Investing in Your Tools as a Pastor

There's a professional carpenter in my church. He spends tens of thousands of dollars every year on trucks, equipment, and power tools — constantly upgrading so he can do better work more efficiently. As pastors, we should invest in high-quality tools for the work we're going to do for the rest of our lives. Here are some I use that aren't cheap but are well worth the money.

A Good Computer

You need a good computer, and more importantly, you need to know how to use it. I'm a big fan of Apple — I've had a Mac for over 20 years. But the brand matters less than knowing your machine well and filling it with decent software.

P.S. I would recommend the base model MacBook Air to almost anyone. You can usually get one for under $1,000 and it should be a great computer for over five years. You could even pick up a used one for a third of that price. (Anything with an M chip will be great.)

A Decent Desk Setup

You're going to spend a lot of time at your desk, so make it a place you can work well. You need a good-size monitor you don't hate looking at, plenty of lighting, an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and a chair you can sit in comfortably for hours.

You don't have to spend a fortune. My standing desk came from a yard sale for $30. I have a cheap Amazon keyboard and a wired vertical mouse. I did research on my chair — it was only about $250, but it's far better than anything you'd find at Walmart or Office Depot.

A Good Writing App

I've been writing all of my sermon content in Markdown for over ten years. It only takes a few minutes to learn, and there are plenty of great apps for it. I use Ulysses and have a sermon framework I copy every time I start a new manuscript. iA Writer is fantastic too, and Obsidian works well.

Find something you like, pay for it, and learn to use it well — you're going to be staring at it constantly.

AI-Assisted Transcription

I type fast — probably 70+ words a minute — but I can speak at least double that. When I switched to dictating my sermon manuscripts instead of typing them, I started saving about an hour per sermon. That's three hours a week.

The app I use is Wispr Flow. It's $150/year, but it saves me more than 150 hours a year. What's your time worth? For me, it's a no-brainer.

Kindle E-Readers

I used to have thousands of physical books. When I moved to Illinois to pastor here about 15 years ago, I started buying all of my commentaries on Kindle — and I don't regret it one bit. My entire library, probably thousands of books at this point, goes with me everywhere. When I hop on a train to Chicago for a doctor's appointment with my son, every commentary I own is in my bag in a format I enjoy reading.

I actually have two Kindles. A Paperwhite stays in my bag and on my bedside for casual reading. A Kindle Scribe stays on my desk. The Scribe is marketed as a writing tablet — I never write on mine, literally never — but it's excellent as a large, stand-up reading screen, which is how I use it daily.

An AI Subscription

An AI subscription service is well worth the money. I use Claude at $20/month, and it pays for itself many times over. Anything I say about its capabilities will be dated quickly, but as an example, this morning it drafted a full fundraising and nonprofit proposal for Congregation Hub in a couple of minutes.

I use Claude weekly in my sermon preparation. It doesn't write my sermons — it acts as a writing and research partner. I feed it my work, and it gives me suggestions for improvement. It keeps me from getting stuck, saves time, and sharpens the final product.

By the way, Claude is just my personal preference. You could use Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok or even Deepseek. They are all about the same.

Closing Thought

These tools — software subscriptions, books, a decent computer, transcription services — can add up. But they're nothing compared to what mechanics and carpenters routinely spend to do their work. Investing in your tools pays off in the long run.

That said, you don't need any of this. You can get by as a preacher with a yellow legal pad, a pencil, and your Bible. Praise the Lord for that. Don't go into debt over tools. But as you can afford them, they'll help you quite a bit.