Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 3

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 3

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 2 (audio)

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 2

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part One

PowerPoint continues to become a more important tool in preaching. The Barna Group reports that 6 out of 10 Protestant congregations today use projection. While it still may not be quite that prevelent in the Lord's church, it is an up and coming tool no doubt. The greatest problem facing preachers in using this new tool is that they have never been trained in visual presentation. They may be great speakers and know God's word hands down, but when they step into the area of presenting those ideas visually they falter. Let's admit it....there is some really BAD PowerPoint going on out there! Bad presentations disctract the audience and sometimes even the preacher.

Last year, at the Bear Valley Bible Institute Homecoming Lectures I presented a 3-part series on "Using PowerPoint Effectively." These files are available through podcast from the Bear Valley site, but I am re-podcasting them here for convenience.

I would appreciate any feedback that you would like to give on this subject. While this can be a powerful tool for presenting the Gospel, we need to learn new skills to do it well. I hope that you find these presentations helpful.

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 1 (originally podcast in Sept 2005)

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 2

Using PowerPoint Effectively - Part 3

Logos Bible software tip: Creating hyperlinks to Logos in MS Word

Imagine being able to link any word in your MS Word document to any resource in your electronic library. You can! For example, you are writing notes or a research paper of the Greek word for love (agape) and you find the article in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) particularly useful in your study. You could just copy and paste parts of the article into your notes but why not include access to the entire article using a hyperlink? This functionality is available through an often overlooked addin for Logos called Power Tools.

The Power Tools addin is freely available to Logos users. This addin adds some very cool functionality and features such as; Fuzzy Search, Quick Navigation (Now a standard part of version 3), Stacked Tabbed Windows (very useful ), Copy Location to Clipboard and others.

How to Get the Addin
Power Tools Addin is available free for download at any time. To install it, connect to the Internet, open Libronix and click Tools Libronix Update. When Libronix Update opens, click the arrow next to Optional and select Power Tools Addin and Power Tools Addin Help. Click Update.

Creating the Hyperlinks in Word
To create hyperlinks in MS Word documents you need to focus on the Copy Location to Clipboard feature of the Power Tools addin. Based on our example, navigate your resource to the TDNT article on "agape" and select Copy Location to Clipboard from the Bookmarks menu (it appears in the Favorites menu in version 3). Now select the text in the MS Word document for the hyperlink. Select Insert Hyperlink from the Insert menu and paste (Ctl-V) into the Address box. This places the location in the hyperlink. Don’t be alarmed at the strange looking entry. You text will now appear with the blue underline to show the hyperlink. Now when you click on the hyperlink in your Word document, Logos will start and open TDNT to the exact page you want. Try it.

Logos Bible software tip: Smart Tags for MS Word

If you are a Logos Bible software user and you use MS Word there is a tool that you should know about. MS Word 2002 or higher utilizes “Smart Tags” as a way of identifying types of text such as phone numbers, zip codes, dates, etc… and then allows a user to perform various actions on it. Logos has an add-in that makes use of these tags to link your Word documents with your electronic Bibles. Logos Smart Tags identify Bible verses when they are typed and allow you to perform various actions on the verse entered. For example, if you type: Gen 1:1 you can then choose to open your Logos Bible to that reference or even replace the text you typed with the actual verse text from your Logos software. This can be a very powerful combination of tools while doing any writing that includes Bible texts and references. You can download the Logos Smart Tags from the Logos site at http://www.logos.com/support/article/530. This tool has saved me hours of time and is worth the download – by the way….did I mention it was FREE! Check it out.

Studying God's Word in the Beauty of His Creation...

I just came back from 3 days in Durango, CO where I attended the annual Workshop in the Word. This workshop is put on by Guy Orbison, Jr. and Denny Petrillo and is held in the mountains about 30 miles north of Durango. I couldn’t think of a more beautiful place to study God’s word! Brother Orbison is the preacher at the Durango church of Christ and runs an Intern Program there that focuses on exegesis. Denny Petrillo is the President of the Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver. Both of these men are outstanding exegetes and preachers. This year’s study was 1 Timothy and it was outstanding! This year ninety-seven men from eleven states attended the workshop (a new record). If you want to dig deeper into the text, this is a workshop that you really need to consider attending.