Be a Digital Witness for Jesus

On September 14th I’m going to share “the chapel message” at Oklahoma Christian School in Edmond for students and teachers. My topic is, “Be a Digital Witness for Jesus.” I started an outline and resource webpage today, and included seven different examples. If you have links to other videos which are good examples of “Christian Digital Storytelling” or Christian testimonies online, please share them as comments here!

Jesus is my Super Hero

In the weeks and months ahead, please consider submitting a video to “3 Minutes About Jesus.”

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Stories of Faith: digital witnesses for Christ

At long last, a new podcast channel for “Stories of Faith: digital witnesses for Christ” is available online at faithstories.speedofcreativity.org. I first wrote about this idea in September of 2008, but the idea of “Christian Digital Storytelling” is something that’s been on my heart since the summer of 2004 when I attended the Digital Media Academy at Stanford. I wrote about this in October of 2004, and still have some resources about “Christian Digital Storytelling” online at www.wesfryer.com/cds. I started the “3 Minutes About Jesus” project (3minutesaboutjesus.org) in the fall of 2010 and hope that project will grow in the months ahead.

Stories of Faith Podcast: digital witnesses for Christ

I’m THRILLED to at last have the seven audio podcast interviews from 2008/2009 online in a “Stories of Faith” podcast channel. One of the big reasons this is “doable” at this point (besides finding the flash drive recently which contained three of the original, finished interviews) is my learning about Podcast Generator last semester teaching at UNT. See my September 2010 post, “Creating a course audio lecturecast (podcast) with Podcast Generator,” for more background. Podcast Generator is open source (free) and the easiest way I’ve found yet to publish a “real” podcast channel which includes a subscribable RSS/web feed on your own site. Sites like iPadio are great too, but there is no guarantee third-party commercial sites like this will be around in a month or five years. If you use an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, consider using the $2 app Podcaster to manage your podcast channels from your device WITHOUT needing to sync to iTunes. More info about that process is also available.

A simple keyword search on Google today for “stories of faith” (without quotation marks) yields over 48 million results. These include sharingfaith.org, greatfaithstories.com, ChristianFaith.com (a site filled with ads) and Inspiring Stories from Georgia Girl. Our landscape of voices is only going to grow more diverse in the years ahead. I think it’s important we share our Christian witness and testimony with others on the digital, global stage– and we invite others to share their stories too.

I submitted the “Stories of Faith” podcast channel to iTunes this evening so it will be listed there soon. I pray the sharing of these audio interviews and testimonies will bring more people to know Jesus Christ and join a local, loving community of Christian brothers and sisters.

Modified Podcast Logo with My Headphones Photoshopped Onphoto © 2009 Colleen AF Venable | more info (via: Wylio)

 

Solar Under the Sun Ministries

On December 17, 2010, a representative of “Solar Under the Sun” ministry spoke with our men’s group in Edmond, Oklahoma. I obtained permission to record and share the six minute presentation.

This is the description I used for the video on YouTube:

This presentation was shared on December 17, 2010, at the men’s group meeting at First Presbyterian Church in Edmond, Oklahoma. Solar Under the Sun is a ministry outreach program of the Synod of the Sun, bringing solar energy as well as clean water to developing nations through a variety of partnerships. Training programs are available too. Learn more on http://www.solarunderthesun.org/

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Upendo Kids International: Sharing Christ’s Love in Kenya

On December 16, 2010, our family attended a mission dinner to support Upendo Kids International at our church in Edmond, Oklahoma. UKI is an outreach ministry to Kenya led by Eunice and Robert Menja.

Kenya Mission Dinner

This 5 min, 41 second video was a part of a presentation by Eunice Menja, founder of Upendo Kids International (UKI,) during our program that evening. Eunice told about the summer 2010 mission trip to Kenya and the work of UKI in bringing educational materials and the love of Christ to children in Kenya.

Learn more on the UKI website: http://upendokidsinternational.org

Kenya Mission Dinner

Kenya Mission Dinner

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Background – 3minutesaboutjesus.org

http://3minutesaboutjesus.org

Please let me know what you think about this project idea – see the attachments. Doing this has been on my heart since 2004. This would cost almost zero (financially) to start – about $30. I think it’s time, but I value your ideas and input. I’ll forward you a Google Doc link to share ideas / feedback shortly.

Wes
Enjoy! Below is the list of attachments:
– MindBlowing.jpg (212Kbytes)
– viral, digital evangelism.caf (3588Kbytes)
– like Film On The Fly.caf (6586Kbytes)
=Total size (10387Kbytes)

This is a mind map generated by MindBlowing.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

viral, digital evangelism.caf (3504 KB)

  
Download now or listen on posterous

like Film On The Fly.caf (6432 KB)

Sent from my iPhone

Promoting multicultural communication among women in Edmond, Oklahoma

Edna Parrish did a GREAT job creating this fifteen minute video about the summer program, “Women at the Well,” in Edmond, Oklahoma. What a GREAT opportunity to hear the voices of so many women, from so many countries and cultural backgrounds, sharing and reflecting on their experiences in this fellowship program.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Way to go Edna!

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REMIX of the Bible Book Bop by Go Fish

Last month our 5th graders shot video and photos to create a “remix video” of the song “Bible Book Bop” by the group Go Fish. We have posted this video as a YouTube response to the “official” music video version of this song, so Go Fish can officially approve if we can have permission to share this on the public Internet. This song is their “intellectual property,” so we need to get their permission. This was really fun to make, and hopefully will:

  1. Help us all remember the books of the Bible better
  2. Inspire us to think about the power of communicating with media, and our own abilities to use media (including video) to share the Gospel of Jesus
  3. Help us learn more about HOW to create with media and safely / legally share it online with others

Make sure you check out the original / official version of this “Bible Book Bop” video by Go Fish, and also visit their website at www.gofishguys.com. Go Fish rocks, and so do our students! 🙂

These are our song and image credits, which we included at the end of the updated video:

Video Credits

This original song is by The Go Fish! guys. Visit their website at www.gofishguys.com. Images used as the background for our green screen sequences were shared under Creative Commons licenses:

www.flickr.com/photos/dotdoubledot/1281864495

www.flickr.com/photos/mandj98/314192764

www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgangstaudt/2217173388

www.flickr.com/photos/danielygo/3949411671

www.flickr.com/photos/loswl/3006536934

www.flickr.com/photos/20792787@N00/2720278372

www.flickr.com/photos/squarejer/522183263

www.flickr.com/photos/chrispollard/201911637

www.flickr.com/photos/iko/106957481

www.flickr.com/photos/martyworld/1464117348

This video was shot using still images from an iPhone GS and video from a Sony GSC-Websharing flash camcorder, and edited with iMovie ’09.

Cross-posted to our 5th grade BlastCAST blog.

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Burn The Ships – Great digital storytelling

Today via a Google search I stumbled upon the YouTube video “Burn the Ships” created by a pastor in a location I can’t identify. The video sets still images and English closed captioning to Stephen Curtis Chapman‘s outstanding song, “Burn the Ships.”

I used TubeTV to download an offline copy to share with our 5th grade Sunday School class in a few weeks. This is an EXCELLENT example of digital storytelling using images and text to visually communicate the message and theme of a powerful song.

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A Story of Faith from a World Class Rodeo Clown: Larry Minchey

The digital story “Minchey” by Shelly Gwyn Moffatt, created this week at our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices professional development workshop in Hugo, Oklahoma, tells the life story of rodeo clown Larry Minchey in his own words as he eventually came to know Christ as his personal savior and became a cowboy preacher.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

This video was not solicited by our workshop organizers to be a “Story of Faith” but is the story Shelly chose to chase and share during our workshop. This coming school year, I hope to formally launch the “Stories of Faith” project on its own website. This is a great example of Christian Digital Storytelling, which has been on my heart to promote for several years.

Great work Shelly– and many thanks to Larry for sharing his testimony. His ongoing ministry to reach out to “the lost” is inspiring.

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Dark side of YouTube Related Videos

This morning someone at our church asked for a DVD copy of the preschool Christmas video their daughter had “read” in, and I told them I could burn a DVD but it was also on YouTube. They then told me they had just seen the video “Stethescope” on YouTube, and showed it to their own preschool kids. The video was great, but the “related videos” were not. (I mobile blogged this from my iPhone so I could not initially paste the YouTube video embed code now, but have added it below.)

As you can see from the iPhone YouTube screenshots at the bottom of this post, some the “related videos” are not likely to be ones parents will want to show to their preschoolers.

This is one “dark side” of YouTube related videos. It highlights the importance of emphasizing “ethical clicking” online, which is an important part of both digital citizenship and digital discipline. It also underscores why YouTube is not a great destination for young children. Totlol is a better choice:

Totlol is a video website designed specifically for children. It is community moderated. It is constantly growing. It is powered by YouTube.

Of course videos like “Stethescope” are not likely to be on Totlol, but perhaps that is OK. As my wife commented when I told her about this, when showing young children YouTube sites, it’s important for parents to be in control / driving the mouse. Totlol, on the other hand, is a “safe” online video destination which appears to be fine to turn your kids loose on… Even young preschoolers.

I’m not asserting that we should or can keep older children off YouTube. I think we need to help our children develop good decision making skills both offline and online, and ethical clicking is a part of that skill set. I’m not sure what age we need to start discussing these issues with children, but it likely needs to be pretty young as kids are getting online. I have not enabled any parental controls on my iPhone or our family iTouch for YouTube content, but this situation has me wondering if I should.

I cross posted our preschool Christmas message video to GodTube, and I think I will embed that version rather than the YouTube one on our church website. I think it is good and important to have Chistian-themed videos on YouTube because they can reach a wider audience. Situations like this also highlight our ongoing need for digital dialog.

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