Tuesday, March 06, 2007

e-Bible Study

Since you're taking the time to read this electronic journal, I assume you also do many other tasks on the computer, as most of us do these days. It seems, that many things that were once done almost exclusively with book in hand, can now be done much easier electronically. For instance you no longer have to steal a persons diary, to know what they, thinking. Now you can just enter the URL of their blog into the address bar of your web browser and viola. I personally spend many hours each week on the computer for work. I do everything from correspondence with supporting churches to banking and money matters. The most time consuming thing I do on the computer, though, is prepare sermons and Bible studies. As little as five years ago, my method of choice for sermon preparation was to sit at my desk with several opened Bible commentaries and other reference works and write out my thoughts on a sheet of paper. I would create an outline from these thoughts and write it out on paper as well. As a final step, I would type the written outline into a computer document. These days, with the help of a couple of free apps (programs for the Windows user) and a few websites, I do the great majority of it on the computer (I still use some hard copy books).

Software

My favorite free program is a Windows program called e-Sword. I really wish they offered this for Mac. There is a Pocket PC version, though, which works well. You can download e-Sword for free at: http://www.e-sword.net/.

Another free program that is available is Online Bible. It is for several platforms including Windows, Mac, Pocket PC and Palm. I don't like it as much as e-Sword but it is still a useful app. You can find it at http://www.onlinebible.net/.

There is also a Mac program called MacSword, which I just recently downloaded. The interface is nice but it doesn't seem very stable. It is a part of the Sword Project, which offers similar programs for other OS's. MacSword is available for download at http://www.macsword.com/.

Online Resources

There are also a few websites that I frequent for Bible study. One is Biblegateway.com, which offers several different translations of the Bible.

A similar site is dieBibel.de. It is a German site but it is also available in English. The thing I like about it is you can set it up as a parallel Bible using whichever translations you want.

Last is a site called BibleStudyTools.net. It is just that.

I, obviously, find these resources useful as a pastor, but anyone with a desire to study the Bible would benefit from them. Have a great one.

Danny

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