Trinity Hymnal/ Trinity Psalter Hymnal tools

[Burke Devlin]

Greetings,

Two tools would make liturgy prep (OPC) a bit more streamline:

1) A list of hymns in the Red Trinity Hymnal not included in the new Trinity Psalter Hymnal

2) Something like a spreadsheet app that would allow one to record and keep track of the worship tunes used each Lord’sDay. I do this manually now, but an app would be nice. Icing on the cake would include the ability to record Call to Worship, Confession of Faith, Reading of the Law/Assurance of Pardon, Title/Reading/Text. The cherry on top would allow the possibility of customizing the app for wider use and/or special services.

I would be willing to contribute to a Kickstarter if there is an app developer out there who would consider designing such a tool.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

 

[Ploutos]

What would the app do that some sort of calendar or spreadsheet app wouldn't already do? There are a lot of budgeting and bill paying apps out there, for instance, but I have yet to see one that is appreciably easier than labeling a few rows in Excel and just adding a new column for each month. Same with hymns, and I have seen churches that have such a spreadsheet in their worship department.

 

[Burke Devlin]

Maybe you are right. I do only use an iPad. Pages has a spreadsheet feature that might work, but I am not proficient with spreadsheet creation. My limited experience w spreadsheets in the past makes me think it would be «clunky» for my purposes. For example, if I had to enter an overly long title, it would throw nearby columns or rows off, or I would not be able to locate the part of the text that didnt fit in the box. If anyone knows of a customizable app that might work, let me know. Maybe I am spoiled, I like dedicated apps for things.

 

[Edward]

Looks like there is a Libre Office based app that will run on an IPad - Collaboro - that has a spreadsheet.

Or upgrade to Microsoft. With Excel, you can wrap text and the row gets bigger to accommodate multiple lines.

 

[iainduguid]

Maybe you are right. I do only use an iPad. Pages has a spreadsheet feature that might work, but I am not proficient with spreadsheet creation. My limited experience w spreadsheets in the past makes me think it would be «clunky» for my purposes. For example, if I had to enter an overly long title, it would throw nearby columns or rows off, or I would not be able to locate the part of the text that didnt fit in the box. If anyone knows of a customizable app that might work, let me know. Maybe I am spoiled, I like dedicated apps for things.

I was recently interim for a church that used planning center to track their song choices. It made it easy to see when the church had last sung a song/psalm, and to see at a glance their standard repertoire, which was very useful as a newcomer to the church. I don't know that it's the best tool for the job, though, and it's hard to believe that some enterprising Christian hasn't developed an app precisely with this thought in mind. (Of course, Christian software isn't necessarily better just because it is written by a Christian, and some general purpose tracking apps might be easily customizable to serve the purpose, if someone set it up right in the beginning).

 

[Ploutos]

I was recently interim for a church that used planning center to track their song choices. It made it easy to see when the church had last sung a song/psalm, and to see at a glance their standard repertoire, which was very useful as a newcomer to the church. I don't know that it's the best tool for the job, though, and it's hard to believe that some enterprising Christian hasn't developed an app precisely with this thought in mind. (Of course, Christian software isn't necessarily better just because it is written by a Christian, and some general purpose tracking apps might be easily customizable to serve the purpose, if someone set it up right in the beginning).

Planning Center is rather pricey though, is it not? And does it have an app?

 

[iainduguid]

Planning Center is rather pricey though, is it not? And does it have an app?

I have no idea. My general thought is that if you don't find something specifically designed to for worship tracking, someone computer competent could likely set up any one of a number of standard programs to accomplish your goals. But I'm no expert in this field, so I could be completely wrong.

 

[Ploutos]

It's been over a decade since my last direct encounter with Planning Center. My recollection is that it is a collaborative tool designed to coordinate planning and communication across an entire team. If the OP is just looking for a single-user way to track hymn usage, it might be overkill.

@Burke Devlin - have you thought about looking for an inventory or calendar app that you could use for this purpose? I could, for instance, envision using Google Calendar for this.

But my personal opinion is that Excel or Google Sheets or other equivalent is still your best bet. Create a column for each liturgical slot - Call To Worship, Opening Hymn, Communion Hymn, etc... then a row for each service. Input hymns as they are sung. Use the search function. I'm pretty sure that I could set this up in 10 minutes or a PC, and I'm slow.

 

[Burke Devlin]

I appreciate the feedback. Maybe I’m thinking too much in the abstract since I don’t use spreadsheets, but I would like to see the info at a glance or simply make an inquiry as to whether or not I use such and such such text, hymn sermon, etc., w/o having to hunt through a spreadsheet. That’s what I manually do now. I thought I might not have known about an app or some tool that people have been using of which I was unaware. I have one spreadsheet for the Trinity hymnal, one for the Trinity Psalter hymnal, and one for the order of worship. I was hoping to combine them into one searchable tool.

 

[Ploutos]

Will clicking Ctrl-F (or it's iPad analogue) be easier or harder than what you do now?

Another way to do this - instead of having a column for each date, you could have a row for each hymn and just enter the last time it was used - or record each time it was used. So then you could quickly scroll to that hymn number and see how often it has been used and when.

 

[Burke Devlin]

For example, if this page was an app screen, I would be able to tap on one of the boxes and see the last time(s) I use such and such hymn, text, catechism, etc.

 

[Ploutos]

Explained that way, you have a really good idea. I'm not sure of a way to get that functionality, but now I'm curious myself if something like that exists.

 

[Burke Devlin]

Will clicking Ctrl-F (or it's iPad analogue) be easier or harder than what you do now?

Another way to do this - instead of having a column for each date, you could have a row for each hymn and just enter the last time it was used - or record each time it was used. So then you could quickly scroll to that hymn number and see how often it has been used and when.

It would also be nice, not only to have this information at my fingertips, but also be able to build the next Lord Day’s liturgy from it by dragging things around or copy and pasting.