The Evernote app is almost always talked about in terms of productivity, organization and business. We seldom associate it with creative expression or the arts in the local church. That’s unfortunate because Evernote is a tremendous tool for becoming more effective in any type of work, including—perhaps especially—worship arts.
The reason is that you cannot lead a successful worship arts ministry without a good measure of organization. Each week, worship leaders and arts pastors must juggle service plans, music, equipment, volunteers, and a seemingly endless array of details. Evernote is a great tool to help keep a worship ministry running smoothly.
In this post, I’ll highlight a number of areas related to worship arts, and how Evernote can help you get organized.
- Worship planning. If you meet with a team to plan services (or even if you plan by yourself), keep notes about any service details or ideas. This is especially helpful when planning major services for Easter and Christmas. You can share notes or notebooks with others who can view or update details.
- Stage design. A few years ago I visited a church and loved the light boxes they had made for the stage. I took detailed pictures and saved them to Evernote for future reference (and used theirs as a model). I’ve visited other churches where I’ve taken pictures of various stage elements I wanted to use in my own setting. You can also use the Web Clipper to save great ideas from the web.
- Music annotation. Use the Skitch app to annotate charts for your worship team.
- Articles and newsletters. When you subscribe to newsletters via email, forward the ones you want to keep to your Evernote account. You can use the Web Clipper to save great articles for future reference. I frequently save material from the major worship training websites to use as food for thought for my classes.
- Future purchases. Keep a wish list of items you want to purchase someday. This can be helpful during the budget process.
- Equipment manuals. If you have printed manuals for lighting, sound and other gear, scan them and put them in Evernote for handy reference. You can also download manuals from the web and save them. One Sunday morning at church we had a problem with a wireless microphone, and I was able to easily reset the frequency because I saved the manual in Evernote. Problem solved!
- Music lessons. If you give lessons, you can keep notes on the student’s progress, or share a note or notebook that contains material you want them to access (like a chart or list of songs to practice). You can also keep track of expenses and income for music lessons in Evernote.
- Keep rehearsal notes in Evernote. This could include arrangement notes or devotional thoughts.
- Equipment list. Keep a list of your significant sound, lighting, and music gear in Evernote. Take pictures of amps, sound boards, guitars and anything else of value. Be sure to include the model or serial numbers. If you store equipment different places, you can include the location of each item. An inventory list can be helpful in the event you would need a detailed list of equipment for insurance purposes.
- Prayer list. Evernote is a great place to keep a prayer list—both prayer needs and those that have been answered!
- If you have a song idea, use the Evernote mobile app to record a quick demo and any lyrics or chords. This is a better alternative to just using the voice recorder on your phone because Evernote syncs across all devices (you can then access your audio file on any computer that has Evernote installed).
- If you have auditions for vocalists and instrumentalists, Evernote is a great place to store your notes for easy future reference. You can also easily share these notes with others if needed.
- Visual records. If you use special stage decorations or a different kind of setup for Christmas or Easter, it’s a good idea to take detailed pictures of the stage and save them in Evernote so you can remember how to set it up the following year.
This post is adapted from my new book 30 Days of Evernote for Churches. If you want to harness the incredible organizational power of Evernote in your church and your life, this is the best place to start. For the past several years I’ve been helping students, leaders and pastors learn how to use Evernote, and I’ve condensed everything I know into this guide.
I’ve also included two special bonuses for everyone who purchases 30 Days of Evernote for Churches:
- A complete Evernote video course. This course covers all of the concepts in Part 1-3 of this book.
- Interviews of church leaders. I’ve interviewed three church leaders, each in different positions, about how they use Evernote in their ministries.
Whether you are a beginner or advanced user, 30 Days of Evernote for Churches will offer practical and detailed tips and strategies you won’t find anywhere else.
If you have any questions about the book, or about Evernote in general, I would love to help. Just leave a comment here or send me a message on Twitter @kentsanders.
Get 30 Days of Evernote for Churches now from ChurchMag Press!
Eric Dye says
Nice!
Tyler says
I think we would use Evernote if it didn’t require syncing for every change. I sat in on a Creative Arts meeting (for another church that uses it) and it was absolute chaos. Work was lost when people didn’t announce that they were going to hit the “sync” button. It felt like a lesser version of a GoogleDoc, as far as sharing goes.
Is that still a “feature”/symptom?
Kent Sanders says
Tyler, thanks for commenting. I would say a couple of things about the church’s issue with Evernote:
1) Having more than one person edit an individual note at the same time is not a good idea unless there’s only one person doing the editing, and the rest are viewing it. EN is not meant to be a “real-time” collaborative tool like Google Docs is. A better way to approach it in that situation might have been to use Google Docs, actually – – or have one person doing all the writing/editing in the meeting.
2) There is also Evernote business. I only focus on EN for individuals, so can’t really speak to all the specifics of the features, but it’s meant to be a collaborative tool. My guess is that would be a better solution for this type of situation. http://evernote.com/business/