The website www.thisisyourbible.com is the worldwide internet presence of the CBM (UK) and the CBMA (CBM of the Americas). The site was activated fully in February of 2006. Over the course of the year we have been excited to see the positive response generated among our new students, and the wonderful support and assistance of our brothers and sisters. Indeed, the Lord has richly blessed this work.
By the end of December, 1058 individuals from 65 different countries established an account on the system. Of these, 704 are taking the Bible study courses available online or by post. The courses vary, depending on the area in which a student lives, and we also have links on our homepage to courses in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
The remaining 354 students who created an account on the system downloaded material or ordered the free DVD advertised on the site, but did not sign up for a course.
During 2006, the site had 1.9 million “hits”, but that number is not as significant as the fact that 17,945 separate individuals accessed our site and downloaded 26.8 gigabytes of material. Imagine: close to 18,000 people have read our literature or signed up for courses over the past year! No other means of preaching has allowed us to reach so many over so short a time!
Since May, 421 DVDs have been distributed with two titles being offered: “The Middle East and Your Future” and “God’s Land of Promises For You”. These excellent DVDs have been made available to us at a very low cost. In 2007 we plan to offer two new titles currently in production, “Introducing Jesus” and “I Once Was Blind”.
We keep track of the number of times literature on the site is read or downloaded. Our primary sources of literature for online viewing are the CMPA pamphlet series and the CBM Basic Bible Teaching series. These booklets were accessed 12,782 times over the course of the year. This information might be of use to you if you are planning for your upcoming ecclesial lecture titles. The top five titles in 2006 were:
- The Middle East and Bible Prophecy (650 readers)
- The Kingdom of God on Earth (602 readers)
- The Sabbath (543 readers)
- After Death What? (539 readers)
- Baptism Matters (497 readers)
Another heavily used feature of the website was “Ask a Question About the Bible”. In total, 384 questions were submitted in 2006. Of these, 160 dealt with technical Bible study issues such as: “What date was Jesus born?” and “What information can you give me about the nameless woman of Shunem?” Another 111 questions focused on first-principle questions, while 101 asked about life issues such as marriage, sexuality, depression, etc. The remainder asked about Christadelphians in general.
Two features added in December were “Minute Meditations” — our first foray into video and audio presentations on the site — and “Answers from the Question Box”. In that one month “Minute Meditations” was accessed 399 times and the “Answers…” feature 1,763 times. Clearly it was a good decision to implement these features!
We currently have 168 tutors volunteering their time to care for our many students around the world. However, we will be requiring the services of many more in the coming year, as we have plans to greatly enhance the profile of the system on the Internet.
Tutors are not involved in mailing out the site’s free offers such as DVDs, nor do they have to tackle the multitude of questions from the “Ask a Question” feature. The site coordinators, Bro. Peter Forbes (CBM UK) and Bro. Mike LeDuke (CBMA), manage those portions of the site. Tutors are asked only to manage the students in their care. Timely assistance from the site coordinators is available to tutors in regard to information about the system, or advice in dealing with students and their questions. Their contact information is provided at the end of this article.
So, why not sign up to be a “This Is Your Bible” tutor yourself? If you have even a minimal knowledge of how to navigate the internet, you can manage students on this system. One of our most active tutors is a 78-year-old grandmother who has taken on 17 students — some of whom are already close to finishing their course of studies online. One of her students is currently studying for baptism with his wife at an ecclesia close to his home. This hard-working grandmother is fond of saying, “If I can do it, anyone can do it!”
The key portion of the website is what we call the Student Management System (SMS). This allows the tutor to track students’ activities automatically as they either download materials or progress through their courses. There are two other unique features of the SMS. The system can be used by ecclesias as their own local database of students, and it can be easily instructed to assign automatically all students generated in a specific area to a particular set of tutors. An ecclesial coordinator has the ability to list all students and their tutors in the local area. Email lists can also be automatically generated both for students and tutors in a given area.
Lord willing, we plan to release many more upgrades in 2007, including individual ecclesial “websites” as sub-sites of “This Is Your Bible” and a much more modern “look and feel” to the site. We also plan to add more video content as well as “podcasts” of Bible talks and flash presentations of first-principle lectures.
The “This Is Your Bible” Project Director is Bro. David Jennings (Pomona, CA) (CBMA Council). The site manager and the coordinator of CBMA site activity is Bro. Mike LeDuke (Kitchener/Waterloo, ON). The CBM (UK) site activity coordinator is Bro. Peter Forbes (Glenfield, Leicester). The technical guru, behind the scenes, is Bro. Andrew Culver (Norfolk, VA).
For further information about the website or information on tutoring on the site, please contact Bro. Mike LeDuke at mduke@gto.net or Bro. Peter Forbes at peter@forbes31.freeserve.co.uk.
Do give the website a once-over at www.thisisyourbible.com and then write to either of the addresses above or to the site’s generic email ID, yourbible@gto.net. We welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions — and especially your prayers — as we take every opportunity to witness to the world, on the eve of God’s impending judgment.
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