Pastor with a Pocket PC

Naturally, being the geek that I am, when I served as a pastor I used technology in some interesting ways. Of course I put my Microsoft Office skills to use with all sorts of Word documents, Excel spreadsheet and Powerpoint presentations. I also learned to do some graphics editing with Photoshop Elements.

But what was a little more unusual was that I got a Pocket PC in the early 2000s and so I had those tools and more on me at all times. Back then there was only one other person I knew who had such a mobile device that could run almost any kind of application that you could think of. Now, almost 15 years later, almost everyone is carrying around that technology in their smart phones.

What was probably the most interesting in the use of my Pocket PC was that I started delivering my sermons from it. Instead of having any kind of paper notes for my sermons, I just stood there, with no podium, with my HP Journada in one hand. At first I just had the messages as Word documents but I found that was too hard to deliver from as I am very visual and I remember where on the page notes for certain points are. That way a quick glance at a page can remind me of my points. Word documents just scrolled and things weren't even at the same part of the screen from one time to the next. That's where abcDB for Windows CE came in.

abcDB

Helped by my knowledge of Microsoft Access I learned how to make custom forms in abcDB that were ideal for me for message delivery. I would write the sermons on my desktop in Word and Access and then transfer the database file to the Pocket PC. I had space for a point and the notes that went with it on the screen, along with a big Next and a smaller Previous button to touch with my thumb. Otherwise the volume control wheel could be used to moved through the equivalent of presentation slides. abcDB was a handy and powerful little mobile database application. The user interface wasn't the friendliest but I figured it out and was able to work with it.

Eventually I went back to the low tech method of having notes on paper, but for a year or two I got a lot of comments from people in our church and other pastor friends about my use of the Pocket PC. I still have it but don't know what to do with it, as I now have a device that's smaller and does more, including occasionally receiving a phone call.

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