Escape from Court

I made it out of the Court today. Fortunately I wasn't one of the parties but one of the Jury. It was a little out of the ordinary as there were 3 parties being represented and 3 lawyers, meaning 3 sets of witnesses and 3 cross-examinations and 3 rebuttals and at least 4 times the amount of work making it a 3 ring circus.

In the end 2 lawyers changed up on the third and booted him out. With him out of the way they made it to a settlement and let me and the rest of the Jury free.

Mind you this took 2 and a half days to accomplish, but I guess Justice was served in this civil case. The Judge Rodgers definitely gets my vote as his jolly attitude, hard-work, and respect for all parties involved was evident.

I'm happy to make it out for a jaunt to Austin with my wife this weekend. We're focusing on thankfulness so I just wanted to be thankful for my trip. Thankful for our court system and Judges like Rodgers. Thankful for our new office we are moving into this weekend.

Confession

We're doing a study on prayer in my small group. This last week was on confession, with a little leading from vcc study notes and Psalm 51 we dived right in to discussion.

It was a reminder of my value for brokenness. In a world that chases so far after success and appearance, humility is despised and pride is exonerated. But our savior is the one who died on the cross and washed other's feet. He came to serve and not to be served, Jesus said I only do what I see the father doing - He needed the father's guidance and direction. He knew better than to try and do anything in his own strength. That's what brokenness is: willing to be taught, willing to listen, willing to be wrong, willing to obey God. It is the prerequisite for a clean heart. Another aspect of this is realizing that you can't do things alone.

I came across John 20:23 , I must have overlooked it before. I generally picture forgiveness as a direct transaction between you and God (via Jesus' Blood) or you and another person. But here Jesus gives tied to the gift of the Holy Spirit an authority that was the dominion of only God alone - Forgiveness of sins

Now I realize that I could combine this with the doctrine of apostolic succession and walla we have the Catholic Priest taking confession in a booth and forgiving or not forgiving sins.

But it seems to me that God alone is still the only one who forgives, only now he does it via the Holy Spirit which is in all believers. But it does point to active participation in the forgivness of sins by other christians not the one on one transaction I usually envision.

I'll chew on the full meaning of it for a while but In the meantime I'll start asking God who needs to be forgiven and have forgiveness spoken over them. I'm sure there are plenty of people who need to be told their sins are forgiven.

Bibleicio.us plan - path to Beta

So I've got the alpha, the rough draft version, running over at http://bibleicio.us/bible

So what's next - try using it and try living it. I'm making a general announcement to my Church this week, and I've already spoken to our 20 Somethings group. I'm hopeful that a few of the small groups will take it and run with it, let their group reflections and discussions of the bible spill over into cyberspace.

This is test week for VLI so I won't have as much time to devote to this as I would like. I'm finishing up my required reading on Paul's letters so hopefully I can stop and add a few nuggets to the site while I'm at it. That's what I would reccomend you do to if you are interested, just try putting a few delicious bookmarks in here or there - try making a direct connection to a bible passage in the blogging you are already doing, and tag things you are already reading with specific bible chapters whether the author makes the connection or not.

After trying it out, if you have any thoughts on how things should be changed or improved post a comment on this blog here.

BTW the overall plan is something like this:

• Alpha Phase - Proof of Concept
• Get online Bible working.
• Search and pull in delicious tags for each book and chapter.
• Start tagging scriptures and get feedback from early users
  
• Beta Phase 1
• Recruit 1-3 additional developers - Javascript, php, AJAX, CSS, etc.
• Recruit 20-50 regular users/community members who are intentionally tagging links
• Focus on the Gospel of Mark, getting 4-10 links for each chapter.
• Start to establish community, determine additional features, work through conflict (in love) and develop a moderation system.
• Main Page - get rid of coming soon stuff.
• Page Layout and Design - CSS master, anyone, anyone, mueller?
• About/Help - describe intent, purpose, statement of faith, tagging guidelines,etc
• Recent Posts - right now hard to tell if anyone is using it, added to main page
• Word/Phrase seach of Bible
• Version 1 of Moderation system for links that appear on Bibleicio.us
• Bug fixes
  
• Beta Phase2
• Solidify site and community norms, add features to enhance community, Improve Bible section of website with better display and more translation options.
• Paragraphs and formatting of bible - OSIS support? (would give alternate versions as well)
• Alternate Translation - ESV API support
• Bibleicious tagging button that prompts and verifies book and chapter when posting to delicious.
• Filter by Tags - filter the links by the non scripture reference tags ie sermon, application, blog, etc for a particlar Chapter.
• Tag cloud on main page of non scripture reference tags included in bibleicious
• User home pages - link to blog list of post, personal info etc.
• List of Users - link to homepages, etc
• Technocrati style tags - add reference to bible passage and automatically get a link posted on bibleicious.
• Adjustments to Moderation system as needed
• Bug Fixes
  Biblicio.us 1.0 !

That's my brain dump. Let me know what I missed/other great ideas you might have.

There is a trap - especially for the bloggers.

It's not having enough time in the closet. If all our thoughts and reflections are in the presense of others our motives get corrupted and our relationship and reward from God gets lost. Mat 6

If all of our "insights" are cashed in to build our blog and online reputation, than we have already recieved our reward. If I really want the Holy Spirit to change me, I have to spend time being gut level honest in the "secret place" with him.

There is always 2 ways to fall of the horse, we can become retreat inward as monks or wear ourselves thin and turn into fakes. Jesus did neither of these, he gave everything he had sharing with others, but then retreated away to pray and reflect and spend time with the Father.

Posting Instructions - Official Abbreviations

Here are the offical instructions for Posting links to Bibleicio.us

Bibleicio.us uses del.icio.us bookmarks. If you don't already have a del.icio.us account register here.

Simply post a link to your del.icio.us favorites and then tag it with the related bible verse.

Tag Format: "first 3 letters for book dot Chapter" so the tag for Genesis, Chapter 1 is Gen.1

Colons and spaces can't be used for tags so we will use periods or dots as seperators instead.

If the book starts with a number include it as well as the first 3 letters so for 1 Corinthians 15 you would tag it 1Cor.15

The only exceptions are Jude which conflicts with Judges and Phillipians and Philemon.
For these:

Jud Judges
Jude Jude
Phil Phillipians
Phm Philemon

These are also the abbreviations used in the bibleicious url so Genesis Chapter 1 is
http://bibleicio.us/bible/Gen/1

Right now you can't tag by verse only chapter. I haven't decided whether to do all Chapter or verse or allow a mix of both.

When you go to that chapter or any verse in that chapter your link will show up on the right. Note that my site uses caching so it might not show up immediately.

The following is a full list of the books of the bible and thier abbreviations

OT
Gen Genesis
Exo Exodus
Lev Leviticus
Num Numbers
Deu Dueteronomy
Jos Joshua
Jud Judges
Rut Ruth
1Sam 1 Samuel
2Sam 2 Samuel
1Kin 1 Kings
2Kin 2 Kings
1Chr 1 Chronicles
2Chr 2 Chronicles
Ezr Ezra
Neh Nehemiah
Est Ester
Job Job
Psa Psalm
Pro Proverbs
Ecc Ecclesiastes
Son Song of Songs (Song of Solomon)
Isa Isaiah
Jer Jeremiah
Lam Lamentations
Eze Ezekial
Dan Daniel
Hos Hosea
Joe Joel
Amo Amos
Oba Obadiah
Jon Jonah
Mic Micah
Nah Nahum
Hab Habakkuk
Zep Zephaniah
Hag Haggai
Zec Zechariah
Mal Malachi

NT
Mat Matthew
Mar Mark
Luk Luke
Joh John
Act Acts
Rom Romans
1Cor 1 Corinthians
2Cor 2 Corinthians
Gal Galatians
Eph Ephesians
Phi Philippians
Col Colossians
1The 1 Thessalonians
2The 2 Thessalonians
1Tim 1 Timothy
2Tim 2 Timothy
Tit Titus
Phm Philemon
Heb Hebrews
Jam James
1Pet 1 Peter
2Pet 2 Peter
1Joh 1 John
2Joh 2 John
3Joh 3 John
Rev Revelations

Sorry no Apocrypha right now, but I do have all of the WEB texts so it would be easy to add Tobit or Baruch if requested.

Bibleicio.us is Alpha!

I had an eventful day.

First off Bibleicio.us is now semi-functional
1) Go to your del.icio.us account and add a tag like so joh.13 .
2) Then go to the page on bibleicio.us -- http://bibleicio.us/bible/joh/13
3) ToDa, your bookmark will show up to the right of the Bible

Yes, its still ugly. I am going to clean up the HTML and then attack it with some CSS.

I'll follow up with a post tommorrow about the official abbreviation system. It will basically be the first 3 letters of the book with a dot seperator and then the chapter. That is nice and easy with just a couple of exceptions like - Judges and Jude and Phillipians and Philemon. Currently the site has weird two letter abbreviations that came from the World English Bible folks, I'm going to standardize them into the 3 letter format and then publish the spec tommorrow so don't go tag wild on the alpha overnight :)

Special thanks to Richard Ericksson for showing me how to quickly add delicious info to my site and introducing me to magpie.

Also, I find I'm playing catchup - Zack already has tagging on his Bible, plus he already knows Greek as well.

Take a look, let me know what you think. What features do you want to see added?
Do you think that chapter tagging is appropriate or should we do verse?

It's always something - Step 1 almost complete

Any project has it's obstacles and this one has to do with configuration issues.

My host is godaddy.com , I've had them for less than a month so this is definately not an endorcement. Unfortunately their apache works a little different than the apache on my laptop and dev server. So I've been learning how to do all kinds of .htaccess magic.

All I wanted is for people to go to http://bibleicio.us/bible/Ge/1/1-12 for Genesis 1:1-12.
Not only could I not set an arbitrary file to be processed by the php engine, I also couldn't get the extra path info. Fortunately godaddy does support mod_rewrite and with a little help from Brian behlendorf I was able to get it working.

Go ahead and try it out. It is very rough and unfinished. You will note that phpScripture won the contest. I did get phpBible working on my laptop, but the xml parsing was so slow it sometimes took more than 30 seconds to execute and the scripts timed out. We definately can't have that on a high volume website so I opted for the simpler of the two.

The space on the right is where all the comments should go. If there are any CSS guru's out there let me know I am going to create classes for everything but I would love a cool layout.

Killing a community one Rant at a time

Last post I talked about a great online community. But let's face it. Conflict will happen no matter how we try to appreciate our diversity.

Initially we will be genuinely thankful for the different perspectives people bring us and grow in our ability to see God and his creation better through their eyes.

But eventually someone will "cross the line" whatever our line is and we will respond. Jon just posted about it. And as Scott pointed out there is a fresh example over at PhilBaker.net. I don't belief it is lack of conflict that should separate us from the world but how we respond in conflict. And it's not easy otherwise it wouldn't be a powerful witness that we are truly Jesus disciples. John 13:34-35.

The problem that is uniquely online is twofold. First there is an attitude that I can do whatever I want because it's not real and I'm not face to face. The problem with this thinking is that there really are real people at the end of all those cable runs. When you are ranting you are not only staking out a stance against a "position" but also against those people who have the position (explicitly or implicate, politely or confrontational). It's easy to forget the people when all you are looking at is a web page.

The second is anonymity - a lack of consequences. Blogging helps a little because those posting (though not commenting) at least have a fixed, semi-permanent presence in the community and there are some consquences to that persona.

For me I dread the can of worms that will be unleashed when Christians start sharing deeply their faith and values on the internet. It's a land mine of conflict from both in and outside the fold. My only answer right now is you need a "healthy, messy, community" - which is acknowledging that conflict will happen but hoping that overall people are much better of for being involved.

I ran across this sig the other day on Slashdot. It gives me a little hope because I think the sentiments could just as easily be applied to Christian Online Community

"The problem with Wikipedia is it is only possible in practice not theory."

Community + Bible + Tags + Blogs = Revival?

I talked with pastor Andy today about the Bibleicious project. We talked a lot about online community, what it was and what it wasn't.

We definately agreed that it wasn't a replacement for offline "material" community. But it could/should be an extention of the relationships we have in everyday life. I've happily connected with these other Vineyard Bloggers as I we have something real in common, even though I haven't met or seen most of them. As a group you guys seem connected closely with your church communities and not retreating to some online escapism or alternate "fake" persona. Your posts and blogs are just an extension of your daily reality, projected into a public forum.

So here is the idea. We combine the bible and del.icio.us giving us a new media that uses tags to connect scripture with our online lives - blogs, news, music, art, devotions, etc.
In doing this we start to see the world through the lens of the bible and we start to see the relevancy of the bible to our daily lives.

It's Relevancy that is fueling my passion, because I really think a real community, relating to each other in love, through the scripture, and on the web could demonstrate the reality of the gospel in a powerful and unique way. For people who don't see how the bible is relevant we would give them dozens of real, current, personal examples verse by verse. Then we show them how the verses themselves become links between people- a way of connecting blogs, thoughts, beliefs, and souls. It brings the Ancient Scripture forward and contextualizes it to the coming blog generation, letting them encounter God in the public forum where they naturally do most of their searching and decision makeing.

So I'm busy building the technical arcitecture and will give you updates on that, but my real goal is not another website, but a loving, healthy community that will be a powerful group witness of Jesus to the coming genereations. If you get it drop me a note. If you don't you might want to let me know what or why. I hope to get a proof of concept up and running in the next few weeks