Have you ever been reading a document, book, or handout and said to yourself, "Man, this is some great content. I really want to use it in my next class/sermon/talk, so I guess I'll just have to type it all out into my notes"?  

I have, many times. As preachers and teachers, we are always taking content from commentaries, papers, and other sermons - and if it's not on the internet already or in a Bible program where you can copy and paste, you have to manually type that content out into whatever notes you have, and that can take valuable time away from your study and preparation. 

Enter PDFPen Scan +. This is an app for iOS that enables you to take a picture of any document, book, or text on any page and convert it to text that you can edit, copy, or paste anywhere you want. And it's great at it too.  

PDFPen Scan + uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to pull the text out of a PDF. You make a PDF out of the document by simply taking a picture of it with your iDevice. You crop the page to fit, then the document is stored in iCloud and synced to all devices running PDFPen Scan +. Then you can choose to OCR that document - literally pulling the text off the page - and share it via email, text, Dropbox, and many other options. 

I find PDFPen Scan + to be especially helpful with old documents that I have on paper but don't have an actual file of that document. It has really come in handy.  

Unfortunately, there's no trial version available since Apple doesn't do that, but you can PDFPen Scan + for $4.99 in the App Store. That's a small penance to pay for the power of this app.  

Check out the video by David Sparks as well. It gives you a real sense of what this app can do.  

Simplenote is an app that I've loved for a long time, but several design choices like small text on the iPad, unreliable syncing, and too simplistic of a design with mobile apps has made it unusable in my opinion. 

Until now. 

Simplenote, in late August, unveiled a complete redesign of their mobile apps for all platforms, including iOS for iPhone and iPad and also for Android. I've been teaching and preaching from it for the last 30 days exclusively. 

I was very excited about Editorial for iPad, with it's great interface, configureable buttons and layout, customized workflows and Markdown support, and I had purchased it and began using it when the new Simplenote came out. Needless to say, I was impressed. 

For the longest time, my workflow included plain text editing with Elements on iPad and iPhone, syncing with Dropbox, and I would actually preach and teach from within Elements. But Elements, at least for me, started getting buggy, even with regular updates. (I'm sure it's been fixed, but 1 or 2 crashes while I am speaking to 300+ people is 1 or 2 times too many.)  So I stopped using it and turned to Nebulous Notes.

While syncing with Dropbox offered some flexibility (like seamlessly offering my lessons as .txt files for download on my website, copying and moving files, and making backups easy), I found that it was a few too many steps. I would compose a text file in my Mac text editor of choice (usually Textastic), save it as either a .txt or .md file if I wanted limited styling, make sure it was in the correct folder in Dropbox, then search for that file under my Elements directory to pull it up on my iPad for teaching. 

With Simplenote, I write my lesson in the Simplenote app for Mac (which is incredibly nice by the way), and my changes are automatically pushed to my devices. All I need to do is load the app on the iPad and whoosh - it's there. And syncing with SImplenote is incredibly fast. 

Another thing that helps is local note caching. All my notes once synced will be available for edit and viewing whether connected to a network or not. I've had lots of speaking engagements where there is no connection whatsoever - even through a cell network - and my notes, provided I synced before I left, are there. No having to worry whether or not that 7th revision to my sermon synced to the correct folder and file in Dropbox. Dropbox doesn't append the file (unless you're using specific programs), it re-uploads the entire file if one letter is changed. I know text files aren't that big to begin with, but when you're out in the middle of nowhere with little or no data connection, every byte is hard to come by. 

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Simplenote Mac app. Click for larger. 

I mentioned it before, but what helped push me over the edge was the Mac desktop app for Simplenote. You can see for yourself that Simplenote really lives up to its name with its very spartan and minimalist interface. The changes are almost instant - I can type and sentence on the desktop and watch it be pushed to the iPad app seconds later. It's great. 

I love Editorial, plain text, and Markdown, but to tell you the truth, I don't need any of that. All I need is text, and the new redesigns for the mobile apps make the fonts much easier to read and far better to compose in. And if a worst-case scenario happens and I lose all my devices, including my Mac, my notes are all backed up on Simplenote servers. I can log on to simplenote.com and edit and back up my notes from there. 

If you're looking for a simple, elegant solution and don't want all the fuss with saving file and formatting, look no further than Simplenote. It's free and it's wonderful. What do you have to lose?

This may be cooler looking than iOS 7.  

From Chris Harrison:  

The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect.

Too cool. Gonna frame it and put it in my office.  

You can visit Chris' site and get the original in super-hi res if you want.  

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MTV has largely been about sex since its beginning, and Miley's performance was almost a brilliant parody. It was a beautiful young woman, very scantily-clad, parading in front of millions, and it was... well, repulsive.

MTV, you're doing the near impossible. You're making sexuality seem boring.

Excellent article by Brant over at Air1.  

Usually, I don't use exclamation points, but this actually warrants one. Because I'm really excited to launch my new set of resource pages here on the site.  

Starting today I'm offering over 30 free downloadable text files of sermons, classes, and devotionals. The sermons are full-length and full-text, because that's how I write out my sermons. These sermon lengths can range from 20-40 minutes. Classes are your standard 40-minute classes, mostly for teens, although the content will be applicable across age groups. These are a mix of full-text and bullet points with scriptures, illustrations, and sometimes even games. The devotionals are short, 5-minute thoughts that I do usually twice a month here where I work on Wednesday nights. They're full-text as well. 

I'm not charging for any of this content, because 1) I believe the Gospel is free and these resources try to teach that Gospel, so they should also be free, and 2) with the exception of personal stories and illustrations, I claim no original content here. In fact, most of these illustrations and lessons you've probably heard before. When I take an idea from someone else's writings, thoughts, or words, I cite it. So I claim no original thoughts here, just some good content that I felt I did not need to keep to myself.  

Most files are in plain text (.txt) format for your connivence. This makes incredibly small files that are easy to download and open and lets you put your own formatting on them if you wish. The text files will open in any text editor, internet browser, or word processor, making them very universal. 

I only have two prerequisites to using the material and content provided: 1) DO NOT use this stuff without further study of your own. This material is meant to help you in your ministry, not replace your study. 2) If anyone wishes to use this content in a publication, either printed or otherwise, I request to be contacted for it's use. 

Take a look at those resource pages and let me know what you think. More resources will be added every week, so keep checking back. Eventually I'll have a library of resources at your fingertips.

May God bless you and the use of these materials in your ministry and study.  

Classes

Devotionals

Sermons