Editing Bible slides in the Sermon Builder

Gregory Lawhorn

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to edit/format the text of a Bible slide without having to click on the slide graphic, click on edit, wait for the slide to load, and edit in the little field on the left hand side? Yeah, I thought so too.

There are times that a verse splits a sentence, and I want to remove the partial text. And, there are times when I want to emphasize a word with ALL CAPS. Couldn't we do that directly in the text as we see it in the Sermon Builder?

Vote here: https://feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-desktop-app/posts/editing-slides-in-the-sermon-builder 

David Paul

In L3, sermon builder was called Notes. In L3, the pop-up you saw when hovering over a note icon wasn't the tiny keyhole it is today. It could be as large as your screen and packed full of all kinds of information. Personal observations, lexicon entries, commentary entries, interlinear entries, parallel entries from other English versions, quotations from sermons or monographs, etc. Sermon builder is an abomination because it does precisely what should not be done in Bible studies...it decontextualizes the information that is being spoon-fed to the passive audience. Extracting data out of the Bible and presenting it as a curated nugget of pre-masticated pabulum has many of the same psychological detriments that are being identified in children who are undergoing at-home screen-based schooling. What if someone has a question about the relation of the verse on the PowerPoint-like slide to the previous verse in the Bible? Never mind again that it would be unthinkable in most church settings to have a sermon be interrupted by a commoner's question (which is an abomination all its own), but how would that question be fielded? In L3, it was literally a matter of moving the cursor to a non-hot space and looking at the previous verse--it was RIGHT THERE, because the speaker-on-high hadn't excised the verse in question from the living word and placed it specimen-like on a slide for observation. I could go on...and on...and on...

The Note entry window in L3 was much more of a pleasant space to work, also, compared to what you are describing for Sermon Builder. It did have some short-comings, but those could have easily been improved upon had it not been abandoned. The main advantage of the way L3 was designed is that it fostered and promoted an organic and natural study process, as opposed to the decontextualizing and psychologically-removing procedures used to present information since L3 was unceremoniously scrapped. All of the data and info that you as the presentation preparer had found while researching and studying could be brought DIRECTLY INTO YOUR BIBLE AND PLACED THERE FOREVER...and...it was forever after only a mouse hover away from being the PowerPoint/Sermon Builder slide that people rely on today WITHOUT DECONTEXTUALIZING SCRIPTURE. The way information was examined and shared in L3 was vastly superior (in spite of over a decade's worth of features, upgrades, datasets, and whatnots) because people actually got to see the presenter move through the Bible and see the whole page/screen's worth of text in front of them. It removed any charge of Exacto-bladed exegesis where unsupportive elements of the text can be left off the presenter's slide because the entire context is right there on the screen.

Don't get me wrong, I readily admit that all versions since L3 have had advantages not found in L3, which is to be expected as continued improvements are made. My gripe is that much, and there is a LOT, of what was SUPERIOR about L3 compared to what we have in the contemporary versions since was scrapped, and in most cases, for no reason or no good reason. What you are asking for in Sermon Builder actually once existed in Logos...and it was taken away so that you are left agonizing for what used to be included. It's called "progress".

Gregory Lawhorn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1142522#Comment_1142522

Thanks for your observation