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Looking Forward to the Resurrection
If you are as enthusiastic about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as many believers are, you may have your annual resurrection Sunday traditions or celebrations planned. Perhaps you begin that happy morning with a heart stirring listen to George Frederick Handel's Hallelujah. Maybe you attend an early morning service with a local church. There are many great ways to encourage your faith on such an important day.
Would you consider adding a new tradition this year? Why not read each day's events of the Passion Week in chronological order? Gain a fresh perspective on the tension that Jesus' arrival into Jerusalem brought. Revisit our Lord's final lessons to his disciples.
At Bible.org there are two free resources that will help you reflect on the Passion Week leading up to the greatest day on the calendar. Take a minute to look at it. Set up your digital calendar to remind you to begin to read. Share these with others so they, too, can enjoy the Passion Week like never before.
New Bible.org Team Member
Ministry Development
David Lawson, MBA
David joins the Bible.org team with over 16 years of executive leadership experience in the nonprofit and business sectors. He served as Senior Vice President of Prison Fellowship Ministries, Executive Vice President of The Urban Alternative, and was in leadership and management roles at IBM Corporation. That's right, he has worked alongside of Chuck Colson and Dr. Tony Evans. He is also a former member of the Standards Committee of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). David has a successful track record of leading organizational transformation strategies designed to improve processes, efficiency, costs and overall bottom line performance. Please pray for David in his new role at Bible.org. We are glad he is on the team.
Milestones
We have had some tremendous milestones at Bible.org this past month. Seven times we exceeded our most pageviews in a single day. We are grateful to all of the Bible.org visitors for trusting us with their valuable time. Bible.org is thrilled to provide all of our quality biblical resources free to so many people.
Social Media
Bible.org provides valuable interaction with our enthusiasts regularly through social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. We currently have a user reach of nearly 205,000 souls. If you, or anyone you know, would like to interact with Bible.org there please do so. If you haven't done so, go ahead give us a like or a follow. We will not disappoint.
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Tips and Tricks: Fuzzy Search?
The NET Bible Study Environment is powerful. In particular, its ability to perform a "fuzzy search" catapults it into one of the most advanced free online Bible study tools. And just so you know, it has nothing to do with a hairless bear.
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Now you may be saying to yourself, "wait a minute... what's search got to do with anything?... especially anything called 'fuzzy'?" The answer may surprise you.
The user experience within an online Bible study tool is vital. Many search bars within an online Bible study tool do not employ fuzzy search. Rather they use a search engine that often requires an exact match in a single translation to produce any results. This places an unnecessary burden on the user to get things exactly correct all the time. However, if you try to find a made up phrase in the NET Bible Study Environment it will handle your mistake and most likely give you the verse as a top result.
Need an example? Have you ever misremembered a verse by merging two English translations together? Try searching for "a man hath many companions" in the NET Bible Study Environment search bar.
The search will produce the verse from the NET Bible you were looking for as the top result (Proverbs 18:24) even though it is not even close to matching the NET Bible's translation.
How does it do it? The NET Bible Study Environment searches multiple translations at once, and tries to match your search term(s) against every verse in each translation after dismissing the nonessential words. The results are ranked based on how well your search terms match the translations of each verse.
Next, right click on "Open Verse in Parallel View."
The left panel will display Proverbs 18:24 from other English translations used by the fuzzy search.
No English translation begins Proverbs 18:24 with "A man hath many companions" but it was close enough for fuzzy search to find it and it will highlight the exact matched terms from the search in yellow. If multiple translations of a verse use a particular phrase that a user entered into a query, then that verse is probably a good match. Therefore it displays that verse in the results.
Unless one selects "Exact" from the bottom filter pane, the NET Bible Study Environment will only match word stems against one another.
Give the NET Bible Study Environment fuzzy search a try. It will handle the phrase you're looking for quickly. |
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Educating the Local Church
It's Sunday morning. You've narrowly made it to church on time. The singing hides your delayed entrance into the sanctuary. Ever since you woke up you've been scrambling to feed, groom, and cloth your squirming little bundles of joy. You're glad your coffee didn't spill on you while driving to church. But now you've settled into your seat for the preaching and you begin to panic inside.
You forgot your Bible. This isn't like you. But it happened. Holding your breath you look. "Hymnal. Hymnal... ah... there it is... the Pew Edition NET Bible." Panic subsides. Disaster avoided. You simply bend down to pick it up and exhale a smile. And look... 7,720 notes! This pew Bible is as good as many study Bibles are. This Sunday you hit the jackpot.
What if your church didn't have a Pew Bible available?
We live in an age where biblical literacy is in decline. That doesn't have to happen in your local church. Equip the congregation with the Pew Edition NET Bible. It's a low cost solution to your church's educational needs. Put the primary source of the sermon's material into their hands. Help them look at the evidence for themselves. Love on your learners.
Consider this message from the Pastor of Trinity Bible Church in Richardson, TX, Jeff Miller:
A few years ago we invited members to sponsor a Pew NET Bible-or box of Pew NET Bibles-with a donation. It was a risky move, since we needed hundreds to fill up our pew slots. But God was good. God's people were generous. It took just one Sunday morning to fill the pews with NET Bibles. Furthermore, it didn't cost a dime out of the church budget."
Our church loves the NET Bible translation. It is trustworthy, striking that elusive balance of readability and reliability.
It is a privilege to have the entire congregation reading from the same translation during the message. And not just the same translation, the same edition. That means that I can supply them with the exact page number where the passage begins. This reduces the intimidation factor from those less familiar with God's Word. As a pastor, I can't tell you for certain that members are opening up God's Word any other day of the week, but I get to see them doing it every Sunday morning. That's refreshing.
The NET Bible is a modern translation that has a top-notch online study environment. That means they can read their Pew NET Bible during the Sunday sermon, and then go deeper in the study environment at net.bible.org where they'll find the same familiar translation.
The Pew Edition NET Bible is a price that is hard to beat by the caseor by individual copy. We keep it very close to the production cost to pass along the savings to churches worldwide. This is great news when many churches find themselves financially challenged.
The educational needs of the church can still be helped with this most basic tool. It's what the New Testament apostles themselves have given to educate the church for the past 2,000 years.
Please forward this email to church leadership for consideration. Think about making your church's stock Bible a Pew Edition NET Bible.
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NET Bible Study Environment Updates
How do you make the one of the most advanced free online Bible study tools better? With beautiful satellite maps and icons for your personal notes, of course. We have released two updates to theNET Bible Study Environment in the last few days.
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"The Holy Land from the Heavens"
Ten years ago the Second Beta NET Bible was published. It was the first Bible to feature beautiful color satellite maps and pictures of the Holy Land. Absolute eye candy. Corresponding "map" notes were created throughout the entirety of the NET Bible to help users find the geographical locations in the map section. These same maps and notes from the Second Beta are featured in the First Edition NET Bible and the Reader's Edition NET Bible. Now you can access these same beautiful maps online with the NET Bible Study Environment. The map notes have been in the NET Bible Study Environment but now they link directly to those satellite maps.
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When you encounter a NET Bible note that includes map references simply click the link to one of the maps to view it. For example, see Joshua 11 notes 1, 11, 14, and 20. Give it a try.
Benefits?
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Not overwhelmed by modern geographical markers.
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Remain in the NET Bible Study Environment.
New Personal Notes Icon
The NET Bible Study Environment has the ability to save your own personal notes in The Environment. For registered users this has been a standard feature for some time when logged in. "Your Notes" under the "Notes" tab displays the material you entered.
We received an email asking if we could add a feature to indicate that a personal note had been created at each particular Bible passage in the NET Bible Study Environment. We listened.
Now when you log in and encounter a NET Bible passage where you've created a personal note you will see a new "Your Notes" icon by the NET Bible verse number (see the example icon below after "8:24").
Clicking the icon will immediately change the right panel to display "Your Notes" under the "Notes" tab. This helps you remember where you've created notes. So go ahead, create more notes!
If you do not see a new note's icon immediately, please navigate to a different passage of the Bible. Then return to where you've created the new note and the icon will appear.
Thank you for using Bible.org and reading the NET Bible. We are glad to be of service to you.
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Rejoicing in Christ's Resurrection,
The Bible.org Team
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