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What Am I?

Sermon Prep Database is a program to organize - and store for easy retrieval - your thoughts and research when preparing a sermon.

What's New in v.5.1.3?

• Made the single-line entries spell-checkable
• Tweaked the code to make it compatible with Linux systems

What Was New in v.5.1.2?

• Fixed inconsistent application of line and paragraph spacing and font size
• Fixed wrong "close" icon being shown in search tab
• A major update to the spell checking system, making it more efficient and accurate
• Many other improvements and bug fixes under the hood

Why Sermon Prep Database?

When preparing a sermon for your congregation, you probably find yourself in the habit of performing certain tasks: doing research from commentaries, jotting down outlines, following an exegesis plan, etc. This program gives you areas to record all of these things and then saves them into a database where you can retrieve them any time.

Installation

Currently, Sermon Prep Database is available for Windows and Debian-based Linux systems.

• Windows: Download the current SPD installer (Setup_SPD_v.5.1.1.exe ) and run it on your computer.
• Linux: Download the current SPD package file (sermon-prep-database.5.1.2.deb). Double-click to install through your desktop's package manager or, from the command line, navigate to the file's directory and run the command, "sudo dpkg -i sermon-prep-database.5.1.2.deb".

Using Sermon Prep Database

This information will get you started, but for more in-depth information on using Sermon Prep Database, please click “Help” and “Help Topics” in the menu.

Screen Layout

When you first run Sermon Prep Database, you’ll be greeted with a screen consisting of tabs:

• Scripture

• Exegesis

• Outlines

• Research

• Sermon

In the Scripture tab, you can record the week's pericope and its readings, or the particular topic you're discussing and the readings to go along with it. You can also record the reference of the text you'll be preaching on, as well as the text itself.

In the Exegsis tab, you can record what you have discerned to be the law and gospel components of the text, it's "big picture" idea, the purpose of your sermon, and the way those things will be brought to your congregation.

The Outline tab is where you can store outlines for the scripture, our sermon, and any illustration(s) you may want to use.

The Research tab is where you can write down any important points you've discovered during your research.

Finally, the Sermon tab is where you can store the text of the sermon itself, as well as any important details regarding the sermon, such as the Date, Title, and Hymn of Response.

Settings

There are various changes that can be made to how Sermon Prep Database works. By choosing the "Edit" menu, and then "Configure," you will find that you can change such things as:

• The Program's Colors

• The Font being used

• The Line Spacing of the text boxes

• The Labels used in the program

• What words are stored in your spell-check dictionary

• Whether Spell Check is enabled or not

You might be particularly interested in changing the labels used in the program. For example, in the Exegesis tab, three of the text boxes are named, "Fallen Condition Focus of the Text," "Gospel Answer of the Text," and "Central Proposition of the Text," but you might prefer the wording, "Sin Problem," "Gospel Remedy," and "Big Idea." You can make those changes by opening the Edit menu, clicking, "Configure," and then choosing, "Rename Labels."

When you first use the program, you might decide that it would be convenient to import your old sermons from files you already have saved on your computer. In the "File" menu, select "Import Sermons From Files". You will be prompted to select a folder that contains your sermons. File formats the program can import from are Microsoft Word (.docx), Open Document Format (.odt), and Plain Text (.txt). It would be beneficial to do a little leg-work in advance of importing so that the program can automatically fill in some of the details of your sermon while it imports. To accomplish this, make sure your files are named in the following way:

YYYY-MM-DD.book.chapter.verse-verse

For example, a sermon preached on May 20th, 2011 on Mark 3:1-12, saved as a Microsoft word document, would be named:

2011-05-11.mark.3.1-12.docx

The import will work fine if you haven't named your files in this way, only the program will not be able to fill in such areas as the sermon date and text reference.

You also have the ability to import an XML Bible. Importing a bible will allow you to have the program auto-fill the Sermon Text area of the scripture tab simply by typing or copying a reference into the Sermon Text Reference box.

Shortcut Keys

There are a few Shortcut Keys that can be used when using the program:

Key	Function	Description
Ctrl-S	Save	Save your work
Ctrl-P	Print	Creates a printout of this sermon's prep work
Ctrl-B	Bold	Set the text to Bold (in text boxes only)
Ctrl-I	Italic	Set the text to Italic (in text boxes only)
Ctrl-U	Underline	Set the text to Underline (in text boxes only)
Ctrl-Shift-B	Bullets	Create bullet points

Known Issues

Technologies and Credits

Sermon Prep Database is written primarily in Python, compiled through PyInstaller, and packaged into an installation executable with Inno Setup Compiler.

Sermon Prep Database’s main database is SQLite and the remaining data files are stored in the JSON format.

Sermon Prep Database uses Qt (PyQt6) for the user interface.

All trademarks (c) their respective owners.

Licensing

ProjectOn is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.