In just one year since its release, RefTagger has delivered over 100 million interactive Bible verses across more than 7,500 websites.
Developed by Logos Bible Software, RefTagger (www.reftagger.com) is a free web tool that webmasters can install to dynamically deliver the text of Bible references within their website. The overwhelming success of RefTagger is due to its ease of use for both webmasters and site visitors.
“We had long been looking for a tool that would display the Bible verses that we reference on our site,” said Shea Houdmann, Director of GotQuestions.org. “Before RefTagger, every option we looked into was either too expensive or too difficult to program into our site.”
Using Reftagger, Houdmann was able to transform over 5,000 Bible references on GotQuestions.org into dynamic links which reveal the referenced text.
Before RefTagger, sites like GotQuestions.org had to choose between leaving references bare, manually building links to Bible websites, or copying and pasting Bible text into their site.
None of these were good options. However, RefTagger alleviates the problem entirely. Sharing the text of Scripture is now as easy as typing out the Bible reference—RefTagger does all the work automatically.
Since installing RefTagger, GotQuestions.org has received numerous emails thanking them for adding the functionality.
RefTagger works on any size website or blog, and can be installed quickly and easily by anyone with minimal web knowledge.
RefTagger pulls Bible texts from Bible.Logos.com, and webmasters can choose from over 25 different translations to display. Webmasters wanting to give their site visitors more control can install the RefTagger control panel to their site which allows users to select the Bible translation RefTagger will display.
With 100 million verses under their belt, Logos Bible Software is aiming to serve 1 billion verses in 2009.
Additional information and examples of active RefTagger sites are available at: http://www.RefTagger.com.
BibleTech:2009 is a two-day conference designed for publishers, programmers, webmasters, educators, bloggers and anyone interested in using technology to improve Bible study.
Are you looking for ways to pump life into your church website? Do you want to get the most out of your blogging community or social web interface? Maybe you’re more interested in Bible translation software or what’s in store for the next generation of Bible technologies. Wherever your interests lay, be sure to secure your seat at BibleTech:2009, where you’ll learn from the experts!
BibleTech:2009 will consist of fourteen sessions split between March 27 and 28. Each session will give you the option of a high-tech presentation or a low-tech presentation. The high-tech presentations will discuss the latest developments in Bible software platforms and the use of computer-based technologies for Bible translation and Bible study. The low-tech presentations will handle issues of design sensitivity, current trends in Bible technologies, and the integration of the Bible with internet-based communities.
A list of conference speakers is available on the conference website. Get acquainted with the speakers and catch up on their preparations for BibleTech:2009 by checking out their personal blogs. You can also view the official BibleTech:2009 schedule and plan ahead for your BibleTech experience!
Ian Paisley, the First of Minister of Northern Ireland, had suddenly decided to step down as moderator of 12,000-strong Protestant congregation in January, after almost 57 years in charge. Retirement shouldn’t be far from Mr Paisley’s mind at the age of 81, but the circumstances indicated he may be jumping before being pushed by an unprecedented revolt among his most ardent followers.
Many small churches are starting to see the benefit of having a website. Today it is easier than ever to get a sharp-looking website up with little effort, little to no knowledge of code (like HTML or PHP), and little impact on your bank account.
Here are some very basic suggestions and resources that you might find helpful as you get started.
I posted this on my personal blog last night and thought it was too good not to repost here.
Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has just announced the launching of their online Theological Library, which contains hundreds of ETS papers from the last five years. The papers are (1) free, (2) fully searchable with selectable text for copying and pasting (most of them),1 and (3) available for viewing online2 or downloading and viewing as PDFs. There’s a wealth of helpful material there that I’m sure you’ll want to take advantage of!
Many of you may know that sharing your email address on your church website or blog is a surefire way to increase the amount of SPAM you get. Spambots are continually crawling the web and stealing email addresses whether they are visible on the page (e.g., john@church.com) or merely in the code (e.g., email me).
Yet many churches share the email addresses of their pastors and staff in such a way that they are prime targets for SPAM. Even a larger church like First Baptist of Taylors, SC does this (e.g., pastors and staff).
I came across two new online tools that allow you to see visually some helpful data from Scripture.
Bible Word Locator
The first is called the Bible Word Locator, and it comes from OpenBible.info. (These are the same folks who brought us the Bible Geocoding, which we blogged about back in March.) It’s helpful tool that allows you to see in a snapshot where a word occurs throughout the entire Bible. Once you visualize your search, it’s fun to try to figure out the context of the occurrences. Give it a try!
Haven’t you always wanted to be able to pick up the phone and call Jesus and hear His voice audibly? Haven’t you wished that He would speak to you in clear, unmistakable words—like a real person? Well, the days of wishing are gone. It’s finally here—unfortunately.
This has to be one of the weirdest and saddest uses of technology that I’ve ever seen. There’s a new website called TalkToJesus.com. It’s a service that allows anyone to call Virtual Jesus—toll free, of course—and talk to him about the struggles, confession their sins, get advice and guidance, and more.
Here’s the site’s description of what it’s all about:
That’s what Rev. Jim Hanson is doing. He pastors a very small Christian and Missionary Alliance church in Dunedin, FL, and has just started using YouTube as a means to broaden his influence. He’s already reaching nearly twice as many people at his “internet church.”
Here are some snippets from the story:
Even when the pews are empty, Rev. Jim Hanson is still preaching.
Tim Wallargues that pastors should be blogging and that they should be blogging on their church websites.
The absolute best scenario for your ministry blogs is to build them right into your primary website. That way, your website benefits from all of the traffic and content added to the blogs.
To do this, you could build your entire website on a blogging platform like Wordpress, or you could use a website CMS that supports integrated blogging. Cory Miller right here at ChurchCommunicationsPro is an expert on the former. For the latter, I’ll give another shameless plug for my company’s content management system, Sky. It has blogging built right in so you can easily add unlimited blogs to any page in your site (and it also has friendly URLs. Hooray!). There are others out there too. Just look for the ability to integrate blogs with your main site.
Many pastors are blogging, but most are using a hosted platform like Google’s Blogger or WordPress.com (not to be confused with the WordPress software that can be installed and run from your own server with your own domain name). In our previous post, Christian Bloggers Survey, we noted that
most Christian bloggers are senior pastor men in their thirties who in the last year started blogging with Google’s Blogger and post about once per week.
But Tim argues that the ideal situation is for pastors to blog on their own church websites. As he points out, one way to do that is to use a platform like WordPress or Joomla! for your website so that blogging is built right in to the structure of your site. Both platforms are free, but my personal preference as far as ease of use is concerned is WordPress.
Another option would be to install WordPress in a subfolder on your preexisting site. If your current website is www.gracechurch.com, your blog would be www.gracechurch.com/blog/. The two sites could be integrated, but not quite as seamlessly as the former method.
Forget about the mystique and start blogging not because it’s trendy, but because it is communication. Share everything about your church through your blog and use other means of communication to point back to the blog. Educate your church members on how to use and subscribe to your blog. In short, make the blog the center of your church communication. It will benefit your church and also give you a better church website than all the flash animation in the world could provide.
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BibleTech:2009
Here are today’s bullet points:
I 
Many of you may know that sharing your email address on your church website or blog is a surefire way to increase the amount of SPAM you get. 
Haven’t you always wanted to be able to pick up the phone and call Jesus and hear His voice audibly? Haven’t you wished that He would speak to you in clear, unmistakable words—like a real person? Well, the days of wishing are gone. It’s finally here—unfortunately.
