I've had my copy of the HCSB Minister's Bible (Holman Bible Publishers, ISBN 1586401696) since February, 2006. Although I don't use this Bible exclusively as a one-stop resource as perhaps it's intended, I have used it for teaching, for preaching, for a funeral, and as of last Saturday for a wedding. And since I've only written about this Bible anecdotally in the past, I thought I might offer a few more thoughts on it now that I've had and used it for a while.

The box cover pictured here describes The Minister's Bible as a single-column/wide margin Bible. I'll go through some of the other features listed on the box and offer a few comments:

Genuine Leather Cover. I'm not certain of the exact grade of genuine leather for this Bible, but it certainly feels like good quality to me. It's a muted black and is quite flexible allowing this Bible to balance nicely, Billy-Graham-style, in one hand. Considering the HCSB Minister's Bible (HMB from this point forward) has a lifetime guarantee, the publisher obviously considers this to be a quality product. I've no doubt that the leather will hold up to the test of time, but I'm not so sure about the actual pages. More on that below.

Large, Easy-to-Read Typeface. Technically the main text uses a 9.8 point typeface. This isn't exactly large print, but it's clear and legible and I can use this Bible in public without my reading glasses, which is always helpful. Also, there's strictly black letters in this Bible. None of that red-letter nonsense.

Two Ribbon Markers. Why doesn't every Bible include two markers? This is quite handy. One is black; the other is red.

Single-Column Format. Any regular reader of this blog knows that a single-column of text is my preferred format in a Bible. The layout here is clean and open and there's no indication of "rushing" the text as in some Bibles to make for fewer pages. There are no cross references to clutter the page and get in the way of note-taking. Textual notes are laid out at the bottom in a smaller typeface.

Extra Wide Margins for Taking Notes. In my opinion, this description is a bit misleading. I imagine the marketing folks simply meant that this Bible's margins are wider than other Bibles. But when I think of a wide margin Bible, I generally see that as a designation of at least an inch of space for note-taking. Therefore, an extra wide margin should be considerably wider--one and a half to two inches perhaps. The one inch margin in this Bible is adequate in most places. There's even much more room for annotations in poetic sections, but longer prose passages, especially in the NT epistles, will leave the person who likes to add notations wishing for more space.

Gilded Page Edges. I liked the shade of gold that was on this Bible when I first bought it. It was a less bright gold color, a bit muted perhaps. However, now after one year's use--and I don't even use it all that regularly--the gold has faded quite a bit. Of course if you want a new Bible that doesn't look new, I suppose this would be a good thing.

Ministerial Helps Section. Perhaps this is one of the HMB's strongest points. In the back of the Bible comes the "minister's manual" with quite a few resources, some of which are actually quite helpful. Here is a list of the features with an occasional comment from myself:

• Pastoral Care: Where to Turn. This is a standard, "When you feel _________, turn to this Bible passage" supposedly for use when counseling those with problems. I suppose this kind of resource is helpful at some level, but really, I hope that most ministers can reference this kind of information off the top of their head.
• "21 Essentials of Authentic Ministry" by James T. Draper. These are helpful reminders from a seasoned pastor and denominational leader. "Never make a decision when you are discouraged or depressed." "Always return your phone calls and answer your mail." "Always be prepared to preach." "Don't flirt with temptation." "Give credit to other people." "When you are wrong, admit it." As the title suggests, there are 21 of these admonitions with explanations. This is probably the kind of wisdom the average pastor should read once a year. I've known some who should read it once a month.
• "Weddings: Guidelines for Premarital Counseling" by Jim Henry. A lot of the wedding/marriage information in the HMB comes from Jim Henry's The Pastor's Wedding Manual (ISBN 0805423133), including these guidelines. Although this information is produced elsewhere, it is still a valuable set of guidelines for what could actually be multiple sessions of premarital counseling with engaged couples.
• Guidelines for Planning Wedding Ceremonies.
• Couples Commitment Form
• "The Kingdom Family Commitment" by Tom Elliff.
• A Classical Wedding Ceremony
• A Contemporary Wedding Ceremony
• "Funerals: When the Death Bell Rings" by Jim Henry. This is handy little resource, primarily for the inexperienced minister on responsibilities and what to do from the beginning of a death notification to the funeral services. It is excerpted from A Minister's Treasury of Funeral and Memorial Messages(ISBN 0805425756) also by Henry.
• Funeral Sermon: "The Teacher Called Death" by Jim Henry. This is the only funeral sermon in the HMB. I suppose it might be handy for extremely short notice.
• "The Invitation or Altar Call" by Roger Willmore
• Commitment Counseling. Topics covered: salvation, baptism, church membership, assurance of salvation, rededication to grow toward spiritual maturity, and commitment to vocational Christian Ministry.
• "The Pastor's Concern for Children" by W. A. Criswell.
• "Reaching Students with the Gospel" by Lynn H. Pryor.
• How to Lean an Effective Parent-Child Dedication Service
• How to Conduct a Worker Commitment Service
• How to Dedicate a Building
• The Christian Year and Church Calendar. I find this interesting because it includes the more traditional calendar dates such as those for the Lenten Season like Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday. Obviously, it's primary market for the HMB is Baptist and most Baptist churches do not celebrate the traditional church calendar days--although some do. Intermixed with these dates are specific Southern Baptist dates that are promoted yearly such as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, Racial Reconciliation Sunday, Citizenship and Religious Liberty Sunday, and World Hunger Sunday among others.
• The Apostles and their History. In my opinion, this is really an odd choice to include with these other items. I really don't know how often in pastoral ministry, a minister will need quick access to a table of facts about the 12 apostles of the Gospels.
• Principles of an Orderly Business Meeting. Unfortunately, this particular guide is only one page long whereas entire books have been written on the subject. I don't know how helpful it will be to have this brief treatment at one's fingertips.

The HMB also includes standard items in most Holman Bibles including a F.A.I.T.H. plan of salvation, HCSB Bullet Notes, a table of weights and measures, a concordance (the box for the HMB claims an 82 page concordance, but someone can't count. It begins with "Aaron" on p. 1735 and ends with "600,000" on p. 1806. By my count, that's 72 pages.) and eight pages of full-color maps.

So what are the strengths and weaknesses of the HCSB Minister's Bible? Well, copy on Holman's product page for the HMB describes it as "like having a fine 'preaching Bible' and practical 'minister's manual' in one." And that, of course, is the goal of it. Ministers manuals abound with specific manuals on weddings, funerals, and the like. But anytime I've had to officiate a formal occasion like a wedding or a funeral, I've usually taken my text and affixed to the center of a nice-looking, black leather Bible. I'm sure that lots of folks who don't know better assume that there's some chapter in the middle of the Bible that contains wedding vows. Obviously, this is not the case. The HMB would theoretically allow a person to use one Bible for teaching, preaching, and administering the great services of life. It's a great idea, but it falls short in some areas.

For teaching and preaching. As far as having a nice looking black leather Bible, with a single-column format with clear and readable text, the HMB can't be beat. However, my greatest complaint in this category is its thin pages. While not exactly a thinline Bible, the HMB has well over 1800 pages and yet is only 1.55" thick! To create a Bible with so much content and yet to keep it so thin, Holman had to use incredibly thin paper. In fact, this has to be some of the thinnest paper I've yet to see in a Bible (and I've seen lots of Bibles!). Bleed through is a problem not only with the text, but also with any notes written in the margins. Even ink from Pigma Micron pens which are generally perfect for writing in Bibles shows through the page. Even worse, the pages are so thin that they have a tendency to curl when written upon or even when laid open to a passage for long enough time. If the Bible is closed long enough this curling will eventually go away, but it can be very distracting while trying to stay focused on a particular passage. Further, it makes it very easy to accidently fold the corners of pages, and afterwards, even if they are straightened out, any passages where you've spent a good amount of time will have a slightly worn look to them. Thicker paper would have gone quite a way to making this an excellent note-taking Bible. As an aside, for HCSB aficionados, this is the ONLY wide-margin Bible available in this version as of this writing.

For funerals, weddings, and other services. In regard to funerals, a minister will be better served by obtaining one or two good funeral manuals. It's no secret that ministers don't always create funeral messages from scratch. Often there's very little advance notice for such an occasion. However, a skillful minister can take a generic funeral message and personalize it based on his knowledge of the deceased. And therefore, having access to a variety of these kinds of messages is helpful as a minister might officiate a number of services in any year's time based on a church's population. Therefore, the inclusion of simply one message (although it is a very good message) in the HMB is not going to be all that helpful in the long run.

I used the HMB when I officiated my friend Andrew's funeral last year. But I did not use the sermon included in the Bible. And because of the nature of the accommodations of the funeral home, I was able to take the text of my message in a binder, and the HMB made a very nice Bible with readable type for use in that kind of setting (although in hindsight, Andrew was traditional enough in some areas that he might've preferred the KJV). However, when it came to the graveside service, I found myself using the old trick of paperclipping my text into the middle of the Bible.

So perhaps here is where the HMB could be improved. Graveside services tend to be very short and basic. Why not include a handful of different graveside services in a resource like this? I believe that would be more helpful than one token sermon.

On the other hand, the two wedding services included in the HMB are very good selections. The classical service has the very traditional "I plight thee my troth" and "With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow." But at the same time, the contemporary service has more up-to-date language: "I promise to honor you, to love you, and to cherish you until death do us part." Although it would still be beneficial to have a full wedding manual with a variety of services to choose from, the two included in the HMB would probably serve the majority of services in which the minister would be engaged (no pun intended).

On Saturday, I performed a wedding service for a former student of mine, and I used the HMB and the contemporary wedding service found in it. Overall, the experience was good, and the contemporary service served the needs of the day well. I didn't stick to the outline in the HMB 100%, but I did stay pretty close to it so as not to add any unnecessary bloopers to the wedding video. In that regard, the HMB was very helpful.

At the same time, after utilizing the HMB in actual use during a wedding, I would offer some suggestions for improvement, and in fact, I wonder how well this product was field tested. First, one of my biggest complaints of this Bible from the beginning is that all of these minister's helps are placed in the back. Think about that for a minute. This is an 1800+ page resource, and all of the primary resources are in the last 10% or so of it. What that means is that for public use, the minister will be turned to the very back of the Bible for the entire time. Not only would it look better to an audience to work from somewhere more in the middle, but there's also a practical issue regarding the way the Bible is weighted. If you've ever been in a wedding in any role, you know that standing in front of the church, having to remain perfectly still for possibly an hour or more can be grueling. Now think about the minister for a moment. When I teach or preach, I can move around and pace and stay reasonably active. However, in a wedding service like the one on Saturday, I had to remain perfectly still for well over 40 minutes with my Bible held out before me in my bent arms--no podium. You might think it's not big deal to hold a Bible out in front of yourself, but try it for 40 minutes, and be sure to keep your feet perfectly planted in one position since you've already been informed by the videographer that if you move your left foot off the tape on the floor, you won't be seen in the video. This can be extremely tiring. As we got further along in the service, the fact that I had my Bible opened to around p. 1690 and following gave me a real concern that in a moment of inattention, it could simply fall out of my hand because the weight was so lopsided.

The very simple solution here would be to simply move all the ministerial helps to a section between the Old and New Testaments. Obviously, that's not going to be the direct center of the Bible, but it would help balance the Bible a bit better when using it, especially in formal settings. This seems like a no-brainer after actually using the HMB as it was intended, and this is why I wonder how well it was field tested. I certainly can't imagine anyone suggesting that such placement might confuse some into thinking this material is actually scripture.

Another issue I had during the service was the placement of text on the page. This wasn't an issue when I sat at my desk the day before and read through everything out loud. However, holding the Bible in front of myself, reading from the text, while at the same time attempting to keep good eye contact became a challenge with the text that was at the bottom of the page. Part of the vows and the dedication of marriage itself was right at the bottom which created more of a strain as I tried to look all the way down to the bottom of the page and maintain frequent eye contact. A better solution might be to keep the bottom third to half blank with the service itself in the top portion of the page. This would allow for any post-it notes for reminders or penciled-in information. As it was, I had a tiny order of service for the entire wedding posted to the page facing the first part of the contemporary service. And I had frequent notes throughout in pencil. A spot at the bottom of the page to write some of this would certainly be helpful.

Final thoughts. Ultimately the HMB may suffer from trying to be too many things at once. It's not the greatest Bible for teaching and preaching for the person who wants to write notes because of the thinness of it's paper. And the ministerial helps ultimately seem more representative of a minister's manual than a final solution. These resources are not going to replace the need for one or more good pastoral manuals.

Nevertheless, the idea itself is a good one. Perhaps rather than trying to include all the information found in the HMB, the publishers could concentrate on specific services such as weddings, funerals and dedications. Yesterday, at our church we had a baby dedication. I noticed that our pastor read the charge to the parents and the church from a single sheet of paper. Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with that, and our service went fine. But I thought to myself that there's an almost exact same service and words included in the HMB. Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be something authoritative about holding a Bible--or at least a black leather book--when conducting formal services such as these. To me, this would be the ideal use of a Bible such as this. And it wouldn't hurt to have it in other translations as well. Note: Hendrickson publishes a number of Minister's Bibles in the KJV, NKJV, and NASB, but I don't believe they cover quite the same content. I've heard rumors that Holman might release the Minister's Bible in another translation, perhaps the NKJV. I ran a search on Zondervan's website and found a similar minister's Bible in Spanish, but not English!?

Another idea might be to have a 1000+ page minister's manual covered in black leather with multiple wedding and funeral sermons, dedication services, and other ministerial helps such as the ones found in the HMB. Such a resource might even have room for the New Testament and Psalms to be included as well.

I'll continue to use my HMB now and then, but it's not the primary Bible that I thought it would be when I got it 15 months ago. Nevertheless, it's a useful, although flawed resource. Now if I could just get something like this in the TNIV...

Tags: HCSB, ministry

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