Traditional print-based resources look very nice on an office shelf and feel great to leaf through but, in reality, they have a number of serious downsides. Bible software eliminates many of the problems associated with paper-based resources.

Cost savings: You spent that much and only got five books?!

They want me to pay HOW MUCH for this book?! Shipping charges are HOW MUCH?! Searching the Internet or your local Christian bookstore and seeing the price for a new paper-based concordance or Bible dictionary can be a distressing experience. During the last couple of years, print books have gone from being simply expensive to being very expensive. You likely don't have unlimited funds to spend on new books - what pastor does? No one likes to pay more than they have to for anything and books are no exception. Whether you pay for your books out of your own pocket or you receive a pastoral book budget from your church, less expensive is better.

How can pastors stretch their funds and save money on books and reference resources? The answer is Bible software! Overall, Bible software offers an amazing cost savings over print books. For example, Logos Bible Software's Scholar's Library Silver Edition offers over 400 Bibles and Bible reference titles worth over $8,000 in equivalent print editions for only $999.95. Purchasing Bible software allows you to acquire more of the titles you need and allows you to acquire them for less money! Even when the cost of a computer to run the software is included, the cost savings are still substantial. Bible software also cuts out most, if not all, of the high shipping costs normally associated with heavy print books. Young pastors seeking to quickly build their pastoral library are well served by Bible software that can be purchased at a minimal cost.

Unless you plan on building your library by purchasing titles from the bargain bins of obscure bookstores, Bible software is the best cost-saving path to take. It just makes sense.

Time savings: The timesaving secret of busy pastors everywhere

Are you a busy pastor? Do you wish you had just a little bit more free time on your hands? Are their parts of your ministry or family life that suffer because there simply aren't enough hours in a day? For many pastors, digging into God's Word and preparing sermons can be an enjoyable but time consuming task. A lot of serious and thorough Bible study involves scouring the pages of dozens of books to put together an accurate picture of a topic or verse.

Bible software cuts out the tiresome aspects of Bible study and cuts right to the chase. All you need to do is type in a Bible verse or topic and the software finds all the relevant information in your electronic library. No more wild goose chases where you jump from one bibliography or cited work to the next. Bible software quickly finds connections and information that would take you hours (or days) using print books. You can access any title you want with the click of a mouse and jump directly to the information you need. Once pastors master a program like Logos Bible Software, they report saving of up to 15 hours a week on sermon preparation and personal study. 15 hours! Even if you save only 1/3 as much time, you'll still have five extra hours on your hands.

Bible software is truly a blessing for overtaxed pastors.

Uses less space: Why fill up your bookshelves when you can fill up your hard drive?

During your lifetime you've probably found yourself browsing for books in a tiny hole-in-the-wall bookstore. Everywhere you look there are books - unreachable books on tall bookshelves, books stacked precariously on the floor, and boxes of books in the back room waiting to be displayed. It is expected that a bookstore will be overflowing with books, but what about your office? You probably don't have a 500 square foot executive office with dozens of bookshelves, so as your print library grows, office space is at a premium. The problem of space can be particularly acute if you're a part-time pastor storing your pastoral library at home.

Your job as a pastor involves much more than hunching over books and reference materials all day; pastors also need to use their offices for meetings, counseling sessions, etc. If you have a large book collection, living with overflowing shelves often seems like the only option. However, this is not the case. Bible software can free up space on your bookshelves like never before and rid your desk of the dozens of clutter-creating books. With Bible software, your pastoral library only uses as much space as the desktop or notebook computer that's running the software. No more giving away old resources to accommodate new resources. No more stacks of books that could fall over at any moment. No more clutter. Just like room-size computers of the 1950s have given way to computers that fit in the palm of your hand, traditional print books are giving way to books run using space-saving Bible software.

If shelf space or office space is an issue for you, Bible software can consolidate large bookshelves of material onto one laptop computer smaller than many Bible dictionaries. Amazing!

Portability: Easily transport your entire pastoral library without a moving truck

Have you ever moved your pastoral library to a new church, new church building, or new office? Have you ever served in the mission field in a country halfway around the world and dealt with the cost and hassle of shipping needed books and resources? Have you ever wished you could move your entire workspace from your church office to your home without transporting 150 pounds of books back and forth?

The sore backs, outrageous shipping charges, and worn-out briefcase are all a testament to the lack of portability of a large print library. The ultimate solution for pastors who want to easily bring their entire library with them wherever they go is simple: Bible software. On a notebook computer weighing as little as 5 pounds, pastors can literally carry 4,000 books in one hand. A full collection of concordances, Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, lexicons, and commentaries can be accessed on an airplane, in a waiting room, or at a park. You become a more efficient pastor when you are able to work where you want and when you want. Imagine using Bible software on your notebook computer during a small group study to help answer questions or to find a passage that is on the tip of your tongue.

For pastors, the term "portable book" used to mean an abridged pocket edition; now the term "portable book" can be replaced with "portable library."

Ease of replacement: Is your pastoral book library fireproof?

Poof! Your entire pastoral library disappears and you are in the middle of preparing a sermon for big multi-church gathering. What do you do? The likelihood that your pastoral library will magically disappear are slim, but fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, bugs, mold, and theft are all real dangers. Thankfully, the probability of any of these wrecking havoc on your pastoral library are slim, but what would you do if they did? Would you dig deep into your bank account and start your library from scratch, repurchasing books and reference materials for today's inflated prices? Rather than repurchase paper books that could be destroyed again, why not buy Bible software?

One of the beauties of Bible software (or at least some software, including Logos Bible Software) is that it is replaceable. With Logos Bible Software, if your notebook computer is incinerated, the record created when you registered your software allows you to reload the software when you get a new machine. You are quickly and easily back to square one. Imagine contacting a book publisher to ask for a replacement copy of a concordance you purchased in 1985. It's not going to happen.

The odds are that you'll never be forced to replace your print library or your Bible software, but if you do, the option that won't leave you, your church, and your ministry out in the cold is Bible software.

Thoroughness: Can you search 1,000 books in less than a minute?

During the course of an average week, how many books do you use for your personal study and sermon preparation? 5? 10? 20? 30? Most pastors are so busy fulfilling their various roles and duties that they can only scratch the surface of their print library. You wouldn't have accumulated thousands of books if they all weren't valuable in some way to the study of God's Word. You would love to consult hundreds of your print titles to glean all the knowledge you can for your next sermon, but you know that doing so would literally take weeks. Is there any way that busy pastors can take full advantage of all the resources in their library without locking themselves in your study for weeks on end?

Bible software is the answer! Rather than going through the tedious process of finding a specific book on your bookshelf, hauling the book to your work area, and digging around until you find the tidbit of insight you are looking for, Bible software allows you to type your topic or verse into the computer and search every electronic title you own in mere seconds! For example, if you are preparing a sermon on John 3:16 you would simply type "John 3:16" into the software and seconds later all the books containing related information will be accessible. Spending hundreds of dollars per year on print books that you may or may not remember to use seems illogical and wasteful. Further, Bible software companies are continually converting new books and reference works to electronic format. If one of your favorite print books isn't available in electronic format, there's a good chance they will be in the foreseeable future.

With Bible software, you'll be doing the most in-depth research possible with a click of a button.

Copy and paste: Print books and word processors don't mix, but Bible software and word processors do

You may remember the days when pastors crafted their sermons the old fashioned way: using a pencil and a notebook. Relevant information was found in a reference book and then handwritten onto a piece of lined paper. Today, most pastors have graduated to the ease and power of computer word processing. However, this isn't necessarily the huge jump forward it seems to be. Many pastors still relegate themselves to finding information in print books and then transcribing it into the word processor. Pastors doing this are standing with one foot in the past and one foot in the present.

Bible software can help pastors move into the 21st century. Today's Bible software can integrate seamlessly with your word processor and also offers handy copy and paste capabilities. Since Bible software puts your entire library on your computer screen, you are able to quickly copy and paste chunks of text (whether it be the Bible, a commentary, a lexicon, etc.) directly into the document you are currently creating. This is a huge time savings.especially if you type slowly. Bible software will also automatically create footnotes within your document, another convenient time saver. Further, creating a sermon or lesson using Bible software and a word processor makes it very easy to save, distribute, and access your notes and sermons.

The copy and paste ability and easy integration with word processors that Bible software offers is a frequently overlooked benefit that makes pastors lives a little bit easier.

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