My brain is a scary place. So this may be a post that you skip over unless you are interested in how I process and organize information. As a pastor, each week I have the responsibility to clearly present a message based on God’s Word. It means that I spend time studying each week, making sure that I am prepared to stand up and preach. I typically write out my sermon each week in Apple Pages. But when I write using a word processor, I am forced to write in a very linear process. When I need to reorganize my thoughts, I have to go through a painstaking process to cut and paste to make everything flow together.

Outlines help somewhat, but they still cannot be quickly changed. That’s where mind maps can help. Wikipedia defines a mind map as “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.” I watched a video tutorial on mind maps over at Pastorgear.com and I decided to give it another try.

I downloaded the free version of XMind for the Mac and I started organizing my thoughts. I created nodes for Bible verses, for illustrations, and for my central idea. I started adding in points and thoughts, and very quickly a sermon was formed. I was able to reorganize my ideas very quickly by dragging and dropping. You can collapse and expand your different points to keep everything on the screen. And finally, when you are done, you can export the map out as a text file to use for preaching. You can see a partial map from the sermon last week above this post.

Overall, I’m impressed with XMind. The program worked great and it really helped me to organize my thoughts. For an engineer, this program really matched my analytical and logical skills and allowed me to be creative at the same time.  The process is much better than simply writing a sermon out on paper. You can very quickly see how the message will flow from point to point. I’ve been using Evernote to store many of my sermon ideas, but I want to start incorporating XMind into my weekly work flow. I might even upgrade to the pro version to get some more export options. Just don’t forget that the most important tool in sermon preparation is your Bible. You must do the hard work of studying Scripture if you teach each week. Nothing can replace prayer and Bible study if you want to powerfully present God’s Word each week.

Let me know how you organize your sermons, and if you want to find out more about using a tool like this, check out the video below from Pastorgear.com that got me interested in trying this out.

We have quite a few people from the community and from other churches come through our facility at Cornerstone. We have renovated an old downtown store and created an inviting environment for church. People always seem to be interested in where we found all of our “stuff.”  Stuff like the signage, furniture, and equipment we use.  I just wanted to share a few quick links that may help some of the church planters out there. It’s touch creating a great environment without spending large amounts of money. Hopefully some of the links may help.

• Signs and Sign Holders – Displays2Go (Look through their specials and closeouts)
• Café Furniture – IKEA (Shipping is extremely high, so visit a store to see everything)
• Curtains, Pipe and Drape – Georgia Expo (Curtains and drapes can really help control sound in a small space)
• Metal CD Cases for our Sermon Series – Effectuality (We bundle audio CD’s from our sermon series to give out)
• Audio and Lighting Equipment – Northern Sound & Light (The absolute cheapest place to buy sound equipment)
• Musical Equipment – Sweetwater (Great to work with)
• Cables and Adapters - CablesToGo (Their rapidrun cables are awesome to pull through tight spaces)
• Coffee – Land of a Thousand Hills (Drink Coffee, Do Good)
• Whiteboards – Whiteyboard (Cheap and Effective)
• Cheap TV Carts – Tyke Supply (It’s tough finding a good quality tv stand – these work great)
• Banners – Ahbanner (If you are comfortable creating your own graphics, this is a cheap place to order from)

If you use a little creativity, you’ll be surprised by what you can accomplish on a limited budget. We were able to get some furniture from a local store that closed. Picking great paint colors will make a huge difference. Don’t be afraid to be bold.

NewSpring has relaunched their website for free graphics and print resources for churches. Check it out at

http://www.newspring.cc/resources

They are offering both print and video downloads for many of their sermon series. I’m a big fan of free graphical resources, because they enable churches who don’t have the technology, resources, or manpower to incorporate technology without spending huge amounts of money. It helps smaller churches like ours to focus on the message and not spend countless hours on preparing graphic files. It shows that churches like Lifechurch and NewSpring have a huge Kingdom focus to give away resources for free.

In preparing for the new series we are doing on the Holy Spirit at Cornerstone, I have been busy reading. If you want to learn more about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, then check out these great books.

Note: if you are using a feed reader, you will need to click through to my blog to see the books.