Bible Gateway Blog

As you may have noticed, there are now ads on the Bible Gateway. This is a big step for us, and it’s one we’ve only taken after much prayer and discussion. Why are we placing ads after so many years of keeping the Bible Gateway ad-free? Put simply, it’s a question of financial responsibility—you can read the reasoning behind our decision at our Why Ads? page.

You’ll also find there our strict standards for advertising (we won’t be running any ads that conflict in any way with our mission to make God’s Word available to the world), and when we’re ready to start accepting new ads, you’ll find information on how to do so there as well.

So how will this affect you as you use the Bible Gateway? All of the features and functions of the Bible Gateway will continue to work as they always have, and we’ll continue to add new Bible versions and translations as we have in the past. The only change is that there’s now a new way for you to support the Bible Gateway’s ministry, by clicking on ads that interest you.

Thanks for your patience and understanding as we take this big step. As always, we’re interested in your feedback—if you’ve got questions or comments about our new ads, let us know.

Greetings everyone!

We wanted to pop in to let you know that after a lengthy process of prayer and planning, Gospel Communications has decided to start placing ads on our online properties. For years we’ve relied primarily on donations to continue our ministry, and as much as we’d love to keep doing that, it’s just no longer feasible.

What this means is that starting soon, probably near the end of the week, you’ll begin seeing some advertising on The BibleGateway. We’ve already rolled out some preliminary advertising on some of our other sites, like Gospel.com and Reverend Fun.

We’re actually pretty excited about this change. It’s going to let us do a tremendous amount of new ministry while still being financially responsible.

Check back on this blog for more information later on in the week.

If you’re interested in reading more about why we’re doing ads, you can hop over to our explanation page (at Gospel Communications corporate site) for more details.

Blessings!

We’re always excited to add more ways to experience the Bible. So, we’d like to offer a special thank you to The Lockman Foundation and mp3nasb.com for helping us get the Old and New testament flash versions of the NASB audio up on biblegateway.com.

The NASB bible is read by Dale McConachie. Click here to listen.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve added Max McLean’s beautiful performance of the KJV to our audio offerings on BibleGateway.com. The files are in an easy to use flash player that you can find by following this link.

You can find all of our audio bibles here. Enjoy!

Thanks you for the over 1600 responses we’ve already received on our Verse of the Day survey!

We wanted to let you know that we’ll be closing the survey tomorrow.

Instead of having our staff picking new verses for the Verse of the Day, we thought we’d extend the offer to you to let us know what your favorite verses are. The survey is one question long, ridiculously simple and we don’t ask for personal information. Feel free to take it more than once if you have a lot of favorite verses!

Looking for a unique way to support the Bible Gateway? You can now become a sponsor of the Bible Gateway, and help us make the Word of God available to millions of people each month!

What does Bible Gateway sponsorship involve? It’s easy—sign up at the sponsorship site, choose which day you want to sponsor, and for your entire chosen day, you (or your organization/website) are prominently acknowledged on the Bible Gateway as the day’s sponsor (in the “Today’s Sponsor box on the left).

Bible Gateway sponsorship starts at $250 per day of sponsorship. (The normal cost is $400—but for a limited time while we introduce the sponsorship program, we’re offering it at a reduced price.) Your sponsorship is tax deductible, and helps us impact millions of visitors by making the Word of God freely available in dozens of languages.

If the Bible Gateway is a ministry you’re excited about, take advantage of this opportunity to publicly support it by sponsoring the Bible Gateway for one or more days! Head over to Sponsor.BibleGateway.com to learn more, or to become a Bible Gateway sponsor!

We’re updating our Verse of the Day feature and we’d like your input. Rather than our staff coming up with a biased list of favorite verses, we thought we’d extend the offer to you to let us know what your favorite verses are.

The survey is one question long, super-simple, and we don’t ask for personal information. Get your two cents in, and then tell a friend!

As 2007 drew to a close, we ran a special donation drive at the Bible Gateway, asking BG users to support our ongoing ministry… and the results are in! You responded with donations totaling over $213,000!

We at the BG team are both stunned and humbled by your response. Your donations will help us continue to improve the Bible Gateway this year with new translations and new features. We’ve got some exciting plans for 2008 and your support is going to make those plans a reality.

So from the Bible Gateway team to everybody who donated or sent a prayer our way—a hearty “thank you!”

(And if you’d like to learn more about Gospel Communications, the organization behind the Bible Gateway and many other ministries, take a look at the Gospel Communications website. Your support of the Bible Gateway and Gospel Communications is always appreciated!)

Last week we rolled out some new functionality on Biblegateway.com. Perhaps you noticed, but when you do a search on Biblegateway.com there is a new results section from a place called Gospel.com. It looks something like this:

Perhaps you’re asking the question, “What’s Gospel.com?” Well, friends, that’s a great question. Here’s a quick explanation:

Biblegateway.com is just one of the web sites that make up the Gospel Communications International Internet Ministry Department (a mouthful that refers to our online ministries). In November we launched Gospel.com, which is an online directory of web pages from our Gospel.com Community. The advantage of a directory is that instead of automatically indexing information on the internet each link is individually indexed by a person. The result is a directory with much more focused resources organized into different topics. And as our Community adds and bookmarks new content to their web sites Gospel.com just keeps getting better.

We’re pretty excited about Gospel.com. The next time you search on the BG, we hope you take a chance to check out one of the links from Gospel.com.

Wow, not only did we click over 1,000 members before thanksgiving, but we just passed 2,500 today!

We love hearing your positive comments about the ministry of biblegateway.com, and the discussions on the boards have been inspiring. A big thank you to the group for being willing to respectfully and prayerfully minister to each other. Here are a few comments that people have left on our Wall:

“I love Biblegateway.com. Not only can I read the Word but hear it as well, thus allowing my faith to increase. Thank you for now also allowing us to be able to encourage one another and meet like minded people. I appreciate you:)” (From South Africa)

“I have made Bible Gateway a verb on IM. Such as: ‘… I cant find the verse, hold on, let me BG that.’”

“Praise the lord, am happy and thankful that i have got a forum where i can share with brothers and sisters who know the lord, thank you bible gateway for your resources, may God bless you, would like to meet people who are ready to share the word to achieve the purpose of us being here Matt28:18-20.” (From Kenya)

“bible gateway is rad.”

The group is open to anyone, so if you’re interested do a search for “Official Bible Gateway Group” on Facebook and click on “Join Group”. Please let us know if there’s any features you would love to see on the Bible Gateway.