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Instructions For Use

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Making the most of your subscription

Tools for Talks helps you to teach the message of the Bible in the language of contemporary popular culture. It enables you to:

  • select a Bible passage to use as the basis for your talk - and understand its meaning and message
  • illustrate a talk on that passage with quotes and illustrations from the latest films, music and TV
  • develop your skills at preparing and presenting talks

This is achieved through the various integrated Tools:

The Passage Picker tool is a good place to start if you have a theme for your talk but not yet the Bible passage(s) that you want to speak from when considering that theme.

Either type your theme in the search box or use the A-Z list to access the index of themes directly. Clicking on the resulting theme will display a very large set of Bible references related to that theme, organised by sub-themes (see FREE sample). Each Bible reference is hot-linked - clicking on one will take you into the relevant place in the Bible Commentary.

The Bible Commentary tool is a good place to start if you know the Bible passage(s) that you want to speak from in your talk.

This is indexed by Bible book so you can easily find the passage you seek (if you have come to this tool via the Passage Picker you will automatically be in the right place). This provides you with a clear commentary on each passage (see FREE sample). Each section of the commentary contains a link called "Find a quote to illustrate this" - clicking on this will take you to the Illustration Finder and display a list of illustrations that might be appropriate to illustrate this passage.


Illustration Finder

The Illustration Finder tool contains a database of illustrations consisting of downloadable film clips, suggestions of clips from DVDs, song lyrics, quotes, downloadable interviews, news stories and statistics.

Once you have worked out what it is that your Bible passage is saying, and what you want to say to your audience, you will want to illustrate it with film clips, quotes, song lyrics and references from film and TV. Our database is updated every week with the latest contemporary illustrations (see FREE sample).

You can search for illustrations in a number of ways:

  1. Display illustrations relating to a particular keyword (such as Grace or Suffering) by clicking on the appropriate keyword from the list
  2. Display all illustrations of a type (e.g. downloadable film clip , song lyric or quote ) by clicking on the appropriate icon from the list on the right
  3. Search for illustrations containing a particular word or phrase (such as "Doctor Who") - see below for more information
  4. Search for illustrations appropriate to a particular Bible passage- see below for more information

Please note that you can't use the search box to search by word/phrase and by Bible passage at the same time.

Once you've done an illustration search, you'll get a list of results:

  • Clicking on the 'more details' link to the right of an illustration will bring up further information - helping you to put the illustration in context and giving suggestions for ways that you might use it in your talk
  • Each illustration lists other related keywords - clicking on one of these will show illustrations related to that keyword
  • Each illustration also displays the type of illustration it is (e.g. downloadable film clip , song lyric or quote ) - clicking on this icon displays the latest illustrations of that type

Searching by word or phrase

This option allows you to search for illustrations which contain a particular word/phrase, such as "Doctor Who" or "Twilight". You can choose to specify which part of the illustration the word(s) appear in, what kind of illustrations to display, and specify a specific thematic keyword (such as Love) which you want illustrations to be appropriate for.

Illustrations are always displayed with the most recent at the top so you get the most up-to-date illustrations for your talks.

Searching by Bible verse

This option allows you to find illustrations in the database which may be appropriate to illustrate a particular Bible verse or passage. This database is massive (there are 31,101 verses in the Bible!) so please note that these searches may take a little while to complete. Our team are working hard every week to refine it.

Please use one of the following formats for Bible searches:

  • John 3:16
  • John 3:16-20
  • John 3:16-4:3
  • John 3

Illustrations are always displayed with the most recent at the top so you get the most up-to-date illustrations for your talks.

The system is intended to accept common abbreviations of Bible books. If you get an error message saying that the system can't find a certain book which you think is a correct spelling, please contact us to let us know and we'll fix it.

 


 

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