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Growth in Internet Radio and Podcast Audiences
Posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 7:46 PM by Jason Barker
Edison Media Research has released several studies over the last two months that demonstrate the growing use – and therefore the potential for widespread outreach – of Internet radio and podcasts.
According to Edison's 2008 edition of the annual Infinite Dial: Radio's Digital Platforms, 33 million people aged 12 and above listen to Internet radio each week. This means that approximately 13 percent of Americans listen to Internet radio each week, and 21 percent (or 54 million) listen each month. This represents a 2 percent growth in total listenership from 2007.
The demographics are pretty evenly divided between men and women – 52 percent of listeners are male, while 48 percent are female – but there is currently a decided majority in listeners aged 25-44 (45 percent of all listeners). Listeners ages 12-24 make up 24 percent of all listeners, while listeners ages 45-64 make up 27 percent of listeners.
Not directly related to these demographics, but nonetheless interesting, is that "prime" listening time for Internet radio – by a wide margin – is 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM, with an Arbitron AQM of 1,247,000 (the next closest, 3:00 – 7:00 PM, is only 670,600).
According to Edison, 23 million Americans – or 9 percent of the total population – download at least one podcast each month; 18 percent (or roughly 46 million) have downloaded at least one podcast at any time. These numbers are notably higher than when I wrote about this topic in December, 2006, when only 12 percent of the US population had ever downloaded a podcast; this means that the number of people who have downloaded a podcast has increased by roughly 50 percent over the last 16 months.
An extremely significant statistic is the amount of time spent consuming digital audio: podcast listeners spend an average of 90 minutes more per week listening to digital audio than do people who listen only to Internet radio. Edison notes:
While some of this may be due to increased interest in audio content in general, at least part of this increased listening is attributable to additional listening occassions (sic) and opportunities in settings where online audio was not previously consumed. The portability of podcasts has enabled new contexts and environments for listening to downloadable audio.
These numbers are quite positive for Orthodox Internet multimedia ministry. While the growth rate for Internet radio has been somewhat flat, it nonetheless is growing, and is reaching a significant number of people. It also is doing so at a time when their media choices are limited; since a sizeable percentage of Internet radio listeners are listening while at work, Orthodox Internet radio has the important opportunity to minister to people in a venue where they otherwise would have little or no access to other Orthodox materials.
Total listenership of podcasts, while currently significantly lower than that of Internet radio, is growing at a much faster rate, meaning that – at least in the next few years – there should be a continually growing "market" for Orthodox Christian podcasts. Furthermore, podcast listeners are among the more dedicated consumers of digital audio; the growth in podcast listeners demonstrates that there is a growing audience for in-depth Orthodox audio teaching.
Edited on: Monday, May 05, 2008 11:08 PMPosted in Miscellaneous
Scripture and Tradition
Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 8:10 AM by Jason Barker
Kevin Edgecomb passes on a quote from Fr. Andrew Louth on the complimentarity of Tradition and Scripture, and some of the limitations of the historical-critical method of reading Holy Scripture. Kevin finishes with an exhortation to attend services at an Orthodox Church to experience the scriptural vitality of Orthodox worship.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Article About Creating Podcasts
Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 9:37 AM by Jason Barker
On the blog for my Get Wisdom podcast, I've uploaded a brief article - also linking to a short series I wrote a few months ago - about creating podcasts. You might find this helpful if you're thinking about creating an Orthodox podcast.
Posted in Miscellaneous
re/CALL Website Featured
Posted on Saturday, April 05, 2008 at 6:52 PM by Jason Barker
The re/CALL website has been featured on today's Daily Slurp, which highlights websites with an interesting visual design.
Posted in Miscellaneous, re/CALL
Tools for Collecting Orthodox Quotes
Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 2:41 PM by Jason Barker
The work I do requires a fair amount of organization - I have numerous different projects on which I'm working at any given time for different organizations, departments and/or ministries. I've therefore developed reasonable (for me) systems of organizing my time, my different projects, the resources for the different projects, and resources (such as Lingo scripts for Director) that I share between projects.
An area in which I tend to fail dismally, however, is in organizing my notes - and particularly quotations - that I use in articles and other documents I write. For some inexplicable reason, when writing I tend to simply have teetering piles of books stuffed with bookmarks on my desk - and a large number of websites bookmarked in my browser - but I have seldom gotten around to actually putting quotes and citations in some type of database or filing system. Thus, when I need a quote or reference that I used in a previous publication, I need to remember the specific publication, find it, and then read it to find the needed information (and too often I find that I misremembered the publication, forcing me to go through several works until I find the information).
My primary New Year's resolution for this year was therefore to turn around this abominable practice and develop a recording system that will enable me to easily find quotations on a topic. I was fortunate to use a type of application that works well with the way my mind organizations information; you might also find it to be helpful.
TREE-STYLE EDITORS
The application to which I'm referring is a tree-style text editor (you can also find them called such things as tree-view information organizers, tree-view PIMs, etc.). When working on the application for the Be Transformed study of Romans, I needed some way of tracking the location of objects on screens, the specific screens on which specific articles and indices appeared, and the location of individual objects (such as specific scripts) from within the cast of several thousand objects that are used in the application.
The free tree-style editor KeyNote (for Windows) served my needs very well: I created nodes for such things as the templates for the different types of screens, and then child nodes for each individual type of screen. Then, when I needed to find the location of an object on a screen, I could simply open the node for templates, and then look at the child node on which I had listed the object locations within that template. I created similar sets of parent/child nodes for articles and for cast members.
If I still used Windows as my primary OS I would still be using KeyNote. I eventually switched to a Mac, however, and I wanted something that would run on my Mac without necessitating the time and resource drain of continually running Windows in Parallels simply so that I could take notes. I eventually settled on Jreepad, a multi-platform application (it requires Java). Jreepad lacks many of KeyNote's features - particularly the ability to work with rich text (Jreepad uses only plain text) - but it saves files in the same format as the commercial application Treepad (which is a Windows app, but is supposedly coming to the Mac this year), and I like the fact that it allows me and others to use the files on both Windows and OS X.
Many readers may prefer Jreepad because, while it's more limited than KeyNote, it is also significantly easier to use than KeyNote: there are only eight simple commands, each of which has its own button in the application's toolbar.
SAVING AND ORGANIZING ORTHODOX QUOTES
I'll use Jreepad - which both PC and Mac users can use - as an example of how you can collect and organize quotations from Church Fathers and modern Orthodox writers. The image below displays the key elements I'll be discussing.
You'll start in the organizational tree by naming the main topic to be covered in this file: in my Jreepad file I simply named this topic "Patristic Quotes" (even though I also include modern quotations). Every topic that you will add to this collection will be added by clicking the "Add Below" button.
After creating a node for an individual topic (you can see my continually-growing list of topics in the left sidebar of the above image), you will then add a child to that topic. I organize the "children" of my topics in one of two ways: by subtopic, or by author. A huge topic - like Christ - will have a number of subtopics; a smaller topic - like Annunciation - will probably not have subtopics, and thus the first level of children will be the names of authors of various quotes. Further levels of children can be created as necessary.
To see an example of this, in the above graphic look at the node for "Annunciation" (which, at the time I am writing this, we will celebrate tomorrow). At this time I only have a quotation from St. Romanos the Melodist about the Annunciation; there is therefore only one child for Annunciation node. I also only have one quote from St. Romanos, and thus there is only one child of his node; if I had two hymns from him, then there would be two children of the "St. Romanos the Melodist" node.
If there is a subtopic that becomes so big that it needs to be made into its own topic, I can simply use the "Out" button to move the node further to the left (which also changes its level in the organizational hierarchy from a "child" node to a "parent" node). Conversely, when I create a topic that I later decide should instead be a subtopic of another topic, then I can use the "Up" button to move the lesser topic's node directly beneath the node for the greater topic, and then use the "In" button to move the lesser topic to the right (and thereby change it into a "child" of the greater topic).
This is the basic process I use for organizing and saving Orthodox quotations. The specific application commands will be different if you use KeyNote instead of Jreepad (or any other similar program), but the basic organizational strategy you use will be similar.
SOURCES FOR ORTHODOX QUOTES
There are, of course, many excellent translations of patristic works and modern works from St. Vladimir's Seminary Press and others that you can obtain from such sources as Light & Life, Conciliar Press and Eighth Day Books. There are also good modern Orthodox periodicals, like Conciliar Press' AGAIN magazine and The Handmaiden.
There are also websites with free translations of patristic works. In addition to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library's public domain collection of The Early Church Fathers, Matthew Steenberg's Monachos site has quite a few translations and articles.
I also recommend Fr. Stephen Freeman's Glory to God for All Things blog which, in addition to containing Fr. Stephen's valuable thoughts, also frequently contains quotations from ancient and modern Orthodox writers. Fr. Stephen also hosts the Glory to God podcast for Ancient Faith Radio, and frequently appears on Theologically Thinking on the Orthodox Christian Network.
Posted in Ancient Faith, Miscellaneous, OCN
Cost of Premium Cables
Posted on Friday, March 14, 2008 at 9:11 AM by Jason Barker
Joy of Tech has a good comic about the possible reasons for the high cost of premium electronics cables. I've always groaned at the shelling out what seems to be a lot of money for cables, but I REALLY groaned when I bought the XLR and insert cables I need for recording Get Wisdom and re/CALL.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Podcast Audience Increasing
Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2008 at 10:02 AM by Jason Barker
eMarketer published an interesting article on Monday noting that the current active podcast audience (meaning people who download one or more podcasts per week) is 6.5 million, while the total audience is 18.5 million. They estimate that 2008 will see a 54 percent increase in active listeners (up to 10 million), and a 51 percent increase in total listeners (to 28 million). The total increase by 2012 is estimated to be 251 percent, with an active audience of 25 million and a total audience of 65 million.
While less relevant to listener-supported media outlets like Ancient Faith Radio and the Orthodox Christian Network, advertising dollars spent on podcasting is also increasing dramatically, with $165 million spent in 2007 and an estimated $240 million to be spent in 2008 (going up to an estimated $435 million by 2012).
eMarketer attributes the growth of podcasts to several factors:
- Greater ease of consumption for podcast content
- Growing awareness of podcasting
- Terrestrial radio’s use and promotion of podcasting
- Increased penetration of portable player
- The evolution of smart phones and proliferation of affordable mobile data plans
All of this bodes well for Orthodox podcasts (such as my own Get Wisdom for the OCN, and an upcoming podcast for Ancient Faith Radio that will launch during the first week of Great Lent). Contrary to many predictions that podcasting is dying, studies such as eMarketer's show that not only is the medium thriving, but it is predicted to continue experiencing dramatic growth. This is a great opportunity for Orthodox Christians on every level, from individuals to parishes to dioceses and national jurisdictions, to engage in a growing and cost-effective form of education and outreach.
If you are thinking about engaging in podcasting, you might be interested in my mini-series on selecting and using equipment to record a podcast:
- Choosing a microphone
- Choosing an interface
- Choosing a channel strip
- Choosing software
- Choosing music
Posted in Miscellaneous
New Article on Creating GET WISDOM
Posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 at 11:58 AM by Jason Barker
On the site for GET WISDOM I've posted an article about using podsafe music in podcasts and online radio programs you create.
Posted in Get Wisdom!, Miscellaneous
Have a Blessed Feast of the Nativity
Posted on Monday, December 24, 2007 at 9:56 AM by Jason Barker
I want to wish everyone a blessed celebration of the Feast of the Nativity. I will not be writing the next two days as my family and I prepare for, and celebrate, the birth of Christ. I'll be back on Wednesday to create the next episode of GET WISDOM.
Entirely unrelated to this, but nonetheless quite interesting, I just read (via a post by Susan Polger) an article about using chess to teach life lessons to daughters. As a parent who also loves chess, I found the central theme (which - as the author notes - can be found in a very large number of other articles and books) to be enjoyable.
Edited on: Monday, December 24, 2007 12:07 PMPosted in Miscellaneous
The Fathers and Reading Scripture
Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 11:54 AM by Jason Barker
Fr. Stephen Freeman has posted an interesting article about the role of the Church Fathers in reading Scripture.
Posted in Miscellaneous
This Blog is One Year Old
Posted on Friday, December 07, 2007 at 4:08 PM by Jason Barker
The Orthodox Christian Bible Studies blog had its first anniversary yesterday. The first two posts were simply references to the old blog, but the third post was the beginning of my debate over whether to create a podcast for Orthodox youth. If you're new to this blog, I finally decided "yes," and in October began producing GET WISDOM - The Orthodox Bible Study Program for Teens.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Cultural Ministry
Posted on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 1:01 PM by Jason Barker
Fr. Stephen Freeman has posted an interesting article about ministering to American culture, and includes this important statement about youth ministry:
I have spent plenty of time with youth of both highschool and college years, who have been nurtured in Orthodox life. They’re not anti-music, etc. (indeed I like a lot of contemporary music and appreciate my children sharing it with me), but these same youth know what it is to worship God and when it is time to lay aside “all earthly cares” and offer God praise that is worthy (if any praise can be worthy) and in a spirit that is yielded to God and not something else. Presenting the Gospel to youth in America very much means to draw them beyond the boundaries of their own “niche” and into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
I recommend the entire article (as I have a number of his articles). I should also note that Fr. Stephen recently started a podcast for Ancient Faith Radio.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Fr. John Behr on Scripture
Posted on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 4:29 PM by Jason Barker
Fr. Stephen Freeman has published an excerpt from a lecture by Fr. John Behr on Orthodoxy and Scripture.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Re-Uploading Some Articles
Posted on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 4:20 PM by Jason Barker
I am re-uploading four articles from the last week. I updated Thingamablog to the new release, but that release lost several articles from both this and the GET WISDOM blog. I'm therefore going back and replacing these articles.
Posted in Miscellaneous
New Email Address
Posted on Monday, November 05, 2007 at 9:31 AM by Jason Barker
Last week I was suddenly unable to access my antiochian.org email account (and am still unable to do so). Since this problem is continuing, I have - at least for the short term - switched my email address to . If you sent email to my antiochian.org address between Tuesday and Thursday last week, I have probably not received it. You will therefore need to resend it to the above address. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Posted in Jason Barker, Miscellaneous
Email Problems
Posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 4:37 PM by Jason Barker
Just a quick message to let you know that the Antiochian email server seems to be experiencing problems, and therefore I may not have received any email you sent today. I'll let you know when everything is working again.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Religious Teens and Happiness
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 6:32 AM by Jason Barker
A survey released several weeks ago by the Associate Press and MTV claims that religion tends to make teens happier. According to the survey, eighty percent of teens who claim to be religious also claim to be happy (compared with sixty percent who say that faith is not important to them). This is also significant because forty-four percent of respondents said that faith is very important to them, and twenty-one percent said faith is somewhat important.
These statistics are encouraging for youth workers, because they emphasize that - contrary to popular (and entertainment-industry fed) opinion - religion is important to a solid majority of teens. This means that there is a sizable group of young people who are at least potentially receptive at any given time to Orthodox Christian outreach (furthermore, those who are currently uninterested in religion may change their minds, and thus must be reached, and it is the calling of all Christians to reach out to others regardless of the immediate response). It is also encouraging, of course, that most teens who are currently involved in religion find at least some benefit in their faith.
At the same time, however, we must avoid placing too much emphasis on the linkage between religion and happiness. Christian Smith, head of the National Study of Youth and Religion, points out that the theological worldview of most religious teens in North America is "moralistic therapeutic deism." Two central components of moralistic therapeutic deism are the beliefs that:
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
This self-centered worldview, in which God is far more a "resource" than omnipotent Deity, is antithetical to Orthodox Christianity. It is therefore imperative for Orthodox youth workers to emphasize the proper understanding of -and attitude towards - God, and the fullness of the Christian's relationship with Him. A true relationship with God should indeed be the source of happiness for a person, but this must never be confused with the idea that God exists solely to give us happy thoughts and feelings, or even more, conflated with feeling good about oneself. Such misunderstandings of what constitutes the Christian life will almost inevitably end in loss of faith and despair.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Thingamablog Problems
Posted on Monday, September 17, 2007 at 12:26 AM by Jason Barker
Those of you who subscribe to this blog may have received through the RSS feed an article announcing the new website/blog for Get Wisdom, the radio show I am creating. If so, you might also notice that the article is not on this blog.
Thingamablog, the blog software I use for this blog (as well as Get Wisdom's site), suffered a database problem and erased the custom template I use with this blog. I believe the problem is that the database entry for the style sheet became corrupted; when Thingamablog created the post about Get Wisdom, therefore, it could not access the style sheet. This caused Thingamablog to revert the format of the entire blog to a built-in template that does not require a style sheet, and thus the heavily formatted blog content became unreadable (also lost were all the graphics and site-specific code I'd inserted into the templates). The problem was compounded by the fact that something in this train wreck also caused Thingamablog to refuse to accept the backup I had made earlier today.
By going into the database, and laboriously replacing the default template with my custom template (minus a few bits of code that were not worth reconstructing), I was able to bring the blog back, minus the post I'd written just before the whole thing crashed.
The main thing missing is the subscription form for Feedblitz. I didn't bother to rebuild the form because: 1) in the history of the blog, fewer than five people have subscribed to the blog using Feedblitz; and 2) Feedblitz is now inserting ads into the bottom of the articles it sends out. While I'm continuing to send the feed through Feedblitz for the handful of people who are currently subscribed through the service, the lack of popularity of this offering causes me to believe it isn't worth the trouble to rebuild and reinsert the form.
I think I have everything up and running again, but please contact me via email or AIM if you encounter a display problem or broken link on the blog.
Posted in Miscellaneous
iCal Woes
Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 at 1:15 PM by Jason Barker
I opened iCal, and discovered that all my events had inexplicably vanished into the ether. This can happen to anyone, but it tends to occur most often to people who have another application sync with iCal (which I do with iGTD).
Fortunately, I backup my data regularly, and thus was able to revert to a database from a few days ago, but it's nonetheless disconcerting to open your calendar and have it be completely empty.
So, if you're one of those people who doesn't backup your data, don't say I didn't warn you!
Posted in Miscellaneous
Mac Freeware for Teens
Posted on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 10:06 AM by Jason Barker
From Thriftmac, I learned that macteens has a list of OS X applications for back-to-school. The list is pretty standard - including such apps as Adium and VLC, which I use, and GIMP and iProcrastinate, about which I've written - but it included one application that is new to me: Schoolhouse 2, a life-and-school management system that reminds me of iGTD (which I use heavily), and which seems to be much more full-featured (and also more complicated) than iProcrastinate.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Youth on the Impact of Digital Technology
Posted on Wednesday, September 05, 2007 at 9:51 AM by Jason Barker
Spotlight on Digital Learning posted a short entry - with a link to the full conference archives - about the April 2007 FOCUS: Teen Voices on Digital Media and Society. The comments in the article are not particularly illuminating, but it does give some perspectives on the perspective some teens have about the impact of digital technology - and particularly communication-related technology - on their lives.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Prediction: Internet Content-on-Demand will Destroy Television
Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 6:45 PM by Jason Barker
A not-particularly original prediction, but the Dallas Morning News' Tech blog links to an article in The Guardian about Vint Cerf. Cerf predicts that the ability to download programming on demand will irrevocably change the way programs are watched.
This is significant for all new media providers, including Orthodox media ministries. While basic production and bandwidth costs are still a significant issue, the Internet is rapidly doing away with the difficulties inherent in choosing (and funding) distribution channels.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Mac Freeware for Seminarians
Posted on Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 8:49 AM by Jason Barker
A student at an evangelical Protestant seminary created a list of freeware for OS X that he believes is indispensible for seminary students. The article is a somewhat standard list of some of the popular free applications for the Mac, with - quite naturally - a bit more emphasis on applications for writing (like Journlr, which I do not use, and Books, which I do (but in which I've so far only entered a few books)).
As regular readers of this blog know, I write somewhat frequently (see here and here) about free and open source software I use on my Mac, and strongly encourage parishes and ministries to utilize FOSS as an effective way of reducing overhead without sacrificing usefulness and productivity.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Greg Floor Quintet
Posted on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 9:09 AM by Jason Barker
I've mentioned before that my favorite musical genres are classical and jazz. While working on program descriptions for the Orthodox Christian Network, I saw that the Featured Artist Block for The ARK next week will highlight the the Greg Floor Quintet, a jazz group.
You can purchase the Quintet's The Grand Inquisitor and Uphill...Both Ways - and hear sample tracks - from St. Romanos Records.
Posted in Miscellaneous, OCN
Teens Producing Media
Posted on Monday, August 20, 2007 at 9:57 AM by Jason Barker
CNet published an interview on Friday with Henry Jenkins about youth using the Internet. The interview covered a wide range of topics, but I was struck by a statistic regarding teens and online media creation: 57 percent of teens online have produced media, and approximately 33 percent have created media that they shared beyond their small circle of family and friends. Jenkins notes that the majority of this content consists primarily of remixes of already existing media, but the involvement level is nonetheless significant.
I wrote some time ago about the possibility - in fact, the desirability - of Orthodox youth groups creating audio and/or video content that they submit for inclusion in my Bible studies. I have long thought that this would be a good way to involve Orthodox teens in the creation of these studies, and Jenkins' statistics simply reinforce this belief. Unfortunately, at this point no youth group has engaged in such a project, but I hope that groups will participate in this work in the future (you can contact me via email or IM using the buttons on the top of the left sidebar is you are interested).
Beyond these Bible studies, the possibilities for youth-created Orthodox media content are endless. The Orthodox Christian Network has a formal partnership with leaders of Teen SOYO, and I know they have discussed teen involvement in radio programming. I've suggested in the past that youth groups could create videos that could be uploaded to YouTube (or possibly the new GodTube). Groups could create podcasts for their individual parishes, or could band together to create content for their dioceses. The possibilities are almost unlimited.
What can you and your youth group create to share Orthodox Christianity with others on the Internet?
Posted in Miscellaneous
Popularity and Orthodox Media
Posted on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 9:52 AM by Jason Barker
A blog about classical music recently looked at the long-standing claim that classical music is dying (i.e., that its listenership is disappearing, and thus the music is becoming an unsustainable artform). The writer makes a cogent point:
Basically: people who say classical music is dying are doing so, in large part, because they don’t think that classical music generates enough of a bandwagon effect...A lot of this arises from a comparison with pop, and is usually follwed by a prescription to present and market classical music more like pop culture. Pop culture dominates the market because it generates lots of bandwagon effect—it’s designed to. (Think of the way Hollywood blockbusters are marketed, and the way they open in thousands of theaters to maximize the return on their short-lived bandwagons.) Unless it can follow suit, it’s claimed, classical music will be left hopelessly in the dust.
There’s almost always an accompanying argument that classical music must be dying because it’s lost the competition for mindshare/media attention/cultural relevance. The concept is similar to another economic idea, a close relative of bandwagons. It’s called a network effect...critics will say that classical music doesn’t really matter anymore, because only a small portion of the potential audience listens to it.
He goes on to ask two questions: 1) Are there enough organizations, musicians, listeners, etc., for classical music to remain economically viable (he answers, "Yes"); and 2) Is the ultimate value of an artistic pursuit necessarily dependent on its ability to generate network effects? He answers:
The second question, in reality, isn’t economic at all. It’s philosophical. And this is why this argument has gone on, and will go on, for so, so long. There’s no way to prove that question one way or another—either you believe that art has an intrinsic value regardless of the size of its audience, or you don’t.
Rudolf Serkin, infamously, once played the entirety of Bach’s Goldberg Variations as an encore. “When I finished,” he remembered, “there were only four people left in the hall—Adolph Busch, Artur Schnabel, Alfred Einstein and myself.” Did the value of Serkin’s recital dwindle along with the number listening? Hardly. My sanguine view of the survival of classical music is reflected in that illustrious trio staying in their seats. There will always be an audience whose demand for the music will remain purely functional, immune to fads, buzz, trends, what have you. Will it be smaller than the audience for this month’s pop sensation? Probably. Does that matter? Nope.
In this post I'm not concerned with the intrinsic value of art - although I emphatically believe that there is an intrinsic value - but rather with extending the writer's point to Christian work. Many Christians erroneously believe that the value of an activity - some would even say the presence of God - can be determined by the popularity of that activity. I have written before about popularity and true success, but the article about classical music - a particular love of mine - once again reminded me of the importance of the point.
It is a simple fact that Orthodox media - be it print or electronic publishing, terrestrial or Internet radio, etc. - is never going to be as widespread as that generated by evangelical Protestants, and far less than secular media. It is a simple question of demographics: there are an estimated six million Orthodox Christians in the United States, compared to an estimated 100 million evangelical Protestants. The demographic difference is even greater when it comes to secular media, since people of most demographic groups - including Orthodox Christians - consume secular media, whereas only a percentage of committed Orthodox Christians - and a small number of non-Orthodox who are interested in Orthodoxy - consume the small amount of Orthodox media currently available.
By American cultural standards, the relatively small target audience for Orthodox media would seem to be indicative of the media's irrelevance: since there are few Orthodox consumers, the argument would assert, there is little need or support for Orthodox media. In contrast to this argument, however, I maintain something close to what the classical music writer quoted above states: "There will always be an audience whose demand for [Christian media] will remain purely functional, immune to fads, buzz, trends, what have you. Will it be smaller than the audience for this month’s pop sensation? Probably. Does that matter? Nope."
Orthodox Christians do not create Bible studies, write and perform music, create podcasts, etc. because we hope for popularity or significant financial profit; we create this media because we are called to provide these materials and resources to glorify God and serve His people. We did not choose these works to build up ourselves; we were chosen by God to build up others. THAT is the impetus for why I create my materials, why the Orthodox Christian Network and Department of Youth Ministry - as well as all the other Orthodox ministry departments and media outlets - exist, and it is where our true concern is to be found. We want to make our work available to as many people as possible, and there are times when the needs and interests of our target demographic - be it increased or decreased - can result in a shift in which specific projects receive time and money, but we will never allow the relatively small size of our audience determine whether we engage in ministry. Each Christian is inestimably valuable in him- or herself, and we are called to serve each person, and thank God for that opportunity.
At the same time, this calling is precisely why Orthodox ministries always strive for growth. We are called to offer our work to as many people as possible, in order to benefit as many people as possible. We believe Orthodox Christianity is a pearl of great value (Matthew 13:45-46), and we give our all in order to share it with others. The point is that we are not to become discouraged, or give up, when we see the fewer number of people who use and respond to our media compared to those who use and respond to other media. Our call is to engage in this work for the benefit of, as the Athanasian Creed says, "Whosoever will be saved," and to thank God for the privilege of serving these people.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Relevance
Posted on Monday, August 13, 2007 at 9:29 AM by Jason Barker
I read an article last week about research on keeping young adults in church. The article emphasized the widely-known fact that teens will stay involved in a church that - among other things - provides teaching that they can directly apply to their lives. There are a number of assertions in the article with which Orthodox Christians would disagree, such as the assertion that worship services should be styled to fit current teen tastes and cultural trends, but we can nonetheless benefit from considering the importance of life-application in Orthodox teaching.
I have previously written about the need for relevant life-application teaching in Bible studies for teens (I've removed the parenthetical citations for this blog):
First and foremost, adolescents in the process of identity formation — i.e., of developing and asserting autonomy — require information that will constructively contribute to this process: they demand that biblical content be demonstrated as relevant to their lives by clarifying significant issues, addressing individual and social problems, and providing a reliable guide to navigation changes in both the larger culture and the constantly changing youth subcultures. Adolescents engage and interpret the Bible from within the context of events and issues in their lives; the changes they are undergoing — or, if they are experiencing foreclosure or identity diffusion, the changes they are avoiding and the defense mechanisms they are employing to avoid these changes — will influence both their interest in the Bible and the message they are currently able and willing (to use Issler and Habermas’ scheme) to comprehend. When motivated to study the Bible for guidance in their developmental issues, adolescents can conclude, in the words of one teenager, “The Bible is something I live by now. It answers every single question, and addresses every problem I've ever had. Maybe not always directly, but with God working in me, I can find the answer"...
Many Christians find the adolescent demand for relevance in biblical study to be in itself unbiblical and antithetical to Christianity; such individuals believe personal application “domesticates” the Bible and desanctifies the gospel message. In reality, however, studying the Bible to answer adolescent concerns and address identity crises is an intrinsically Orthodox activity: “prophetic” biblical interpretation addresses all contemporary situations — including personal, moral and social issues — to provide “the light of the word of God for correction and guidance.” John L. Boojamra addresses this point when he exhorts religious educators to “begin where people are and bring them to where the Church feels they should be... Any aspect of the Church’s life can be taught as typical of the whole, depending on the people with whom one is working. This, however, means selecting those aspects of the Church’s life that suit the people and, at the same time, are faithful to the given of the Church. This is not pandering to the whims of the people and betraying the Gospel; it is taking personhood, process, and community seriously."
At the same time, as I've warned before, we must be careful to avoid distorting Orthodox Christian teaching to pander to the cultural whims of modern youth (or modern adults for that matter). A website creating satirical "motivational posters" for emergent Christians has created a good graphic lampooning a skewed view of true relevance, "RELEVANCE - Tell me what I want to hear or else shut up and go away." Truly relevant teaching tells its listeners two things: truth they need to hear (which isn't, of course, necessarily what they want to hear), and ways in which to live out this truth in their lives.
Posted in Miscellaneous
More FOSS for OS X I Use
Posted on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 at 10:14 AM by Jason Barker
In an earlier post I listed the free and open source software (FOSS) I use on my Mac. While I still use most of these programs, I've both changed and added a few since I created that list. Therefore, in keeping with my practice of recommending FOSS for parishes and ministries, I thought I'd list the new FOSS I've adopted:
Word Processor - I still recommend NeoOffice, and use it when I need to create documents incorporating things like headers and endnotes, but NeoOffice also presents a significant problem for me: because it loads the entire suite in order to launch any one application, NeoOffice uses 94 MB of RAM at launch, and then uses continually more RAM as I work on a document. Because at least 95 percent of my writing goes into an electronic publication, and I therefore do all my layout in another application, I seldom use anything more in my word processor than font style and size and paragraph alignment. Since I often have desktop publishing (like InDesign) or multimedia publishing (like Director or Flash) applications open at the same time as my word processor, I often find NeoOffice uses far more resources than my needs warrant.
I've therefore switched to Bean as my primary word processor - it performs the tasks I commonly use, and only uses 10 MB of RAM at launch. While there are a few features I miss, and prefer toolbar commands to the floating menus incorporated by Bean, the application is generally a good solution for my usually pretty basic word processing needs. If in the future, however, I find that I need to regularly engage in more complicated word processing than simply changing font attributes and paragraph alignment (particularly if future writing requires heavy collaboration on documents), I will either go back to NeoOffice or will need to grudgingly pay for Microsoft Office.
Web Browser - I've switched to Camino. I love the extensions (now called "add ons") I can use with Firefox, but became dissatisfied with how often Firefox on the Mac would choke on Flash-based websites. While it was a nuisance to re-enter my common passwords into Keychain, I've been pleased with the speed and stability of Camino. I still use Firefox for viewing Shockwave applications (Shockwave is the format in which my online Bible studies are published), because the Shockwave plugin for OS X requires running the browser in Rosetta (which, since the emulator causes apps to run more slowly, I prefer not to do with my primary browser).
IM - As I wrote earlier, I use Adium.
Twitter - I use Twitterific to publish my tweets.
Graphics - As I've written before, when I want to do something simple like resize and web-optimize a graphic, and do not want to open Windows in Parallels so that I can use the version of Photoshop I currently own, I use the GIMP-based Seashore.
Task Managment - While I am not a devotee of Getting Things Done - I haven't even read the book - I have found very useful the principle of breaking down larger tasks into their smaller consecutive tasks, and then methodically following each of these tasks without allowing myself to be distracted by the innumerable external things that clamor for my attention. To help me keep a schedule of these tasks, I have become increasingly reliant upon iGTD, a free application that largely follows the GTD process, and that I've adapted to my own workstyle.
Podcast Receiver: I now use Playpod which, while no longer under development (as is the case for most OS X podcast receivers, including my previous choice of Juice, since iTunes has taken over podcast handling for most Mac users), allows me to select downloading preferences for individual podcasts, to read the description of the episode before downloading, and to group podcasts by category.
App Launching - I have several applications I open many times each day - Camino, Thunderbird, Bean, etc. - that I keep in my Dock. There are many other applications that I use regularly, but not daily, and therefore do not want to keep in my Dock. I've tried a number of methods and applications to access these, and currently use Namely, which enables me to launch applications by name without scrolling through the Finder.
Posted in Miscellaneous
New Subscription Feed
Posted on Monday, August 06, 2007 at 3:23 AM by Jason Barker
The subscription feed for this blog now goes through Feedburner; I therefore ask those of you who subscribed to the old feed of the blog to delete your current subscription and add this link to your feed reader (you can also go to the blog's homepage and click the "Subscribe" link to re-subscribe). I now send the feed through Feedburner in order to determine precisely how many people subscribe to this blog.
I have also stopped publishing feeds for the various category indices. If you currently subscribe to the feed for one of the indices (such as "Bible Studies" or "Orthodox News"), I encourage you to subscribe to the new feed for all the articles.
Posted in Miscellaneous
"Screen Kids"
Posted on Monday, July 30, 2007 at 12:46 PM by Jason Barker
Albert Mohler recently wrote on his blog about the well-documented phenomenon of "screen kids" - youth whose life is built upon electronic communication and entertainment. In the article Mohler quotes a 1999 speech by Bill Gates about the current generation for whom electronic media are truly an intrinsic part of their lives:
To them, the idea that all the rich information should be easy to search and find, and that you should be able to find other kids in another country and speak to them about what their thinking is about that topic. They'll simply take that for granted. They'll think of buying as something where you can go out and get the best prices, or get the product reviews across the Internet. And so, they will think about the Internet in a far more profound way than most of us who grew up without it being an ever-present tool.
While it's easy to laugh that Bill Gates is hardly a seer when it comes to the Internet and electronic media - his 1995 The Road Ahead said little about the Internet when it was in fact booming, and even this lecture fails (as Apple's coup demonstrates) to anticipate the rise of something like the iPod while mentioning kids using computers to listen to and organize their music - his prediction is nonetheless a concise statement of the importance of the Internet in the lives of modern teens. And, as this quotation states, this importance will only rise in the years to come.
It is for this reason that online Orthodox media is such an essential form of ministry and outreach. The Internet is where teens currently look - and will look even more in the future - for information about spirituality and for spiritual resources: it is therefore imperative that we provide things like online multimedia Bible studies and Internet radio and video.
At the same time, Mohler makes an important point:
We need a generation of parents who will exercise their authority to teach their children how to use these technologies responsibly. This means no digital babysitters and no screen kids. This would mean family dinners with no digital noise, just the rare sound of parents and children talking to each other. This would mean balancing "screen time" with "paper time" -- that activity previously known as reading books.
The media we provide for youth must not be "electronic babysitters" or resources to equip youth to be autodidacts - it must be media that is shared by parents and children. I strongly encourage parents to go through my Bible study materials and discuss them with their children. I'm sure that Fr. Christopher Metropulos, John and Tatiana Maddex, and Ruston Miles - along with all the other Orthodox media providers and educators - would likewise encourage parents and children to listen and view online Orthodox media as a family, rather than exclusively consuming the media as individuals. We all want the resources we create to build up the entire Body of Christ - families as well as individuals (and, of course, parishes).
Furthermore, Mohler correctly points out the need to read books, and not limit textual consumption to short Web articles and blog posts. I've discussed the issue of printed text versus electronic text before - in fact, it was inspired by another post by Mohler - but I nonetheless want to agree with him that reading and meditating upon longer texts is an essential discipline.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Orthodox Concerts Online
Posted on Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 4:21 PM by Jason Barker
The Orthodox Christian Network has announced that they will upload videos from the Antiochian Archdiocese Convention of concerts by Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist and Ron Moore.
Posted in Miscellaneous
The Need for Orthodox Media
Posted on Monday, July 23, 2007 at 10:54 AM by Jason Barker
Fr. Christopher Metropulos has an interesting article about the need for Orthodox Christian media. He gives a good summary of the situation in the two concluding paragraphs:
We now choose to invest in making sure there is an Orthodox witness in the media. That means valuing our faith and what our faith has to offer to the point that we pay the price to include our faith in the mass-media community of ideas. That means we invest in radio programs. We develop and distribute TV programming. We work to use the Internet to share our faith, and we publish books that are readable and attractive to our culture.
In other words, we work hard to use media as well as we would use any tool to communicate the life-changing message of Orthodoxy to our nation. We don't try to do eternal things on the cheap, but we insist on excellence and we are willing to fund these good works.
I recommend reading the entire article.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Scholarship and Reading Scripture
Posted on Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 5:47 AM by Jason Barker
Kevin Edgecomb has written an interesting article on scholarship and reading Scripture. He writes:
Our Tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy is full to bursting with that ancient type-antitype allegorical exegesis. This method is rich and deep, and has thrived for centuries longer than any critical methods of study, creating an environment which produced not only amazing works of art, literature, hymnody, and philosophy, but especially the people who created them, whose lives were transformed by immersion into that environment, that worldview, to such an extent that they were, by God’s grace, rendered into Saints, continuing the cycle by continuing to pass on the Tradition.
I recommend the entire article.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Providing Bibles for All
Posted on Monday, July 16, 2007 at 9:01 AM by Jason Barker
The other day I read an article - I don't remember which publication - about the need to provide Bibles for students in Bible study groups. The point of the article is that many participants in a Bible study will not bring a Bible with them to the group - some will not own a Bible at all - and therefore churches and group leaders need to make available copies of the Bible for all participants. This is an excellent point, and jibes with my experience: if you want teens to follow along with the Bible reading and participate in group discussion, you need to have copies available at each meeting.
I include the New King James Version of the biblical text (generously provided by Thomas Nelson) in each of my Bible study applications. While this is necessary in the applications, it does not address the issue of providing copies of the text at Bible study groups. To meet this need, I encourage churches to keep numerous copies of the Orthodox Study Bible for use in study groups and classes. For churches or groups that cannot afford individual copies of the Orthodox Study Bible, I at least encourage you to find inexpensive copies of the NKJV (the official translation used in the Bible Bowl competitions in the Antiochian Archdiocese): for example, a few years ago I went to a sale at a local Christian bookstore and was able to purchase paperback copies of the NKJV for one dollar each.
Extending further the idea of making Bibles available for all, I want to particularly commend Steven Robinson and Bill Gould's ministry providing copies of the Orthodox Study Bible to all who ask. Steven and Bill - hosts of the Our Life in Christ radio program and podcast - need your support to continue this vital ministry.
Posted in Miscellaneous
iProcrastinate
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 1:21 PM by Jason Barker
For readers who use OS X, Cool OSX Apps featured iProcrastinate, a free home / task management application. For my teen readers, this application looks particularly useful for managing homework and class assignments.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Teens Do Not Pay Attention to the News
Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 12:26 PM by Jason Barker
Foreign Policy links to a study by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government revealing the far from surprising fact that teens generally do not pay attention to news reports. Mike Boyer writes:
Nearly one in three American teenagers, according to the report, pay almost no attention to daily news. Another 32 percent are merely "casually attentive." So, taken together, 60 percent of teens can be considered to be basically uninterested in what's happening in the world...But surely, you say, "the Internet" must be informing America's youth. Apparently not. Just one in five teenagers say they get exposure to news on the Internet everyday, and two thirds of the teens who say they do get some news from the Internet also say they're not seeking it out, they "just happen to come across it."
This was an issue for me when I considered design themes for my Bible study on the Acts of the Apostles. The newspaper theme was the first idea with which I came up (and, obviously, is the theme I ultimately chose): laying out the articles in a newspaper format gives the content a sense of immediacy, a - for lack of a better description - "you are there" impression. The newspaper theme therefore reinforces the idea that the events in Acts are not simply historical events from the ancient near east, but are also events whose impact and import we experience today. The visual design therefore serves as a kind of bridge connecting "then" with "now."
At the same time, I knew there was a problem with design: most teens - and a continually decreasing number of adults - do not read newspapers, and therefore the impact of the newspaper theme would not necessarily be immediately apparent. I nonetheless went with the newspaper theme because, while most teens do not read newspapers, they are at least familiar with the look and purpose of newspapers, and could therefore eventually connect the visual layout of the Bible study with its content.
Getting back to Boyer's article, his final sentence brings to mind an important point about Bible study for teens: "I bet that if the military draft came back, though, you'd suddenly find U.S. teens paying rapt attention to what's going on out there." In other words, teen interest in news reports is largely predicated by self-interest: they will pay attention to the reports when they believe that the subject of those reports will have an immediate and tangible impact upon their lives.
This is an important reason for highlighting the life application articles in Orthodox Christian Bible studies. The main purpose for including these articles, of course, is simply to help readers see how to live out the truths contained in Scripture; the assumption in this case is that the reader has read the Scripture, wants to make this application, and simply needs guidance in doing so. Boyer's statement nonetheless helps us to remember that these life application articles serve an additional purpose: they appeal to the reader's self-interest, and therefore serve as an incentive for Bible reading for individuals who otherwise would not read the Bible. It is for this reason that the headline graphic on the home page for the Romans Bible study reads, "Do you wish you could transform your life?" Their self-interest serves as the initial attractor for Bible study that will ultimately remove their focus exclusively from themselves and turn it toward God.
I would of course, prefer to promote these Bible studies by focusing exclusively upon God, e.g., "Here's a study that will help you learn more about God and His Word!" And, if you look at the descriptions I give on the home page of each study, you will see that I do in fact emphasize this point. At the same time, however, such an appeal will not work with teens who have no interest in God; to attract these teens, you need to address their self-interest. The key is to NOT leave the focus on themselves, but instead to guide them in shifting their focus to God.
To wrap this up, if I were creating a newspaper for teens, I would have a sidebar for each article clearly stating something along the lines of "Here's what this means for you," and/or "Here's what this means for (the people of Iraq, the environment, the poor in Dallas, etc)." This would give the teens the information they need to be productive citizens, but would also give them the emphasis on relationship with self and others - in other words, the relevance - that inspires them to give their attention. I point out the life application articles in my studies for the same reason: I hope that readers will start with the biblical text and commentary, and set up the navigation so that these are always the first options, but provide easy access to the life application articles for those who will not (at least initally) read the biblical text. By providing easy access to the life application articles, I at least give otherwise uninterested teens entry into some of the principles in the Scripture, and hopefully inspire them to engage in further study.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Profile of Contemporary Youth
Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 at 12:09 PM by Jason Barker
OrthodoxyToday has republished part of the summary of a presentation by Fr. Jonathan Tobias giving a profile of contemporary youth.
Posted in Miscellaneous
20 Million Podcast Listeners by 2010
Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 9:40 AM by Jason Barker
Via one of Scott Bourne's blogs, I learned about an eMarketer / Bridge Ratings estimate that 20 million Americans will download podcasts on a weekly basis by 2010. They estimate that 7.1 million Americans currently download podcasts on a weekly basis, and 21.4 million do so occasionally.
Interestingly, contrary to popular belief, the study found that listening to radio station podcasts tends to increase listening to that station: 56% of podcast listeners claim that they increased the amount of time spent listening to the station supplying the podcasts, while 44% claimed no change in their listening.
These findings are significant for the online Orthodox radio networks (Orthodox Christian Network and Ancient Faith Radio), both of whom offer downloadable content in addition to their streaming networks.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Gender in the NETS
Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 11:19 AM by Jason Barker
Fr. John Fenton has written a brief post about the problematic "gender specific/inclusive language" issues in the New English Translation of the LXX (the availability of which I noted yesterday). He nonetheless writes:
Even if not intended for liturgical use, it is nevertheless good to have yet another translation of the LXX; particularly since this is the preferred OT text in Orthodox Churches. Yet I shall await more eagerly this long-promised translation.
I second his eagerness for the complete Orthodox Study Bible (scheduled at this time to be released in February 2008).
Posted in Miscellaneous
"Ordinary" People as Theologians
Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 8:49 AM by Jason Barker
Mike Aquilina has written an article about the need for modern Christians to be theologians (rather than leaving the study of theology exclusively to clergy and professional academics). As an example, he turns to St. Gregory of Nyssa and the Christians of the fourth century:
In the middle of the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssa gave in to a fit of complaint. Ordinary people, he said, were spending entirely too much time talking about theology. “Mere youths and tradesmen, off-hand dogmatists in theology, servants too, and slaves that have been flogged … are solemn with us and philosophical about things incomprehensible … If you ask for change someone philosophizes to you on the begotten and the unbegotten.”
And the problem followed poor Gregory all over the marketplace. If he asked the baker the price of his bread, he got Trinitarian doctrine instead. If he asked whether the bath was ready, he got still more speculation.
Gosh, times have changed. Not too long ago, a friend of mine ordered a Christmas cake to read “Happy birthday, Jesus,” and the baker asked her how that name was spelled.
Today we live with widespread doctrinal ignorance, and reading St. Gregory’s complaint can be irritating — like listening to a friend gripe about having too much money or a spouse who cooks too well.
We live in a time when theology is an esoteric academic discipline practiced by very few Christians and of little interest to the bakers and bankers.
Christians of the fourth century knew better.
Aquilina's point is not that St. Gregory was wrong to lament the prevalence of Arianism and the debate it inspired, but rather that there is a tremendous value for Christians to - in a phrase I heard (and used) many times as a Protestant - "know what you believe and why you believe it." As Aquilina says, "Theology is not just for the elites. It’s a basic life skill. St. Gregory himself knew this, and that’s why he wrote one of the Church’s first catechisms."
Aquilina is a Roman Catholic, and therefore a few of his specific references - e.g., EWTN - may be unfamiliar to Orthodox readers, but his article nonetheless makes a very good point for Orthodox Christians.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Recover Lost Word Documents
Posted on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 1:17 PM by Jason Barker
Kyle Pott of Lifehacker writes about an article explaining how to recover lost Microsoft Word documents (in Windows). Pott says:
Maker of data-recovery applications Ease Us offers several approaches to resurrecting a lost Word document. The tutorial goes from the obvious -- look in the Recycle Bin -- to more complex searches, like looking for a backup file with the WBK extension, to looking for files that start with a tilde (~), plus a few more. They sprinkle in several recommendations to use their shareware apps, but if you ignore these, there are quite a few good tips you can try next time a Word document goes MIA on your PC.
Recovering deleted files can be lifesaver. My favorite freeware file recovery program for Windows is Brian Kato's Restoration. It isn't perfect - no application is - but it is remarkably effective for a simple and free application.
Edited on: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 1:17 PMPosted in Miscellaneous
Forbes Article About Caesarea
Posted on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 6:24 PM by Jason Barker
Forbes recently published an article about the author's visit to Caesarea, an ancient city built by Herod the Great and dedicated to Caesar Augustus. The city is prominent in the Acts of the Apostles.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Giving Increases Happiness
Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 11:17 AM by Jason Barker
The Dallas Morning News linked to an article about a University of Oregon study in the new field of neureconomics which concluded that donating money to a charity activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure. The findings are not restricted only to financial giving, but also to virtuous living. Manya Brachear writes:
Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, told me the findings speak not only to generosity but virtue. The study supports the theory that humans who strive to be virtuous are actually honing happier lives and better relationships, he said.
Scientists are puzzled as to why humans feel the need to give to others, and why they derive pleasure from such giving:
As for why humans would develop a desire to help others, the researchers can only speculate. "One basic is that early humans lived in small groups, where survival of the group helped your own cause," Mayr said. "But that still leaves the question of why you might care why someone in Africa is starving, how this particular mechanism becomes overgeneralized."
Christians, however, recognize such a life as a divine imperative, as just a small selections of biblical passages demonstrate:
- God Himself is generous (Matthew 7:7-11).
- It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).
- Generosity is rewarded by God (Proverbs 11:25; Matthew 25:34-40).
I've written before about ways in which you can donate to the Orthodox Christian Network and Ancient Faith Radio, and the Department of Youth Ministry can always use your donations of money and/or time to serve God and others.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Christian Education Beyond Sunday School
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 at 10:52 AM by Jason Barker
Fr. Gregory Jensen links to another blog article discussing an article in a recent Christianity Today about the way in which Christian churches approach Christian education. Mark Galli (the author of the Christianity Today article) uses as the foundation for his argument yet another article from Theology Today discussing the fact that, under current educational strategies (particularly in Protestant churches), religious education is largely the attempt to transmit intellectual knowledge: "Understood this way, knowledge is perceived as a kind of repository of neutral facts, and the mastery of these facts constitutes the process and the ultimate goal of coming to know." Instead of a largely intellectual approach to Christian education, Debra Dean Murphy argues in Theology Today, churches must understand that true knowledge is to be transformed through "the praise and adoration of God within the eucharistic fellowship of the body of Christ gathered together in worship."
I mention these articles, not to imply that these articles in any way reflect upon the excellent work of the Department of Christian Education in the Antiochian Archdiocese or the pan-jurisdictional Orthodox Christian Education Commission, but instead because they bring to mind a serious danger of Bible study: the tendency to make Bible study an individual intellectual pursuit rather than a communal spiritual discipline.
Bible studies for youth - as with those for most adults - must be more than simply the transmission of data. A simple perusal of the titles given to my Bible studies - Follow Me; The Journey; See the Vision; Be Transformed - gives an indication of the intent of the studies (both individually and collectively): transformation through a worshipful relationship with God and His Church. While there are any number of intellectual components in my work - and cognitive strategies informing these components - the focus is always on growth as a Christian, rather than simply the memorization of facts. It is for this reason that my studies are not simply a collection of summaries and quizzes - although the studies contain these - but also include numerous articles on Orthodox faith and worship, and life application. Furthermore, these studies always encourage the individual to become ever more deeply involved with - and committed to - the Body of Christ.
At the same time, while avoiding "over-intellectualizing" Bible study, we must avoid "under-intellectualizing" it. There are any number of modern "Bible studies" that, instead of studying the Bible, simply use the biblical text as a launching point for the delicate art of navel gazing, endlessly discussing one's feelings rather than the text itself. Bible-related activity that effectively promotes biblical ignorance is arguably even more damaging than biblical study that focuses exclusively on data transmission: a person might still be reached by a cold recitation of facts, whereas a person is very unlikely to grow in his or her relationship with God when the focus is away from Him and the Scripture He gave.
In another writing I stated the ideal for which I aim when creating Bible studies (I've removed the paranthetical citations):
A full reading of the biblical text, with its incorporation of scholarship and academic methodologies, should not be contrasted with - or opposed to - reading for life application or devotional reading. As this general approach demonstrates, both are vital to comprehension of the text: reading devotionally without understanding the background or context of the text results in the individual constructing “a new sacred calf” that is molded by a hunger for comfort or desire for the control of familiarity. Conversely, an academic reading without devotion to the God revealed in the text results in God being diminished into a mere concept over which the reader has control. The function of the instructor is to “urge [learners] to creatively and actively perform the reading role in such a way that personal and social life (theirs, ours, our neighbors, even our enemies) is informed and (by grace) transformed into an encounter with God” through the text.
Edited on: Saturday, June 16, 2007 12:40 PMPosted in Miscellaneous
Unicode on Windows XP
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at 10:16 AM by Jason Barker
From Biblical Software Review, I learned about a post on SansBlogue discussing using Unicode on Windows XP. This is important if you use biblical languages in your writing.
I previously mentioned an article from Tyndale Tech about using biblical language fonts and Unicode, and also have written about InsertBible, a free tool for incorporating Unicode fonts when using biblical langauges in Word 2003 for Windows.
Posted in Miscellaneous
St. Cyril of Alexandria
Posted on Saturday, June 09, 2007 at 9:28 AM by Jason Barker
Today is the feast day of St. Cyril of Alexandria. The Troparion and Kontakion are here.
I am incorporating St. Cyril's commentary on the Gospel according to St. Luke into the study on Luke. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you can find St. Cyril's commentary in several different formats here.
Posted in Miscellaneous
Enforcing Reading
Posted on Friday, June 08, 2007 at 9:50 AM by Jason Barker
Today's Frazz comic makes an important point about reading: youth are more likely to engage in the process when it is self-initiated and self-selected. This is not, of course, to disparage the importance of assigning reading: as an Orthodox writer and teacher, and the spouse of a children's literature professor, it would be foolish and hypocritical of me to disparage the role of authority in the learning process. At the same time, it is important to recognize that youth engage in learning with greater enthusiasm, and ultimately with greater efficacy, when they choose to learn.
That is a crucial reason for the emphasis I place on the design of my Bible studies. For one thing, youth are accustomed to their learning materials being packaged in increasingly more sophisticated packaging. While it would be wonderful if youth were attracted to materials only by the content to be found therein, and while it is extremely important to never let the design overwhelm (or even worse, replace) the content, we must recognize that youth are fa