I've been writing sermons in Microsoft Word for 20 years. It would be hard to switch to Logos for preparing outlines, but the new Sermon Builder in Logos 9 looks interesting. Has anyone made the switch? What are the pros and cons in your experience?
I have been using the sermon builder since it first came out.
I enjoy it. I like that I can create slides as I go.
I still write in Word, then Copy/paste into Sermon Editor. This permits me to take advantage of Word’s robust font color/size for my printed preaching notes. The Paste into Sermon Builder provides 1) a Simplified path to creating slides for Proclaim; and 2) a tagged and searchable archive of my sermons in the Logos ecosystem.
I was asking a similar question here:
https://community.logos.com/forums/t/195185.aspx
I assume the generated slides also work without Proclaim (i.e. with plain PowerPoint)?
I've been in the habit of taking research notes, writing the sermon, and creating slides all in Word / PPT.
I just posted a similar question today. I am trying to figure this out.
Has anyone made the switch? What are the pros and cons in your experience?
Like Kenneth, I have been using the Sermon Editor (now Builder) for a long time.
The benefits for me include:
Apart from some of the bugs which have been worked out over time I haven't really found any downside to working in this way
I did this transition when the Sermon Editor first came, although there's not a lot of formatting options it's good enough, the ability to just write the biblical reference hit enter and then it appears and you can switch for another version in a couple of clicks, the way to do the slides it's great, it algo syncs in the cloud so I have my sermons immediately on my tablet, also the way you can add a quote from a resource, I don't see any cons actually I'll encourage any Logos user to make the switch.
Yes, PowerPoint export is supported.
My own activity here is very similar to David Thomas'.
I make verse by verse notes in Logos.
I then copy the notes into my Word template for sermons (nothing fancy, just reflects my work style).
I edit and work it in Word, then finally copy > paste into Logos sermon editor and adjust the slides, etc.
Now the reason:
I am a relentless maker of backups. I have lost YEARS of work before I became a backup nutjob. Quite frankly I cannot make a backup of Logos documents, so I view them as merely secondary copies of my real documents.
And I backup my documents like an insane lunatic. Because I am one. Losing my past work made me one.
Now: Go make a backup people.
I've been using it since I got it and don't regret it. It's not a full fleshed out word document processor, but the good things of this feature far outweight this.
I am a relentless maker of backups. I have lost YEARS of work before I became a backup nutjob.
I appreciate that Sermon Documents are backed up to Faithlife servers, but I echo TCBlack - I've lost too much data in the past so I archive my Docx in paper (in 3 ring Binders), local Micro SD, an external HD in a 2nd location, and 2 cloud services. Redundancy is your friend!
Now, to quote a wise man [H]
Go make a backup people.
being able to have sermons I had preached come up in Passage Guides etc
Can you elaborate on what comes up in the Passage Guides? Is it stuff that I have manually tagged in the "Sermon info" such as Key Topics and Key Passages?
Thanks!
Is there a way to NOT have the text of Scripture in the outline itself. What I've always done is have the passage in my outline in bold, and when I'm preaching I turn and read it from my Bible (not off the outline). If I had all my scriptures written out I'd have to get used to a really long outline. [:)]
Can you elaborate on what comes up in the Passage Guides?
I just ran a passage guide for the text I preached last Sunday. Under My Content I have links to the Notebook I created for that Sermon, the Clippings File and the Sermon doc. [Disregard the Notebook from Luke 4 - I had errantly placed a Luke 6:1-2 anchor in a note in that notebook]
Yes - it is tied to information we provide in the info pane
So, for example, running a Passage Guide on John 6:35-40, I can see (in the Sermons -> Sermon Documents section) that I have five sermons that are tagged with that passage. Clicking those results opens the associated sermon
Is there a way to NOT have the text of Scripture in the outline itself.
Sure. If you just enter a scripture reference "in line" the actual text is not included. So, in a sermon I have:
" To understand what this is about we would need to look back at the beginning of the chapter where we find that they had been out of Egypt for about six weeks (Ex 16:1) after living there in slavery for hundreds of years."
If I click / tap Ex 16:1 in the document it will update my Bible to that point and I can read from there.
crossposting to another thread on this topic with many of the same users posting both places - https://community.logos.com/forums/t/195475.aspx
