Faithlife Asks: How do you 'work' a Bible passage?

Bob Pritchett

How do you work on a passage as part of your study or sermon preparation?

Do you use visual filters? The highlighting tool? The sentence diagramming tool?

Are you able to do everything you want in one tool, or do you use a combination of tools?

Do you ever print it out and work on it with a pen or pencil?

I'd love to see examples; screenshots of your 'ready to preach' marked-up text, or scans/photos of anything you still do on paper. We want to make Logos even more useful, and knowing what you're doing -- and more importantly, what you're doing outside Logos because you can't do it inside Logos, will help.

Kevin A. Purcell

We want to make Logos even more useful, and knowing what you're doing -- and more importantly, what you're doing outside Logos because you can't do it inside Logos, will help.

First here’s my steps list.

1. Diagram using ESV and the Logos 7 Diagramming tool.

2. I open a few translations and read it repeatedly and record my observations and questions about the text in my Bible Notes document in Logos 7.

3. I use my phone or tablet to mark up the text that I’ve exported from Logos to a document that I can draw on using my Apple Pencil or Samsung Galaxy Note stylus. (CAN’T DO THAT IN LOGOS!!)

4. I then do word studies using the built in Greek or Hebrew words study layout (great addition in recent version).

5. Now it’s time to consult things like dictionaries, atlases, etc. for key words, places, people.

6. Next I use passage guide to open all of my top commentaries prioritized in Logos and go through them to check my observations and conclusions.

7. By this point I’m ready to export my passage to Word using copy bible verse tool. I then go through the steps to discover the Textual Big Idea and then a Homilitecal Big Idea and then create my outlines, supporting materials for each movement in my sermon and then add intro/conclusion.

So the two key things I do outside of Logos

1. Marking up the text with a stylus

2. Writing the sermon. Sorry, not a fan of the Sermon Editor in Logos. I would never want to keep them that tied to one program no matter how long I’ve used it and how much $$ I’ve invested. I doubt Logos is going anywhere, but you never know. If all my sermons were stuck in Logos I couldn’t ever get them out, that would be horrible. Word is so ubiquitous that I am not worried about it going under fast enough that I couldn’t convert my documents.

While I never “print” I do export and use a “pencil”, that is an Apple PEncil. There is not a single quality tool for working with the Bible text with a stylus in a digital form. I’d trade my dog and <exaggeration>maybe one of my two children </exaggeration> for that feature in Logos. If Accordance added it, I’d immeidately begin using it regularly and leave Logos behind or use it far less. If Olive Tree added it, I do the same.