NAC Sermon Studio
Small web apps for a New Apostolic Church congregation, deployed from one static
site:
- Seating & Communion Planner — who sits where and who serves communion, described
below. Built from the repository root, live at https://nac-seating-planner.vercel.app.
- Choir Programme Planner — the choir conductor's hymn index, service
programme, before-service running order, festive service preparation form and practice
sheets. Built from
choir/, live at https://nac-choir-planner.vercel.app. See
choir/README.md.
- Study Bible — a minister's personal study bible: Scripture in
several translations, notes on verses, where the Catechism refers to each verse,
theological background to every book, chapter and passage, and a guided divine
service preparation with printable sermon notes and a cue card. Built
from
bible/, live at https://nac-study-bible.vercel.app. See
bible/README.md.
The Study Bible is also where the others now live: the Seating & Communion Planner
is its Seating tab, the Choir Programme Planner its Choir tab, and the
Congregation Reminders app (birthdays and wedding anniversaries from the office's
listing PDFs, with WhatsApp greetings ready to send; its own repository is
weddings-and-birdays) its
Reminders tab, so one app holds a minister's Bible, the congregation's seating, the
choir's programmes and the congregants' dates, and all of them ride the Study Bible's
sync between a person's devices. The standalone apps stay where they are, at their own
addresses, for anyone already using them; their backups load into the Study Bible under
Settings.
Each app is its own Vercel project on this one repository, so a push to the production
branch redeploys all of them.
Seating & Communion Planner
A small web app for planning who sits where and who serves communion in a
New Apostolic Church congregation. It draws the church floor plan, lets you
assign ministers to seats and serving stations, and produces an A4 PDF that
can be shared straight to WhatsApp from a phone.
Live at https://nac-seating-planner.vercel.app (redeploys on every push to the
production branch). It is a static site: no build step, no server, no login.
On a phone, open the link and use "Add to Home Screen". The user manual is at
https://nac-seating-planner.vercel.app/help.html (also the Help button in the app).
Using it
- Congregation: pick the layout at the top. Gezina, Sinoville and Hercules
are built in; other congregations are added in the Layout tab. Each layout
defines its own serving sections, for example Left, Right and Balcony at
Hercules.
- Seat numbering: every layout follows one standard. Seat 2 is the
presiding minister (Apostle, District Apostle or Chief Apostle), on the bench
left of the altar, second from the congregation end, with seat 1 beside them
closest to the congregation. Along a bench the numbers count up from the
congregation end towards the altar, and the benches fill from the one nearest
the altar outwards.
- Seats: tap a numbered square on the plan, then tap a minister (or type a
name). Tap another seat to swap the two. The Seats tab shows the same
assignments as a table.
- Serving stations: tap a hatched square and choose the seat number of the
minister who stands there. Steppers in the Communion tab add or remove
stations per group (up to six each) and cups on the altar (up to eight a
side).
- Colours: in the Roster tab, give each minister the colour of the section
they serve. The colour follows them to their seat, to the station holding
their seat number, and to the tables and PDF. Several ministers can share a
colour. Sections and their colours are defined per layout.
- Plans: the app opens with empty seats and stations. Use Save (header)
or "Save as new plan" (Plans tab) to keep a plan; saved plans load from the
dropdown. Unsaved changes are restored on the next visit. Roster and
layouts are saved automatically; Export/Import backup moves everything
between devices.
- Save PDF / Share PDF: builds the A4 sheet (title, plan, legend, seating
table, communion table, note). On a phone the Share button opens the share
sheet so you can send it via WhatsApp; on a desktop the PDF downloads.
Layouts for other congregations
The Layout tab manages layouts:
- New layout (copy) duplicates the current layout under a new name.
- Edit this layout turns the plan into an editor: drag blocks, seats,
markers, the altar and station groups; tap one to change its label, size,
colour, cut corner or direction; add or delete items.
- Export layout / Import layout or picture share a layout as a JSON file
between congregations. Importing a PNG or JPG of a floor plan starts a new
layout with the picture as a faint tracing background (edit mode only, not
printed) so you can place blocks, seats and stations over it.
- Share layout link encodes the layout into a link that can be sent over
WhatsApp or e-mail; opening it offers to add that congregation on the other
device. The tracing picture is left out to keep the link short.
- Restore built-in version appears when a stored copy is shadowing a
built-in layout, and puts the current built-in one back.
- Serving sections and colours define the colour choices offered in the
Roster tab and the legend on the PDF.
The layout format (see src/layout.js, GEZINA) is plain JSON with blocks,
an altar, markers, seats, station groups, sections and default cup counts, in
a 1100 x 800 coordinate space.
Files
index.html, styles.css – the pagesrc/layout.js – layout model, built-in Gezina layout, SVG renderersrc/editor.js – drag-and-edit layout editorsrc/pdf.js – A4 sheet builder and PDF export (uses the vendored jsPDF)src/app.js – state, storage and UIvendor/jspdf.umd.min.js – jsPDF 2.5.2 (MIT)
