• Why study history? Here are sixteen excellent reasons. “9. Nothing actually ever changes in history; change is an illusion; some systems or practices always remain the same. We study the past the same way we would study the present, to understand a single system which is continuous over time.” [via kottke] 04/28/2008
• Shawn questions the legitimacy of the Subversive Blogger Awards. You should read his post and the comments — it’s good conversation if nothing else. What do you think? 04/28/2008

Getting a foot in the door

hired., originally uploaded by jakebouma on flickr.

A while back I wrote a post called On writing a book which revealed that one of my life goals is to write a book. One of the toughest parts about pursuing this goal is getting your foot in the door. It’s the proverbial chicken-and-egg conundrum: publishers want to see legitimate writing experience, but one can’t get experience without the help of a publisher.¹

Well, thanks to the grace of God and a friend by the name of Erik Ullestad, I’ve been officially hired/contracted to write for Augsburg Fortress Publishers, the publishing house of the ELCA. It’s nothing glamorous; I’m writing devotionals for the webzine of Augsburg’s confirmation curriculum. But it’s a start.

My foot is planted firmly in the door.

1. Now, I realize there are other ways to get “published”, e.g., online magazines, blogs, and other various freelance endeavors… but you get my point. ↩

• There’s a debate (or “blogalogue”) between N.T. Wright and Bart Ehrman over at beliefnet on the subject of theodicy entitled “Is Our Pain God’s Problem?” N.T. Wright:

  Near the heart of Jesus’ proclamation lies a striking redefinition of power itself, which looks as though it’s pointing in the direction of God’s ‘running of the world’ (if that’s the right phrase) in what you might call a deliberately, almost studiedly, self-abnegating way, running the world through an obedient, and ultimately suffering, human being, with that obedience, and especially that suffering, somehow instrumental in the whole process. What ‘we would want God to do’ – to have God measure up to our standards of ‘how a proper, good and powerful God would be running the world’! – seems to be the very thing that Jesus was calling into question.

  [HT]: Exploring Our Matrix via N.T. Wrong 04/24/2008

Type-ified

Head here to make your own. [ht: soupablog]

Related: I’ve been Simpsonized.

Why I do youth ministry

“So, why do we call Jesus the Passover lamb?”

Several hands reached for the ceiling and I called on a blonde, spirited seventh-grade girl named Kara. Like many of her peers, she had raised her hand before actually formulating a response.

“Because, um, Jesus was… like…”

I waited patiently for Kara to finish her thought. Her face was starting to wrinkle and contort in hopes that the answer would soon arrive. It didn’t. I looked around the room for another vertical fleshy stick, and as I began to point at another student, I was abruptly interrupted.

“OH!” Kara blurted, with her eyes lighting up and back her straightening as she experienced her eureka moment. “So. Just like how they used to sacrifice a lamb during Passover and put the blood on the doorposts to, like, protect them from evil [Exodus 12:1-13], that’s like how Jesus sacrificed himself and gave up his blood to, um, save us from sin [John 1:29]. And that’s what Jesus meant when he said ‘This is my blood, shed for you’!”

I nearly broke into song as I said, “YES! That’s exactly right.” And I thought to myself, This is why I do youth ministry.

Subversive Blogger Awards, round two

It’s time for round two of the Subversive Blogger Awards.

American author Henry Miller (1891-1980) once said, “The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”

Subversive bloggers are unsatisfied with the status quo, whether in church, politics, economics or any other power-laden institution, and they are searching for (and blogging about) what is new (or a “return to”) - even though it may be labeled as sacrilege, dangerous, or subversive.

For round two of the Subversive Blogger Awards, I am tagging the following five blogs/bloggers:

1. Sarcastic Lutheran by Nadia Bolz-Weber (e.g., Why she isn’t that kind of Christian)
2. The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus by Jon Birch (e.g., Hamster Wheel Church)
3. Missio Dei by Jonathan Brink (e.g., Top 50 Possible Reasons Why You’re Not Emergent)
4. Nate Ritter (e.g., Ideas that Change the World via Twitter)
5. novus•lumen by Jeremy Bouma (e.g., The Good of Affluence: A Critique and Evaluation of Capitalism)

The rules of participation are pretty straightforward:

1. If you are tagged, write a post with links to five subversive blogs.
2. Link back to this post on JakeBouma.com so people can easily find the origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the “Subversive Blogger Award” somewhere on your blog (images below) with a link to the post that you wrote.

That’s all there is to it. Keep in mind that this award is meant as an encouragement to bloggers to keep doing what they’re already doing - being subversive (however you interpret it). May we never forget that Jesus (and His message) was the original and ultimate subversive.

Here are the images you can use for your blog, courtesy of Josh Brown and Red Cowboy Designs. All I ask is that you download them and upload them to your own server.

Blog on.

UPDATE: Nate Ritter has graciously designed an additional badge for the award which you can find below. Feel free to use it in addition to or on place of the original badges.

• I added a kickass new podcast to my list last week: Watching Theology (link opens in iTunes). The podcast explores “the theological, philosophical, and thematic content of a single film.” The episode I listened to was on Casino Royale (2006), and it was fantastic. Related: Pat Loughery’s podcast list. 04/13/2008
• This quote is pertinent to the topic we discussed at youth group tonight: “Who is the focus of the Church? Who is the person we are concerned about? The person we exist to serve? For Jesus there was no question. In the Kingdom, the humble are lifted high and the most vulnerable have pride of place. That is why you cannot ask Jesus into your heart alone. He will ask, ‘Can I bring my friends?’” From With God in the Crucible by Peter Storey. [via] 04/13/2008

Shift conference: Complexity and simplicity

Brian McLaren, originally uploaded by jakebouma on flickr.

It’s day two of the Shift conference at Willow Creek in Chicago, and it’s been going pretty well. Yesterday there were three main sessions, with Brian McLaren, Mark Yaconelli, and Shane Claiborne, and they were all great. At points throughout the sessions, I laughed, cried, and gained some insight and wisdom.

I’ve decided to not post any of my notes from the past day and a half, because much of what I’ve been mulling over boils down to the question of the seemingly simultaneous complexity and simplicity of the gospel and its implications. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, keep reading. This morning at Brian McLaren’s Onramp to Postmodernism discussion, there was a Q&A session in which I decided to go up and ask for his insight into the matter. I really liked his response, and I recorded both the question and his answer for your listening pleasure.

Click here for the mp3 of my question and Brian McLaren’s answer (03:58, 3.7mb)

I looked up the quote he’s referring to (read: “Googled”), and it comes from former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. He said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Do you know what he’s saying? Do you understand how awesome that is? I totally dig that.

Anyways, there are several people blogging and Twittering from the conference; Gavin has a roundup (actually, I met the guy thanks to Twitter). I started using hashtags to track tweets from the conference, so check the hashtag page for #shift08 to see all of the various comments and perspectives, and be sure to keep up with my Twitter feed as well.

What?

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Blogging from Chicago this week

I’m heading to Chicago on Tuesday to attend a pair of conferences: the Shift Student Ministry Conference and the Wheaton Theology Conference. I’m staying with my good friend and academic journal connoisseur, Brandon Mick. Like the National Youth Workers Convention last fall, I’ll be blogging my experience throughout the week.

Here’s a rough (and flexible) schedule of what I’ll be doing this week.

Wednesday

[Shift Conference]
9:00 - 10:30am — Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change; worship with Charlie Hall
11:15 - 12:45pm — Mark Yaconelli, Failure, Frustration & Loss: The Youth Worker’s Path to Holiness; worship with Charlie Hall
2:15 - 3:45pm — Shane Claiborne, The Scandal of Grace; worship with Charlie Hall

Thursday

[Shift Conference]
7:45 - 8:30am — Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President
9:00 - 10:30am — Brian McLaren, Onramp to the Postmodern Conversation
11:00 - 12:30pm — Scot McKnight, Missional Jesus
2:00 - 3:30pm — Tommy McClam, Mentoring Students in Your Ministry
4:00 - 5:30pm — Kara Powell, Deep Justice in a Broken World
[Wheaton Theology Conference]
7:30 - 8:30pm — Kevin Vanhoozer, Keynote Address #1

Friday

[Shift Conference]
7:45 - 8:30am — Aaron Niequist, Worship Songwriters Unite!
9:00 - 10:30am — Kara Powell, Deep Ministry in a Shallow World; worship with Brandon Grissom
11:15 - 12:45pm — Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus, But Not the Church; worship with Brandon Grissom
[Wheaton Theology Conference]
1:30 - 3:00pm — Mark Husbands and John Franke, The Trinity as Social?
3:30 - 5:00pm — Robert Lang’at and Keith Johnson, The Trinity and Mission
7:30 - 8:30pm — Kevin Vanhoozer, Keynote Address #2

Stay tuned to JakeBouma.com this week for updates from the conferences. Any fellow bloggers going to be at either of these conferences? Leave a comment and let me know; I’d love to meet up.

Do-it-yourself emergent

Image care of ASBO Jesus.

How to move your iTunes music library from a PC to a Mac without losing metadata (ratings, play counts, album art, etc.)

I spent the better part of yesterday trying to load my iTunes library on my new MacBook Pro. I was bound and determined NOT to lose all of the metadata associated with my music — star ratings, play counts, playlists, album art, etc. Call me superficial, but I just didn’t want to lose all of that information; information that has been compiled for 3,300+ audio files over the last three years.

Anyway, I eventually got it all figured out, but I thought I’d pass along what I learned. The tutorial below will help you if you DON’T let iTunes manage your Music folder (you can check this setting in Preferences → Advanced → General) and you’re moving from a PC to a Mac. If you don’t mind letting iTunes manage your music, there are easier ways to make the transfer.

I followed this tutorial for the most part, but I got hung up towards the end of the process. So I paraphrased and edited that tutorial to help out people like me (and, presumably, you) who want to switch from a PC to a Mac.

1. Transfer all of your music from the PC to the Mac.

Don’t delete anything — you want all of the same files on both the PC and the Mac. There are lots of ways to transfer your files documented elsewhere, so I won’t cover that here.

It will make things easier if you try to replicate the folder structure on your Mac that you had on your PC. For example, on my PC I had a folder located in D:/Music/ and within the “Music folder” were four sub-folders: “Downloads” (D:/Music/Downloads/), “Full Albums”, “Single mp3s”, and “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)”. When I copied the music to my Mac, I kept the same folder structure, within my new music folder: /Users/jakebouma/Music/. More on this later.

2. Check for up-to-date software.

Make sure that both machines are running the most current version of iTunes. Might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important.

3. Find and transfer “iTunes Music Library.xml”

On your PC, locate a file called “iTunes Music Library.xml”. By default in Windows, iTunes will place this file in the “My Music” folder. For example, C:/Documents and Settings/Jake/My Documents/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml. If you’re having trouble finding the file, just perform a search.

Making sure that this file is not deleted, transfer it from your PC to your Mac. You can do this many ways, including using a USB drive; I emailed the file to myself.

4. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” on the Mac.

Using a text editor like TextWrangler (all screenshots will be of this application), open the iTunes Library.xml that you just transferred to the Mac. You can do this by holding ⌘command and clicking on the file.



The next step is where retaining the basic file structure from PC to Mac (Step 1) comes in handy. This file, iTunes Music Library.xml, contains ALL of the metadata associated with the music in your iTunes library (ratings, play counts, album art, etc.), including where it is located on your hard drive. All you need to do is change the file locations in this file to reflect their new location on the Mac to keep all of this vital metadata intact.

Rather than editing this file by hand, which would take hours and hours, you’re going to use the “Find” and “Replace All” function.

5. Find and replace.

First, you need to find the “Location” line of a file. This is the line that tells iTunes where to find the file with which it associates the metadata. In Step 1, I mentioned that one of my folders was called “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)”. iTunes recognizes this file as located at file://localhost/D:/Owned%20Albums%20(mp3%20backup). The %20s denote the use of spaces.



Because all of the files in “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)” on my PC now reside in a similar folder called “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)” on my Mac, all i have to do is change the beginning of the file locations.

Highlight the beginning of the file location, and copy it (⌘command + C). In TextWrangler, click Search → Find or press ⌘command + F to open the “Find & Replace” pane. In the top “Search For” box, paste the text you highlighted (⌘command + V). In the bottom “Replace With” box, enter the beginning of the file location on your Mac. (To find the location of a file on your mac, just ⌘command + click the file, and choose “Get Info”. The location is the line that says “Where”.) Make sure that you add file://localhost/ before the location of the Mac file in the “Replace With” box, or iTunes won’t be able to find your files. Here’s what it should look like (click the image for larger file):



Make sure the “Start at Top” box is checked, and then click the “Replace All” button on the right side.



Voilà! Repeat this as necessary for the number of folders you have. Save this file.

6. Copy and replace “iTunes Music Library.xml”.

Make sure that iTunes is closed and locate the iTunes folder on your Mac. Mine is in Users/jakebouma/Music/iTunes. If you have never opened iTunes on your Mac, there won’t be any files here. If you have, there will be two files: iTunes Music Library.xml (not the one you just edited) and iTunes Library.



Copy and replace the iTunes Music Library.xml in this folder with the iTunes Music Library.xml that you just edited in Step 5. Do not open iTunes yet.

7. Manually corrupt the “iTunes Library” file.

Use a text editor such as TextWrangler to open the iTunes Library file (not the .xml file — see the image in Step 6). Select all of the text (⌘command + A) and delete it. The file should now be blank, with zero characters in it; save it (⌘command + S). iTunes Library’s filesize should now be zero KB (This is important, because some text editors — e.g. UltraEdit — may append invisible characters to the beginning of the file).

If this file is corrupted, which is what the above paragraph details, iTunes will default to iTunes Music Library.xml for all of its information. iTunes will automatically rebuild this file itself, so it’s okay to corrupt it for now.

8. Open iTunes and let it do its thing.

A prompt with a progress bar will come up — iTunes is rebuilding your library. Depending on how powerful your computer is and the size of your music library, this may take a while. When this ends, iTunes will come up with a message saying that the library file was corrupted/damaged and it tried to rebuild things for you. Press “OK” and iTunes will finally launch.

9. Tidy up.

After you’ve made sure that all of your metadata is intact and the files play correctly, you’ll probably want to tidy things up a bit now, such as reformatting your columns in the library and all the playlists and setting the Preferences as you’d like them.

I don’t subscribe to a whole lot of podcasts, so I just went to the iTunes Store and re-subscribed to them all. If you want to keep past episodes, follow the instructions here.

That’s it! You’re done!

10. Reformat your iPod (optional).

If you have an iPod and it was set up on your PC, the iTunes on your Mac will say “Only Macintosh-formatted iPods can be updated” when you plug in your iPod. Your iPod will still sync properly with this message, it just won’t download any new iPod software that Apple releases. To fix this, click “Restore” and iTunes will automatically reformat your iPod for your Mac and re-sync all of your music.

Phwew! Please leave comments if you have any questions or if something was unclear. I wrote this to save people the headache I went through.

• Nadia Bolz-Weber from Sarcastic Lutheran writes about wealth and the prosperity gospel at God’s Politics. “As a Lutheran, I fully reject the gospel of prosperity, primarily on the grounds that I’m pretty sure it makes Jesus throw up in his mouth a little bit every time he thinks of it.” 04/04/2008

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