The Bible: The Epic Miniseries

I remember hearing about The Bible when it first aired and getting very excited. I knew the History Channel had started making some really high-quality original content, and I heard a lot of hype about the miniseries. I really wanted to watch it, but the broadcast time was awful. 7:00 pm on a Sunday is not a good time to air something that’s directed toward a Christian crowd. Still, the show did really well and broke a lot of records on television as well as when it was released on DVD. I finally got the Blu-ray set for Christmas so I could see what all the fuss was about.

I think it’s important when analyzing The Bible to keep in mind what Roma Downey and Mark Burnett were trying to do with it. They were inspired to create The Bible after watching The Ten Commandments with their kids and realizing how dated it was. They wanted to make a cinematic version of the Bible that would appeal to modern audiences. They took the Bible at face value and tried to tell the stories in a compelling way in order to encourage Christians, bring wayward believers back into the fold, and expose people to the stories of the Bible who have never heard them before. I believe that, at least as far as these goals are concerned, The Bible was a huge success.

First off, the show is simply beautiful. It’s very obvious that this is a professional production with experienced actors, directors, producers, and the like. The Bible was shot in Morocco, and all the sets, costumes, and characters look stunning and realistic. The creators made great use of modern technologies like CGI to bring some of the larger-than-life aspects of the stories (such as Noah’s ark and the Jewish temple) to life, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. The Bible is cinematically on par with—if not above and beyond—anything else anyone is making right now, and that really helps broaden its appeal beyond just a Christian audience.

The Bible looks great and reached a lot of people, but is it accurate? At the opening of every episode, there is a message that says, “This program is an adaptation of Bible stories that changed our world. It endeavors to stay true to the spirit of the book.” I think the wording here is important. They are striving to stay true to “the spirit” of the Bible, not necessarily to the details. Good or bad, when a book is turned into a movie (or a miniseries), some things get changed. Some details are left out while others are emphasized, added, or rearranged. The producers involved several Bible scholars throughout the creation of the show to make sure they weren’t straying too far, and overall, I think The Bible succeeds in its goal of staying true to the spirit of the Bible. But I do have some concerns about a few of the changes that were made.

First of all, I’ll say that I appreciated their overall approach to the Bible. The show presents the Bible as a grand narrative. It is a cohesive story with major themes that builds to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus. The show’s creators went to great lengths to structure the show in the same way and to approach the Bible stories as historical facts. In this sense, it’s a great introduction to the overall story of the Bible for someone who doesn’t know much about it, and it’s a nice way for people who are familiar with the Bible to experience the stories in a refreshing way.

But the stories in The Bible are all slightly different from their book counterparts. As I said before, this is just a side effect of taking a book, even a sacred book, and trying to adapt it for the screen, and it’s not always a bad thing. I didn’t see anything in the show that was sacreligious or heretical. I did feel like some of the changes may have been deliberate, though, especially when it comes to Peter. I know Peter is a major character in the New Testament, but his role was emphasized even more in The Bible. Peter is portrayed as the first of Jesus’ disciples in the show, which is simply not how the story goes in the Bible. One of the very few direct quotes from the Bible in the whole miniseries is where Jesus tells Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I shall build My church.” I sensed a bit of a Catholic bias in all this, which makes sense because Roma Downey is a Roman Catholic herself. I don’t think the show creators were trying to misrepresent or misuse the Bible, and the good that the show has done certainly certainly outweighs any bad caused by indescrepencies between the Bible and the show, but some of the changes did give me reason for caution.

I think The Bible is a great series that is definitely worth watching. It’s basically a ten-hour highlight reel of the Bible that tells some of the major stories in a modern, compelling way. It brings the Bible stories to life in a way that I think would be a great encouragement to any Christian who watches it. It’s also a wonderful introduction for people unfamiliar with the Bible (and who may not be willing to actually read the Bible), and hopefully it will spark their interest in the book itself. That said, I hope that people who watch The Bible will also take the time to read the texts of the stories that they’re watching on the show. Ultimately, the show should always point back to the holy book that inspired it. I think the true impact of The Bible miniseries will lie in its ability to lead people to God’s word and the peace, love, and forgiveness that one can find through it.

The Bible miniseries aired on The History Channel in March 2013 and is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. A two-hour film called Son of God will be released in February telling the story of Jesus through footage and deleted scenes from The Bible miniseries. A follow-up miniseries titled A.D., centered around the lives of the disciples after Jesus’ ascension, has been greenlit by NBC and will air in Spring 2015.

Grownups Need Directions, Too

When I was a kid, my mom never used a GPS. She didn’t have one. But more importantly, she didn’t need one, at least not in my eyes. She always seemed to be able to get us exactly where we were going with no problems, even if we were going somewhere she had never been before. I had no idea how to get anywhere, partially because I was kid and partially because I have no sense of direction whatsoever, so this astounded me. I came to the conclusion that all adults had some sort of secret special ability to find their way around places, and I assumed that I would someday develop this skill, too.

Boy, was I wrong. I am now 21 years old, and I can’t navigate anywhere without directions. I get lost just trying to drive around Fort Smith, a city I’ve lived just outside of for nearly 15 years. If the ability to navigate new areas is a skill all adults are supposed to have, then I must have missed out on that one somewhere along the way.

Not that I consider myself completely “grown up” just yet. I’m still pretty young, and I’ve got a lot more growing up to do. But I’m certainly not a kid, and I’m starting to slowly get an idea of what it’s like to be an adult. And one thing that I’ve found out is that, contrary to what most kids think, adults don’t have it all figured out. They question things, too. They still wonder about who they are and where they belong in life. They’re still growing and changing and learning and experiencing new things, too. And, yes, sometimes adults get lost.

I think this became most clear to me one night last summer. I was at a church event at a park, and I was babysitting my nephew Aiden. My mom was coming by to pick him up, and she called me to ask how to get to where I was. Whoa. My mom, the one who drove me around for years, the one I thought knew how to get everywhere, was asking me for directions? No way.

OK, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, but you get my point. It was then that I realized my mom didn’t know how to get everywhere without directions. In fact, she has a GPS installed in her car now, and she uses it on a regular basis. Because it’s OK to need a little direction every once in a while. It’s OK not to have it all figured out. Each of us is on a journey, and that journey doesn’t end when you become an adult. My journey is just beginning, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead. Some days I may feel like a lost little kid without a map, but that’s alright. I’ll find my way. Sometimes, grownups need directions, too.

Evernote and School

I know, I know. You’re on Christmas break, and the last thing you want to be thinking about right now is school. But believe it or not, spring classes are right around the corner, and it’s always good to be prepared. With that in mind, I’d like to share with you a tool that has been absolutely integral to my college success: Evernote.

Evernote is a note-taking app for computers, tablets, and phones. Its slogan is “remember everything,” and I think that it lives up to its name. People use Evernote for everything from meeting notes to shopping lists to long-term project planning. And I think Evernote is a necessary tool for every college student to have.

Why Evernote?

One may ask why Evernote is even necessary. After all, there are a lot of students who prefer to take their notes by hand and a lot of professors who don’t allow students to bring technology into the classroom. And many students who do take in-class notes do so in a word processor like Word or Pages. But even in these cases, I think Evernote can still be a great tool for college students to have, and here’s why.

Evernote is a fantastic note-taking program. It clears out all the unnecessary fluff that a lot of word processors have and lets you simply focus on taking down the information you need. That doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful, though. Evernote allows you to create lists and tables and to insert images as needed. It also allows you to organize your notes into notebooks and add tags for further classification. But it doesn’t bog you down with a bunch of unncessary options or hide the features you need. Another advantage of Evernote over word processors is that it stores all your notes in one location. No more searching through your computer’s file system for your notes. Just search for the name of the note, and Evernote will find it.

Evernote stores your notes in the cloud, so they’re always secure. And you can get Evernote on all of your devices, so if you need to look up something from your notes quickly, you can just pull out your phone, and you’ll have all your notes right there. If your computer crashes or gets stolen, you can log in to Evernote’s website and access all your notes right in the browser. You can have all your notes with you anywhere you’re connected to the Internet.

But what if you take your class notes by hand, or what if one of your professors doesn’t allow computers in class? First of all, I would suggest taking class notes on a computer whenever possible. It’s more efficient, your notes are always legible, and you can quickly look up a term or section with Evernote’s search feature rather than flipping through pages of handwritten notes. And if you can’t/don’t want to take your in-class notes on a computer, you should consider typing them up later. It not only increases your memory of the information, but it stores your notes in a more secure location than a physical notebook than can be destroyed or lost easily. Plus, when you’re studying for an exam, instead of flipping through pages of notes looking for a certain topic, you can type a term into Evernote’s search bar and find the information quickly.

Plus, Evernote isn’t just for class notes. You can put your class syllabi, handouts, and presentations into Evernote so you have all your documents for your classes in one easy-to-access location. Evernote really is an app that every college student should have. If you’re convinced at this point, read on to find out how to use Evernote in college.

Before the Semester Starts

So you want to use Evernote next semester. That’s great. You should probably go in with a plan so that you don’t find yourself two months into the semester with a bunch of disorganized notes and no way to use them. So I’ll share with you my organization plan for usng Evernote at school. It’s not the only way of using Evernote in college, but it’s the method I use, and it’s worked well for me so far. Feel free to copy my plan or come up with another one that works better for you.

First of all, you’ll want to sign up for Evernote and download it to your devices. You can get access to all of this on the Evernote website. The sign-up process is really easy, and installing Evernote on any of your devices is very simple. All of their apps are really slick. You’ll find yourself using them a lot very soon.

Then, you’ll want to create some notebooks. Notebooks in Evernote, like notebooks in real life, are collections of notes that are grouped together because they all fall under a certain category. I create a notebook in Evernote for each class that I’m taking. That way, I don’t get any of my notes for my Religion class confused with my notes for Psychology. I also have a general School notebook where I keep notes that I’ll need over multiple semesters, such as my degree requirements and a record of what grades I’ve earned in previous classes.

Notebooks are pretty easy to understand. Tags, however, are a bit more complicated. If simply grouping your notes by class is enough organization for you, then don’t even bother with tags. If you want to be a little more precise in how you organize your notes, though, tags are the way to go. Tags are simply a way of adding more detail to a note’s categorization. You can add multiple tags to one note, and tags are independent of notebooks. I have a “class notes” tag that I use to label all of the notes I take in class, regardless of which class they’re taken in. I also have a “for future reference” tag that I use for syllabi and other class materials that I may need to look back at later. Tags can really come in handy if you use them properly, and with a little experimentation, you can find the tagging system that works best for you.

And that’s it. You’re all set up and ready to take on the semester with Evernote. So what should you do on the first day when you actually sit down to take your notes?

During the Semester

As I said before, everyone has their own way of doing things. I introduced my friend Blake to Evernote last year, and his note-taking style is totally different from mine. But I’m going to tell you how I use Evernote to take notes, and you can use my style, adapt it to fit you best, or ignore my method completely and do it your own way. I promise it won’t hurt my feelings. I’m just offering to show you my way in case it’s helpful.

When I’m in class, I create a note for each new chapter or unit we cover, depending on the class. This means one note may cover multiple class lectures if we don’t cover a whole chapter/unit in one day. Some people may prefer to start a new note each day, and that’s fine, too. Find whatever works best for you.

Although Evernote does keep track of when you created a note and when you last updated it, I prefer to actually put the date within the text of the note. You can do this quickly by hitting command + shift + D all at the same time. Every time I sit down to take notes in class, I put the date first. If I’m continuing a note I’ve already started, I add a horizontal line and then the date to mark that I’m starting a new day of lecture. This helps me remember what day I wrote down that information and gives the information some context. This may come in handy when you’re studying for a test.

How you choose to format the actual class content is up to you. I personally put the large topics in bold, with main points below them, and subpoints indented below the main points. This style isn’t for everyone and every class situation. It’s just the general rules I use when taking my notes because it makes sense for me. Some people prefer to use bullet points, and that works, too. As you start to use Evernote more, you’ll find the style that works best for you. Once you do that, your note-taking will go more smoothly, and you’ll be able to use your notes more effectively for reviewing and studying.

You’ll also probably want to add your class syllabi and study guides to Evernote. You’ll want to reference these often and have them quickly available when you need them. Evernote is great for that.

As the semester progresses, you’re going to accumulate a lot of notes. Don’t get overwhelmed or think this is a bad thing. All of these notes will come in handy when you have to write a paper or when the final exam comes around. If you’ve organized your notes properly, you should be able to navigate them with ease and use them to prepare for assignments, papers, and exams throughout the semester.

When Classes Are Over

May seems like a long way away now, but it’ll be here sooner than you think. And when you get finished with all your finals and start packing up for summer, you may be tempted to simply delete all of your class notes for the semester and never think about them again. Or you may be tempted to just leave them there cluttering up your Evernote app and taking up space. I would argue that neither of these options is best. Fortunately, there is a quick, easy way to store your notes efficiently in case you ever need them again. It’s called exporting, and it takes no time at all.

When you’re done with one of your classes, simple right-click on that class’s notebook and click the “Export Notes from…” option. Give the backup a name, choose the Evernote XML Format (.enex), and save the file wherever you like on your hard drive, or an external drive if you prefer. Once the file is saved, feel free to delete the notebook from Evernote. If you ever need any of those notes again, simply open that .enex file, and your notes will be added back to Evernote like magic. It’s that simple.

Conclusion

So there you go. That’s my guide to using Evernote for college. Most of these are just suggestions rather than hard-and-fast rules. As you use Evernote, you’ll find your own way of using it. The main thing is that Evernote makes your life as a student easier by simplifying the note-taking and note-storing process for you. If you’d like to give Evernote a try, you can sign up and download it here.

This is only one of the many ways you can use Evernote. I haven’t covered all of its features or potential uses in this guide. If you try out Evernote, I’m sure you’ll find it useful not only in school, but also in other areas of your life as well. I know I have. I may do a more general write-up on Evernote in the future for those of you who aren’t students. Anyway, I hope this guide has been helpful. If you’ve got any Evernote tips or suggestions for other tools that I should review, feel free to contact me anytime. Thanks for reading, friends, and I’ll see you on the Internet!

Five Things I Learned From Building a Website

Merge Ministry, the young adult minstry at my church, recently launched our new website, and I must say it’s pretty sharp. Dave (my college pastor) and I have been working for the past six months on the website. We worked long and hard on creating the right outline, getting the style to fit our ministry, and wording everything in just the right way. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.

I’ve worked on a few websites before. After all, I’ve been running this one for a couple of years, and I administrate all the back-end stuff on the BackSpace Productions website. But this was my first experience of building a full-fledged website from the ground up. I started with a template, a few tools, and a long list of pages to create. It was an awesome experience, and it taught me a lot. Here are five things I learned from building a website.

1. Always have a plan.

Dave and I have been talking about creating a dedicated Merge website for a long time. I remember two and a half years ago when Dave approached me and asked me to put up a “Merge website coming soon” page on the old Cavanaugh Church site. In the grand scheme of things, two and a half years may not seem like a long time, but a lot happened during that period. We had several meetings where we sat down and talked about what we wanted the site to look like, what content we wanted on the site, and how we were going to manage the site once it was up. In the end, we had all these great ideas and all this amazing content, but we had no plan. We had no way of getting our awesome ideas out there until we sat down and came up with a solid strategy for how we were going to get it done. We got a domain name and a template through our media pastor, and then we decided that I was going to learn how to make the site while Dave wrote out the content. Once we made a plan, we started to see our ideas come to fruition, and a website started to form.

2. When in doubt, collaborate.

Creating the Merge website was definitely a group effort. Going in, I had very little knowledge about how to use all the powerful website-building tools that I had at my disposal. I had to depend on Dean, my media pastor, to show me the basics, and I consulted him several times throughout the process on how to do things that were outside of my skill set. I also worked very closely with Dave to make sure everything on the website looked and read the way it was supposed to. I’ve invested a lot in the Merge website, and I’m very proud of it, but if I had decided that the website was mine and that I was the only one who was going to have a say on how it looked and felt, the final product wouldn’t even be close to the great website we have now. I had to acknowledge that other people have knowledge and insight that I lack and that I can work with those people to make my work even better. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to learn new things, which is something I try to always take advantage of.

3. Accountability is key.

I was asked to start building the Merge website in June. I logged in and looked around at all the different tools I could use. I plugged in a few of the basic pages that had already been written. But I wasn’t in any rush to get the site finished. I figured I would work on it little by little and get it done eventually. That is, until Dave announced that the website would go live on January 1. All of a sudden, I had a deadline, and other people knew about it. Through this, I learned that a reasonable, self-imposed deadline can actually be your friend. It gave me a level of accountability that I needed to get serious about finishing the website in a timely manner. I set aside time each week to work on the website and update Dave on my progress. I got excited about the release date as it came closer and closer, and that gave me the inspiration to get the website finished and to make it the best it could be.

4. Find your voice.

The day before the website launched, Dave asked a fellow staff member to look over the site and offer feedback. When she finished looking over it, she got really excited and started telling Dave her thoughts on it. And then she gave the website one of the biggest compliments I think anyone could give to it. She said it really captured the tone of our ministry. Wow. We worked so hard on the look, on the content, and on the user experience, but the most important thing was that we used to website to reflect our ministry, and, at least according to her, we had accomplished that. That’s what it’s about. When you’re working on a website or any other creative project, you need to decide what tone or overall feeling you want to convey, and then you need to center everything else around that. While working on the website, we found the voice of Merge Ministry, and we communicated that on every page. That’s what we should always aim to do.

5. When you get stuck, just try something.

I can’t tell you how many times I hit a dead end when I was working on the Merge website. I would get an idea, and I would try to implement it using the knowledge and skills I had, and for one reason or another, it wouldn’t work. At that point, I would get discouraged and be tempted to give up on that idea altogether. But I eventually came to see these times as learning opportunities. Instead of giving up, I would re-think my approach to the problem, and I would try something new. Sometimes, that meant using a tool I had never tried before. It was a lot of fun. It wasn’t always succesful, but more often than not, I learned something new. There were some things that I had to seek help from others on (see point number one), and that’s OK, too. But I chose to take the approach that trying something and failing is better than doing nothing at all, and it led to some great results and a lot of new skills on my part.

Creating the Merge website was an amazing learning experiene. There’s no way I could put all that I learned from it into one blog post, but I hope this has given you at least a glimpse of everything I learned from building my first full-fledged website. I am so thankful for the opportunity and for everyone who played a part in it along the way (including my spellcheckers, Angie and Kristie). It took a lot of time and hard work, but it was worth it, and I couldn’t be more proud of the result. Thank you guys for reading. Please check out the Merge website if you haven’t yet, and I’ll see you on Saturday!

Way of Life

So it’s January 4th. You’ve (mostly) recovered from all the festivities Tuesday night, you’ve probably already written the wrong year on at least one important document, and if someone tells you, “Happy new year!” one more time, you’re most likely going to respond by punching them in the face. Am I right? Good. We’re all pretty much on the same page now.

We may not all be on the same page when it comes to our New Year’s resolutions, though. Sure, you had good intentions on New Year’s Eve when you declared that you were going to cut sweets out of your diet, but now that chocolate cake in the fridge is looking pretty tempting, and it’s taking everything you have not to grab a fork and consume the whole thing in one sitting. It’s OK if your resolutions are already getting tough. Or maybe you’ve already slipped up and broken a New Year’s resolution. That’s OK, too. The important thing is that you recognize where you are and start taking steps toward where you want to be.

Having said that, I would like to introduce the topic of my first Stuff Devon Likes post for 2013: Way of Life. Way of Life is a productivity app for iOS devices that helps you form good habits and break bad ones. The app is simultaneously simple and powerful, and combined with a great interface, this makes for fantastic user experience that can truly improve one’s life.

The basic function of Way of Life is simple. To start off, you add an item (such as “exercise” or “eat junk food”) to your journal. You then tell the app whether the item is something that is good for you or bad for you. Once you’ve made your list of items, you log each day whether you did each item or not. If an item is a good habit, you get a green mark for doing it and a red mark for not doing it. The opposite is true for bad habits. And that’s it. Do that every day for each habit, and you’ll start to fill out your journal. You can view your journal in week or month view, and you can view each item as a pie chart to see how your green and red marks match up against each other. You can also set a reminder at a certain time of day to remind you to fill out your journal in case you forget. But that is just the beginning of what Way of Life can do.

Some habits may be more complicated than just marking yes or no every day. For example, what if the habit you’re trying to form is to exercise five days a week? It hardly seems fair that you should have two big red marks on the days you don’t exercise. You are keeping to your goal, after all. But you also don’t want to lie and say you exercised when you didn’t. And that’s where Way of Life’s skip option comes in. You can give a day a blue mark by telling the app that you’re skipping that item for that particular day. This mark will not count for or against you. I use this feature on Sundays when my devotional book gives me a day of rest, as you can see in the image of my journal above.

Another handy feature in Way of Life is notes. Let’s return to the exercise example. Let’s say you don’t just want to exercise every day, but you want to keep a log of your daily workouts. When you go into Way of Life to give yourself a green mark for the day, you can also swipe left to add a note containing your workout details. The notes feature has unlimited potential in Way of Life (such as remembering why you skipped a certain day or why you gave yourself a red mark) and adds to the app’s overall usefulness.

Way of Life also comes with powerful statistical tools. On the Trend tab, you can see graphs for each of your items, and as you fill out your journal over time, you will start to see patterns in your data. Hopefully you’ll start to see your number of green bars for each item go up over time!

After all, that is the point of the app. It’s called Way of Life for a reason. It exists to help you improve your life by creating good habits and removing bad ones. Of course, the app can’t do that for you. The decisions you make are completely your own. But what the app does is make you more aware of the choices that you make and how those choices line up with your goals. Should you eat that piece of chocolate cake? If you do, you’ll have to mark it in your journal. And after all, your goal is to cut sweets out of your diet, and eating chocolate cake isn’t exactly in line with that goal.

I am of the firm belief that if we were more intentional about the decisions we make and the way we spend our time, our lives would be greatly improved. My experience with Way of Life has been fantastic. I use the app to keep myself accountable for my daily Bible readings, my self-imposed coding lessons, my New Year’s resolution to write daily, my sleep schedule, and more. I look forward to marking my journal each day, and it really has helped me think more about the decisions I make. If you made a New Year’s resolution, try using Way of Life as a tool to help you get on the right track. And even if you don’t have a New Year’s resolution, I’m sure there’s something you’d like to start do (or stop doing). Give Way of Life a try and see if you can start forming some good habits today.

Way of Life is available for free on the App Store. The free version lets you add three items to your journal, which is plenty to get started with. If you like the free version, you can unlock unlimited items for just $4.99.