I have recently developed a philosophy of book-buying. It goes like this: "Anything you're not going to read cover to cover, get electronic." Time is a valuable commodity, and the faster and more efficient I can be in my study, the more time I have to focus on other areas of ministry.

You'll never drive by my home and find tables full of books in print waiting to be sold at a quarter-a-piece, though. I still enjoy reading the good-ole -fashioned book (besides what would I do with my book shelves?). But when it comes to study, there is just no comparison to having electronic resources that are fully searchable. It would take me days to go through all the books in my physical library and find every reference to "Zephaniah." But in my digital library, it takes just minutes.

And did I mention affordability? If there is no overhead cost of printing, that means the consumer gets a better price. I'm not trying to give an economics lesson here, but the fact is, you get more for your money with e-books. When you're dealing with church budgets, this makes more and more sense (no pun intended).

BIBLE STUDY SOFTWARE

Bible Explorer 3, Premium Edition

System Requirements: Compatible with Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP; hard drive space: 40 MB minimum; for Windows 98/Me: 32 MB of RAM minimum, for Windows 2000/XP: 64 MB of RAM minimum; resolution: at least 800x600 with high color; certain features require a modem or Internet connection; CD or DVD drive.

Price: Current sale price is $299.97 (Suggested Retail: $379.95).

Review: The subtitle of Bible Explorer 3 is "The Internet-Enhanced Bible Library," and it truly is just that The distinguishing feature of Bible Explorer is its integration with the Internet. If you have a connection to the Internet, then you have access to discussion groups and a community library.

Have a question you can't find the answer to? With Bible Explorer, you can post questions, responses, and comments on a bulletin board that may be viewed by all other Bible Explorer users. These bulletin boards are indexed by topic and library, making it simple to find the category for your question or comment. You literally have a global network of Christians available to you in addition to your digital library.

The community library consists of articles and studies posted by the global network. You can access these works on-line and view them right there or download them into your library. You can also add your own writings to the community library quickly and easily. To do so, simply open the Bible Explorer word processor and then open your document. The only catch is that your document must be in .html format (an Internet format). Every current word processor I'm aware of has a feature that will convert the document to .html for you. It's an extra step, but easy to learn. And if you utilize the Bible Explorer's word processor, it does it for you.

Once you have the document opened in the Bible Explorer word processor you can edit it to your liking. All you do to publish it to the community library is click the publish button and follow the instructions in the publishing wizard. You are then given the opportunity to write a brief synopsis and give key words for searching. Once loaded, all your Bible references are hyper-linked too.