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If you use Logos Bible Software, you should consider Morris Proctors MPSeminars.com. I review this training subscription service here and on YouTube. See my video and read the review here.

Thanks to MPSeminars.com from Morris Proctor, you can comprehensively learn how to use Logos Bible Software. This service offers a slew of videos and courses on how to use the powerful computer (desktop and laptop) software for studying the Bible.

Note that I’ve republished this review from two years ago because of a nice update to the training site. Look below for the bold and italicized paragraph under the “User-Interface” section.

My video review on the Theotek YouTube Channel. Go subscribe and like it there.

In this review, we’ll look at the courses and how well the service works. Let’s judge MPSeminars.com on three criteria…

  1. Quality of Training
  2. User Interface
  3. Value for Money
morris proctor mpseminars.com

Morris Proctor MPSeminars.com Quality of Training

I subscribed to the Morris Proctor’s MPseminars.com Logos Bible Software training library for a few months now. In that time, I went through a few courses and watched maybe 100 videos so far. Morris Proctor knows not only how Logos works, but he also knows how to effectively teach users to use this complex and powerful Bible study tool.

morris proctor mpseminars video tutorial

Each video has excellent sound and Morris Proctor speaks clearly. His voice is easy to listen to and I enjoyed taking the courses.

Back in 2005 I bought my first package of Logos 3.0 and have been using Logos off and on for the last 14 plus years. I’d call myself an intermediate user. Plenty of people have a better understanding of the more arcane tools built into Logos Bible Software, but I’m no beginner.

In spite of nearly 15 years of use, I still learned some things from Morris Proctor and MPSeminars.com.

Morris Proctor MPSeminars.com User Interface

I like the user interface generally but have a few gripes. The site follows the blue and white branding of Logos and has a modern look and arrangement. When you open the site, you can clearly see where to go for different parts of the subscription service.

The first page, after a user logs into their account, mimics the look of the Home Page in Logos 8 with cards in a 3 column grid similar to the columns of cards in Logos 8’s home page.

At the top you will see a set of tabs for the following:

  • Training Library – the bulk of the training courses show up here and they offer courses for both Logos 7 and Logos 8.
  • Free Training – you don’t have to pay to use MPSeminars.com. They offer some free courses on this section, which they organized like a blog with articles for each topic of training.
  • Camp Logos – if you want to get live training in person, the go here to sign up for the scheduled Camp Logos. As of this writing we see only one Camp Logos course in Murfreesboro, TN for Dec. 9-11, 2019 and it costs $129-$329 depending on whether you want to attend the live webinar (online with no travel to TN necessary) or in-person. You can also rent a computer so you don’t need to bring yours. I’d recommend you bring your own.
  • Account – shows your specific account interface and lets you manage your subscriptions.
  • Logout – log out of the site.
  • Search – a button to search the site.

Users will spend most of their time in the Training Library. It has training for both Logos 7 and Logos 8. I’m a Logos 8 users, so we’ll focus on that part of the library.

You find courses like “What’s new in Logos 8” and “Quickstart for Logos Bible Software Version 8”. A more comprehensive list of courses shows up under the Logos 8 A to Z: A Video Reference Guide, which includes courses for most of the features, if not all of them, found in Logos 8. Use this as a reference guide. If you have a question on one specific tool, head here to find a video to learn how to use it.

Strangely, even though I’m a subscriber, I get this message that pops up when I first clicked this part of the Training Library instructing me to click on the Take this Course button to add it to my list of “My Courses”. That seems silly. I’d rather just click and let it open the list of courses.

MPSeminars.com Video Interface

Once you begin taking a course, the website falls down a little. When I watch the videos, I like to watch them in a faster speed. It sounds funny, but you get through the course quicker. People who don’t like this don’t have to do it. You won’t even notice this unless you change it. However, I do like to speed up the videos.

To watch the videos in their fastest speed and highest quality, 1080p and at 1.5x times speed, I have to change this setting every time. I like that I can change it, but the videos default to lower quality and 1x speed. For most people, it should default to lower quality and 1x speed. But once I change it, I wish I didn’t have to keep changing it. I suspect this is a limitation of the software they use to present the videos. It looks a lot like Vimeo, a service like YouTube. And they probably don’t offer the option. I just wish MPSeminars.com could find a way to add this feature.

After you start watching the videos in a course, the site shows your progress with a visual progress bar and a list of the course outline to the right of the video. The completed sections show an orange checkmark next to the section. Incomplete sections show up as a gray empty circle where the checkmark will go once the user completes that course.

At the end of each video, you can mark that video as complete. It would be ideal if the website would automatically mark it or give the learner an option for the site to mark it complete automatically. When you click on the Mark Complete button, it will automatically take you to the next video without any interaction from the learner.

UPDATE: The folks at MP Seminars found a way to fix one of the above complaints. Users can now watch a video and the site automatically advance to the next video marking the previously watched video as complete.

A few courses look like they have videos that are slightly out of date. It doesn’t happen often. The user can still learn from the course, but you get little differences between the current version and the way the software looks in the video. For example, in a course entitled “Bible Study with God and Guides – Passage Study” you see a problem. In the video, it says enter Luke 4:1-4 and you’ll see Open Passage in the command box. That’s not the way the program behaves in the current version. Instead, it says Open Passage Study Guide to Luke 4:1-4. It’s a minor annoyance, but can confuse beginning users getting started with the most recent version of Logos 8.

Value for Money

Morris Proctor does a great job on MPSeminars.com of training users. The cost of the service is not cheap and you can get a lot of what you get for free on the Logos Training website. There’s a reason Morris is the official trainer of the company. He does a great job. But he also charges a pretty penny for his courses.

The monthly subscription costs $19.99. There’s an annual subscription for $199.99 too. You can buy courses without paying, but I like that I get all updated courses, even when Logos 9 comes out, which I assume will happen by the end of 2019.

To buy the courses instead of subscribing you’ll have to pay. The Logos A to Z course, their most comprehensive training on Logos 8, costs $500. The What’s New in Logos 8 course costs $100. They offer a Time-Saving Tips and Tricks course for $50. And a few courses are only available to subscribers.

The service even taught me, a long-time user some new things. Plus it reminds you of the features that you might have stopped using, thinking they are too basic but have improved since you quit using them. For example, I tried the Canvas tool early on, but never really liked it. The training on the What’s New course on Logos 8 inspired me to try it out again and I like it.

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