How do others use the Sermon Filer?

[BrianShoe]

Regarding the Sermon Filer, I'm more interested in "who owns it", in other churches that have PC+ installed.

Does your minister/pastor/priest file sermons there himself/herself? Is this done by the church secretary? (In which case, I presume you employ a full-time secretary - ours is only part-time.) Or do you have a committee for service-related issues (we call the Church Services committee) that handles filing the sermons?

I'm working on getting various committees and individuals in our church interested in using PC+. I'm not whether to push the Sermon Filer concept with our minister (who is rather technophobic) or with our Church Services committee - therefore I'd like to hear how others use this feature.

Brian Shoemaker
First Parish Unitarian Universalist, Canton MA
Unofficial PowerChurch application support

[NeilZ]

The only person we have authorized to update/change is our Pastor ... however, I just got him to use a Palm with Pocket PC+, so getting him to use the Sermon Filer is on the list.

[John Dykema]

We have 2 pastors, each with his own pc on our network. If they use Sermon Filer, is there a way for each to have their own sermon records? How would we keep tem separate? Seems like they'd be looking at each other's sermons if there is only one file.

[NeilZ]

We have 2 pastors, each with his own pc on our network. If they use Sermon Filer, is there a way for each to have their own sermon records? How would we keep tem separate? Seems like they'd be looking at each other's sermons if there is only one file.

Basically, the sermon filer is just a 'rolodex' of quick reference information about the sermon. There's a place to enter who gave the sermon, but the actual sermon is not included. You can keep track of a local file where the text is kept, but again, that is a file outside of PC+

[John Dykema]

Thanks, Neil. Actually I'm not trying to keep track of the sermon itself but rather the Title, date, etc, as is the purpose of Sermon Filer. But, if you have 2 preaching pastors and they both track their sermons this way, how can they just see only their own records they've entered.

[NeilZ]

Thanks, Neil. Actually I'm not trying to keep track of the sermon itself but rather the Title, date, etc, as is the purpose of Sermon Filer. But, if you have 2 preaching pastors and they both track their sermons this way, how can they just see only their own records they've entered.

Quick answer ... they will see all the records if they just sequence through the list. You can pull the 'selected' records by matching on the 'who gave' data item.

If you use just the initials of the pastor (JS, SJ) like that, you can then pull up the report easily.

[John Dykema]

I'm trying to sell PC+ to people here but all I have done is the memberships and contributions so far.

[NeilZ]

I'm trying to sell PC+ to people here but all I have done is the memberships and contributions so far.

I'd concentrate on the accounting and event scheduling functions before any of the record keeping functions. Those areas are currently very functional, I'm hoping that the record keeping areas will be the next area to be improved.