Gary Hamel on Re-Inventing the Church

October 9th, 2009

The other night I spent an hour watching a web clip. It wasn’t anything from Youtube, it didn’t have a high entertainment factor, but it was nonetheless one of the best I have seen i quite a while.

It was quite simply Gary Hamel, the famed strategy guru, who spoke in front of an audience in his church in Menlo Park, California. The church’s name is Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, MPCC, and the congregation seems highly affluent, not the least when it comes to creativity, tech-savviness, etc.

Gary Hamel, who reach the status of world-famous a couple of decades ago through books that proliferated like wildfire through business schools all over, took his analytical skills to the world of the Church. It wasn’t all nice things he had to say of how the Church is conducting business, espcially its core business – reaching out to people.

With hard data he showed how the Church has a very different view from the peple on the outside, concerning what it stands for in terms of openness etc.

Gary furthermore put the awkward question if we tend more to focus on organizational issues and tradition, than to actively do what the Church should do – namely reach out. The comparison with corporations, that start out as agile beings and that later on become more and more sleepy before they eventually demise, was also to be had.

Gary encouraged us to put our creativyty and abilities to work in order to change the downward trend. And, as they say, everything starts with recognizing the problem.

I have put the film in the hands of everybody I think has the task of re-inventing the Church. Now, please pass it forward.

http://mppc.org/series/ripple-effect/gary-hamel/shifting-tides

Johan Jorgensen, CEO and Founder

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Check out Biblesearch.org

September 29th, 2009

Now, if you want to experience a really good Bible search engine, just drop by Biblesearch.org. It is still in beta, but it is very promising, including the possibilities to create your own, commented reading lists. Now, guess where that idea came from ;-) .

Johan Jorgensen, CEO and Founder

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New Bibles at Voxbiblia

August 18th, 2009

We have just launched three new Bible into the system! It is the wonderful narrations by Max McLean of the ESV, the NIV and the KJV. Now we are very proud of that. We have yet to complete the cutting of the recodings into the stories of the Bible. That is a major task that will take some more time, but you can download them in the traditional way. Just check out our shop!

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Voxbiblia on Reboot

July 2nd, 2009

I am just back from the yearly Reboot conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was there to speak about how really, really old media meets new media. It was a fascinating experience. Reboot is a self organizing conference that has been around for 11 years and it attracts the movers and shakers of the European new media scene. It was fun to give them the Biblical time perspective on things and how the Bible has lead the media development until modern times when it suddenly has started to lagg behind. And how we at Voxbiblia.com intend to change that.

For a good comparison; If you lay out a 35 meter (or yard) time-line, starting with when the first books of the Bible came along, the internet comes in during the last 15 centimeters.

I got very good feedback from the audience. You would think that most in the new media world do not read the Bible – well, they don’t – but that does not stop them from being fascinated by the Good Book. When you do not try to show the Bible down peoples throats, they tend to respect it and like it. It is when you become too obsessive in your misso

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Finally – All Books as Albums

February 10th, 2009

We had an internal competition yesterday in order to put online all the books of the Bible as separate albums. Thereby it is possible to easily download a specific book. Now, that was always possible for subscribers to our Bible download archive, but not for anybody else – until now, that is. We managed to do this in a rather short period of time – a few hours. It is amazing how fast you can build a thematic Bible album and publish it. Some might think that it is easy from the technical perspective just to write something that would take care of the publishing without the intervention of humans. It is, but the texts describing each album still needs some human touch, and that is what takes time.

But now comes technology. Now we are going to replicate the Bible albums across our other translations. Publish once, deploy everywhere. The digital world is beautiful!

Of course you can embed the books of the Bible, just go ahead and do it!

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Voxbiblia named source of inspiration for 2009

January 2nd, 2009

Well, what can I say. We usually don’t brag about every press mentioning we get, but this one was particulary fun. The Swedish Christian daily Dagen named Voxbiblia one of a 99 sources of inspiration for 2009. We were placed as number 30 on the list (right behind the Swedish Archbishop), but then someone told me that the list just mentioned the top 99 in no particular order. So we could really be the number one source of inspiration – or the number 9. Guess what we think?

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Voxbiblia releases user generated Bible albums

November 17th, 2008

PRESS RELEASE November 17, 2008

Voxbiblia Releases User-Generated Bible Albums
Swedish Voxbiblia.com today has today released the option for users themselves to construct their own Bible albums, effectively giving them a peer recommendation system for Bible passages.

The new service lets people easily construct their own Bible albums based on Voxbiblia’s repository of over 3,000 Bible passages. Thereby it is possible to put together thematic selections from the Bible, for instance based on specific situations in which the Bible has helped you, comment the selction and add pictures to the album. Once you are finished and chooses to publish the album, it becomes immediately available online for other to listen to or download.

- The Bible has so much to say in the situations of life, but it is so hard to find the relevant passages. We all need help with this, says Johan Jorgensen, founder and CEO of Voxbiblia.com.

In Acts (8:26-40), we meet Philip who teaches the Ethiopian eunuch who to read Isaiah. In fact, we all need someone to teach us what the Bible says. No-one can claim to know what the Bible has to say in all situations, but together we can.
Initially there are a total of approximately 200 Bible albums available on Voxbiblia.com – a number that is constantly growing. The albums are available for download or through streaming audio, and the whole Bible also comes in the form of a download archive, as mp3 files on DVD, CD or pre-loaded onto an iPod Nano.

An access to Voxbiblia.com’s download archive (valid for one year) costs $29 for the New International Version and $49 for the Today’s New International Version. It includes downloads of all the albums and the whole Bible both in the traditional form of books and chapters as well as the approximately 3,000 passages. Individual albums are $3 a piece.

Welcome to Voxbiblia.com!

For more information, please contact:
Johan Jörgensen, CEO Voxbiblia, +46 735 200 633, johan@voxbiblia.com

Voxbiblia.com Background
Voxbiblia.com aims at a disruptive modernization of how the Bible is brought to the masses. The idea is to make it easier for modern people to access one of the most important pieces of text ever written, and, hence, to further expand their understanding of our world and their own role as human beings. By helping people to access the Bible more easily, Voxbiblia.com hopes to not only show how useful and interesting the Bible can be, but also how easy it can be to start digging into the material. There should be no reasons for religious illiteracy to continue to spread.

The release of the Bible in the form of thematic albums represents the perhaps most significant new navigational system of the Bible since Robert Stephens (Robert I Estienne) added the verses to the Bible in 1551. For audio this new system is essential, since it is impossible to find passages by fast-forwarding through 100 hours of recorded material.

Voxbiblia.com’s mission is to give to as large an audience as possible an easy-to-use means of accessing the Bible. Voxbiblia.com is not affiliated with any church or other religious organization. Its sole purpose is to make the Scriptures available in a user friendly way.

Currently Voxbiblia offers three complete recordings of the Bible in English: the New International Version, the Today’s New International Version and the Authorized (King James) Version. In Swedish the recent translation Bible 2000 is offered. The recordings are sold as MP3 downloads, or thematic play-lists, pre-loaded on iPods, and as MP3-files on DVD or CD. You can also listen to the whole Bible through streaming audio, More Bible translations are currently being processed for future launch.

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Church Tour in Nashville Tennessee

October 27th, 2008

Pretty interesting day. We usually overdo Sundays and try to get the most out of it, educating ourselves to the various flavors of Christianity. This time the Nashville church tour took me first to Christ Community Church (christcommunity.org) in Franklin for an early morning service at 9am. CCC is a presbyterian church, very warm and welcoming (Thank you Nathan for bringing us along and introducing us).

Then off in high speed in order to make the 11am service at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Nashville. Now, if you believe that parking spots right outside a crammed cathedral might be tricky to find, behold the miracle. One reserved specially for us – ten meters from the entrance. Now, the trick is to read the signs carefully. Parking just might be allowed in strange spots during Sundays. Being an Episcopalian church, service was somewhat different. Well, if you compare presbyterian churches having rock music thundering through the speakers with a traditional Lutheran High church with a visiting boys choir from the UK, you are rather likely to find differences. That adds to the experience though.

Lunch. Then off again to Crosspoint at 6am (well, a rather long lunch at Chappy’s…). Crosspoint (crosspoint.tv) was really interesting. Esentially being a rock concert – great music, great stage –  with suprisingly little preaching going on. Pete – the pastor – related to our everyday job situation and the necessity of holding on to your identity as well as your purpose. But he had an easy day as far as I am concerned. Anybody who quotes Ecclesiastes – one of my favorite books – will get high marks.

Now, I really liked the format being a mix of entertainment and philosophy. Some would probably think that there was too little religion and preaching in there. However, I think the format has the potential to appeal to my home country of Sweden. Or any other secular country for that matter. An important part of getting people who are not accustomed to the Bible to read it more is probably to not show it down their throats, but rather to relate to everyday situations. Plus it was fun.

Ann, who introduced us to to Crosspoint, has been bashing us for not being entertaining enough. I have to give her credit for that.

We finished off the day visiting Campus Crusade’s Sunday night meeting at Vanderbilt University. Joe Thomas made a very nice introduction and we invited them to trash the Voxbiblia.com website. We need feedback. Loads of it.

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Voxbiblia in the Financial Times

October 8th, 2008

Today Voxbiblia was all over the Financial Times! Well, at least all over page 12 with the title “The Dotcom Evangelist”. A wonderful article about our reason to exist and what we are doing. Such an encouragement is seldom to be had. It also felt as a great rubber stamp on the company as such. Read the article here:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e47fc850-9487-11dd-953e-000077b07658.html

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Voxbiblia releases new download site

September 1st, 2008

PRESS RELEASE September 1, 2008

The Bible Goes Internet With New Download Site
- New Download Site for Bible Albums Lowers Thresholds for Bible Usage

Swedish Voxbiblia.com today has released a completely new online service for audio Bibles with the Bible provided as thematic albums. The centre piece of the service are recordings of the New International Version and Today’s New International Version from the UK’s leading Bible publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.

Voxbiblia.com has today launched a completely new online service for audio Bibles. Besides the traditional books and chapters, Voxbiblia.com also provides the Bible in the form of thematic albums, making it easy to find suitable passages even if you have no prior knowledge of the Bible – one of the most cited reasons for not reading or listening to the Bible.

In a co-operation with Hodder & Stoughton it is now possible to listen to their world-class recordings of the New International Version as well as the Today’s New International Version on Voxbiblia.com.

– We are very proud to be able to work together with Hodder & Stoughton on this project. Their recordings are truly excellent and we now hope to be able to make them known and available to a new and broader audience, said Johan Jorgensen CEO Voxbiblia.com.

Initially there are a total of approximately 200 Bible albums available on Voxbiblia.com – a number that is constantly growing and that will grow even faster when the users themselves later this autumn can create their own albums, publish them, and thus help in building a grand repository of suggested Bible listening for various situations – a recommendation system for the Bible that is founded on the users themselves!

The albums are available for download or through streaming audio, and the whole Bible also comes in the form of a download archive, as mp3 files on DVD, CD or pre-loaded onto an iPod Nano.

An access to Voxbiblia.com’s download archive (valid for one year) costs $29 for the New International Version and $49 for the Today’s New International Version. It includes downloads of all the albums and the whole Bible both in the traditional form of books and chapters as well as the approximately 3,000 passages. Individual albums are $3 a piece.

For more information, please contact:
Johan Jörgensen, CEO Voxbiblia, +46 735 200 633, johan@voxbiblia.com

Voxbiblia.com Background
Voxbiblia.com aims at a disruptive modernization of how the Bible is brought to the masses. The idea is to make it easier for modern people to access one of the most important pieces of text ever written, and, hence, to further expand their understanding of our world and their own role as human beings. By helping people to access the Bible more easily, Voxbiblia.com hopes to not only show how useful and interesting the Bible can be, but also how easy it can be to start digging into the material. There should be no reasons for religious illiteracy to continue to spread.

Voxbiblia.com has suffered the usual dotcom hardship on its way to the release of its online service. Not only has Voxbiblia.com been forced to construct a Bible centric content management and download system. In addition the Bible has through a tedious work been split up into more than 3,000 passages – the passages we actually use – that can be combined to a long range of thematic albums.

The release of the Bible in the form of thematic albums represents the perhaps most significant new navigational system of the Bible since Robert Stephens (Robert I Estienne) added the verses to the Bible in 1551. For audio this new system is essential, since it is impossible to find passages by fast-forwarding through 100 hours of recorded material.

Voxbiblia.com’s mission is to give to as large an audience as possible an easy-to-use means of accessing the Bible. Voxbiblia.com is not affiliated with any church or other religious organization. Its sole purpose is to make the Scriptures available in a user friendly way.

Currently Voxbiblia offers three complete recordings of the Bible in English: the New International Version, the Today’s New International Version and the Authorized (King James) Version. In Swedish the recent translation Bible 2000 is offered. The recordings are sold as MP3 downloads, or thematic play-lists, pre-loaded on iPods, and as MP3-files on DVD or CD. You can also listen to the whole Bible through streaming audio, More Bible translations are currently being processed for future launch.

Posted in News from Voxbiblia, Press | 1 Comment »

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