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February 3, 2015 By Ryan Nelson | 1 Comment

How to Change Your Notification Settings

When you create a new Faithlife account and join a group, by default you’ll receive an email when someone posts to the group, sends you a message, starts a new discussion, and more. You can see a complete list of notifications when you edit your profile and go to the notifications tab.

Next to each type of notification you’ll see “Edit per group settings.” This lets you choose which groups you’ll receive emails about, and which groups you’ll only see in the app and online.

Click the drop down arrows on the left to see all types of notifications, or use the check boxes on the right to change settings for everything at once.

Say, for example, you’re in a group led by your pastor, and he posts devotional thoughts once a week. You might want to receive email notifications when your pastor shares something new. Your small group, however, posts multiple times per day, so email notifications might not be as urgent.

There’s also another option:

If you still want to know everything that’s going on, you can adjust the frequency that you receive email notifications. These settings apply after you indicate what you would like to receive email notifications for. If you change all your notification settings to “notification,” then this option won’t matter. If, however, you have a particularly active small group or ministry team and you want to receive email updates about what’s going on without filling your inbox, you can set this to daily or weekly digest to stay in the loop.

Create your Faithlife account today, or tell your friends and family about email notifications, so they can follow along with your Faithlife Groups.

January 24, 2015 By Ryan Nelson | 2 Comments

Customize Your Faithlife Group

There are lots of ways to use Faithlife Groups. Your worship team could use one. Your family could use another. Maybe you want a massive collection of insight. Maybe you want to make a group centered on prayer. Or a reading plan. Or a topic.

However you use your Faithlife Group, you can customize it to meet your needs.

Go to “Group settings,” found on the right side of your group:

Under “About Your Group,” you’ll find a section for page tabs. It lists all of the tabs your group includes (or could include), and by checking the boxes, you add or remove tabs from your group’s navigation. If your group only uses one or two tabs, consider removing the ones you don’t use. That way it’s clear where the action is when people join your group.

In “Group Permissions,” you can adjust the settings to determine who can use what features and in what ways.

For example, if you have a specific curriculum you want to share with your group, you probably don’t want your documents tab to be a free-for-all. Adjust the control so that anyone can connect to your documents, but only moderators and admins can share new documents:

You can customize your group’s permissions for the news feed, calendar, documents, reading plans, prayer lists, Community Notes, newsletters, photos, and more.

Don’t forget to play with your group’s sidebar. The sidebar floats to the right of your group, even when you change tabs. This is a great place to provide supplemental links and media, like your church’s Twitter feed, or our free Verse of the Day images. You can include podcasts or blogs you want your group to read or listen to regularly, Community Notes or prayer lists from the group, and more.

Customize your Faithlife Group today. Or, start a new one and invite your friends.

December 2, 2014 By Ryan Nelson | 1 Comment

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:

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.

July 1, 2014 By Jayson Bradley | 2 Comments

Get Your Bible Study Online with Faithlife

Summer’s here, which makes this the perfect time to gather a church group or a collection of online friends for Bible study.

Start by combining the Faithlife Study Bible (which you can get for free) with Faithlife Groups, and you’ll get all the tools you need to put together a powerful study for people who can’t regularly get together.

One church has already done this and seen amazing results! To let you in on their secret, Torn Curtain Church in Greenville, South Carolina put together a video that walks you through getting involved in their Colossians study:

Are you, your church, or your friends using a Faithlife Group? Leave us a comment and tell us about it.

Download the Faithlife Study Bible, and start your own group today!

April 8, 2014 By Ryan Nelson | Leave a Comment

Keep Your Group in the Loop with Faithlife Newsletters

One of the gems of Faithlife Groups is a little-known feature, quietly waiting to show administrators an even better way to keep everyone on the same page—Faithlife newsletters.

Set the tone of your group

Neatly nestled in the corner of your group’s tabs, “Newsletters” is a nifty feature accessed through the drop-down menu.

Newsletters open the door to a whole new class of communication. The tool’s intuitive design helps you put as much or as little detail into your message as you want. The basics display automatically–your headline, content section, and more. Click on the “+” symbol to open up a wealth of options to enhance your newsletter.

You can:

Highlight important conversations from your group’s news feed
Display meaningful Community Notes
Share prayer requests
Point out upcoming events
Send the newsletter to other affiliated groups
Show today’s Verse of the Day

Bring clarity to your members

Depending on the size of your group, a week, a month, or even a day can have more news, notes, and prayer requests than some of your group members can handle. In the information age, it’s all too easy to get buried with too many things to keep track of. Newsletters help you speak into the fog and showcase the things you need your group to know.

Get the word out

One of the hardest parts of communicating to large groups of people is figuring out the best method to make sure everyone sees it. Do you post it to your group? Do you send an email? When you send a newsletter, it’s visible to everyone in your Faithlife Group, and it also emails the same message directly to everyone in the group, so you don’t have to create your message twice. So next time you’re trying to decide on the best way to get your message out, just remember–it’s both!

If you’re a group administrator, you have the power to provide your group with elegant, concise newsletters that are both engaging and informative. Or, if you don’t have the time yourself, find a responsible person in your group with more room in their schedule, and give them administrative privileges so they can share the load.

Once you start a newsletter, Faithlife Groups saves it automatically. The draft can only be seen by administrators, so you’re free to take your time and send it when you’re ready to make an impression. Go to your group’s “Newsletters” tab and try it for yourself!

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The Faithlife Study Bible links Scripture passages that address the same topic, so you can make connections with just a click. Download the Faithlife Study Bible for free from your favorite app store, and take your Bible study to the next level.

March 29, 2014 By Ryan Nelson | 2 Comments

The New and Improved Faithlife Calendar

We made some changes to the Faithlife calendar to make your life easier. Now, you can see and do everything you need right from the calendar tab.

Your status now appears next to each event. This field reminds you if you are hosting, attending, or undecided about an event, and you can change your status without leaving the full calendar view. Click on the highlighted text, and you can select your response to the event invitation from the drop-down menu.

The calendar also displays more details about each event. You can see the type of event, in addition to the name of the event and any groups affiliated with the event. If you were invited as a part of a group, or if you invited an entire group, that group’s name and image appear below the event’s date and time.

You can also edit event details using this handy gear icon:

Click on the gear icon next to the event you want to change, then alter or add anything you need. When you save, you’ll return to the calendar view. If you have a recurring event, such as a weekly Bible study, you can use this same wheel to download Outlook and iCal files to put the event into your regular calendar software.

We’ve also added the ability to filter the types of events you want to display. You can filter events by group, or choose “My events” to display events not associated with a group, like family events, personal reminders, and appointments—things that can get lost in everything else you have going on.

If you aren’t already using it, the calendar tab is more useful and dependable than ever. With these updates, it’s even easier to keep track of what’s happening in your faith community.

March 20, 2014 By Ray Deck III | 2 Comments

Introducing Faithlife.com Plugins

Use the new “Join my group” plugin to connect your church’s website and Faithlife.com, so that when someone asks you for instructions on joining your church’s Faithlife group, you can say, “It’s on the website.”

Click the new “Plugins” item on the Faithlife.com menu, or visit Faithlife.com/Plugins. This is the first of several helpful plugins we have planned, so be on the lookout for more soon. When you click through to the “Join my group” plugin page, you’re only three easy steps from having a Faithlife.com “Join” button on your website.

Step 1: Search for and select your group.

Use the search box to find the group you’d like to link to. If you have multiple Faithlife.com groups associated with your church (one for each small group, for example), you may like to place multiple plugins on your church website, perhaps setting aside a special page to serve as a catalog of your church’s groups.

Step 2: Choose from three display options.

Once you’ve selected a group from the search box and drop-down menu, you’ll be presented with three different button sizes—small, medium, and large. The small and medium buttons also include a drop-down menu with options for changing your group status. Select the size you prefer, and you’ll get a preview of the button and the code you need to place it on your website.

You’ll notice that the button changes based on your group’s status. Any website visitor who is not a member of your group will see “Join,” but the button will display differently for website visitors who are already members. You can see an example of this below.

Step 3: Copy and paste two code snippets to your website.

The final step is to copy two small lines of code into your website. One—beginning with “<script”—goes in the body; the other—beginning with “<p”—indicates exactly where you’d like the plugin to reside.

Make it easier for church members to connect with one another on Faithlife.com.

Place the “Join my group” plugin on your church’s website today.

March 4, 2014 By Ray Deck III | 5 Comments

Introducing Faithlife Discussions

Faithlife Groups help facilitate faith-based discussions.

A healthy faith community always contains diverse opinions, experiences, and interpretations of Scripture. Navigating the differences can be spiritually enriching in a way that few other things are (Proverbs 27:17). As we’ve often said: we learn best when we learn together.

Faithlife discussions makes enriching conversation on faith and doctrine easier than ever. And it’s simple. You’ll find the discussions section of your Faithlife Group on the menu bar alongside newsletters, calendar, and other important group functions. If you don’t see it, use the down arrow to reveal more features.

Inside Faithlife discussions, you can create new discussion threads, view the post count, and read and reply to existing threads. Group members can comment on a thread by either adding their own thoughts in a comment or affirming with expressions like “Agree,” “Amen,” “Praise the Lord!,” “Stand Firm,” “Like,” and “Praying.” These options create a unique middle ground between a “like” and a full written response.

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Group administrators can moderate threads and comments with tools to edit, delete, and flag inappropriate posts.

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We hope that Faithlife discussions equip you to facilitate more meaningful conversation in your faith community.

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Faithlife Groups are the digital home for your faith community. It’s free to join and invite others. Tools like prayer lists, reading plans, Community Notes, and a group newsletter make it easier than ever to communicate, collaborate, and fellowship around the Word of God. Join today at Faithlife.com.

February 24, 2014 By Ray Deck III | 11 Comments

Understanding Prayer Lists in Faithlife Groups

Prayer lists add unique functionality to Faithlife Groups. Here’s a quick primer on what they can do, and how to get the most out of them.

Setting user permissions

Faithlife Groups offer five levels of access, and empowers you to set privacy settings that suite your group’s unique needs. In the group settings panel, determine which members will be permitted to connect to group prayer lists, create and share new prayer lists, and remove requests.

Regarding prayer lists, you have three decisions to make:

Connect to prayer lists—That is, follow prayer lists. Anyone connected to a prayer list will be able to add requests of their own, see details on other added requests, and receive notifications about prayer requests inside their Faithlife Study Bible app.
Create/Share new prayer lists—New prayer lists are created from inside Logos 5 (more on that later), and shared to a Faithlife group, but you may wish to limit access to only certain people, like administrators or moderators.
Remove prayer lists—Prayer lists can be deleted easily, so guard this permission a little more cautiously to prevent inadvertent deletion.

For a more detailed explanation of all privacy controls and user permissions on Faithlife.com, check out the post “Understanding the Privacy Settings on Faithlife.com.”

Creating new prayer lists in Logos 5

It’s easy. Select “Prayer lists” from the documents menu, give your list a title and start adding requests right away. You can set frequency and duration for each request and add tags so that your prayer requests so you can find them again later.

Then, visit Documents.Logos.com to share it with a group. The “Collaborate” option will give a group ownership of your prayer list, so that members can add their own requests to it.

You could, for example, create a prayer list about a missions trip that your small group plans to make together. You would create the list in Logos 5, seeding it with some general requests like “financial support” and “safe travels.” After announcing the trip, you could share the list with your group at Documents.Logos.com, and then members could connect to it and add their own more specific prayer requests.

Add a prayer list to the group’s sidebar

Though a prayer list may belong to a group, it may still not appear on the group’s page. A group administrator or moderator can add group lists to the sidebar for all to see. Tab over to the “Sidebar” section of the group settings menu, and drag a prayer-list widget to make shared prayer requests visible to all group members.

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February 12, 2014 By Ray Deck III | Leave a Comment

4 Faithlife Features You Forgot About

Faithlife.com is a superb home for your digital faith community. We’ve been adding lots of new bells and whistles over the last few months. Some of the most useful features, though, have been around for a while.

Here are four features you might have forgotten about:

Custom URLs

Set your group’s URL so it’s easy for everyone to find. By default, the address will be your group’s name. But change it to Faithlife.com/Whatever-You-Want in group settings.

Fine-grained privacy controls

You have a lot of control over your Faithlife group’s privacy settings. You can set the overall level of visibility for your group, choosing between open, closed, and secret. And you can set permissions for each member, defining the amount of access available at each level. There are a lot of choices to make here, so I made some recommendations about privacy settings in a previous post.

Expiring groups

Limited-time groups are common in church life. Small groups often meet weekly through the fall, disband over the holidays, and then reform after the dust settles in January. New groups start up all the time. When you form a seasonal group, you can also set an expiration date for it, saving you the trouble of deactivating it later.

Duplicate this group

If you need to create a new group much like one of your existing groups, use the “duplicate this group” button to save time. You can then change the name and group photo. Think about all the time you’ll save when you don’t have to create brand-new groups for each new Bible study series or small group that pops up.

What are your favorite Faithlife.com features? Tell us in the comments.

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Faithlife.com is the digital home for your faith community. It’s free to join and invite others. Tools like prayer lists, reading plans, Community Notes, and group newsletters make it easier than ever to communicate, collaborate, and fellowship around the Word of God. Join today at Faithlife.com.