You’re doing your homework, or reading Christian Century, or even reading a memoir, and you come across this amazing treatment of a text or a story that reminds you of a passage of scripture and you just know you’ll need to hang onto that for the next time you preach it. You can relate these to a specific pericope, or to an entire chapter. (Note that the RCL field will only be able to pull information from “pericope” entries.)
The examples I’ve included are real, and were in fact part of my inspiration for creating this resource. Faith Beyond Resentment is not a commentary or a preaching resource. It’s not even, quite honestly, my favorite book. But I loved Alison’s treatment of John 9 and Mark 5, and I didn’t want to lose them. And how on earth would I remember to go back to that random memoir next time I preach these texts?
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You can download the Notion app to your phone, and install a little widget that will look like a + on your app screen, and you can set that + to automatically add pages just to this database. So when you come across a great source, you can snap a pic or jot it down and immediately let it populate here. You’ll see the most recent at the top, both here and on your dashboard, so you can add details later if you don’t have time to add them when you first add it.
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<aside> ⚠️
My recommendation is that you not put everything you see in this database. Only put the things that are really striking to you. “Everything” is on Google, and on ChatGPT, and in the numerous commentaries you keep on your shelf. This is for the stuff you really don’t want to lose. (Every chapter of FBR treats a text, much of it well, but I didn’t save every chapter here. The things we read form us in ways we can’t remember or understand, and that’s enough. It’s ok to let that be enough. But sometimes, we really want to keep access to the exact source because it’s just… chef’s kiss. And we really want to remember which scripture it was tied to. So put that stuff here. Don’t put your whole library here.
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