Logos 5 is here! That’s nothing new but the upgrade process comes with quite a sticker shock. Today is the last day to get some discounts on the base packages, but users can also move up to Logos 5 with three other less expensive options available either now or very soon.
UPDATE: We can now download the free limited Logos 5 engine for free without paying for a crossgrade or upgrade.
Two Less Expensive Upgrade Paths for Logos 5
Logos offers what they call the Logos 5 Core Datasets for $79.95 or about $21/month for a few months. This set includes the following:
See the “What’s New in Logos Bible Software 5 video below:
Logos 5 Minimal Crossgrade
With the Minimal Crossgrade, the buyer gets more for about twice the price. It costs $159.95 or $21/month. They call it the “bare-bones crossgrade to Logos 5″. This gives the user all the new stuff added for Logos 5. See the above video for details about these new features.
The list above comes with this upgrade. They also add the following:
Ancient Texts and Morphologies from the Lexham Hebrew and Greek tools
Lexham LXX
Faithlife Study Bible Notes
Lexham Bible Dictionary
New Topical Textbook
Animals Mentioned in Bible
Complete Book of When and Where: In the Bible and Throughout History
Plants of the Bible
Connect the Testaments devotional
Faithlife maps, photos and media
Lexham Interlinears
Bible Illustrations
There’s a lot there for just $160.
Free Basic Engine Upgrade
We expect that very sooncan now download the free limited engine of version five of Logos with a basic Logos 5 engine upgrade that doesn’t include many of the above features and content. You’ll have to gamble that you won’t want the new features and only the engine because their discounts will end before the free upgrade shows up on their website. When it shows up they will likely post links to their Support page.
My review of the latest update to Logos 5 came out in Christian Computing Magazine this week. You can read it in PDF format and consider signing up for a free subscription to get my monthly columns.
Next months should cover how to set up a live stream of your worship service using free services and a camera you may already own.
Just a quick quote from the Logos 5 review:
Logos surprised users by dropping version five November 1st. So what’s new in Logos 5. First, a solid edition that hasn’t crashed in the weeks I’ve used it. Also, much better performance gets exhibited in things like the notes editor. There’s no lag. What else is new?
We get a cleaner and more useful user interface. The Logos home page that showed up in version 4 now shows more on a single page. They moved the prayer lists, reading plans and library discovery tool from the top to the left. They also still offer a Home, Library and Search button.
The Sermon Starter Guide sits atop my list of favorite new features in Logos 5. Think of it as the Passage Guide but for preachers. The Sermon Starter Guide helps preachers combine middle steps study and sermon prep into one easy report. I say middle steps because preachers should never use this guide early in the study process. More on that later.
For people who haven’t used Logos before, think of the guides as a digital research assistant. I tell the guide to go look in my library for content related to a passage or a topic. For example, I preached this past week on 2 Timothy 1:8. I did a search on the passage and on the topics of fear, witness, evangelism and power.
Using the Sermon Starter Guide
Find the Sermon Starter Guide under the Guides menu.
Start a Sermon Starter guide report using the Guides menu
Now uses the Sermon Starter Guide to do one of two kinds of supported searches – passage and topic searches. While entering a passage might help if the preacher doesn’t understand his passage yet, I think the best start comes from entering the passage’s primary topic. Preachers should wait to do this until after they’ve studied the passage using the word study tools and the Exegetical Guide in Logos. Once that’s done, then do a topic or passage search using the Sermon Starter Guide.
For example, I ran a report on 2 Tim. 1:8 below.
The list of included data in a default Sermon Starter Guide shows the following:
Theme – shows themes from the chosen passage
Thematic Outline – an outline of topics related to the above themes with example texts, great for surveying what the Bible says about the topics in a chosen passage
Collections – searches the passage or topic in a predefined collection of works
Media Resources – visual resources related to the passage or topic
Commentaries – commentary entries about the passage
Outlines – outlines from books related to the passage like commentary outlines or Bible handbooks
Parallel Passages – cross references of the passage or topic
Topics – topcis related to the passage with references
Illustrations – sermon illustrations from illustration books
GraceMedia.com – media from the site useful only to those who subscribe
SermonAudio.com – audio sermons about this passage
Sermons.Logos.com – same as previous but text-based from Logos’ sermons database
SermonCentral.com – same as previous but from this site
Customizing Sermon Starter Guide
This guide works great, but not all of these entries work for everyone. That’s why I love that I can create a different set of default data sets using the Add button to include more along with the default. Also an X button shows up at the end of the list items to delete that particular guide data set. Click on the Sermon Guide menu in the upper left corner of the guide window and choose to Edit the content to make your own guide for future use.
From now on, run this edited version instead of the default version to get a sermon guide that helps you.
Good Exegesis by Doing Sermon Starter Guide Last
Before leaving this topic, let me suggest that you not jump on this Sermon Starter Guide at the beginning of your sermon prep. Do the basic exegesis of a passage by studying the words using an Inductive approach and then do word studies. The Exegetical Guide helps in this second step. Then stop and think about the ideas included in the passage and run your sermon guides on those topics first and then on the passage last. This workflow will help you become more biblical and not as tied to third-party tools.
To summarize, here’s how I’d use Logos in my sermon prep in order of steps from first to last.
Find a passage using search tools – search topics first or just enter passage if you already know the reference of a passage you want to preach
Delineate the passage by reading it repeatedly using the Passage Analysis Tool and the Pericope Set to show the first and last verse in passage sections according to editors of the various Bible translations
Use the Text Comparison Tool to read the text over and over in different versions and consult the Passage Analysis Tool again to compare translations
Do language study – some will translate from Greek or Hebrew while others will run Bible Word Studies on important words in the passage and/or using the Exegetical Guide and looking up words in dictionaries using the Power Lookup Tool
Keep notes along the way using a note attached to a reference, not a translation
Using the Sentence Diagram tool under Documents, create a structural diagram of the passage.
Determine the topic or theme of the passage (I’m a Big Idea preacher from the Haddon Robinson school so I like to come up withe the Big Idea at this point)
Search for these topics or themes using the Sermon Starter Guide reaching as much as needed in the various resources returned
Collect media resources for presentation
Come up with the outline of the text and translate that into an interesting contemporary preaching outline
Use info from the Sermon Starter Guide where it fits by doing the four kinds of sermon development (explain ideas, illustrate them, prove them and apply them)
Put it all together and then look over it to determine if the sermon points to the glory of God or instead pushes us to “do better” and fix it if it fits in the latter
I hope this helps you see where the Sermon Starter Guide fits in the sermon prep process.
Logos 5 launched with some exciting new tools and a few updated old ones. I want to share three of them with you.
Bible Facts Tool
Logos reworked some of their tools used to learn about people, places and things with the new Bible Facts Tools. It focuses on giving users some visually rich information about these things as we study our Bibles. Added to them we get events too. The tool pulls its information from many places, like Bible dictionaries, atlases and collections of visual tools.
Here’s how the tool works. Logos describes this as running a “Biblical background check.” I like that. I can just open it from the Tools menu in Logos 5 or as I’m studying a passage I can select a person, place, thing or event and right-click. The menu will often show me those things. Select Jesus and find the Person entry in the right side of the popup menu. Select it and see a ton of content.
The visual tools present tell us about the person with things like family trees or relationship graphs. Places show maps and pictures of the places. Events show up on a Bible Timeline (see below). And students can take these visual tools out to presentation software, like PowerPoint.
Along with the visual tools that the Bible Facts window shows, you get reference tools like searches in the Bible and Hebrew or Greek words translated as your word.
See this demo video below:
Bible Timeline
As I showed in the video above, Logos 5 comes with a new Bible Timeline that shows off the timeline of both Biblical and historical events on a horizontal timeline.
The tool lets users filter based on event, date and it lets users customize the look.
Biblical Sense Lexicon
The Bible Sense Lexicon offers students a quick way to search the Semantic Domains in Bible study to learn the “sense” of a Biblical word. It helps users find words related to your word by meaning. Here’s a brief video demo of the tool. http://youtu.be/Sk-57aGnm8I The quickest way to get at it, as shown above, is through the Reverse Interlinear tool. Open a Bible with a Reverse Interlinear like the ESV and make sure the Bible Sense line shows at the bottom of the interlinear information at the bottom of the Bible window. If not, right-click on the list to the left and check the Bible Sense line, which is at the bottom. Now, highlight a word with a Bible Sense Lexicon entry. Not all words in the Bible show up in the lexicon. My example came from 2 Timothy 1:7, and I looked up the word “testimony”. Click on the link in the Bible Sense line of the Reverse Interlinear to open the lexicon. It shows a few things.
Bible Sense Lexicon
In the image above, notice the dictionary entry followed by two hyperlinks. These will open a Bible Word Study of each word. Below that we see a graph showing where this word shows up in the Bible. Along the right we see how the word relates to other words in that Semantic Domain. Click each of the words to open the Lexicon to that tool.
Logos released Logos 5 yesterday and their servers were hit with a ton of people downloading the update. It’s a great update and everyone should grab it as soon as they can. Right now they don’t offer a free crossgrade like they have in the past but it will come soon. Until they do, check out Joe Miller’s nice video showing off the new features.
Unfortunately, Logos chose to use the same bundle names for their packages. I’ll explain why I say “unfortunately” in a bit.
Logos 5 includes the following bundle names:
Starter
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Diamond
Portfolio
To upgrade to the Platinum edition will cost me nearly $485.
Wait!
What?
I owned the Platinum package under Logos 4 and to go from the same package to the new Logos 5 version costs almost $500? The answer is both yes and no.
First, yes it will cost me that much to get the Logos 5 Platinum bundle. However, the Logos 4 Platinum holds the same tools as the Logos 5 Silver package. In other words, Logos actually added more stuff to their packages and thus chose to demote our package names even though we still get the same books. The upgrade page tells me to upgrade from my current Logos package to the new Logos 5 with the same books will not cost me much at all if I pick a lower level package than I did under Logos 4. I will not lose any books I own, but will get some great new tools and features.
If people want to upgrade to Logos 5 without paying much or anything, wait till the crossgrade shows up in the future. Until then Logos will give the people willing to help them keep the lights on, the servers running and their employees paid, will get early access. The rest will have to wait a bit. Not an unfair trade-off.
Right now, many people are posting all kinds of vitriol in the Logos user forums over this method of upgrading using the same names. People feel duped and I understand the confusion. But it’s unfair. In hindsight the solution might have been for Logos to use different package names. Call the old Platinum package the new Logs 5 Black Package and the old Gold the new Red. Maybe numbers like Logos 5 X, Logos 5 XI or something. It would help defray the confusion that’s causing so much consternation.
For an explanation, Bog Pritchett posted in the above linked thread.
When a new movie comes out, I can only take a family of four to watch it at the theater. (3D movie, as much as $12.95 x 4, plus popcorn and snacks we’ll probably buy. Easily $50-60.)
If I wait six months (often less!) I can rent that movie from the DVD kiosk machine for $1, and all four of us can watch it with 25 cents of home-made popcorn.
When you go to the movie theater, are you angry that on opening night there isn’t a kiosk with $1 rental versions of the same film right next to the ticket line? Should it “have been available from the start to allow viewers who decide they can’t afford the theater experience not feel left out”?
- Is this wrong, or just frustrating?
- If the $1 rental was available the first day, do you think the revenue would be enough to cover the cost of making the movie?
That’s an apt analogy and makes perfect sense. I’m fortunate to once again get a free upgrade to the software alone as a reviewer and journalist. However, if I wasn’t I’d likely pay a bit to get the new features on day one. I want Logos and other great Bible software to remain available for years to come and helping Bob and company put food on the table makes that likely.
UPDATE:
Bob Pritchett also explained the situation going forward for those who only want to get the new features of Logos. Essentially, in the linked post at the Logos Forum Bob wrote that Logos 5 will become available as a basic search engine only upgrade for free. All the new features will become available for a small fee at a future unspecified date.
Dan Pritchett, VP of Logos
Dan Pritchett, Vie President of Logos and Bob’s brother, told me that Logos has a challenging task. They must support past buyers while still keeping the lights on at Logos. They struggle to get qualified top-flight programmers who can often make a lot more at places like Microsoft, Google or Apple. So they must pay these people and find ways to fund development of future awesome features that draw users back to Logos, like the great Sermon Starter Guide and the many visual ways they show off Bible content.
I asked Dan about the problem people have with the new names and he explained that rebranding their many packages is a challenge. In the past they called them levels. Today they use package names like Gold, Silver and Platinum. Whatever they call them, there’s confusion so they kept the same names.
Finally, I asked Dan about the trouble balancing their role as a group that seeks to support the church by offering Bible software and working as a for-profit business that seeks to make money. He explained that a lot of Bible software makers went the non-profit route and couldn’t keep going or couldn’t make the incredible products that business like Logos can make. He said that they realize that Logos costs some money and not everyone will want to pay what they charge. That’s okay with them. People can get other programs that cost less. He believes that will not get as much value, but they recognize that “Logos isn’t for everyone.”
I appreciate the way both Dan and Bob interact with their customers. I’m impressed with the candor fo these two men and hope the best for them and Logos just as I do for all the great people who work in the Bible software industry.
