Leading Christian Digital Publisher to Launch a Product Line for Adventists
by ANN
Logos Bible Software, the leading publisher of Bible software and digital media for churches, has hired a Seventh-day Adventist pastor to develop a new line of products for the Adventist market. A story released by the Adventist News Network (ANN), the denomination's official news service, written by Mark Kellner, news editor of the Adventist Review, has announced that Pastor Martin Weber, who retired recently as communication director for the Mid-America Union Conference, has been employed by Logos as the firm’s Adventist product manager.
Based in Bellingham, Washington, Logos has more than 2 million customers that use its Bible software worldwide. With users in more than 210 countries, it publishes in more than 30 languages. It is the only electronic publisher to offer The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary and the Ellen G. White writings as part of an integrated Bible software package. Logos is believed to be the first interdenominational publisher to launch an initiative specifically aimed at serving the Adventist market.
Weber, in a telephone interview, said his task will be to expand the list of Adventist-related publications—which now stands at 18, including the recent addition of the Andrews Study Bible notes—to cover a broad range of the movement’s writers and thinkers. “I’m hoping to take leading Adventist writers and speakers, contemporary and historical, and have them available in an Adventist-specific package,” he said. Logos has a proprietary database system in which thousands of documents can be searched at once for highly specific results. For example, it will be possible to type “Rev. 14:6” and see where every Adventist author in the database has ever quoted that text.
Logos can also transcribe into print format various Adventist audio and video archives and make them searchable with a keystroke by users. Potentially, a user could instantly discover every time Voice of Prophecy founder H.M.S. Richards was recorded speaking the word “Gethsemane” in his nearly five decades of radio talks or every time noted evangelist George Vandeman used the word “Armageddon” in his 35 years of television sermons. Logos hopes to package the written transcripts of their messages, and those of more than a dozen other beloved Adventist teachers past and present—with their original audio or video—thus opening up a multimedia trove of materials.
Weber is working with Logos management to provide Adventist materials in languages other than English, giving priority to Spanish, Portuguese, French and German. Ultimately, he said, thousands of articles in the archives of numerous Adventist publications can be bundled into general categories such as spirituality, outreach, Adventist history, prophecy, etc. The whole mass of documents can then be searched specifically, so that any Adventist document included in the database that used the word “Millerite” will be instantly discoverable. Participating Adventist publishers and authors would receive royalties from Logos sales of their documents. Weber said he wants to “work in collaboration with existing Adventist publishers, seeking ‘win-win’ partnerships for the sake of benefiting church members globally.”
Another advantage for Adventists, Weber said, is that evangelists and pastors can publish Ebooks through Logos, opening up distribution to the entire Christian marketplace. These materials would be available to the wider Logos user base across denominational lines.
Weber’s four decades of employment by the denomination on five continents uniquely equip him to serve the Adventist market through Logos. In addition to his role with the Mid-America Union Conference, Weber served at the Voice of Prophecy in 1983 and two years later became assistant to the director at It Is Written. He wrote 100 television scripts and answered more than 8,000 letters from viewers seeking biblical information.
During the early 1990s Weber served as associate editor for Ministry magazine and as a member of the General Conference executive committee. He also authored several books, served as an adjunct faculty member at several Adventist colleges, was a member of the International Police and Fire Chaplain’s Association, and was board chair for The Hope of Survivors, an international organization advocating on behalf of victims of clergy sexual abuse.