Digital Bible Blast 002 Covering Logos, PocketBible and More

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Mar 11, 2013 in Digital Bible Blast, Digital Bible Study | 0 comments

In this second episode of the Digital Bible Blast we cover a few things. Here are the show notes that go along with this episode.

Story One – Preaching Workflow

We cover the steps for writing sermons using a Mac and then getting those sermon notes on an iPad using the Pages app from Apple on the iPad. It amounts to writing in Pages on the Mac ($19.99) and then saving to iCloud and opening the sermon notes in Pages on the iPad ($9.99).

Store Two – Logos March Madness

Check out this year’s Logos March Madness at LogosMarchMadness.com.

Story Three – PocketBible for Windows Phone

Laridian announced that they made PocketBible available on the Windows Phone platform. Get it for free and $6.99 for the advanced features.

Story Four – iOS Bible App Updates

A few Bible apps received updates. The biggest came from YouVersion which added support for iPhone 5′s larger screen and the inclusion of video clips from The Bible miniseries from History Channel, the Jesus film and the Lomo Project as well as the KJV included in the download. Other app updates include:

• Olive Tree Bible
• e-Sword
• MantisBible

Story Five – More Logos News

Morris Proctor, the official Logos Bible Software trainer posted about the new features available in Logos 5 to coincide with the free barebones version of the Logos 5 engine becoming available for download. Check out the post to see what comes new in Logos 5.

They also started their March Madness campaign  Vote for favorite authors and save money on books based on the outcome of the competition. They’re now in round 2 with a 30% discount.

Morris Proctor explains what’s new on Mar 4 on Logos Blog

Free engine update available
Beta has new Notes editing engine that should improve things a lot

Logos 5 Discounts, Free Upgrade and Cheap Upgrade – UPDATED

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Feb 4, 2013 in Digital Bible Study | 0 comments

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:

• Bible Facts: Events
• Passage Guide: Events
• Bible Word Study: Phrases
• Topic Guide
• Visual Filter: Reported Speech
• Timeline
• Phrase Concordance
• Preaching Themes
• Thematic Outlines

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:

• Clause Search
• Bible Word Study: Senses
• Bible Sense Lexicon
• Exegetical Guide: Syntactic Force
• Clauses Dataset: LGNTISBL Edition and LHB Edition
• 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 soon can 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.

Logos 5 Sermon Starter Guide

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Nov 13, 2012 in Bible Software, Digital Bible Study, Preaching, Software | 0 comments

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.

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.

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. Keep notes along the way using a note attached to a reference, not a translation
6. Using the Sentence Diagram tool under Documents, create a structural diagram of the passage.
7. 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)
8. Search for these topics or themes using the Sermon Starter Guide reaching as much as needed in the various resources returned
9. Collect media resources for presentation
10. Come up with the outline of the text and translate that into an interesting contemporary preaching outline
11. 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)
12. 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.

Proclaim Remote App – Control Presentation with Sermon Notes on iPad

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Oct 4, 2012 in Apps, Digital Bible Study, Preaching | 0 comments

Proclaim worship software isn’t my favorite, but they do offer something that I don’t think anyone else gives to preachers – the ability to not only control their sermon presentation but also see their sermon notes. This benefits preachers like me who use their iPad or Android tablet for preaching instead of using printed notes.

The Proclaim Remote app will wireless control a Proclaim worship software presentation from an iPad, Android tablet or smartphone or even an iPhone or iPod Touch. The Remote app integrates sermon preaching notes into the control app. Pastors can control the slides from their pulpit or lectern as they preach. At the same time they will see their sermon notes. See the details at Logos.

Proclaim offers a lot of other tools for use like PowerPoint integration, incorporation of services like Song Select for song lyrics and multimedia services like Highway Media and Graceway Media. Worship leaders who use Planning Center Online can also integrate with the software.

Proclaim runs on both Windows and Mac and comes from Logos Bible Software. They cost is based on a church’s worship attendance. Smaller churches pay as little as $10/month while large churches pay $20/month.

I’m not a fan of the Proclaim tool itself because it makes creating a worship presentation convoluted and clotted. It takes me much longer to build my sermon presentation than other tools, like my favorite MediaShout. I also don’t like the subscription model which forces people to keep paying.

Despite my qualms with Proclaim, it can offer some great options for those who use Song Select, want to subscribe to a media service and put together their sermon slides in PowerPoint to then import into Proclaim.

A Full Toolbox for Exposition Part One: Text Comparison

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Sep 6, 2012 in Bible Software, Featured, Preaching, Software | 0 comments

Does your Bible study solution offer all the tools needed to do good Bible exposition so you can preach the Bible using an expository style? That’s an important question before you select a tool, invest more money for resources to grow your toolbox or as you consider a change in software or adding a secondary tool.

Expository Preaching Needs

I believe all expository preaching requires a preacher to do inductive Bible study first. That means I will study God’s word without the use of any extra-bibilcal sources first. Then, I will do things like language study, comparison of translations and cross-reference checking.

Image credit: DrGBB on Flickr

Doing this kind of Inductive study requires a couple of things.

1. Multiple translations – it helps to read the text in more than translation before going to language study
2. Translation comparisons – It’s helpful to see how the various translations differ from one another so a student can focus on the places they differ wildly since this clues us in to complex translation issues
3. Language tools – Greek and Hebrew offer complex ideas that sometimes English doesn’t give an equivalent translation
4. Quick topical search and good cross references – the ability to quickly find passages that relate to the topics in my text helps me know how my text fits into the context of the book, the testament and the Bible

Tools to Look For in Bible Software

First, ask if your Bible software or a solution you might buy offers at the least the following translations:

• KJV
• NKJV
• NASB
• ESV
• NIV

Why those five? They’re the most used and popular translations today. Most of your congregation will likely read from them as you preach. I’m not a huge fan of the NIV, but more people likely will read from the KJV and the NIV in the congregation than any other, unless you’ve actively promoted one translation over another.

You might also want your favorite. I use the HCSB to preach because I love the way it translates the text into easily understood language while also keeping true to the original text. If the KJV and NASB represent more literal translations and the NIV or NLT represent a dynamic translation that’s not as “word-for-word” exact, then the HCSB sits in the middle.

Other tools to look for include the ability to visually compare the text. Some will highlight the words that differ between two or more translations. Some will simple put them in columns next to each other offer them in a parallel way with one line for each. I prefer the ones that offer a visual difference. Look at an example from Logos Bible Software. Below see the Text Comparison tool.

That’s just one that Logos offers. Here’s another way to compare the text using what they call the Passage Analysis tool which includes five different ways to visually see how the text differs in the multiple translations.

Notice Accordance 10′s ability to mark up a text to show differences between two translations.

If you’re Bible software doesn’t offers some form of text comparison tool, then consider a change. If you’re looking at buying one without it, look somewhere else.

These aren’t the only two that offer this kind of comparison. They’re just two that I often use. I’d love for the makers of other software or apps to comment below to explain how they offer this capability in their toolboxes.

Looking Ahead

In a future post I’ll consider the language translation tools in various applications. Then we’ll look into tools for doing cross referencing. If you’ve got a recommendation, let me know in the comments below.