admin | 
Mon 13 Feb 2012, 16:49Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) and United Bible Societies (UBS), both members of the Forum of Bible Agencies International, have announced a new expansion of their partnership.
According to the press release:
"The two Christian organizations, each committed to providing God's Word to all the peoples of the world, have agreed to a collaboration that will lay the groundwork for unprecedented access to digital Bible text and audio. This is accomplished by an agreement that brings together UBS's Digital Bible Library and FCBH's Digital Bible Project in a way that will leverage technology for greater access, while also improving efficiency and reducing duplication of work and services.
"Since UBS and its members have worked closely with FCBH for many years, this new agreement can realistically be viewed as a 21st century extension of decades of mutually committed efforts in the field of Bible engagement and Scripture literacy. It is a logical next step to providing the Word of God to all peoples of the world." [more...]
How do you get Scripture video into a format that people can watch and share on their mobile phones? You'll need a program that can convert video to 3GP and MP4 file formats.
In this paper, David Phillips compares three video conversion programs: Miksoft’s Mobile Media Converter, Acala 3GP Movies Free, and Any Video Converter.
Choosing the right video file type can take some trial and error with sample phones among your target audience. You might need to distribute mobile phone video in at least two file types. For example, H.263 3GPP (.3gp) video files are used for many low-end phones with small screen sizes and less powerful processors. MPEG-4/H.264 (.mp4 or .3gp) video files are what you'll need for higher-end phones and smartphones (such as the iPhone) which have larger screen sizes and faster processors.
There are all kinds of options to choose from (video and audio codecs, bitrates, frame rate, sampling frequency, screen size, etc.), so it can get complicated. That's why it's good to have a converter program that meets your needs and level of expertise, giving you the options you need but not too many to confuse you. [more...]
From the book description:
"Many Christians today experience Bible teaching in isolated, unconnected pieces, receiving little or no guidance into how these pieces form a coherent picture in Christ. How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens presents Christ as the central focus of each biblical book and the primary way the Bible relates to contemporary circumstances. Each book of the Bible has an identifiable theme ultimately fulfilled in the person and work of Christ.
By demonstrating how each theme relates to living the Christian life, this book promises to be an invaluable guide for reading and understanding the Bible."
"Social activity is our responsibility in the discipling process. Once a person has responded to the love of Christ, we are to help them grow up in their faith. Setting them free from the chains of sin and yet not removing them from the chains of illiteracy and thus oppression is not loving my neighbor."
In 'Is Hearing Enough?', Don Edwards presents research carried out in India, where a significant percentage of new church leaders and believers cannot read. He argues the case for literacy to play an important role in discipleship efforts as part of what it means to love our neighbor.
In the light of the growing focus on Orality, the author challenges us not to lose sight of the vital role that literacy plays in grounding believers in their faith. [more...]
admin | Tue 3 Jan 2012, 19:24The latest IJFM 28:3 (International Journal of Frontier Missions), is devoted to Bible translation, especially the choice of meaningful key terms.
Articles include:
- A New Look at Translating Familial Biblical Terms - Rick Brown, Leith Gray and Andrea Gray
- A Brief Analysis of Filial and Paternal Terms in the Bible - Rick Brown, Leith Gray, and Andrea Gray
- When “Literal” is Inaccurate: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Translating Scripture Meaningfully - Donna Toulmin
- Ideological Challenges for Bible Translators - Roy E. Ciampa
- Basic Principles and Procedures for Bible Translation - Forum of Bible Agencies International
You can download each of the journal articles for free, as well as previous issues. [more...]
Reflections on a research paper by Anicka Fast, relevant for those working on Bible translation in multilingual church contexts:
Fast, Anicka 2009. Managing linguistic diversity in the church: language ideological contestation within a shared moral framework in south-western Burkina Faso. Language Documentation and Description, Vol 6, 161-212.
In this review, Katherine O'Donnell reflects on Fast's research as she looks at the perceptions held by missionaries, church leaders and villagers on Mother Tongue (MT) use in church. Fast studied south west Burkina Faso in an area with lots of languages and lots of multilingualism. Many people speak Jula, a Language of Wider Communication (LWC), and some speak French (the official LWC). This situation resembles that in many of the countries where Bible translation is in progress, where there might also be high multilingualism with a LWC and MTs. [more...]
admin | Wed 28 Dec 2011, 17:03"There are lots of ways to read the Bible in a year, and I won’t try to capture all of them. But here are numerous options, in no particular order. You may want to look through it and see what you think would work best for you."
It's a good time of the year to think about how you're going to read the Bible in 2012. Justin Taylor gives us a long list of different Bible reading plans on his blog.
These include book/chapter plans to print out as bookmarks, links to web pages and ways of getting the reading for the day on your phone. [more...]
"What we are trying to do is say we want our people to know the Scripture — and how will they know the Scriptures other than by reading it? And what’s the best way to read it? I’m convinced that it’s designed to be read in big chunks, out loud, with people getting together."
Cornerstone Church in Kingston, UK, have embarked on 'The Big Read'. The idea is to read one book of the Bible each month, together in small groups.
On the first Sunday of the month, the pastor preaches an overview of the book. Then at the midweek prayer meeting, they read the first few chapters together, leaving the rest for the small groups during the other weeks of the month. They've put together a series of 10 questions to help them reflect on what they're reading.
For more details, see the article in The Briefing, which contains some provocative thoughts on Bible reading from Cornerstone's pastor, Pete Woodcock. [more...]
admin | Thu 22 Dec 2011, 15:09The solar-powered Proclaimer was launched several years ago by Faith Comes By Hearing for audio Bible listening groups around the world. Since then, we have seen a number of developments in the technology in response to field experience, resulting in new models of the Proclaimer - both large and small.
Here's what the new M2 version of the Proclaimer will look like for groups receiving them in 2012:
The most obvious difference compared to previous models is the new circular layout of the navigation buttons and the lack of an LCD screen. New Testaments are embedded within the player. The M2 dimensions and weight are essentially the same as the previous version.
Most of the other solar-powered audio players have done without an LCD screen (Saber, MegaVoice Ambassador, Renew Papyrus, Audibible, mini-Proclaimer). The key is to have the name of the book and the chapter announced at the start of each track, so users can find the right place by listening. [more...]
admin | Thu 22 Dec 2011, 14:15The Audacity digital recording software is a popular choice for recording audio Scripture engagement products: Scripture recordings, songs, radio programmes, etc.
A new version, 1.3.14, was released on 11 December 2011 and is available for download here.
For those learning to do audio recording, we have an Audacity manual on the Scripture Engagement site: How to do Recording on your Computer. Please feel free to download and print a copy. [more...]