There's an app for that high-Church Presbyterian

I realized I would need a calendar to stay on top of my schedule during a summer internship while still in seminary. For a couple years I used a day planner (only the Far Side calendar inserts started the week with Sundays; I have no idea what that tells us about the decadence of the business community, but I am sure it tells us something), and then got all high-tech with a Palm Pilot. A couple years into the pastorate I conceded to the inevitable and got a cell phone; when I got sick of carrying around two electronic devices, I moved on to a Palm Treo.

Actually, I was very happy with my successive Treos, but Palm stopped supporting its Desktop application for the Mac OS several years ago, and it got to the point where I had to restart my computer almost daily in order to sync the two devices. Thus, a few months ago I got as hip as a presbyterian pastor can possibly get via the purchase of a refurbished iPhone 4. From the start, I found it a very efficient mobile computing device, but not so much functional as a PDA. It's great to have all my podcasts and a sample of my embarrassingly large music library right on my phone. The Maps app has almost entirely replaced my reliance on Mapquest, and the Starbucks mobile card app makes my caffeine dependency a fun hobby.

On the pastoral front, I love the Lectionary app. Based off the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, but following the readings of the Revised Common Lectionary, it provides not only the lections for each Lord's Day, but daily readings which also follow the Church year. For three bucks, you can keep up on your devotional reading all within this app.

I have been using the powerful Accordance Bible program since 2000; its recently released app puts my entire library of resources onto my iPhone. It's unbelievably cool to do Greek and Hebrew word studies while waiting in line for my caffeine fix. (Well, so long as "cool" is defined by ministerial professionals.) The Accordance app is free, and comes packaged with the ESV and a number of tools for those who haven't invested hundreds of dollars into the desktop program.

In my naivete, I had assumed Apple would provide me with what Palm had: a single interface which would display my appointments and daily tasks. Nope, and for some reason to-do app developers don't for the organization of tasks by date, which of course is what any sane person does. After much searching, I replaced the iPhone's Calendar with the Calvetica app, which displays events' color codes (an extraordinarily important visual shortcut for me). Then I found Todo, which allows me to sync with iCal to-do items, and EVEN LETS ME CREATE REPEATING TASKS. (Believe you me, that's the El Dorado of app features.) Once I added XpenseTracker (which contains the also strangely-rare-but-necessary feature of creating expense report printouts), I finally was able to turn my slick-looking iPhone into a functional PDA.

I do the legwork, you do the downloading. You're welcome, vast reading public.