What is Joomla Bible Study?
Joomla Bible Study was born in 2007. As a pastor of a small church in Newberg, Oregon (http://www.CalvaryNewberg.org), I was asked to put my sermon notes and mp3 files on the internet. My first efforts used FrontPage and were a series of static pages. I got complaints that the more studies I added the slower the site loaded and that's when I discovered all the junk that FrontPage puts out as html code (sorry, Microsoft).
I decided to create something dynamic using a database. I coded some stuff in php and at least had a webform that would present the study notes and mp3 files. But there was no security (or very little) and no flexibility. The script is actually still in use as of this writing at http://www.CalvaryChapelSalem.com - our sister church in Salem, Oregon.
One day when I was surfing the net I found one of our other nearby churches using something called Joomla. I looked into and really liked what I saw. I first looked for a component that could do what I needed but just didn't find anything with enough flexibility or power. At that point I decided to write something on my own. I knew very little php and nothing about the Joomla API. Thanks to tutorials and the patience of people like Ian McClellan, I managed to write a Joomla 1.5 component that worked. It wasn't clean but it did what I needed.
Then along came Eugen who used Bible Study on his church site. He was a high school student at the time but offered to help. Eugen knew ALOT of programming (and is about to graduate with a degree in computer science) and his expertise really helped.
Soon others would join the project for a while, contributing something great - like Kyle, Richard, Darren, and others. Our team has been fairly steady for a while - I serve as the lead developer but I'm not the one who does most of the work. Brent has been a tremendous help on the project, setting up our releases and many other things in the code. Anton handles our translations and Nick does all our multimedia stuff. Though we always need more developers, I am blessed by this great group of men who know far more than I do!
In 2010 we decided to re-write the component to Joomla 1.6/7. So far we've gotten the administrative side completely re-written, thanks mostly for Eugen and Brent. Now we are turning to the front end. The work is never done but hopefully we will always make improvements.
If you would like a feature added and can do some programming we may as you to suggest some code. That's how all the members of the team got on board.
Above all it is my sincere desire that this free component be used to help further the gospel of Jesus Christ!
Pastor Tom Fuller
Calvary Chapel Newberg