sermons online.

The advantage of this system is that it allows me to keep everything together, so that I don’t have to hunt around in folders or searching the web or anywhere else. Once I’ve found it, it’s in there. At the end of the season I just move the current year’s sermons into the research section for next year.

In the new post I’ll discuss the actual writing process. I am still fairly new to Scrivener, so I’m sure there are other features I haven’t found yet. But at this point, I can hardly imaging writing without it.

Pr. Todd Peperkorn