On Tuesday, LifeWay announced the development of Bible Navigator X for the XBOX 360, via the Indie Games Channel and XNA.  In the next few weeks we’ll be talking more about the application on HCSB.org and BibleNavigatorX.com but, since a lot of the gaming sites have picked up the news, I wanted to be able to answer some questions specifically for you.

1) Why only the XBOX 360?

B&H is producing this via the XBOX Live Indie Games channel; the other consoles and handhelds don’t offer a similar toolset.  While we would be interested in developing for those platforms, the opportunities simply aren’t there right now for us.

2) What is the HCSB?

HCSB stands for the Holman Christian Standard Bible.  It’s one of the most modern transalations, and one of only two Bible translations (the other is the NET Bible) to have been done utilizing computers.  It’s a cross-denomination translation, with 17 denominations represented on its translation team.  You can learn more at HCSB.org.

3) What does the ‘X’ stand for?

B&H already has a product called Bible Navigator for the PC.  We wanted to keep the name of the product line and, since this is currently and XBOX-only project it seemed fairly obvious to call it Bible Navigator X.

4) Will I need a patch to read the text in SD?

Nope; we’ll let you control the font size on Day 1.  That’s a part of the nuts and bolts of our app.  ;-)

5) Will there be Achievements or DLC?

Sorry, but unfortunately no.  Those features aren’t available on Indie Games.

As cheesy as it sounds: I love my job.

There are goals that you set for yourself in life that you hope to attain, and there are goals that you put before yourself that you place there for the sheer audicity of it all, knowing that it’s not something that will ever happen.  Like flying to the moon, adopting a pet dragon, or helping to put the very words of God into a medium that it’s never been in before.

Today my team announced that we will be bringing the HCSB translation of the Bible to the Xbox via Bible Navigator X.  This has been a dream of mine for since the XBOX 360 launched and they announced that there would be downloadable games.  Way back when it first came out, in 2005, I managed to actually get someone on the phone at Microsoft to see if we could partner with them to make something happen.  At the time, there was simply no way to make it work within their ecosystem… especially since it wouldn’t be a game.

So, fast forward 4 years, and God somehow places me in the book publishing division of LifeWay, where we publish the Bible.  And, not only that, but B&H is an honest-to-goodness inovator in the digital publishing space and, even in this economy, is willing to take financial risks if it means spreading the Good News of Christ.  So, when I asked if we could explore putting the Bible on the XBOX, my coworkers and boss actually said “yes.”

So, to begin my quest of making it happen, I posted out to a game developer’s forum asking how I might connect with someone to freelance a project.  Lo and behold, I was found by Andy Dunn – a fairly well known developer in the XBOX community.  Someone whose stuff I read back in the day when I was trying to code my own XBOX wares.

Andy and I struck up a conversation, outlined what the application would look like, and we went to town.  His wisdom was, quite honestly, astounding.  I’ve learned more about the game/app development process from him than I ever expected to know.  But there was still that nervousness… is this really going to work?

If you’ve got a dream, you’ll have spent hours thinking about it in your head, hoping that some day the reality might be even a sliver of that dream.  In these past few weeks, as Andy has dropped a build to me every few days, it has almost freaked me out.  This is the very first version of Bible Navigator X, our first go at putting this most sacred content onto a video game system… and it work with the medium so perfectly.  It feels natural and nice; like the XBOX was made to host the Bible.

In short, reality suprassed what I had dreamt up in my head.

I feel almost foolish and childlike, gushing about how exciting this is for me and how much I love my job that allows me to see dreams come true.  I have a renewed interest in spreading the Gospel of Christ, now that it’s in a medium that my peers can connect with.  I have a brand new level  of respect for the scholars and wise men who translated the Greek and Hebrew into what we call the HCSB translation… and the programmers and developers who translated that into XML and code.

And, I’m not trying to wax philosophically here… I’m just finally able to get out words that I’ve had to keep secret for so long, I feel like a huge burden has been lifted.  It’s not every day that you get to be aware of being a part of God’s plan.  It’s not every day that you know your actions could – litearlly – impact millions.  This is one of those things that I’ll tell my children about, and I will tell their grandchildren, and so on and – hopefully – so on.

Excited.  That’s how I feel.  I hope you didn’t mind my shoutting it from the internets.

Last night, after installing an official firmware update to my Playstation 3, my system’s Blu-Ray drive stopped working (it won’t read any media: Blu-Ray, PS3 game, or DVD).  A quick Google search on the issue pulled up this blog post from the official US Playstation Blog:
 
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/09/ps3-firmware-update-v3-01-now-available/
 
On this post there are over 700 comments, many of which talk about users’ Blu-Ray drives ceasing to work (with only one reply in the thread, mentioning how it fixes issues with a specific game).  Since I added my comment on the thread last night (#759), 8 of the ten comments made overnight were in regards to issues with the Blu-Ray player.
 
I called the customer support line today and had three conversations:
 
1) Eva (first level support, did not think to get her ID#)

• Because my system is out of warranty, it would cost $150 to be serviced
• Warranty is only 1 year from purchase date; even if you are one year in, w/o a receipt they would charge you $150
• According to Eva, my phone call regarding 3.01 breaking the Blu-Ray drive is the first they have ever recieved
• According to Eva, the official blog is just a place to post thoughts and comments; the fact that there was a post with hundreds of comments regarding this issue did not matter at all

2) Jason, #474009 (Eva’s supervisor)

• To have the system tested by them to discover if the firmware caused the issue, I would have to pay the $150 service fee
• I asked Jason if I could quote him on this, and he agreed: “Even if the firmware caused the issue, you would have to pay the $150 service fee”
• Jason told me that even if the firmware update caused the issue, they would still charge me $150 to have the system repaired; there would be no refund of the service fee
• When agreeing to a firmware update, you agree that if the firmware causes any damage to your system, Sony is not responsible

3) Vance, #47083 (Jason’s supervisor)
 
At this point I explained to Vance that I wanted to be sure I had all of my facts straight for when I shared my story.

• According to Vance, Sony is unaware of any issues with 3.01 causing issues with the Blu-Ray drive
• Sony did extensive testing before the release of 3.01 – he is unaware of any testing regarding the Blu-Ray drive issue since its release
• If the Blu-Ray drive failure did become a documented issue, he does not know if they would refund any service fees
• There is no way for him to service the system for free, regardless of whether it was caused by the firmware or not, because I have owned the system for two years
• There is nothing more that I can do to let Sony know that 3.01 firmware caused the Blu-Ray drive to stop working
   

It is appearant to me that Sony’s firmware update has caused this exact issue in a number of Playstation 3 systems, and that they are ignoring the issue.  I find it hard to believe that mine was the first phone call they have recieved on this issue, as was told to me.  I also find it hard to believe that they expect me to pay $150 to repair something that they broke, and that they have no interest in testing my system to find out if the firmware caused the issue.

Does anyone have suggestions on what I can do to better let Sony know that the 3.01 firmware caused my system’s Blu-Ray drive to stop working?

Recently I had the chance to write an article for Collide Magazine that is the sum of my thoughts in the year 2008: The Near-Future of the Bible.  Through conversations with friends, attending and speaking at conferences, and spending time working on a yet-to-be-finished sci-fi novel, I began to craft a vision in my head of what the future of the Bible might look like.  Amazingly enough, Scott was kind enough to let me put some of those thoughts into a few words… and then thought they were worth printing.

Fast forward a few months, and the article is now available online for your reading pleasure by clicking this link.

If you’ve been around me the past few weeks, you know how important I think this kind of work is, and how happy I am to be working at a company who sees value in exploring these ideas and possibilities.  Check out the article and please, let me know your thoughts!

Romans 7:1 Since I am speaking to those who understand law, brothers, are you unaware that the law has authority over someone as long as he lives? 2 For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. 3 So then, if she gives herself to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. Then, if she gives herself to another man, she is not an adulteress.

If death frees us from the law, and changes the circumstances and regulations of that previous yoke of responsibilities, it makes me curious to examine what sorts of deaths we truly have in life, the impact that those deaths have upon us, and how we mourn/praise those deaths.

At first thought I would suggest that there are a number of deaths worth examining:

• The Death of a Childhood
• The Death of a Relationship
• The Death of a Person
• The Death of Our First Adam
• The Death of our Physical Self

Revelation 9:1 The fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth. The key to the shaft of the abyss was given to him. 2 He opened the shaft of the abyss, and smoke came up out of the shaft like smoke from a great furnace so that the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then out of the smoke locusts came to the earth, and power was given to them like the power that scorpions have on the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green plant, or any tree, but only people who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads. 5 They were not permitted to kill them, but were to torment them for five months; their torment is like the torment caused by a scorpion when it strikes a man. 6 In those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.

Our inital response and thought to death is the hurt, pain and damage it does to us and those around us.  This passage of Revelation, however, shows a very distinct reason that people might actually seek death: to end their suffering, to move on to the next phase.

In all cultures, there is some sort of right of passage that tranisitions us from childhood to adult hood.  For a typical American teenager, that passage happens when they get their driver’s license, or attend their Prom, or – for some – graduate College and are now forced to live outside of their parent’s shelter.  In other cultures there are more set rites of passage, that make a boy into a man or a girl into a woman.  We are all so eager to achieve that status of being an adult… and then so many spend the rest of their lives trying to be a child again.

I think there is wisdom in acknowledging that – yes – our childhood died.  There is wisdom in caring for it and mourning for it.  But to seek it out continually, to want to return to a way of life that lacks responsibility or action and allows us to simply view the world with wide-eyed wonder is an insult to the path of life that has been laid before us.

The world needs men and women in their twenties, seeking to be respected by their peers and elders – their fellow adults – so that fresh energy and ideas can enter the cultures around them.  The world needs respected seniors honoring their roles as sages and wise leaders, instead of dirty old men trying to relive their “glory” days as a young and virle teenager exploring the world.  And the world needs all of adulthood, in all our stages, to help raise the children of the next generation.  If any generation renigns on their responsibility to the rising youth, then years of knowledge, emotion and memories are lost and the rising youth are missing key stories and elements from which to grow on.

So why do we long for the magical powers of youth?  Why do we seek to forget the lessons life has brought us to just make the mistakes of our less mature days over again?  Why do we not let the pieces of our childhood die when and how they, naturally, should?

Could we, instead, be honored to have a life like David’s?  Even being the youngest of his brothers, the Lord annointed him through Samuel to be the King of Isreal.  But his journey didn’t happen overnight.  Before he would be king, David would:

1. Become a famous musician, and nearly be killed for it
2. Defeat Goliath, after being mocked and laughed at
3. Become best friends with the son of a man who was trying to kill him
4. Serve his country in war, then be driven into hiding for it
5. Survive the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, only to benefit from it

What would have happened to David if he had not had these experiences, and went from being a shepherd boy to a king overnight?  Which one of these was most forming for David to become a man of God – and a King?  How did David let his childhood die?

What are the moments where your childhood died?  When did you grow from being what you were, to what you are?

Social Media Contests for Ministry?

My friends Cleve and Eric asked me to write a guest post for them over at MediaSalt.com.  Let me know what you think!

originally published on the B&H Staff Blog

About a month back I went on my first video shoot with B&H Publishing Group to First Baptist Church of Woodstock in order to film for Sunday School in HD, by Allan Taylor, and Building Your Leadership Resume, by Johnny Hunt.

The video shoot went wonderfully well – it was simply incredible to hear the stories of life change coming out of the church and the way they do Sunday School. Here’s a little video about my experience even just hearing the stories:

You can view the rest of the videos here. Enjoy!

WSo, like any good modern media software, the Zune tracks the number of plays you have for each song.  As I noticed that I was approaching 25,000 total plays, I figured I’d take a look at my top artists, just for fun.  It’s one thing to say a certain band is your favorite… it’s another to add stats to it!

8 Gnarls Barkley

7 The Decemberists

6 Over the Rhine

5 Ryan Adams

4 Sufjan Stevens

3 The Killers

2 Eisley

1 Tegan and Sara

Other notables (200 or more plays from the band):

• Nick Cave
• They Might Be Giants
• Meg & Dia
• Josh Ritter
• Jon Foreman
• Silversun Pickups
• Glen Hansard
• Modest Mouse
• The Pipettes
• Damien Rice
• Queen
• The Myriad
• Scarlet Johansson
• Johnny Cash
• Derek Webb
• Vigilantes of Love
• Belle & Sebastian
• Griffin House
• Tom Waits
• Tokyo Police Club
• Kerli
• Ray LaMontange
• The Frames

And, since the stats are right there for me to type in, my Top 8 albums (not sure of the order, though):

• With Arrows, With Poise – the Myriad
• Anywhere I Lay My Head – Scarlett Johansson
• Orphans: Brawlers, Brawlers and Bastards – Tom Waits
• Something Real – Meg & Dia
• The Odd Couple – Gnarls Barkley
• We Are the Pipettes – The Pipettes
• Combinations – Eisley
• Songs for Christmas Singalong – Sufjan Stevens

About a year and a half ago, I got a new job.  I must say that, without hesitation, I loved the job.  I felt fully empowered to help our division grow and move towards the future.  With the support of my bosses, teammates, and people throughout the organization we were able to take an unknown digital transition and make it a viable distribution channel.  I loved every single minute of it and the people who I got to hang with.

However, last month, I got the opportunity to move from one dream job to another.

I don’t know why the Lord has blessed me in this way, but I am humbled at the responsibilities placed upon me.  I recently have switched over to be the manager for the Digital Promotions team (eMarketing).  I have been entrusted with numerous websites, microsites, web ads, digital videos, and all kinds of things inbetween.

In the month that I’ve been in this role I’ve gotten amazing support and the chance to use my skills and knowledge in new, fresh ways.  I love – LOVE – that I am helping move books and the Bible into the digital realm.  I feel so very blessed with my job; I truly look forward to going to work each and every day to see what new idea or project awaits.

I look forward to discovering what challenges I will fail at, and which victories my team and I will share.  I truly hope that everyone gets at least one chance to love the job they do; it’s just plain fun.

The good folks that run the BibleTech conference have made the MP3s of each of the sessions available for your listening pleasure!  If you care to hear my voice and ideas for 45 minutes or so, click on this link to get to my conference presentation.  Enjoy!