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How to Create Community Notes

The Community Notes feature is a powerful Bible study tool that’s built into the Faithlife Study Bible, Logos Bible Software, and Faithlife Groups.

They’re kind of like margin notes, only better.

When you write Community Notes, you decide who gets to see them. You can post them directly to one of your Faithlife Groups, or don’t select a group, and share them to “My Faithlife,” so all your connections can see them.

Community Notes sync across all of Faithlife’s Bible applications. That means you can make them on Bible.Faithlife.com and Biblia.com, in Logos Bible Software, and the Logos and FSB apps. Once you’ve made a note, you can see it from anywhere.

Depending on where you choose to get into the Word, making Community Notes looks a little different.

Make one in the mobile app

Here’s how to make Community Notes using the Faithlife Study Bible mobile app:

Make one on the web

Hop over to Bible.Faithlife.com or Biblia.com and follow these three easy steps to create a new note:

1. Find the passage you want

Enter the passage in the search field. If you want to make a note on the entire chapter of John 2, just type John 2; if you want to comment on a specific passage or verse, like John 2:11, enter the specific passage in the search field. The Community Note you create will attach itself to the passage in your search field—even when you change translations!

2. Go to the “notes” section and click this icon:

making_a_note
Whether you’re on Biblia.com or Bible.Faithlife.com, the notes section is the tab on the right, outlined in the red box above. To create a new note, click the icon indicated by the red arrow above.

3. Choose a Faithlife Group, write a note, and click “post”

Right below the passage you’ve selected, a drop-down menu lets you select from all of your Faithlife Groups. In the image above, I’ve selected the Community Study Bible: a user-created Faithlife Group that capitalizes on the potential of Community Notes.

You don’t have to be a biblical scholar or a pastor to create Community Notes. They’re for connecting what you know with who you know.

If you are a pastor, Community Notes can help you take better sermon notes.

Create a Community Note today! Find your favorite verse and share why it matters to you.

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Want to see Community Notes in action? Join the Community Study Bible group. Share notes or interact with the notes of others.

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5 Ways to Use Community Notes

bible margin notes
Margin notes are great, but Community Notes are better!

Create a Faithlife Group, and start using Community Notes today.

There are a lot of ways Faithlife Groups can improve your Bible study or small group.

One of them is the revolutionary Bible study tool, Community Notes.

When you reread your favorite passages of Scripture or your favorite books, your margin notes remind you of insights, revelations, or interpretations you’ve encountered in the text. With Community Notes, you can effortlessly share those same insights with your family, your small group, or your ministry team.

Every time you create a Community Note, select which Faithlife Group you want to share it with. Whenever you open your Faithlife Study Bible, Vyrso App, or Logos Bible Software, you can toggle which groups’ Community Notes you want to see as you read along. That means you can see the Community Notes of your entire Christian community, or you can isolate it to your small group, your family, or your ministry team.

Here are five ways you can use Community Notes to get more from your Bible study:

1. Study interactively

When your Faithlife Group studies a passage together, Community Notes let you pose questions to the group, right from your Bible, directly into theirs. You can even comment on a Community Note, so you can point someone to related Scripture, or even a relevant book in your library. You can also use a particular passage as a spring board for deeper questions, and encourage your whole group to respond.

2. Follow along with your pastor

Your pastor is one of the greatest resources you have in your church. But think about how exhausting it would be for your pastor to personally invest time to study with every individual member of the congregation.

Your pastor already spends a lot of time in personal Bible study. As a member of the congregation, you are indirectly learning from your pastor’s Bible study all the time through their teaching and counsel. Creating a Faithlife Group for your pastor means you get to learn directly from their personal study as well. Every note your pastor writes on a passage can become an opportunity for your church to grow.

Encourage your pastor to help you grow, using the studies they’re already doing!

3. Hold each other accountable

Community Notes are a great way to show each other that you are reading and wrestling with Scripture. If you’re setting reading goals with your friends or family, sometimes it’s hard to know if everyone is on track—especially with young kids or people who don’t like to read. Setting goals that incorporate Community Notes provides a tangible way to hold each other accountable.

Depending on the group, you could set a goal like one Community Note per chapter, or one per paragraph. Setting goals with Community Notes asks people to not just read Scripture, but to process it.

And encouraging someone to process Scripture is like asking them to chew their food.

4. Learn what to focus on

If you’re a small group leader, Community Notes can help you prepare for your next meeting. If your group actively uses Community Notes to point to the verses or passages they struggle with, then you can prepare to spend your time on those areas, and assemble any necessary materials before you meet.

Without Community Notes, you could prepare a great lesson or discussion on a verse or passage no one had questions about. Community Notes help you invest in the areas your group needs the most help processing.

5. Grow with your whole church

Faithlife Groups aren’t limited to small groups. Thousands of churches across the globe have Faithlife Groups that are open to their entire church.

Your church is full of wise, intelligent people that you can learn and grow with.

Community Notes help you tap into your church’s collective wisdom.

Start small, and invite church members you know, or go big, and approach your congregation or leadership team. When you share your wisdom with others you help build up the body of Christ.

Start using Community Notes today! Learn more here.

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If your small group isn’t using a Faithlife Group yet, you’re missing out on prayer lists, shared reading plans, Community Notes, and more. Faithlife Groups are the ultimate church communication tool. The best part is, they’re absolutely free.

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Introducing Faithlife News & Notes!


At Faithlife we use technology to equip the Church to grow in the light of the Bible. For more than 25 years that mission has guided everything we do. This year, to better equip the Church, we are focusing on several key areas:

  • We are engaging users and helping them learn from each other in our product forums and Faithlife groups. Check out Faithlife.com to find a Faithlife group for each of our products, with active discussions from both our customers and the Faithlife team.
  • We are improving integration across our products so you can spend less time doing “all the things” and more time on ministry. For example, you can now create a sermon and slides in Logos, present it with Proclaim, have the congregation follow it in real time through the Faithlife Study Bible, and publish it to the web at Faithlife TV and Faithlife Sermons.
  • We are expanding our partnerships to increase the availability of content within our products to bring more value in the areas of Christian media, books, Bible study, and academia.

With this in mind, we’ll be sharing the progress that gets us excited around the office more frequently, with more intention, and with more opportunity for feedback.

Below you’ll find some highlights of how Faithlife is helping equip the Church. We are excited about partnering with you, and would love to hear how you are using our tools in your ministry—along with what we can do to better serve you.

Follow the group at Faithlife.com and share with us today.

– Bob Pritchett [Read more…]

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How to Get Church Members to Join Your Online Community

joining a Faithlife Group

So you want to facilitate a thriving online community for your church. You understand the value of having a private place to ask big questions as a church or for small groups to share curriculum. You know your church wants to talk about the Bible more and share what they’re learning with the rest of the congregation.

Related post: Take Your Church Beyond Handshakes and Hellos

Sometimes getting your congregation to do anything new might feel like crying out in the wilderness. But it doesn’t have to. With the right perspective, and the right strategy, you can be the catalyst that helps propel your church into a vibrant online community they’ll keep coming back to—because it’s your church, online.

Here are four ways to grow your church’s Faithlife Group:

Read more…

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Community Study Bible: A Collaborative Journey through Scripture

bibleWhen you read your Bible, study notes and other resources help you get more out of the verses. After you have time to process Scripture and think about what it means for your life, you walk away with insight you didn’t have before.

Imagine reading a Bible that was full of these insights from Christians all across the globe. A Bible packed with Community Notes where people share why particular passages have meant the most to them, connections they’ve seen with other verses, and what God has shown them through that passage.

That’s exactly what Nathan Parker envisioned when he created the Community Study Bible. It’s a Faithlife Group that let’s anyone and everyone share Community Notes on the verses and passages that mean the most to them.

If you’ve ever learned something from a verse before, this is the place to share it. If you’ve ever written or preached on a passage before, share the insight you gained. You never know who might need to hear what you have to say about a verse.

Even if you don’t feel qualified to provide insight into Scripture, your thoughts matter. Joining the Faithlife Group is like adding a whole new layer of notes to your Bible—the notes appear on the passages they’re connected to, so if you’re part of the group and someone has learned something from a passage, you’ll see it in a note icon, like this:

Community_Notes

Click the note icon to bring up the note, right within the translation you’re using. When you change Bible translations, the notes tag along—they’re connected to the verse, not the version. If there are Community Notes in the chapter you’re reading, you’ll see a note icon attached to the chapter heading—click it to see all of the Community Notes in the chapter.

When I read through my print Bibles, the notes I’ve made in the margins over the years reveal different perspectives I’ve had over time. Questions I’ve wrestled with because of a particular passage. Connections I’ve made. The Community Study Bible exposes you to the “margin notes” of other believers through interactive Community Notes.

You can respond to other people’s notes, build off their thoughts, or ask questions to get more out of the notes. And every time you do, you increase the value of the Community Study Bible to everyone else.

Get the most from the group

If you aren’t already using the Faithlife Study Bible app on your phone or tablet, download it today to have these Community Notes with you wherever you study.

Once you join the group, you can see these notes right inside your Bible when you read on bible.faithlife.com, biblia.com, the Faithlife Study Bible app, or Logos Bible Software.

You can even browse through all of the Community Notes by going to the Community Notes tab in the group itself.

The Community Study Bible group was created by users, for users. A thriving Christian community like this adds a whole new depth to your Bible study.

Join the Community Study Bible group today.

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Take Better Sermon Notes with Faithlife

Note-taking has many benefits. It helps you focus your attention. Studies have shown that note-takers retain more of what they hear. If you’re still using pen and paper and you want fewer ink stains on your clothes, we have good news for you: Faithlife notes are just as powerful and elegant as Logos notes.

Here’s a rundown of what they can do.

Connect to a selection or reference

Long-press in your mobile app to highlight a portion of text—you’ll have the option to either highlight or make a note. You’ll never run out of space, which can’t be said of taking notes in the margins of your paper Bible. Write as much as you like, and then connect your notes to a reference or Scripture selection. If your note pertains to more than a single verse or defies normal chapter/verse divisions, you’ll likely want to use the selection option.

faithlife-notes1

Easy sharing

You can choose to keep your notes private, or share them with the Faithlife community so everyone can benefit from your study. After all, we learn best when we learn together. (Click to tweet)

Stored on the cloud

Your notes are kept safely in your own corner of our server, so they’re available on all your devices, all the time. Even if you made a note on your computer using Logos, it’s visible on your mobile device in the Faithlife app. No downloading required. You can see all your notes in one place at Documents.Logos.com.

If you’re using a reading plan or a prayer list on Faithlife.com, it’ll also appear at Documents.Logos.com, and you can search through all of it using the search box at the top of the page.

Organize into documents

To keep myself a bit more organized, I’ve organized my notes by book of the Bible. You might choose to organize your notes another way—perhaps by subject (notes about forgiveness) or venue (notes from church.)

documents.logos.com

Export & print

Using Logos 5, you can quickly export or print an entire document of notes. This is especially helpful if you’re preparing to preach or teach. Make notes in your app as you read throughout the week; when you sit down for more focused study, your notes are all together. You could conceivably write your own commentary using Logos’ notes feature. If you do that, call us. We want to hear about it.

If you’d like to learn more about Logos’ notes, check out some of these posts.

 

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Dig Deep into Your Favorite Translation with the FSB’s Study Notes!

The Faithlife Study Bible gives you so many options for better Bible study: three layers of study notes, a built-in Bible dictionary, 400 photos, videos, and infographics, Community Notes, group reading plans, and so much more. And now we’re giving away 2.5 million copies of the FSB—free for life!—so you and all of your friends can enjoy it.

Use the FSB’s notes with your favorite translation

The Holy BibleWe want to make Bible study as convenient as possible. To that end, we’ve made seven Bible translations available; you can integrate them right into your Faithlife Study Bible. We’ve even discounted a handful of the more popular translations:

To save on these translations, you’ll need to enter the coupon code Bibles at checkout. (If you click any of the links above, though, the coupon code drops into your cart automatically.) With many more translations to choose from, you’ll find the perfect Bible for your study needs.

Once you have your favorite Bible, setting it up as your default is easy!

1. Open your Faithlife Study Bible app and select the settings gear in the top right of your app. (Tapping your name on the title bar will work, too.)

Go to settings

2. Select Settings in the dropdown menu, and then hit Preferred Bible on the next page.

Go to preferred Bible

3. Tap your preferred Bible to make it your default.

Select your BIble

 

Browse the Bibles, pick your favorite, and start using it with your Faithlife Study Bible notes today!

*Note: although you purchase these Bibles through Logos.com, you’ll use your Faithlife credentials to check out, and each Bible still integrates seamlessly into your Faithlife Study Bible.

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Free Book to Share with Your Community

Faithlife communityLast month, I wrote a blog post on group reading plans featuring Logos’ then–Free Book of the Month, The Christian Doctrine of Prayer. The post highlighted your ability to integrate any of your Logos resources into your Faithlife community through reading plans. While you can, of course, create your own reading plans for your group, we’ve already created a reading group around this month’s Free Book of the Month, John Darby’s Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: Genesis to 2 Chronicles. First, a little background on the book:

Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: Genesis to 2 ChroniclesSynopsis of the Books of the BIble: Gensis to 2 Chronicles

Darby’s Synopsis of the Books of the Bible is a five-volume series that explicates the Bible chapter by chapter. In the first of these volumes, Genesis to 2 Chronicles, Darby lays the groundwork for interpreting the Bible, exhibiting key tenets of dispensationalist thought. He covers important themes like creation, sin, and the relationship between good and evil. This volume shows that God’s kingdom in the Old Testament resembles not only the church in the present, but also God’s intentions for the future.

Reading Plans Made Easy

The reading group is called “Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: Genesis to 2 Chronicles,” and it’s open for anyone to join. It’s easy to keep up with the reading plan using the Group Readings widget. Read what other group members have to say about the text using Community Notes*. Dig deeper into your Bible study by sharing interpretations and ideas. And, now, read anywhere with the Faithlife Study Bible app, available free for your iOS or Android device through March 2014. Download your book, join the group, and read in community today!

Don’t have a Faithlife account yet? Sign in with your Logos credentials or create one for free today!

*Don’t miss your group’s discussion—turn on your Community Note notifications in your account settings under the Notifications tab.

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How to Run Church-Wide Bible Studies Online

I remember the days of midweek church.

We’d gather Wednesday nights for a scaled-down version of Sunday morning: a little singing, some prayer, and meatier teaching.

The kids would be dismissed for age-appropriate classes, while the adults stayed in the sanctuary for lecture- or discussion-based lessons. It was an effective way to get our whole church body growing in biblical literacy. [Read more…]

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5 Ways Busy Christians Can Continue Their Bible Education

This is a guest post by Peter Krol.

I loved seminary while it lasted. The academic environment, the spiritual fervor, the disciplined accountability. Lectures, discussion groups, and access to both an exceptional library and a brilliant faculty. What a treat.

So you can imagine my chagrin when it came to a premature end. I had to move across the state. Life’s expanding responsibilities held me by the collar. The seminary had to drop my tuition discount. And there was not yet such a thing as distance education. Mine was a cold, hard providence.

[Read more…]