CPT stands for Church Plant Tech, a term I “coined” back in my early blogging days. I’m a church planter, and I find that cheap and effective solutions are pivotal to a planter. My CPT articles are to help other planters (and probably everyone else too) find good solutions to problems for as cheap and as creatively as possible. Enjoy!
If you’re a church planter, you know that life can get a little hectic when following God’s call for your life. We live fast-paced, white-knuckle, arrow-prayer kind of lives. I wanted to share with you some apps that you might find useful to you as a planter entering into 2016. They’ve helped me over the past 4 years as a planter, and I hope that they can serve you well as they have done for me.
Stay Organized
One of my biggest problems is organization. Hey, not everyone can have a clean desk all the time! These are some apps I highly recommend to keep you on task in 2016.
Evernote
Ah, yes, Evernote. This puppy makes just about every Christian (and non!) favorite app list, but it’s for good reason. Evernote can handle pretty much anything you can throw with it, and if it can’t, you can just upgrade for more of whatever it is you need. It can handle chatting, notes, checklists, reminders, voice recording, document grabbing and more. This is the church planter’s office, since we’re so mobile a lot of the time.
Learn more about Evernote (cross-platform).
Today Calendar
This app is one of my favorite calendar apps out there. It’s fast, stable, and customizable. One of my favorite features is the hybrid full-calendar/agenda view combo. You can view the entire month at the top half of the screen, and the agenda for individual days on the bottom half. You might not realize it, but it’s the feature you’ve always needed in a calendar app. Keep an eye on +Jack Underwood’s Google+ page for sales on Today Calendar Pro.
Learn more about Today Calendar (Android).
Todoist
Stop looking for a to-do app. Just. Stop. Todoist is by far my favorite to-do app out there. I know we’re all tight on cash, but definitely get the cheap upgrade to pro. My favorite part of Todoist is the native language capabilities it has. Just type “Meeting with Jake tomorrow at 1pm” and it’ll add the appropriate date and reminders. Love it. Not to mention it’s on almost every platform you could possibly think of, it’s hard to pass this gem up. Learn more about Todoist (cross-platform).
Up Close and Personal
We can’t be all business all the time! So below I’ve collected a few apps for personal use that might be of interest to you guys in your personal lives. You know, whenever you’re not wearing a cape.
Journey
Journaling is important for those of us with crazy schedules. It helps clear our minds and reset. Journey by 2AppStudios is one of my favorite journaling apps out there.
It’s beautiful and stable, links with Dropbox for cloud saving, and fills in your location, activity, and weather conditions when you create a post.
Save the everyday moments with app reminders to write, and add photos to remember what was going on that day. Might even be great to go back through your timeline for some #tbt remembrances!
Learn more about Journey (Android).
Jotterpad
Another fantastic app by the same developer is Jotterpad. This is a writing app with Dropbox sync to save all that stuff in some magical cloud space somewhere.
If you’re like me, you’re constantly worrying about content creation for your church, and Jotterpad is a great mobile writing solution with Markdown support to give you some more control over formatting. It’s beautiful to boot, so get to it!
Learn more about Jotterpad (Android).
Logos Bible
If you’ve been a Christian leader for more than 10 minutes, you’ve heard about Logos Bible Software. They’re one of the leaders in in-depth Bible Study tools for leaders and pastors, and their mobile app is pretty awesome too, even if you didn’t sacrifice your firstborn to pay for one of their premium packages.
They have daily verse graphics for you to share with your church and tons of reading plans of various lengths to keep you in the word day by day.
My favorite feature is the tie ins it has with another one of Logos’ (now Faithlife) products, Proclaim. We’ve written about Proclaim since 2011 here on ChurchMag, so you should definitely check that out pronto as well. It’s a church presentation software that will sync with the Bible app to provide contextual “announcements” and prompts to your congregation’s mobile devices live and in-service. Genius!
Learn more about Logos Bible (cross-platform).
Notegraphy
Notegraphy takes a quote that you input and displays it tastefully in one of dozens of preset graphics ready for you to share away on social media. As the comms elder at my church, this is incredibly helpful to me since it does the creativity for me, I just plug in a quote from this week’s sermon and voila!
Learn more about Notegraphy (cross-platform).
Bonus Round!
Last but not least, we all like to unwind and have some fun, right? I highly recommend the Kingdom Rush tower defense games. They’re the bee’s knees! Awesome graphic style, intense strategy, leveling up, etc. Just great fun. Seriously, check those out too!
What apps do you recommend to add to your 2016 app arsenal?
If you’re a “seasoned” pastor, what do you recommend for the new guys on the block?
What tools do you find helpful in your daily lives?
Bonus points if you can guess my favorite Kingdom Rush game!
Matt Rittgers says
Planning Center Online is an absolute game changer when it comes to scheduling volunteers and distributing schedules, service orders, and charts.
Jesse Gruber says
I’ve looked into them before, but have never had a use case for them in our local congregation. We use CCB for a lot of those functions currently. But they look like a great option!
Chris Wilson says
Nice choices Jesse. I really like having a journalling app (be that Journey on Android or DayOne on iOS). I really wish there was a great text expander syncing option for Android and desktops as I often use question prompts to make me reflect and just needing to type a few characters really helps. I know there are some good text expanders out there for Android now though.
Todoist is also a boss! so useful and flexible unlike some more rigged task management tools.
Jesse says
LOVE Todoist! Ran out of premium membership in December though 🙁 Nothing was as awesome as Todoist. Using Tick Tick now and it’s ok. Best 2nd I’ve found so far!
Also dunno what you mean by text expander. I think it got lost in your crazy accent 😉
Chris Wilson says
Tick tick eg, Interesting. I’m kind of interested in checking out Asana (I never thought that Eric might convince me to shift over!) especially with my premium coming to a close soon.
Text expanders are brilliant. I’ll review an android one for you to explain it better.
Eric Dye says
Great lineup Jesse!
Jesse Gruber says
Thanks! Hope you find some use for something!