Can you prepare your sermons using online Bible study sites? We try to answer that question and give a few recommendations if you choose to give it a try. At the end of the podcast we also give a few recommendations in our new segment, “Our Favorite Things”.
We only had three of our team members in this podcast. Rick Mansfield works with Accordance Bible Software and didn’t think that online Bible study sites were good enough to do full sermon prep yet. Users often don’t have access to the Internet or they don’t have a reliable connection. Most of the online sites don’t give users enough power to do serious word study. Most them include limited options for commentaries and word study tools. The ones included usually are only public domain works.
Antoine Wright from Mobile Ministry Magazine was a little more bullish since he’s a mobile-first kind of guy. He recommended a site called Bible Web App. It suffers from the same weaknesses of the other online sites with limited options and mostly public domain. It’s fast and clean and does most of what Antoine needs.
I like online sites and use a few. Last year I reviewed 6 online Bible sites in a two-part post. You can find part one and part two to see the video demos of the 6 sites (three in each post). Two of the sites I reviewed are no longer my favorites. Instead of My Study Bible from WORDsearch and Lifeway, I now recommend their new site MyWSB.com. Second, Logos has a site for subscribers to either their Logos Now or Logos Cloud services. Learn more about Logos Now in a recent post and Logos Cloud in another post.
The online sites from WORDsearch and Logos above will cost you a little bit. The best option for those looking for a free site comes from Bible.org. It’s called Lumina.
Our Favorite Things
In “Our Favorite Things” this week we recommended some apps, a utility and an accessory. Rick recommended a USB C dock for the new 12-inch MacBook (not the Air or Pro). It’s the HyperDrive USB Type-C 5-in-1 Hub with Pass Through Charging for $50. It connects to the USB C port on the MacBook and adds ports for an SD card, micro-SD card, 2 USB 3.0 ports and a USB Type-C port for charging or hooking up a 4K video adapter.
Antoine recommended a list of Lent Apps he put together on his website. They can help Christians who observe Lent.
My recommendation comes from github. It’s a free utility that helps the user switch their MacBook screen resolution. It’s called DisableMonitor and runs in the OS X menu bar. A drop down box shows all the resolutions your monitor supports. This gives you far greater control over the screen resolution settings than the built-in Display Settings in System Preferences in OS X. I wrote up a full How To post on it at Notebooks.com.
