Who is Bible.org?

By: David Austin

The Bible.org family is a community of Christians with a shared vision and purpose. It is made up of men and women from all walks of life, e.g. scholars, pastors, teachers, students, housewives, etc. from all across the globe who have moved from sitting on the sidelines of life to joining the race of life making their lives count for eternity by sharing what they have been freely given by God with others. They want to make their lives mean something and they plan to finish the “race of life” well as Paul talks about in 2 Tim 4:7-8 and when they “finish well” they will receive eternal rewards Matthew 25:23. The Bible.org family include people who have retired and now volunteer full time, authors who have donated their life's work to the site so that it would be available forever, and authors who give their work so it can be downloaded for free for those who can not afford to buy the same material from our e-store. Many of our part time staff are volunteers who have day jobs and sacrificially give of their expertise and time. The remaining operational staff are salaried. All in the bible.org community are your servants and are dedicated in completing the Great Commission journey well. That journey begins by an act of faith, when a person recognizes that they are a sinner and need someone to pay the penalty for their sin. That someone is their savior, Jesus Christ. It continues as we read the Bible and understand that Christianity is a relationship with God who gives us the Holy Spirit to help us take our next step in faith and learn more about Christ and His commandment to tell others about Christ and to disciple others. As we walk this journey of faith and invest in others we gain eternal rewards and a satisfaction and a meaning to our life that makes gains or power and the riches of this world insignificant by comparison. By joining others on the same journey we can accomplish great things for the Kingdom of God. Would you consider joining the bible.org community in this journey/race that Paul talks about in 2 Tim 4:7-8 and share your time, talents, monies, and prayers so that when the race is over you to will receive the crown of righteousness and all hear the words “well done” Matthew 25:23.

What has Bible.org done to date and what is their vision?

The Bible.org community has assembled thousands of quality biblical articles and its scholars have produced the the highly acclaimed NETBible, a new English translation with over 60,000 footnotes to help the reader understand the teachings from the prophets and apostles. Bible.org vision is to equip all people with quality material, independent of their ability to pay, and it serves millions of users across the globe who read and download these “free” materials from the site. Bible.org and its supporters believe that their “Ministry First” approach will be sustained by God who will use those who believe this ministry is needed and should be expanded.

Bible.org's Vision and Purpose is:

To Equip all people to:	Attain the knowledge of the Son of God..	Col 1:9-10
	Become a mature person in Christ .........	Eph 4:12-16
and be....	Competent to teach others.....................	2 Tim 2:1-2

And it's Mission is to:

Be a servant and partner to churches around the globe, to help people develop Faith Communities that produce lasting personal relationships that results in Christians actually Caring for each other as Christ commands us to do John 13:34, Heb 10:24; 1 John 3:23, as we work to complete the race of life 2 Tim 4:7-8 and Christ's Great Commission task in one generation. Matt 28:19, Col 1:6.

What does Bible.org plan to do in the rest of 2009 and 2010?

Continue to be the premier site on the Internet for finding “Trusted Biblical Content”
We would like add a Google like and become the number 1 search site for finding Christian content. We have been talking about search techniques that could not only find material on bible.org but anywhere on the Internet. To be more useful it would need the ability for organizations to endorse articles and for people to review material telling others if they found the material biblical and useful.
Create an open community Internet social networking site for Christians to share.
Taking our lead from Acts 1:9, With your support, we plan to focus our efforts on projects that help the local church, around the world, create environments where people can find and develop caring and lasting relationships whether they live in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria or in the farthest parts of the earth. We sense that the western church is losing the relationship war as its youth are making virtual relationships in social networks like Facebook. As an Internet based ministry, Bible.org needs to expand its web ministry from being just a biblical reference site to one that can supports community building e.g. user groups, blogs and instant messaging discussions. It needs to harness web technology and team with the local church and concerned Christians and provide a virtual place to interact with the non-Christians and to take these new virtual relationships developed on the Internet and provide a physical place to anchor them e.g. a bible study, where people can find love for one-another and a love for the study of God's Word. To support this project we are launching a USERS site and linking it to Facebook. This Users site will support the establishment of local bible study groups for churches and can be used by any member to share their studies with others in this new virtual community.
Launch the NETBible Another initiative we look forward to this year is a plan to Launch the NETBible and to partner with the current users of the NETBible to “get the word out” about how great a translation the NETBible and its notes are. We will supply you with brochures and material that you can use to put the NETBible in your church store and encourage your local Christian Book store to become a reseller of the NETBible. We will offer special packages of the NETBible so your youth group or your missions trip group can use the sale of NETBibles as a fund raising vehicle. It would be a perfect gift to use for fund raising as it provides a lasting benefit to the purchaser when they study it themselves.
- As part of this focus on the NETBible we will enhance the NETBible learning environment with the help of our partner Sabda.org.
Enhanced pastors Community Group: We also plan to enhance our support for our pastors community with a new pastors only community group on http://users.bible.org . We plan to product better tools for pastors to use the NETBible in there sermons.

Would you Join the Bible.org family today and Help us tell others about the NETBible and help us develop Faith Communities that produce lasting personal relationships that results in Christians actually Caring for each other as Christ commands us to do. We need all kinds of people who want to change the world one heart at a time so their children and grand children will have a better place to live. Some people devote their lives to save the planet. Christ commands us to devote our lives to see people saved for eternity.

Join our community today by emailing us at Volunteer or
you can email me directly at David Austin exec director

For more Project detail see the approved projects page

To learn more about how Bible.org began read the History page below

Bible.org's History begins in 1995:

It began with the founder's vision to use the Internet as a platform to extend the reach and impact of great teachers outside their local geographical area and allow them to reach audiences that were much greater than their normal weekly audience. The founder's pastor had a small country church with 20 people in his Sunday school class and while many of his younger students went off to seminary his impact was extremely effective but limited in reach. The founder's vision was to build a platform where good Bible teachers/authors could make their material widely available so anyone in the world could read it and download it for free. He set up Biblical Studies Foundation with its http://Bible.org site as a non-profit 501(C)3 organization in 1995. The purpose of the site was to develop and distribute trusted evangelical Bible study materials in electronic format so that anyone with Internet access would have access to trusted biblically based biblical studies. The founder (who wishes to remain anonymous.Matt 23:11-12) was a successful businessman who wanted to be a good steward of the monetary blessings that the Lord had given him and one of his key verses was Lev 23:22 that taught the principle: fruit from his labors be made available for free to the poor and foreigners. This biblical principle is foundational for bible.org as they trust God for the funds He provides from donations, tent-making activities and sales. God has blessed the ministry over the years as it has developed, acquired and delivered millions of bible studies and Bibles to both open and closed countries all around the world, without regards to their ability to pay. Using the Internet as a cheap distribution channel it is able to do this at a cost of less than one penny per study.

However, this vision to provide trusted bible studies for free on-line was interrupted in 1995 because of the copyright restrictions associated with quoting modern bible translations e.g. NIV and NASB etc. The founder of bible.org immediately attempted to buy the rights to quote a modern translation and was refused. He discovered ,in 1995, that copyright owners of modern Bibles just didn't have a way to license quotations for use to ministries who want to quote scripture and give their studies away for free on the Internet. He then added to his vision to fix this copyright restriction problem. The solution was to turn to the scholars and begin the 10 year multi-million dollar development Bible translation project called the NET Bible. The NETBible is a completely new translation of the Bible that allows authors of bible studies to be free to quote a modern translation without being hostage to copyright 'hell", it is not a revision or an update of a previous English version. It was completed by more than twenty biblical scholars who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. It is unique in that it has over 60,000 footnotes explaining why the translators chose the words that they did. This history raising step moved bible.org up out of the copyright dilemma and caused bible.org to adopt and announce that the NETBible will be part of the “Ministry First” philosophy.
How does bible.org begin to implement “Ministry First” for the NETBible?

Bible.org allows anyone in the world with an Internet connection to use (download and print) the NET Bible without cost for personal study.

In addition, anyone who wants to share the Bible with others can print an unlimited number copies and give them away free to others. This is unprecedented in the Christian Publishing Business.

We invite anyone to present us with a proposal to put the NETBible text on a new platform and will work with them to make it available to the world for free ( we have NETBible modules for: e-sword, Sword, Bibleworks, Accordance, Libronix, IPhone, IPod audio, )

Kindle noteless (note this was done by a volunteer and needs to be redone see reviews )[if you are interested in making a Kindle version let us know click feedback link bottom of page]

And.... We are looking at how to rewrite the copyright statement so it is more in line with ministry first see copyright innovations.

for a more complete discussion of our vision, goals and ministry heart see the Link below titled "Read More about Bible.org Vision, Goals"

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