Over the weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Worship Conference 2011 at William Jessup University, which happens to be practically in my backyard. I was so encouraged by this conference, the speakers and session leaders, and the amazing worship led by Jason Squires and Brenton Brown. Among the many fabulous session leaders was Brook Drumm, owner of Vault Multimedia.
Brook led a great session on smartphone apps for pastors and worship leaders, sharing info from his collection of blog posts on MinistryVault.com.
I even learned of several new phone apps that would be especially helpful for anyone in ministry. So here are Brook's top 8 smartphone apps for pastors:
- Bible: God’s Holy Word
- Dropbox: Magical Cloud Storage
- Instapaper: Stuff you want to “Read Later”
- Elements: Dropbox Powered Text Editor
- Simplenote: Sync your notes to all devices
- Google Voice: Free phone calls and text messages.
- GoodReader: Easily read PDFs on your phone.
- Dragon Dictation: Dictate emails and texts on the go.
Brook has also built a custom app for broadcasting sermons, called PortableSermons.com. Definitely worth checking out.
Note: If you don't have an iPhone, there are alternative apps for BlackBerry and Android if you search for them. Let me know if you can't find a specific app that you are looking for; also if you would like to recommend an app that you think belongs on this list, please leave us a comment!
Have you seen the iPhone app: myPraypal?
It is an easy to use app that let’s you keep track of your prayers, set reminders to pray, and see how God is working in your life.
James
Very cool! I will check it out!
I use an Android phone, and I find CadreBible to be a killer app. It is an offline Bible app (meaning you can still get full functionality without a network connection) with many great translations (some free, some paid), including Greek and Hebrew texts. In addition, it offers a growing library of additional resources (e.g., commentaries, dictionaries, reading plans) which I find very handy when studying, doing devotions, and more.
smartphones…
go here for more…
Some other good free and open source mobile apps for religious organizations and their members to check out on the non-profit http://religion.cositech.net web site, e.g. eBible PDA, Olive Tree, PocketSword, YouVersion Bible
Another great free app for Pastors is “Bible Lock Screens” for iPhone & iPad. They have high quality (retina) images with Scripture on them! There are new lock screens each week as well. They really help keep Scripture on your mind throughout the day.
Watch the 1-min video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0SqwHv5VSA
Download from iTunes for free: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bible-lock-screens-bible-wallpapers/id414174774?mt=8
Sounds like a great tool! Thanks for adding it to the list!
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Thanks for the link!
Great list! Google voice is an awesome app!
I hope to use Google Voice myself soon – I’ve heard so many great things about it! What features do you like best? Do you have a land line and mobile lines, or just Google Voice and a mobile? Just curious 🙂
Do pastors really read a lot of PDFs?
Other than that a good list to aspire to I guess – but as the UK still hasn’t seen Google Voice and my pastor is very much a techno luddite (despite now having an iPhone) I can see him using maybe half of those apps 🙂
Brook Drumm, the guy who penned this list, said that when he works with pastors, he finds that they use PDFs quite a lot. I have a Blackberry and it has cool functionality that will let you read and edit any Microsoft Word or Excel file, if you want to, PDFs are extremely hard to view on a mobile device and this app scales it down to text for easy scrolling and no side to side. I could definitely see it being useful!