Macs in the Ministry

DAVID LANG

Author

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Nelson Publishers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, TN, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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Book Interior: Stephen Ramirez

Editor: Mary Cosola

Series Editor: Michael Lawson

Produced in Association with Lawson Music Media, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN: 1418541729

ISBN-13: 9781418541729

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 — 13 12 11 10

Acknowledgements

If this book proves helpful to you in your ministry, it will be because of the help and support I received from so many others.

Mike Lawson, who first approached me about writing this book and who offered the encouragement needed to complete it.

My employers at OakTree Software, who graciously let me scale back my workload at a time when there was no shortage of work to do so that I could complete the manuscript.

The many ìMac ministers who responded to my questions and surveys. The pages of this book are seasoned with their wisdom, experience, and practical advice.

The gurus on the Mac-Ministry e-mail list, who expertly answered all my technical questions about Mac hardware and software.

Tim David of Apple Inc., who repeatedly pointed me to helpful resources and helped spark new ideas.

My five wonderful children—David, Caleb, Bethany, Alexa, and Josiah—who patiently understood when their father had to tell them, I can’t right now. I need to write.

My incredible wife, Lisa, who not only gave me the time I needed to write, but who also served as a sounding board, editor, and inexhaustible source of encouragement.

Contents

Introduction

Macs in Ministry

Insanely Great Ministry

Using Technology in Ministry

Inspiration and Perspiration

Mac Ministers and Mac Literacy

My Mac Cred

Part One

Inspiration: Discovering What’s Possible

Chapter 1 Preparation

In the Beginning Was the Word, So Start There

Paper versus Electronic Bible Study

Web-Based Bible Study Tools

Bible Software for Mac

Web-Based Tools or Bible Software?

Choosing Bible-Study Software

Chapter 2 Presentation

Presenting to a Small Group

Presenting to a Congregation

Multimedia in Worship

Ways to Use Multimedia in Worship

Multimedia in Conjunction with the Sermon

Presenting in Other Kinds of Services

Chapter 3 Publication

From Desktop Publishing to Desktop Anything

Print Publications

Publishing on CD or DVD

Publishing on the Internet

Power of the Press

Chapter 4 Promotion

Biblical Examples of Self-Promotion

Promoting Your Message in Print

PDF: Bridging Print and Electronic Media

Promoting Your Message on CD and DVD

Promoting Your Message on the Internet

A Message Worth Hearing and Promoting

Chapter 5 Participation

Why We Fail to Involve Others in Ministry

Encouraging Participation in Ministry

Creating Ministry Opportunities

Fill in the Blank

Chapter 6 Practical Needs

Creative Fund-Raising

Technical and Creative Services

Offering Vocational Training

Building Fellowship

How to Build Unity

Loving Your Family

Family Memories = Family Ministry

The Most Important Part of Your Ministry Team

Part Two

Perspiration: Making It Happen

Chapter 7 Ten Basic Steps to In-Depth Study

Look Up Your Passage

Read the Passage for Yourself

Understand the Context

Compare Multiple Translations

Examine Key People, Places, Concepts, and Events

Consult Related Passages

Record Your Findings

Examine Key Words

Consult Commentaries

Organize Your Thoughts

Make It Your Own

Chapter 8 Making an iMovie

Planning Your Movie

Getting Started

Modifying a Clip

Adding a Soundtrack

Recording a Voiceover

Fine-Tuning

Transitions

Adding Titles

Making It Your Own

Chapter 9 Creating iPhoto Slideshows

Events

Faces

Places

Creating an iPhoto Slideshow

Effort Well Spent

Chapter 10 Creating iPhoto Cards, Calendars, and Photo Books

Creating a Promotional Postcard

Creating a Calendar

Creating a Photo Book

My One Gripe with iPhoto

Chapter 11 Making Music with GarageBand

Getting Started

Working with Loops

Adding Tracks

Using the Arrange Track

Mixing Things Up

Sharing Your Masterpiece

Going Beyond GarageBand

Chapter 12 Recording and Sharing a Podcast

Recording Your Narration

Editing the Narration

Adding Jingles

Adding Images and Chapters

Sharing Your Podcast

Chapter 13 Creating a DVD with iDVD

Chapter 14 Designing a Website with iWeb

Adding a Blog

The Blog Summary

Adding a Podcast

Publishing Your Podcast

Adding Hypertext Links

Publishing Your Website

Submitting Your Podcast to iTunes

Chapter 15 Getting to iWork, Part 1: Creating Documents with Pages

Developing a Sermon Outline

Developing a Weekly Curriculum

Chapter 16 Getting to iWork, Part 2: Creating Presentations with Keynote . . .

Working with Master Slides

Building Your Presentation

Delivering Your Presentation

Beyond the Basics

Chapter 17 Worship Presentation Software

Flexibility Is Key

Chapter 18 Finding Help When You Need It

Apple Online Documentation and Training

Apple Store Training

Finding Third-Party Mac Applications

Christian Macintosh User’s Group

Macs in Church

Wisdom from Experienced Mac Ministers

Index

Introduction

It was a missionary Sunday at my church. The normal Sunday school classes had been suspended so we could hear reports from visiting missionaries and members of the congregation who had recently participated in short-term missions projects. This particular Sunday we were to hear from a couple doing missions work in the South Pacific and from a teenage girl who had done a summer mission to a poor village in Mexico.

The professional missionaries had clearly done this before. They showed us a computerized slide presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. I seem to recall having to wait a few minutes while they tried to get their Windows laptop to communicate with the projector, but eventually they were able to give their presentation.

I’ve heard it said that power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. That adage was certainly evident in the missionary couple’s presentation. It was hideous, with poorly chosen fonts, a garish combination of backgrounds and colored text, and the indiscriminate use of every conceivable slide transition effect (wipes, dissolves, page flips, spinning text, and so on). While their ministry was well worth hearing about, their presentation was woefully amateurish and distracting.

Then it was the teenage girl’s turn. She went up, plugged her laptop into the projector, and was immediately up and running. She showed us a couple of videos a friend had created using photographs and footage taken on the trip. The music was engaging and perfectly in sync with the still images and video clips shown. A judicious use of subtle transitions and titles gave these videos a professional, polished look. All of this had the net effect of giving us a feel for what this young lady had experienced. We saw the muddy roads and drab buildings of the village. We saw the grinning faces of the children who were being helped both physically and spiritually. We saw the teenagers on the mission trip goofing off together and working hard to build houses. In a matter of minutes, we had shared in this student’s experience.

As I thought about the contrast between these two presentations, it occurred to me that the missionaries’ awkward presentation had likely taken many hours to produce, while I’m confident the young lady’s videos had been produced in a fraction of the time.

Was this just a case of the teenager and her friend having a better grasp on how to use technology than the grownups? I don’t think so. It was simply that the teenagers had the benefit of tools that helped them look professional and polished.

These teenagers had Macs.

MACS IN MINISTRY

This young lady and her friend were not professional ministers. Neither were they professional videographers. Yet they were able to use the Mac to help communicate a message and minister to others.

This book is about Macs in Ministry: how you can use your Mac to minister to others. Whether your ministry consists of preaching, teaching, leading worship, youth ministry, missions, or serving behind-the-scenes, the Mac can help make your ministry easier and more effective.

All computers promise to make life easier by saving you time and effort, but the Mac actually delivers on that promise. First of all, the Mac is easy enough for mere mortals to figure out how to use. Secondly, it requires less under-the-hood maintenance than other computers do. Thirdly, Macs just work, without the need for frequent restarts and reinstalls. All of these strengths combine to offer you a tool to help you accomplish your ministry goals, rather than distract you from ministry.

Your Mac can make your ministry more effective because the Mac has been designed to make its users look good. Apple’s iLife suite of applications (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, and iWeb) makes it easy for rank amateurs to create professional-quality media such as photos, video, music, podcasts, and Web pages. Apple’s iWork suite includes office productivity programs like Pages for word-processing and page-layout, Numbers for data and spreadsheets, and Keynote for slide presentations. Yet, unlike most office productivity suites, iWork is designed to help you incorporate great design into your documents and presentations. Other Mac applications we’ll cover in this book are likewise designed to help you do quality work and present a professional image.

INSANELY GREAT MINISTRY

In the Mac universe, the goal is never to be good enough, but to be insanely great. In fact, the desire to be insanely great is central to Apple’s corporate culture (see sidebar Mac Literacy: Good Enough or Insanely Great?).

Can your Mac help you to have an insanely great ministry? Sure it can, but an insanely great ministry ultimately depends on three things, none of which is driven by a microchip.

Mac Literacy: Good Enough or Insanely Great?

When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was overseeing the development of the first Macintosh computer, he repeatedly inspired the Mac team to create a computer that would be insanely great: something so forward-thinking, it would eventually change the world.

In 1984 when the first Mac was released, most computers used a command-line interface in which the computer user would enter arcane text commands that had to be memorized. The Mac introduced the graphical user interface typical of most computers today. It was so easy to use that many computer geeks dismissed it as a toy, but eventually the innovations popularized by the Mac would forever change the way people interact with computers. The Mac did indeed prove to be insanely great.

When Microsoft eventually released Windows 95, some argued that PCs were now good enough to be considered comparable to Macs. Whether or not that was true can be debated, but the contrast in standards is striking. Mac users expect their computer and its software to be insanely great. They’re never satisfied with good enough, and it shows in the hardware and software that gets developed for them.

Sacrificial Service

When Jesus commissioned Peter to lead His church, He commanded Peter repeatedly to feed and shepherd His sheep (John 21:15–17). James, the brother of Jesus, defined pure and undefiled religion as taking care of orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:27). Paul taught that Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others (Philippians 2:4). Finally, Jesus made it clear that Christian life and ministry are about serving rather than being served:

Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be a slave to all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life—a ransom for many. (Mark 10:43-45)

Clear Communication

Sacrificial service must be coupled with clear communication of the gospel. After all, we don’t just serve others in order to be do-gooders, but to exalt the name of Christ and to reveal His love. Jesus said, Whoever gives just a cup of cold water . . . because he is a disciple . . . will never lose his reward! (Matthew 10:42). Jesus also commissioned us to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19–20). In other words, the ministry of making disciples requires clearly communicating whose disciples we are to become and how we are to follow.

Similarly, Paul underscored the need for clear communication of the gospel when he wrote:

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? . . . So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ" (Romans 10:13-17).

An insanely great ministry is one that clearly communicates the message about Christ, the good news that any who call on His name can be saved from the penalty and power of sin.

The Work of the Holy Spirit

No matter how ardently we serve or how eloquently we preach, the success of our ministry ultimately depends on how the Holy Spirit works in it, through it, and sometimes even in spite of it. Jesus said, No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him (John 6:44); and Paul made it clear that the natural man does not welcome what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to know it since it is evaluated spiritually (1 Corinthians 2:14). In other words, the hardness of the human heart can only be overcome by the power of the Spirit. We are blind to the truth until He enables us to see it.

When I was in college, I was involved in a ministry that was strongly focused on evangelism and prided itself on finding the best methods of communicating the gospel to unbelievers. It was a wonderful ministry and a wonderful experience for me, but one thing always struck me as odd. Whenever they would introduce us to some new evangelism method or technique, they would give us some statistic like, Forty percent of those who hear this evangelistic presentation make professions of faith. I remember thinking when I would hear these statistics that I didn’t realize the Holy Spirit graded on a curve!

We can do many things to make our ministries more effective. We can ramp up our service, improve our communication, make better use of technology, and learn new methods. Most of this book is dedicated to helping you do exactly that. Yet ultimately, the effectiveness of our ministries depends on God.

Jesus said, The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me (John 15:5). As you use your insanely great computer to help you in your ministry, don’t lose sight of the fact that an insanely great ministry does not depend on human will or effort, but on God who shows mercy (Romans 9:16).

USING TECHNOLOGY IN MINISTRY

Throughout church history, Christians have embraced new technologies as a means of spreading the gospel. Roman roads enabled the first Christians to evangelize an empire. Christians led the way in moving from the scroll to the codex (bound books as we know them today), probably because books were more economical, portable, and durable. When Gutenberg’s printing press made the mass production of books and pamphlets easier and more affordable than ever, Christians embraced the new technology to increase circulation of the Bible, carry on theological discussions, and evangelize previously unreached parts of the world. More recently, Christians have utilized air travel, the telegraph, radio, television, computers, and the Internet to spread the gospel and minister to others.

Yet at every step along the way, some Christians have questioned whether these technological advances were indeed a good thing. After all, each new advance brought with it unintended consequences, created new problems and new opportunities for sin, and was used by non-Christians to advance their own agendas and ideas. Today, new technologies are being introduced at such a dizzying pace that their long-term benefits and drawbacks are increasingly hard to discern.

This book will expose you to a wide variety of ways a particular technology—Macintosh computers and software—can be used in ministry. It will also introduce you to a wide range of people and ministries who are using Macs in innovative ways. Which methods you choose to adopt and which examples you choose to follow will depend on your own philosophy of ministry and technology.

Don’t know what your philosophy of ministry and technology is? Start by considering the following examples. Which one sounds the most like you?

The Technophile

Steve is a 23-year-old seminary student who is serving as a youth minister at a church of about 400 members. He barely has two nickels to rub together, but somehow he owns a MacBook and an iPhone. He has set up a Web page for the youth group and frequently blogs about his latest seminary class or the last movie he watched. He uses Twitter to give up-to-the-minute reports on what he is doing and uses instant messaging to keep in constant communication with the kids from the youth group.

At youth-group meetings, Steve loves to illustrate his points with video clips and snippets of popular songs. He’s very concerned with being relevant and engaging. In fact, he worries that the church is losing young people because the worship service and sermon might not hold their interest. He is constantly preaching the virtues of new technology as a way to improve outreach and pushes the church staff to get up-to-date.

High-Tech Prep, Low-Tech Preaching

Mike is the 49-year-old senior pastor of the church. He’s no technophobe; he uses computers all the time. He uses e-mail to communicate and Bible software to prepare his sermons. He sends his sermon outline to the church secretary so she can prepare the print bulletin. He may even use instant messaging occasionally. Yet when it comes to the weekly sermon, he sees solid content as far more important than flashy delivery. In fact, he worries that too many visuals will distract his congregation from the message he is trying to preach. He’s suspicious of churches that focus too much on entertainment and not enough on sound doctrine.

He’s not quite sure what to do with Steve, his enthusiastic youth minister. On the one hand, he admires how Steve uses technology to make himself so accessible to the kids. On the other hand, he wonders if all these brief tweets and IMs are leading to a fragmented, disjointed form of communication, which he feels ultimately results in shallow relationships. Is the Facebook generation capable of deep conversation and clear theological understanding? Sometimes he wonders.

The Presenter

Josh is the 32-year-old assistant pastor of the church. He’s not nearly as connected as Steve, but not quite as suspicious of new technology as Mike. He preaches from time to time in relief of Mike, and when he does, he uses a video projector to display bullet points and the occasional video clip. While Mike isn’t crazy about Josh’s high-tech delivery style, he tolerates it so long as Josh is careful not to let flash get in the way of content. Most of the congregation responds positively to Josh’s preaching, and he feels that the visuals help hold their interest. Still, he sometimes wonders if they’re really listening to what he is saying or merely focusing on his bullet points. He therefore sees some validity in Mike’s concerns, but he nevertheless feels the advantages of his presentation style outweigh the disadvantages.

While these three characters are fictional, they represent a spectrum of attitudes toward technology that can be found in any church or ministry setting. Some, like Steve, embrace all the latest technologies uncritically, without any thought to their potential downsides. Others, like Mike, embrace technology to a point but worry that too much emphasis on it will have a variety of negative side effects. Still others, like Josh, fall somewhere in between, cautiously adopting an extensive use of technology.

Wherever you fall along this spectrum, I would encourage you to think through how best to use technology in general, and your Mac in particular, to enhance your ministry. Some of the ideas in this book may appeal to you, but if they don’t fit well with your approach to ministry, or if the people to whom you minister will not respond well to them, you should avoid them. Don’t get caught up in the use of technology merely for its own sake, and don’t avoid it just because you’re suspicious of it. Instead, strive to use technology in a way that meshes well with your theological commitments and ministry goals. You’re not backward if you decide not to use multimedia to enhance your sermon, and you’re not necessarily being an effective preacher if you do.

INSPIRATION AND PERSPIRATION

Thomas Edison famously remarked that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. The goal of this book is to help you use your Mac to become a ministry genius by giving you the inspiration you need and reducing the amount of perspiration required.

Part One of this book will offer you inspiration by showing you what’s possible. In it, we’ll explore how your Mac can be used in six distinct and alliterative areas of ministry.

Preparation Discover resources to help you study the Bible and organize a lesson or sermon.

Presentation Learn how to present your message in a way that enhances communication.

Publication Find out how to publish your message for a wider audience: in print; on the Web, CD, or DVD; or even through iTunes.

Promotion See how you can publicize ministry activities, communicate with your congregation or supporters, and reach out to the community.

Participation Get other people involved in the creation of all this content, helping to develop their gifts and giving them a broader understanding of what ministry entails.

Practical Needs Use your Mac to develop innovative fund-raisers, service projects, and outreach opportunities.

Part Two of this book is about perspiration: showing you how to make all these things happen. Here we’ll take a single Bible passage (the story of David and Bathsheba) and use it in a series of step-by-step projects: preparing a sermon, presenting a lesson, publishing it in a variety of ways, and so on. Once you’ve worked your way through these sample projects, you’ll be able to customize them for your own lessons and ministry activities.

MAC MINISTERS AND MAC LITERACY

Throughout each chapter, you’ll benefit from the examples of various Mac Ministers. These are folks who are using Macs to enhance their own ministries. These include pastors, youth workers, Sunday school teachers, missionaries, laypeople, churches, and parachurch ministries. The best form of inspiration comes from real-world examples, and the best advice comes from those who have been there. So you’ll find plenty of these Mac Minister profiles.

You’ll also find brief lessons in Mac Literacy. These lessons will expose you to interesting Mac facts and trivia, history lessons about Apple and the Mac, and things you need to know to avoid looking like a Mac newbie. (See sidebar Mac Literacy: It’s a Mac, not a MAC.)

Mac Literacy: It’s a Mac, not a MAC

One sure sign of a non-Mac user or a recent switcher is that they will write MAC in all caps. Trust me, it’s a Mac, not a MAC.

PC is written in all caps because it is an abbreviation for Personal Computer. Mac, on the other hand, is merely a shortened form of the word Macintosh. Written in all caps, MAC looks like an acronym for a three-word phrase, which, of course, it is not.

So don’t look like a Mac newbie. Write Mac not MAC!

MY MAC CRED

The Mac Literacy lessons are designed to give you Mac credibility, so it’s only fair that I should tell you a little about my own Mac cred. Put another way, if you’re going to read a book about how to get more out of your Mac, you want to know the guy writing it has something to teach you. So here’s a brief account of my own experience with using Macs in ministry.

I bought my first Mac in January of 1992 as a student in seminary. After telling a fellow student that I was looking to buy a computer, he began evangelizing me to my need for a Mac and dragged me to a demo of a pre-release Mac Bible software program called Accordance. When I saw this somewhat eccentric programmer using a Mac to do sophisticated searches of the Greek New Testament, I was hooked. This, I thought, is what I want to do with a computer! I stretched my budget as far as I could to get a Mac Performa 600.

I used that computer to write papers for school, develop a home-group curriculum for my church, and even run a side business called Cyrano’s Custom Calligraphy. Eventually, the work I had done for my church turned into a full-time job ghost-writing books for the senior pastor. The church supplied me with QuarkXPress, a professional (and expensive!) page-layout program, and Accordance Bible software, which officially had been released.

Not long after I sent in my registration card for the Bible software, I got a call asking if I’d like to work for the company part-time! It was a local company named OakTree Software, which was so small at that point they were willing to approach a local kid who had bought their software. I had no prior experience in software development and only a couple years of experience using Macs, but they assured me they would teach me everything I needed to know. I started working for them from home on a part-time basis and have been with the company ever since. I started out converting e-texts of Bibles and commentaries into the modules that work with the Bible software, and I eventually moved on to helping design the program interface, writing tutorials and online help, developing a company blog, and even creating our own custom Bible-study materials. I also got to demonstrate the software at numerous MacWorld expos, conferences for biblical scholars, pastors’ conferences, and training seminars. My work for OakTree on Accordance has taught me a great deal about the Mac, a great deal about the Bible, and a great deal about the needs of people in all types of ministry.

About the time I started working for OakTree, my new boss— the same programmer I had seen at the seminary a couple of years earlier—invited me to come to a local meeting of the Christian Macintosh User’s Group (CMUG). He had been asked to participate in a panel discussion with CMUG’s president, the president of a company that developed church-management software for the Mac, and a woman who