Do Pastors Dream of Electric Sheep?

Lectionary at Lunch at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

You don’t get more geeky than the internet and original language bible study.  Well, I’m a geek and proud of it.  Next in my series on “Free Internet Services that Really Work” is Concordia Seminary St. Louis’ “Lectionary at Lunch.”  When I was a lowly Seminary student every Wednesday I used to sit at the feet of the Exegetical (bible study from the original languages) Professors  at lunch time and listen to them translate and explain the Old Testament (in Hebrew) and the Gospel Lesson (in Greek) for the upcoming Sunday’s readings in church.  It was a great way to prepare for when my teachers called on me to translate passages of the bible in class.

When I became a pastor I discovered that keeping up on translating the bible for preaching became very difficult.  The parish ministry has many demands on a pastor’s time.  Unfortunately, it’s very easy to let the deep study of God’s Word in the original languages slide because it is very time consuming.  The thing is, in preparing to be a pastor that kind of deep study was a daily occurrence.  I spent countless hours parsing verb, diagramming sentences, and memorizing vocabulary.  None of that time spent was useless as it has paid off in spades every time I open the texts in Hebrew and Greek.  As one of my professors said, “Reading the bible in English is like kissing your wife through cellophane.” (I think it was Gibbs).

Enter Lectionary at Lunch.  In the old days those lunch reading sessions were recorded and posted to the internet for download.  Now they are podcast and available through many different channels on the net (see list below).  They have since removed the Lunch and added the Epistle reading.

Lectionary at Lunch is no substitute for personal deep original language study of scripture but it is a great way to begin preparation for preaching.  The professors read and translate the texts from the Lutheran Service Book Three Year Lectionary and then add a few suggestions for preaching.  One of the best features is the variety of ideas and emphasis that come across as the Exegetical professors take turns in the task.

As a side benefit, a busy pastor is able to keep his hand in the original languages even when his schedule is packed.

Concordia Seminary Web Site http://www.csl.edu/Resources_AudioVideo_LectionaryatLunch.aspx

Concordia Seminary on iTunes

http://itunes.csl.edu/

Pr. Jonathan C. Watt

Rev. Jonathan C. Watt
Trinity Lutheran Church, Creston, IA

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.