Just finished filing some sermons. It made me wonder, "How many people file a hard copy of their sermons anymore?"
I'm wondering if I need to consider a well-backed up copy on my computer good enough.
What are some of your practices?
I currently:
1)File the hard copy of the preached sermon.
2) Enter the text, sermon title, date, location, series (if applicable), and some quick topic notes in a spreadsheet.
Looking forward to hearing from some of you. Or else will listen to the crickets chirp as a wait.
Comments
My hardcopies go in the recycling bin. Everything on my office computer is regularly backed up in two locations.
The file names of my sermons are based on the Scripture reading. Each file is stored in an appropriate subfolder (e.g. "OT Poetry," "NT Epistle"). When my sermon collection gets bigger, I may refine that even more as some of those folders are getting pretty large. In addition, like Todd above, I maintain a database listing my sermon texts, titles, and a few comments.
Sometimes I think about all the sermon manuscripts that go in the recycling bin each week, each month, each year... Having a notebook computer up front with my manuscript seems too "intrusive," getting in between me and the congregation. An iPad, however... Hmmm... =)
~Stan
Just a note for easy backup in the "cloud." Dropbox.com is a free software that will automatically save and upload the files you designate to a secure site that you can access from anywhere. Also, you can easily share files with another computer (i.e. a desktop and a laptop computer) so that they sync when you have an online connection.
The service is free for up to 2 GB of storage. This is usually adequate, but if you need to, you can upgrade to 50GB for a cost of $99.00 per year.
Pretty nifty.
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