USERVOICE review: Add Bible study templates - premade as in L3 beta and user created

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MJ. Smith | Forum Activity | Posted: Thu, Apr 14 2016 2:01 PM

Add Bible study templates - premade as in L3 beta and user created

Okay, I believe that Faithlife is being foolish not implementing some version of this. Why?

• people common up through the schools for the last two decades have been trained to use graphic organizers - for notes, comparisons, plots, et. al. in language arts, social studies, science - to not support the way the younger generation's are used to studying writes them off as users that matter.
• the casual Bible study user often uses templates such as those contained in Warren, Rick. Rick Warren’s Bible Study Methods: Twelve Ways You Can Unlock God's Word. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. or any of the specific methods given in hermeneueics books, standard lists of questions, 4 senses of scripture, typography, Jensen's diagrams, Precept symbols .... By making those things available in Logos ... or easily buildable in Logos one can catch the casual user and train them up to serious study

Put another way, I see the critical entry points for the "average pew warmer" to be:

• reading plans
• lectionaries which serve as reading plans to some people
• highlight palettes supporting several popular Bible study methods
• templates supporting several popular Bible study methods - both "complete worksheets" e.g. SOAP and "specific tool worksheets" e.g. typology
• a customizable devotional layout with a journal-like feature

Bernie Sanders has shown us the power of a lot of little contributions to the Faithlife coffers and I really think that tools oriented towards them are necessary ... as well as assisting the religious ed/faith formation people already notes by Verbum/Logos.

OFF the soapbox and onto the request.

I would put this request in much different terms now than I did several years ago, partially because of the changes within Logos. At the moment we can almost make satisfactory templates in Word and import them as PB's in Logos. If it weren't for the word "almost" we would be in the situation where a religious ed instructor could build templates in Word, include any number of occurrences of the template then compile as a PB. The Word document could be shared; we can already make and share templates.

To solve the almost we are back to an issue that keeps reappearing in different contexts - text boxes.

1. Text boxes must expand and contract based on the text inside them.
2. The text within the box must be searchable.
3. The text within the box must be included when the resource is printed
4. In the PB replicated template case, the used should not have to assign a unique name to each box i.e. if I have 10 text boxes on the form and 100 forms in my PB I should not have to go through and adjust the names on 990 text boxes.

This is to me an absolute minimum solution. I would love to have other users, in general not pastors and academics, express their needs and views.