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Communication

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(Photo credit: SNL screen capture)

I’ve spent the past two weeks coming up with a format to create and disseminate transcripts of video and audio materials I find important enough to have in text format.

With the proliferation of videos and podcasts, transcripts have become more useful in my work. As a writer and teacher, transcripts enable me to:

  • Skip long videos and podcasts (by reading or scanning them, instead.)
  • Search hundreds of videos, podcasts, or lectures by keywords.
  • Listen and read at the same time.
  • Come back up to speed quickly on an “old” video or podcast.
  • Quote the text without having to transcribe or retype.

I use DevonThink to store, scan, and search thousands of documents. Transcripts make videos, podcasts, & lectures available to that research workflow.

As each transcript is completed, I’ll make them freely available on either DivineCouncil.org (Spiritual) or McGillespie.com (Business, Family, Legal, Government, Health, Personal.)

Note: Each transcript (pdf) will be digitally signed by yours truly for web security. If you see my digital signature, you’ll know the document has not been altered from the signed original.

This is the advanced version of the Story of the Bible Logos Layout demonstrated in a previous video. We’re going to pick up where that video left off adding pictures and enhancing the ability to navigate story elements with automatic sync.

SOTB Advanced Frame

The Bible does not always unfold in chronologically which makes it hard to grasp the story from reading in the sequence of the canon. Unfortunately, the “find box” in the event navigator is limited making it easy to get lost and hard to reorient yourself when you do. The remedy for this is the logos explorer.

Use Logos Explorer for Reorientation

With the Explorer set to the same linkset as your Bible, you’ll have three options to reorient and get back in sync with the story: through the event navigator, the explorer, or from your Bible.

Additional Benefits

There are two added benefits of having the explorer in this layout:

  1. The “Media” tab in the explorer automatically finds all the pictures in your library related to the passage you’re reading (though I recommend keeping the “media” tab closed until you want to find more images, so it doesn’t search continually while the narration moves from verse to verse.)
  2. The notations in the event navigator are hot-linked to open in the Factbook.

This advanced story layout is the centerpiece of my morning routine. I highly recommend this layout for writers or anyone looking to reach a deeper understanding of the narrative structures of the Bible.

One of my favorite ways to read the Bible is to listen to it being read aloud. By listening, instead of reading, I can more easily focus on the story the words are intended to convey. If that seems child-like it’s because it is. It’s also the most demanding and thrilling “reading” I’ve ever done. And, if sophisticated describes “the degree of complexity or that which appeals to those with worldy knowledge or experience” then, yeah, it’s that too.

I would argue that books are the “new kid on the block” for human communication. People have been telling each other stories since there was a second pair of ears to hear them. And the first person to exist probably told stories to themself! How long after storytelling did books come about? Nobody knows. But there’s is no doubt about which came first.

Wired for Story

People are wired for story; we think in pictures and learn from narrative. Want to explain something beyond words? Show a picture or paint one with the words you thought the idea was beyond. Want to impart lasting knowledge? Tell stories about those pictures.

It should come as no surprise, then, that God’s word came to us first by voice, and then in story. For all its many uses in describing the relationships between abstract entities, math is most certainly not the first language of God.

Introducing Basic Story Layout

This is more than enough to introduce a favorite morning ritual: listening to the Bible while focusing on the story. It’s the first part of my morning routine and great for writers or anyone looking to reach a deeper understanding of the narrative structures of the Bible. I use it to keep story, characters, and plot elements (and their relationships to other stories) at the forefront of my reading/listening.

Wisdom, prayer, songs, and stories within stories telling the Big Story. That’s what the Bible is. And yet, there’s more to the Big Story than what’s on the page.

Once absorbed, story becomes the raw material from which we build and live our own. And our story becomes part of HIStory, not in canon, but as Paul filled up what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions.

Like it or Not: Narrative is Your Premise

The most important decisions I’ve ever made were deciding what stories were true enough to build my life on. Disagree? Yeah, sure, tell me a story about it. Wherever you may be on that journey, perhaps this morning ritual and layout may be of assistance.

 

 

Want to quote a Bible verse without leaving your word processor using one keyboard shortcut?

Quoting the Bible with Keyboard Shortcut

Mark Ward describes two ways to do it.

Yes, it works from within Scrivener, too!

I received a call from FaithLife, yesterday, notifying customers that the eligibility requirements for a FaithLife Church Group subscription have been changed. They are now limiting access to legally recognized churches only.

Back in June of this year, when we purchased our subscription, it was open to all church groups regardless of legal status. As of today, this is no longer the case. Indeed, the sales page on FaithLife has been updated with this new restriction.

For DC to maintain our FaithLifeTV & Logos Moblie Ed subscription, we would have to reorganize as a legally recognized church. Though not impossible, it’s not something we can do quickly. It’s also not something we’ve even contemplated, until today.

Background

Over the past two months, I’ve been in contact with multiple levels of FaithLife sales asking for guidance on how to expand the reach of our group. Based on their lack of direction I came to understand that FaithLife’s church subscription was a “pilot” sales program for the company. Their approach was to make the subscription available to see where it would lead. They were discovering things as they went along and, unfortunately, this has led to the new legal restrictions on access.

The good news is that hundreds of us on DivineCouncil.org were able to view some of the best Biblical courses in the world for almost five months. The bad news is that Faithife is now limiting access to legally recognized churches only.

Since DC is not currently a legally recognized church, please reach out to your local church to extend your access.

In the meantime, I’ll be in contact with FaithLife to see if there’s another option for small groups (and the ever-growing number of believers who have no affiliation with a formal church).

Update: After a day of thinking and discussing this with others the impetus behind this new policy became clear: the storage and streaming costs make it cost-prohibitive for FaithLife to handle organizations with members scattered around the world. In our case, we had almost 100 people from China, Korea, and Japan subscribe in the past month! Fantastic, from our point-of-view, as part of our aim is to penetrate the 10/40 window with the best Biblical materials in the world. However, if your business model or pricing structure does not account for such streaming costs, it could become impossible to break even while delivering hundreds of gigabytes of video courses.

I speculate that FaithLife’s new policy of “Legally recognized churches only” is their way of saying “Local Only”. Therefore, even if DC had met every criterion of a legally recognized church our subscription would still have been terminated due to streaming costs.

For the latest updates and discussion on this see this thread on our private forum.

By Mark Ward, originally published under the title, “What Would the Author of ‘Amazing Grace’ Say about Social Media?”

John Newton wrote a beautiful letter to a friend which is called in _his collected works, “On Controversy”—because that friend was about to engage in public controversy over Christian doctrine; Newton wanted to give him some scriptural counsel. I have read it 20 times over nearly as many years, and thought of it countless more. In order to more fully get the principles into my own soul—because I, frankly, have not always lived up to them—I have taken the liberty of “transculturating” it for today’s Christian SMWs—Social Media Warriors. If Newton were to write the same letter today, this is my guess as to what he would write:_

Dear Christian Friend about to Post a Comment in a Social Media Battle,

I’ve always appreciated your love of truth—and I know that itch you’re feeling right now, the itch to jump into the fray.

I happen to agree with the position you’re about to defend. We’re together on this. And truth is stronger than fiction: our side cannot lose. Not even the gates of hell could prevail against it. So even a person without your skill with a keyboard could enter this particular social media mêlée with some confidence of coming out on top—in the end, at least.

But we must be more than conquerors. We need to triumph not just over error in others but over sin in ourselves. Some battle wounds may make us wish we had never won.

Let’s stop and think about our opponents, the internet bystanders, and ourselves.

Our social media opponents

I’m ashamed how often I myself have forgotten step one, step zero: have we prayed for our internet sparring partners? I mean prayed for them not only before pounding out a response but between every keystroke. Are we praying for them as our fingers hover over the return key? If we ask the Lord to teach them and bless them, that prayer will soften our hearts and our prose in profoundly healthy ways.

If our opponents are Christians, we can imagine the Lord saying to us what David said to Joab about Absalom: “Deal gently with him for my sake.” The Lord loves our opponents; his love for them was longsuffering long before we met them, ahem, fifteen seconds ago. If we wring their rhetorical necks, we’ll not only risk unforgiving servants, we’ll risk proving unforgiven ones (Matt 18:35).

Someday our Facebook pages will be memorial walls for whatever friends we have left—and so will be those of our (Christian, remember?) opponents. Think about what will happen then. All of us will be together in heaven, forever, and our love for each other then will be greater than our love for our best earthly friends now. Our opponents may be dead wrong, but after we’re all dead—they’ll be right again.

If our opponents are not Christians—and I try not to be too quick to come to that conclusion if they claim otherwise; before their own Master they stand or fall—the best emotion to feel toward them is compassion, not anger. “They know not what they do!” But we know who’s responsible for giving us new hearts dedicated to truth. It didn’t have to be this way. God was not required to save you and me from our sins. But for the grace of God, we’d have their list of Likes.

There is room for an Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), an Isaiah mocking the silliness of idols (Isa 44), and a Jesus Christ mocking the Pharisees (Matt 23). But those seem to me to be exceptions to the general rule that one ought to “correct his opponents with gentleness” so that “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25). If we are writing for spiritually blind people, we must be careful not to put any trip hazards between them and the cross. God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but this is no reason to push people (humanly speaking) further away from him.

And there are mudslinging trolls out there—Christian and non-Christian—whom it is foolhardy to engage. They’ll only drag you down to their level (Prov 26:4Matt 7:6). My rule of thumb: I do my best to avoid debating people who can never bring themselves to acknowledge that their opponents have just made a good point. (I also, by God’s grace, do my best not to be one of those people—if I can’t see the genuine strengths of viewpoints I disagree with, it’s likely my fault.)

The internet bystanders

Among those reading and liking (and trolling) will be three groups:

1. Those who disagree with you

It’s easy to forget these people when our eyes are focused on our direct opponents. But those opponents represent many, many others who hold the same opinions. Many will watch who will not comment. Regarding these I will point again to the thoughts above.

2. Those who don’t care about your religious points

But then there are people who don’t know or care about the doctrines we defend online, because they aren’t religious at all. If these people are generally indisposed to dislodge their rather shining views of their moral rectitude, that doesn’t hinder their ability to sniff out pride in us. Even those who can’t follow our arguments can read our spirits pretty well in between the pixels. And they know that religious people—particularly Christians—are supposed to be meek, humble, and loving.

Every day online the Scripture is proved true: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” If we mix invective and scorn into our posts, we’re forgetting that the weapons of our warfare—the only weapons which, in reality, can break down strongholds of error—are “not of the flesh.” Whether we persuade anyone of anything else or not, somehow we must persuade bystanders that we wish others well. We are known by our love (John 13:35).

3. Those who agree with you

Read the Full Article Here

A few months ago, there was a 60-day preview of Unseen Realm on LOGOS and Michael Heiser asked some of his more veteran readers to help shepherd newcomers to the material on the FaithLife Forum.

Growing out of those discussions has been what I hope to be the first sister website and forum for writers, artists, and believers looking to interact with others on the material: DivineCouncil.org.

What is it?

It’s a full website & forum with three writers contributing to the front page blog. I hope the site may also serve as an outlet for others. So, if there are any believing writers, artists, photographers etc. Looking to contribute, this might be a good fit for you.

The forum part of the site is structured around the Unseen Realm in terms of the overarching missions of Jesus. We are organizing it to be a central hub for small groups to share materials and study the Word of God, wherever they are on the planet!

So What?

There’s a special resource manager setup to disseminate materials to small groups and make it easier to find things to bring to your church. Each resource can be reviewed, and have discussions formed around them, so people know how they can be used, the ideal audience, attributions, etc.

There’s also a live chat area, so you might be able to catch fellow listeners online for a brief chat while you’re on the forum.

Better than Facebook!

Facebook is fun, but if you’re tired of conversations scrolling off the screen (and other FB pitfalls) the private forum environment is more conducive to organized and focused discussions that can be searched later by yourself and others.

So, if you’re looking for a more private and trusted environment for discussions around this material you have another option available in which to do that. And, if your looking to start a small group, our forum may be the ideal place in which to find, organize, and disseminate the optimal subjects of study for your group!

What Next?

Over 50 people have signed-up to the forum in the first week, and the platform will scale up to as large as it needs to be.

If you’d like to use the forum to organize (and optimize) your small group, send Terence an e-mail at tg@McGillespie.com so he can set you up.

Nathan, Terence, and Zechariah hope DivineCoucil.org will fill a need for the Kingdom, empower small groups, and be a worthy site for the Church.

See you there!

DivineCouncil.org Website
DivineCouncil.org Forum