With this post I have added a new category: Dissertation. This will be the place for posts related to work on my D.Min. dissertation (more about that later).

The past few days I have been trying to come to a decision about the method I will use to manage citations and bibliographic information from my research. The programs that are used for this are usually called Bibliographic Software. These programs generally do some or all of the following:

• use a database to keep track of referenced works which will eventually appear in the bibliography
• generate properly formatted footnotes according to MLA, Chicago, etc.
• when the paper is finished, generate a properly formatted bibliography
• some also provide a way to take notes (quotations) from resources, and a way to organize and search them

Those are the basic functions. Some programs also include a word processor. Others are integrated with MS Word, and will insert a footnote with a single mouse click.

Here are the criteria that I decided to look for in a program for my use:

• generate properly formatted footnotes directly into MS Word
• support for a variety of styles (MLA, etc.), and ability to define custom styles (for all those journal articles I hope to write some day ;-))
• when the paper is finished, automatically scan through and correct footnote references to the proper form for first references and subsequent references to a source (this is a very cool feature found in some of these programs)
• provide a way to take notes, and link the notes to the source so that when I paste in the note the footnote automatically appears
• cost no more than $100 (some of these programs cost $400 or more!)

It’s difficult to find a program that meets all of my criteria, but some are pretty close.
Here are the main contenders so far:

1. Scholar’s Aid — A very capable program, with a free version that is useful. Unlike most, this program has an integrated note manager. The only missing feature is the ability to adjust the footnotes at the end. The web site has a note saying that this will be added in the next version. I sent them an email asking when that might be available, but as of yet I have not received a reply.
2. Biblioscape – The Standard edition looks good, but there is not a demo that I can download and test. They do have a free version, but does not seem to adjust the footnotes as the Standard version apparently does.
3. Bibliographix – This one also looks interesteing. It inserts footnotes in a temporary format, which allows it to come back and update them to final form when the paper is finished. There is a free basic version which is actually quite powerful. There is a module to manage ideas, which could be used to record quotations, but it doesn’t seem to provide the one click functionality that Scholar’s Aid does for inserting quotations with a footnote. It does provide the update footnotes feature, but I had a lot of trouble trying to get it to work properly.

I will add to this post as I continue to work on this. . .

Added 10-13-05
Here is a good overview of this type of software and what it can do.
I have downloaded a trial version of Endnote, a popular bibliographic program. The academic version is about $100 on line. So far I really like it.

A little over a week ago I did a Q&A session for Crossroads (our college fellowship). One of the questions was about the value of Christ’s death. How could the death of one man, even a perfect man, pay for the sins of all humanity? And how could suffering for a short time pay for an eternity of judgement.

As I said at the time, this is a very good question. In my answer I pointed to the deity of Christ as the basis for his death having infinite value. If Jesus had only been a perfect man then his death could only take the place of one other person. But since He was both God and man, his death could cover the sins of all.

Since that time I have been reflecting further on this question and I realized that there is another important factor to be considered. God is the judge, and He has declared that He will accept Christ’s death as a substitute for all who believe. This makes it possible for God to declare us righteous in Christ without compromising His own justice, or as it is put in Romans 3:26 “that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Even if we can’t completely understand the divine calculation by which God computes the value of Christ’s death, as a practical matter what is really important is that He has made it clear that Christ’s death is sufficient to provide justification to all who believe.

I am currently doing a series of sermons on worship. This is a summary of message #1 in the series. This is only a summary of the key points. To listen to the entire message you can go here. (The Scripture references below include links the text of the passages.)

We all worship something. Some people dedicate their lives to some pretty strange things. But it is important to find something that truly deserves to be worshipped.

What is worship?

We were created to worship God (1 Peter 2:9). Not only that, but we are also commanded to worship God (Psalm 135:1-2). So worship is important.

But what is “worship?” The English word “worship” comes from an Old English word worth-ship. It means to declare someone’s “worth.” Or to give the children’s Sunday School definition, “Worship is telling God how great He is.”

In Revelation 4:1-4 we catch a glimpse into heaven. In fact whenever the Bible mentions heaven there is almost always worship taking place. In Rev. 4:8 we meet the heavenly “worship team.” We can learn a lot from the way they worship.

Why should we worship?

The reason that we should worship God is that He is worthy of our worship. In Rev. 4:8 the heavenly praise is based on God’s nature. He is holy (repeated three times for emphasis), which means that He is completely separated from anything sinful or unclean. He is also the almighty one, and the eternal God who has always existed and always will exist. For these reasons He is worthy of our praise.

God is also worshiped on the basis of what He has done. Two great deeds of God are mentioned in this heavenly scene. First in Rev. 4:9-11 He is praised for His great work of creation. Then in Rev. 5:6-10 He is praised for His great work of redemption. The heavenly scene closes with a great heavenly chorus of worship in Rev. 5:11-14.

Lessons about worship

What can we learn about worship from these heavenly scenes?

1. It’s not about you

We tend to make worship all about ourselves, and focus on how we feel. Churches talk about creating a good “worship experience.” A Google search for the phrase “It’s all about you” yields about 155K hits. We love to be the focus of attention. But the worship in heaven is God-centered. If you ask what you “got out of” worship then you are asking the wrong question. The goal of worship is not for you to get something out of it. The right question is what God “got out of it.” The purpose of worship is to give praise and honor and glory to God because He is worthy!

2. It’s all about Him!

Worship is God-centered. We should worship God no matter how we feel or what our circumstances. No matter what else is going on, He is worthy. Nothing can change that. You will notice that the reasons for worship in the heavenly scene have nothing to do with how my life is going today.

When it comes down to it, worship is a choice. We choose to worship God because He is worthy. Sometimes it will be easy to worship God because everything is going well. At other times we might not feel much like worshipping because our lives are a mess. But He is still worthy and we should still worship.

I am thinking about the best way to use this blog. I have written posts on a variety of topics, and I am wondering if that is confusing to readers. Someone might be interested in the biblical/theological reflections but not the technology, or vice versa. Some of the sites about creating a good blog say that it is better to have more of a single focus. So I wonder if it would be better to split it into two separate blogs.

A less drastic solution would be to force the technology posts to appear only on a separate technology page. That way ppl interested in that could go directly to that page, and others could just ignore it. I wonder if that would be enough. But it is not that difficult to create a separate blog.

I say all this because there is a lot more that I want to post in the technology section, including resources on web ministry and church web sites.

I would be interested in what you think, so please leave your comments.

The situation in the New Orleans area has been getting worse since Monday. At first there was minimal flooding, but then the levy broke and the city filled with water. As the conditions in the city have gone from bad to worse the people there have become more desperate. Today there are reports of armed gangs and violence that is hindering relief efforts. It’s sad that at a time when some people are working heroically to save life, others are taking advantage of the chaos to engage in violence and looting. It reminds us of the fallenness of the human race. We need to keep the people there in our prayers.

Reporters are already talking about who to blame for the slow emergency response, although I think that for now we should just focus on helping the victims. There will be plenty of time later to discuss policy changes or to restructure emergency agencies. But it does seem that the response is much slower than it should have been. It’s not like they didn’t know that the hurricane was coming.

When there is a disaster people usually look for someone to blame. It’s part of their effort to cope with the magnitude of the tragedy. They ask “How could this have happened?” and then “Whose fault is it?” Since they can’t blame anyone for the hurricane itself, they look for other places to focus their blame. We see the same sort of behavior any time there is any sort of tragedy. Usually it ends up with the passage of some sort of law, whether it does any good or not, because people want to feel that they have “solved the problem” so that “this sort of thing” won’t happen again.

But the problem is that we really can’t guarantee that “this sort of thing” will never happen again. We can never make our lives totally safe, although we often delude ourselves into thinking that it is possible. After we take all the reasonable and sensible precautions that we should, we must recognize that there are some things that are beyond our control. It creates an uncomfortable feeling, but we must accept it because it is true.

For a Christian, this is where our faith steps in. Things are never totally under our control, but they are under God’s control. The universe is not running amok, although at times it may look that way to us. Of course talking about God’s control immediately leads to the question “God, why did you let that happen?” (I don’t think that God directly causes the calamities in our lives, but He does allow them to occur.) There are a number of partial responses to this question, but in the end I don’t think that we have all the answers. It comes down to “Do you trust Him?” And in the midst of a crisis, trust in the Lord can be a very comforting thing.

Let’s keep the people affected by the hurricane in our prayers this week!

You might also want to read my article on Responding to the Tsunami Disaster from January 2005 or listen to my sermon on the Tsunami entitled “Why, God?”