Here is Nov. 29, 2009 worship service stream from my church, High Peak Baptist Church. The sermon was the last in a four part sermon series entitled “The Christmases Before Christmas” about OT stories where God appeared in human form. This week was about Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32.

Here is the streaming video of my latest message at High Peak Baptist Church.  This is the whole worship service, but the sermon starts at about 21:45.

Here is my review of Logos 4 in the Christian Computing Magazine. It is a free electronic magazine for Christian computer users.

It is becoming a Mac v. PC or Pepsi v. Coke or iPhone v. Droid (well that one is not there yet) kind of debate.  Since I moved into the world of the iPhone last summer I’ve enjoyed using and reviewing literally a dozen Bible study apps for the device.  Some let you flick your finger up and down and the page smoothly scrolls like a web page.  Others treat it like a book and you flick left and right and the page either instantly or with some pretty visual cue “turns the page” to the next block of text.  Which is better? Which works best? Which helps in reading better?

I personally wish that every Bible chapter would scroll up and down in that chapter and then swipe left and right to advance to the next Bible chapter.  But to be honest I don’t really care that much anymore. I am getting used to the swipe and the scroll methods using programs like Laridian’s PocketBible which swipes left/right.

Currently I do my daily devotions in Mantis Bible since it nice tracks my devotional reading progress and when I open my reading plan it automatically shows me the next passage to be read.  Yes, even as a preacher I occasionally miss a day. So while it is Nov. 17, after a year of reading I am in October in my schedule. I don’t think Jesus will keep me out of heaven for this.

My point is that when I go from Mantis to Olive Tree to Logos to Laridian, I occasionally mess up and try to swipe left/right when I should be flicking up/down and vice versa.  But I get used to it and no big deal. Then, today I read a post at the Laridian blog and found out that there might be a good reason why swiping left/right in the page style instead of the scrolling text up/down style might be better for comprehension.  Who knew? Either way, the important thing is we are reading our Bibles and studying them with some pretty amazing products that do some amazing things.  It is the days of wine and roses! Whoops! I’m Baptist so make that milk and cookies. Anyway, it is a pretty great time to be using mobile Bible software.

Here is the live stream of the Sunday Morning worship service at High Peak Baptist Church for 11-15-2009.  The message was the second in a series of messages on Christmas Before Christmas – the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from Daniel 3.

The publishers of the New Living Translation have really been publicizing their product on Twitter and other locations. I learned about a beta of their NLT Interlinear. As you can see below, they the content of the English NLT or the Greek text (based on the Reader’s Greek New Testament). When you go to the home page you will notice that it is pretty sparse. Down the left there is a list of the Books of the Bible. Click it and you go to that book.  The chapters are hyperlinked across the top with links to the NLT, Greek NT, Matchup, Interlinear and Reverse Interlinear(see below).  The Matchup is the NLT in the left hand column and the Greek text in the right hand column.  An interlinear is like below. The text of one translation is on the top with the other below it.  Usually the Greek is on top in a traditional one, but the Reverse Interlinear has the English text on top.

The online NLT asks you to sign up and you have to confirm it via your email address.  If you do not do this, you don’t get access.  This is a little annoying.

The content is good, especially if you like the NLT.  It is an easy to read translation and much improved over the old Living Bible which was a paraphrase. It is not my favorite translation, but this could be a good tool and I hope to see it in my favorite Bible software soon.

One complaint is that if you enter your passage into the search box and check the by Bible reference button, the result will not have verse numbers. I entered 1 Peter 3 and it does not show the versification of the chapter. It’s a minor thing, but would make a big improvement.

There is a new version of the Laridian iPhone PocketBible.  I just downloaded it and here are a few of the new items and fixes:

Notice the first one on the list in the screen grab above: NOTES!! And the functionality of the notes seems to have lots of bells and whistles. You can copy verses to the clipboard so that you can paste them in other apps. I use Docs To Go so this will be nice when editing files on the iPhone when I want to include a verse. You could also post to Twitter/Facebook.

When you open PocketBible and go to a verse that has a note attached it has a hyperlinked “note” next to it (see above left). That way you will know it is there.  This is in keeping with the very simple and clean interface of PocketBible. Other programs use icons, bit I kind of like this approach. It is a taste issue, but the interface feels very uncluttered.

Above are also screenshots of the notes editing environment (above center) and the HTML tag insertion screen (above right).  The notes feature lets you add HTML to spice up the look of the notes.

There is also a Rotation Lock feature that allows you to keep it from automatically rotating to landscape mode when the iPhone senses it is rotated.  I do not use this feature in other programs, so I doubt I will in PB.  However, I know this was a much requested feature during the beta testing phase, so I’m sure many will be jumping to get the update just for that feature alone.

This is a wonderful update and makes PocketBible a much more enticing option in the very crowded iPhone Bible space. Now, let’s hope for some notes syncing with the Desktop version of PocketBible and also a split screen view.  My 4 star rating is getting much closer to five stars!!

I am reviewing QuickVerse 2010 for an upcoming issue of Christian Computing Magazine. Here is a screen cast I have created for the review. Look for the review in December 2009.

Please notice that I had not entered my Twitter account info, so in the demo video when I tried to post to Twitter it failed. My fault, not QuckVerse’s.  It will post to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and Delicious. Pretty good program, but is bit limited compared to others.

Valdese Soccer 2009 Champs-001, originally uploaded by kerussojc.

Here is the 2009 Rec League Champions. We went undefeated in the league that included teams from Valdese, East Burke, Drexel and Granite Falls Rec Leagues.

I’ve had it now for a few days.  And I wanted to say a few things. I do not have room in my Christian Computing Magazine column this month about Logos new release for much about the iPhone so I am putting it here.  So here is the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The Good

It’s free.  This is only somewhat true since to get a lot of use, you have to be a Logos 4 user on the PC.  I have Logos 4 and like it.  I really like the way the iPhone app works with it, potentially. I say that because there is a great framework for a killer app, but it is not yet there.  It is free!  If you don’t have Logos 4 you can get access to the resources available at http://bible.logos.com.  That’s limited, but it is something.  Also, if you register you can get 31 free resources. Strangely, I am  registered yet the program has a link in the Home Screen asking me to do so. It should already know that I am and remove this link.

The other good thing about the Logos iPhone app is the overall interface. It is nice. It opens to the Home screen which lists reading plans and news information. Tap on Library and there are two lists, the bookshelf (pictured above) and the library. It is a little confusing to have a library tab on the library page. I wish they had made it more obvious that the bookshelf is the most used books while the library tab is all available books. Titles like Favorites and All would be more explanatory.  I’d also like to see a tab here for purchasing new books from within the app.

Notice above that next to the Library button there is one for Search and Read.  You can search all the books available in your library. On the Read screan you can read them.  When you first select Read, it will show the currently open book. It takes a couple of seconds to load it on a fast Internet connection, but when it appears, tap in the center and the toolbars appear (pictured above). Notice that at the top there is a place to type in a reference or you can select the button next to it and it will reveal a page to choose the book of the Bible or the Table of Contents of a book.  The blue bar slides back and forth to quickly move to a spot in the open book.  The book covers show recently opened books. Tap one and it will reopen.

Tap on more and you get a list of other features. Text Comparison is for comparing multiple translations of a verse. The Passage Guide behaves similarly to the desktop app. It finds resources about a particular passage. The Word Study Guide does the same for a word or topic.  The others on the More screen are Settings, Favorites and About which are self explanatory.

The interface is intuitive and simple. It works. I prefer to read books by scrolling but it has a swiping method.  I do like the app and for an initial release it is very good. I reviewed it in the App Store and gave it 4 stars.  Why not 5?

The Bad

Sadly, there are some little glitches.  The library tab on the library page does not properly load books. When you get to the bottom of the list there is a button for more books. Tap it and you would hope the next set of books in alphabetical order would be added to the bottom of the list. But instead, they are inserted in the middle of the currently loaded list. You have to scroll down to see the new books added.  Notice below how The Swanson New Testament Greek Morphology book is ahead of The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint book.

Speaking of Interlinears, I opened one and sadly the layout is all mashed together. It is inelegant and in my opinion useless.

Another very minor flaw is that it forces you to open to the Home screen. In both Logos 3 and 4 for desktop you can open to the previous location instead of the Home screen. But not in the iPhone app. Minor but would be nice.

These are bad but also minor and I suspect will be fixed very soon. However there are two more serious problems with the Logos iPhone app.

The Ugly

These two things make the iPhone app nearly useless to me. First is the problem of reading books offline. You have to be online to read the books and I am not sure if this will change anytime soon.  The best iPhone Bible apps read offline like PocketBible from Laridian and OliveTree.  Neither of these require Internet access to use them, which puts them way ahead. While it is bad on my iPhone which only has Edge access in our area, it would be worse with an iPod Touch.

Secondly, most of the books in my Logos 4 collection that I would want to read away from the computer are not even available in the app at all due to publisher agreements.  This is not the fault of Logos and Bob Pritchett of Logos assures me that this will change.  They are working hard to retain the rights to let us use our books in the app. But until it does it is severely limited. Until they can be downloaded to the app, it is useless to me away from Wifi access not having 3G coverage in my area. (AT&T when?)

But the app is free so don’t just take my word for it. You definitely should download it and give it a try.  Register to get access to the 31 free books.

If Logos solves these Ugly problems then their iPhone app will be nipping at the heals of with what I call the big three (Laridian, Mantis and OliveTree).  Solve all of them and it will be a real contender.