Confession and Life
{ Category Archives }
Paul Kretzmann’s commentary on the whole Bible has been a dear resource for generations of Lutherans. The books are long out of print, though you can probably still find used copies floating around. An alternative, though is to search and read it online. Try it out. This brief commentary was widely published and used for good reason.
Update: After getting things to sound reasonably normal when playing our podcasts, I thought I’d try the same thing from other computers. It turns out that the older sermons sound pretty good, and the “fixed” ones sound a little distorted. I think the problem was not in the recordings themselves, but in the machine playing those recordings. The computer I’m typing on now seems to play all digital audio so that it sounds a bit chipmunkish. If you’ve been hearing a similar effect on the older audio archives, then your computer may have the same problem. In light of this, I’ve changed the encoding process again to use the 44,100 Hz sample rate in our recorder. If you think this is not adequate, feel free to let me know.
I’ve finally looked into the slight distortion in our audio sermons. It made my voice sound slightly chipmunkish, but otherwise OK. Though I suspected the problem was a mistake on my part, it turns out to be a mistake on the part of our microphone recording device. The non-technical will be glad to know that I can apparently correct it, so hopefully future recordings will sound closer to normal.
The technically-inclined may want to know what the problem actually is. My recording device, a Zoom H2, seems to be using a sample rate somewhat lower than the rate it claims to use. Since I record this audio to compact disc, I use a sample rate of 44.1 kilohertz, meaning there are 44,100 digital samples taken per second. That’s the standard for audio CDs. However, when the CD has been made, or when your computer plays a file made with the incorrect assumption that the source audio was truly recorded at 44.1 khz, it results in some distortion of the sound. The effect is the same as with a tape recorder that runs slower than it should. When the tape is played on a correctly-running tape player, voices will be chipmunkish.
The solution for now is to have the recorder use a sample rate of 48 khz (an industry standard for DVDs and other media), which turns out to be a little lower than that as well. Then, when I encode that audio data for compression, I override the incoming audio file’s reported 48 khz sample rate with a sample rate of 44.1 khz. The result sounds much better in testing.
On a related note, I apparently upgraded some of the software needed to add a service to the sermon audio archives on our web site, and the new version changed something. It rendered unusable the mp3 files from the first four Sundays in May, but I was able to restore the most recent one after finding and fixing the problem. The Speex files were unaffected.
After opening devotion, we had a few ideas to consider for future activities at LFF. Kirk provided quite a few, and Pastor said that anyone who would like to have a particular activity some night will have to bring any extra equipment and supplies we might need. For example: ingredients for cooking. If you’d like others to plan an activity with you ahead of time, just get it into the Sunday announcements the week of LFF.
This week, we had a nice group come for a book club discussion, and our first night with the new Wii game systems. Did people seem to like the Wiis? As they say in France: Wii Wii!
Some of us have read books by Gene Edward Veith, including The Spirituality of the Cross, which we are discussing at Bethany’s Lutheran Family Fellowship gatherings.
You may be interested to know that Veith has a blog of his own, to which he posts quite often, and which hosts a lot of high quality discussion related to Christianity, our culture, and vocation. It’s named after a Lutheran layman and friend of Martin Luther whose professional vocation was that of a painter. There are framed Lucas Cranach paintings at Bethany, and I preached a sermon focused on one of them last Summer. Cranach painted many others during his career, making him an example of serving God through his earthly vocations. Veith’s blog is therefore named after Lucas Cranach.
The address for the Cranach blog is www.geneveith.com.
Several years ago I met Pastor Todd Wilken and Mr. Jeff Schwartz though they probably don’t remember me, because it was at the Marvin Schwan Retreat Center for one of the Worldview Seminars that was being held there. Those men were the host and producer, respectively, of a radio talk show aired in the St. Louis area and also broadcast online. It was a successful outreach of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, but this year during Holy Week, the LCMS cancelled the show. Speculations abound, but to me it seems highly likely that the value of the show was much lower in the eyes of synod administrators, because its allegiance to the Gospel and the Lutheran Confessions was stronger than its allegiance to the synod. Though the show did not flaunt this, it was evident in its “Christ-centered, cross-focused” operation.
The good news is that the show “Issues, Etc.” has been reborn as an independent endeavor. You can listen to past shows, or live streams of current shows online. Podcast and iTunes links are also available for those who prefer them. The new show began broadcasting this week, and I have to say that it’s better than ever.
If you have the time, and you are the sort of person that enjoys thoughtful conversation about important things, please give it a try. You can find all the information you need at http://www.issuesetc.org.
Concordia Publishing House had a regular radio-broadcast interview with Deaconess Pamela Nielsen on the upcoming Growing in Christ Sunday School lesson. That has been replaced with a podcast — an audio show that you can catch on your computer over the Internet. To tune in, go to the CPH podcast page. Some web browsers might automatically know what to do with the podcast link. If yours does not, then you may have to install something like iTunes or Windows Media Player. I use Amarok, which is developed on Linux, but also available for other computer operating systems.
Why are these called podcasts? For one thing, it rhymes with “broadcast,” but more importantly, it refers to the iPod, Apple’s portable media player that seems to be everywhere. With the right software, your computer will automatically load a portable media player with the content of a podcast, so that when you are ready to take it with you, there will be something new to listen to. At Bethany and Concordia, we also use podcasts, containing recordings of recent sermons. In fact, we have about a year’s worth of recorded sermons just waiting for someone to listen through the web. Go to the home page at bethanythedalles.org or concordiahoodriver.org, and you will see the links in the left-hand column.
The same daily devotion texts you find in our bulletin inserts are now also available from our web site. (This wouldn’t have been practical at our old web host.)
If you spend a lot of time working online, this may be a nice way to make devotions in God’s Word easier for you: easier to remember, and easier to complete.
There’s more information at my personal blog.
If you don’t use one already, I suggest you find yourself a free RSS aggregator program for your computer and install it. An alternative is to use a web-based aggregator provided by Google, Yahoo! or the like. Your web browser may also be able to function as an aggregator, in a pinch. Once you have your aggregator working, subscribe to one of our two daily devotion addresses, and start reading. The addresses are:
http://www.bethanythedalles.org/devotions.py
http://www.concordiahoodriver.org/devotions.py
This web site has been transferred to a different hosting provider: 
. I recommend the new provider to anyone looking for a host for your web site. (If you decide to use DreamHost, enter our promo code “BethanyConcordia” (no space between) for an additional $20 discount when you sign up for 1 year or more at a time.)
Our old provider is still a fine one, but from here in the Northwest, I’ve been seeing a lot of connectivity problems with them. I think they are located in Toronto, so the distance was probably a real factor. There were enough problems, anyway, that it was worth the trouble to switch. Our new provider is located in California, and is much closer via traceroute (hops through the Internet). The new provider also seems to have a more personal touch, and has some of the same interests that I have in terms of the software they use. The last thing to be updated is the sermon archive, since it’s pretty big. I’m still uploading it now, and it will probably be several hours before it’s finished.
If you notice something that doesn’t work any more, please let me know!
Everything in live involves some amount of risk. We do what we do because we are ignorant of the risks involved, or because those risks are tolerable to us. That’s life in an imperfect world.
When we know that there are risks to our personal safety, or the safety of others, in what we do, yet we don’t care about them or do nothing about them, then we are being reckless. It’s tempting God, something that Jesus refused to do in Matthew 4:7.
So if we want to do something that we know involves risk, we must do our best to avoid recklessness. In other words, we should reduce the risk.
Using MySpace has risks, just like many other online activities. MySpace may be even riskier, because there are predators looking for vulnerable kids, specifically on MySpace. So I recommend that parents and kids both take time to learn the risks involved in their online activities, and take steps to reduce those risks. Here are some starting points:
I recently read a fairly gripping novel called A Skeleton in God’s Closet by Dr. Paul Maier. Though the book was written years ago, it depicts a situation vaguely similar to the claims made in the “Jesus Family Tomb” documentary. It’s worth reading, especially for a deeper understanding of the fact that we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus as an article of faith, not something proven by archaeology.
There are two scholarly responses to the present documentary that you may wish to read. One is by the same [Dr. Paul Maier](http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/LCMS/Maier on Jesus Family Tomb.pdf) and a longer piece by a professor at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, [Jeffrey Kloha](http://www.csl.edu/Img/about csl/LostTomb.pdf). Both of them link to PDF files, which are suitable for viewing on screen and also for printing. Thanks to Pastor Paul T. McCain for the links.
