BibleProject - What’s Next for the Bible Project

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

In this episode, Tim and Jon take a break from discussing theology to talk about some exciting developments at The Bible Project. The guys talk about upcoming theme videos and podcast series, transitioning to a season-based format, and a brand new initiative called “Classroom.” Say hi to us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/jointhebibleproject/ https://twitter.com/JoinBibleProj https://www.instagram.com/thebibleproject/ And find all of our resources for free at thebibleproject.com Show Produced by: Dan Gummel. Jon Collins Show Music: Defender Instrumental: Rosasharn Music Loudness and Clarity: Joakim Karud Love Mode: Joakim Karud

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode. Hey, this is John at the Bible Project.

Today on this episode of the podcast, we're gonna do a little housekeeping. Tim and I are gonna sit down and talk about where we've been and more specifically where we're going in this next year and a few things that we love to bring you up to speed on. Here we go. All right, this episode of podcast is for us to just be able to get you up to speed and for us to just kind of wrap out about what's going on we've never done this we're many episodes in we've never we've never used the podcast to just talk about the state of the Bible

just to talk to people about what we're doing or chill out yeah totally there you go. We're not talking about any theological biblical topics in this video. We're gonna talk about the next year of what's coming and also 91. What's happening? 91 episodes. We just released our 91st episode. We're gonna hit 100 pretty soon. Yeah, dude And if that's each one represents an hour of us talking That's a hundred hours. That's a hundred hours of us talking. Yeah. We've talked a lot more than that. That's true. So we could start and say this podcast began a couple years ago as like an offshoot of something John and I were already doing. Yeah. Which was having these conversations. Sitting over your notes and me asking you questions. That's right. And then you're like, let's turn on a microphone one day. Yeah. And then that became the podcast.

Yeah. I was like, this is so fun being able to do this, and I'm the only one to benefit. Yeah. Why don't we turn on a microphone? So it is fun. It's one of the most fun things of the whole video production process for me,

and I think it's still list for you. I heard you say it. And we've now, a couple years in the podcast, heard from so many of you, our listeners, reaching out to us, we meet people who actually, we've met people who hadn't even seen a video, but they've heard the podcast, or they started listening to the podcast first,

and that's how they learned about the videos. So that's interesting. But anyway, we're so stoked that these conversations are helpful for you. Yeah. We're having a great time. We are having a great time. If you can't tell and so thank you for listening and being a part of what we're doing. So we've been at this for five years. Yes. This podcast has probably been about three years. Yeah, that's right. This project's been five years and we launched the very first videos four years ago and then ever since then,

we have been releasing videos regularly but more and more regularly. So the first video released, it took like three, four months to release the second video, took another three, four months to release the next and on and on and on and that's not true, we released two at once. So the third video anyways

I always hoped that we could get to a video a month and I felt like a video a month would be Good to keep people engaged and then we did the read scriptures Oh, yeah, and we were releasing tons of videos. Yeah. Yeah, that's right We times like four a week we timed the video releases to the one year Bible reading plan. Yes. And so this was in 2016, 2017 or 15, 16 Holy cow. We've all planned together for me. Anyway, yeah, so in the week of the minor prophets, it was like eight videos that week or something.

Yeah, I mean, those videos are easier to make. Yeah. Not for you, but for design wise. Yeah. And so we got into more rhythm, our team grew. And in the last year, we got to the point where we thought, wow, we can release a video every other week, every second week. Yeah, every two. Sometimes three, but usually every two weeks. Yeah.

And then we realized we can't go faster than this. Yeah. That's that's maximum capacity. Yeah, every two, sometimes three, but usually every two weeks. Yeah. And then we realized we can't go faster than this. Yeah. That's that's maximum capacity. Yeah. And so we're like, cool. Indefinitely releasing two videos a month on average. And then if you map out how much how many more videos we want to do, it's like another three to four years. At that pace. At that pace. Yep. And then it kind of occurred to me earlier this year. Oh. Man, that pace might kill us. Yeah, totally. And maybe just to translate, I've never worked at an animation studio before this project.

And I'm guessing most people haven't worked at animation studios. But it started to clue in for me that I can't manage the amount of videos working on because it would be like some five videos going on simultaneous Right. Yeah, we still do that. I would sit down in a meeting to catch up on this week's progress on whatever a Shema video. And I literally couldn't remember anything about the video because I've just spent the last four days thinking about the four other videos. And not only are five videos in production and then you're studying another video. Yeah, that's right. So, I think John and I both started to talk like, I think we need to dial it down a little bit so that we can actually take a marathon approach. Yeah, we're running a marathon.

Running a marathon over the next few years to make, you know, another 50, 60 videos that we would like to make. And we want to do each one well, and not be tired. Yeah. So we are doing something this summer, for the first time.

We're moving to a seasonal release schedule. So instead of just the grind of every two weeks, we're gonna have a season where we release videos every other week and then we'll take a break. We're gonna do our first season, which is really our fifth year, so we're gonna call it season five. Yeah, we've been going four years,

just making videos as much as we can. As much as we can. And we're tired. That season one through four. That's right. It's all blurred together. That's right. And so season five is going to start in September in the 2018 and it's going to go to June of 2019. And so what we're going to do is July and August, we're not going to release

videos of 2018. So the two months that are ahead. The two months ahead. No video releases, we're gonna prepare for season five, and then season five will go till June of 2019, and then we'll take another break, and then prepare for season six, and we're gonna do a lot of seasons. Yeah, that's gonna make exciting. Yeah, we have a lot more seasons.

So really it's just eight weeks out of the year where we're not gonna be releasing, yeah, everything every other week, but even just that takes off some pressure. For the overall calendar, it makes everything more manageable in how the studio works and their own workflow. So if you're following our releases, as they come out, you'll notice that. We are going to release some behind the scenes videos,

another kind of content throughout the summer. We're actually going to release more content than kind of content throughout the summer. We're actually gonna release more content than we would normally during the summer. Just not animated videos. It just won't be the animated, Bible videos. That's right. So there you go, you heard it here first.

I mean, we've talked about it in some other venues, but I think this podcast will be the first kind of telling our viewing audience, and just an audience about. Season five starts in September. Season five. Do you want to talk about tell me what you're excited about? We have multiple series that we're going to be working on. So we have four theme videos that we're planning on for next season five.

One is a counterpart to the exile, so we did the exile theme. And then there was so much on the cutting room floor. If you listen to exile conversations on the podcast. You'll notice that we didn't get this so much. We didn't cover about the Jeremiah and the exile ethic. And Daniel. Loyalty and subversion.

So we're going to make a video all about that, the exile ethic and the loyalty and the subversion of Babylon So we're gonna call it the way of the exile. Yeah, I'm excited about that. That's in the works It's in the work that season five material. Yep. We're gonna do a video Right now the best name we can think of to call it is God. Yeah, the God video the God video Yeah, God video one way to understand it is God. Yeah, the God video. The God video. Yeah. God video. One way to understand it is it's a video

explaining the identity of God. So we have to talk about how God is three and one. So we're doing a video on the Trinity. Here's how we're framing it in the first seconds of the video. I'm reading for a lot of the Bible and there's one God. Yeah. The Lord is one. Love the Lord.

You've got the Lord in the first three quarters of the Bible. And then I get to the Jesus part of the Bible. The last quarter. And all of a sudden God is Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit. Yeah, what's up? So is God one or is God three? Is God one and three? And if so, how did that? It's basic man. What's going on? That can't work. Yeah, what's going on? What's going on? So it's not really about the Trinity as such. Sure. We don't even ever be more about how the concept of God as one and more than one actually isn't a new idea for that Jesus and the Apostles innovated. It's an idea deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible's depiction of God of Israel.

So in fact, in the podcast, the following week, we're going to start our conversation of God of Israel. So in fact, in the podcast, the following week, we're going to start our conversation on God. It's the longest conversation we've had about any video. You and I sat down and probably talked for like 15 hours. I, oh, I had on record almost 20. Oh wow. My nose. Man, a lot of good stuff.

Oh yeah, so I learned so much. This is the biggest stack of books I've read. I taught you a lot in books. Oh. What do you remember I came to you with 40 pages of notes? I basically almost wrote a short book. You did write a little book. But there were so many questions about this topic,

about the meaning of monotheism, about other gods in the Hebrew Bible, sons of God, angels. Yeah, we talked for an hour just about the sons of God. Yeah, the son of man and Daniel 7 There's so much background yeah to what ends up in the New Testament as the Trinity That I just wanted to chase down a bunch of wild rabbits. I'm really excited to release those episodes I think I think everyone's gonna really enjoy them. Yeah, we both learned a lot. It gets nerdy

Yeah, but in a good way. Yeah, you're kind of used to that. So the God videos coming out, and that's gonna be preceded by a long podcast series throughout the summer. And then sometime the fall we're hoping to release that, I thought it would be like the premiere of season five. Yeah. But I don't think we're gonna be ready.

I may not. Yeah, it may not. It's such a hard video to do. Yeah. And the other two theme videos, so it's God, the way the exile, the other two theme videos in season five, we're going to be another little twin pair, one on the Son of Man theme, and then one on the Son of God theme, which I don't fully appreciate what you mean by

that. Either of those. Well, the first one we've talked enough now about, I think I got a handle on that. Well, that's right. G.S.'s favorite title to call himself was not the Messiah. In fact, he never once calls himself the Messiah. Most regularly, and many times, calls himself the Son of Man, which is a title and a theme with a long prehistory going back to page one of the Hebrew Bible. Yeah, I'm excited about that one. Me too. And then Son of God is another topic theme. It's a phrase that begins right in the early pages of Genesis with humanity as the image of God.

Yeah. I think in the God conversation we talk about Son of God versus Son of Man. And what I realized was spoiler alert. Usually when I think of Son of God, I think of Dity. Like you are. You are. Jesus Dity, so I'll come Son of God. And Son of Man, I think of his humanity.

But you helped me see that it's actually more reversed when people talk about, when the son of man has within it all of these Yeah, denotations of deity correct and son of God more of Unity of gods human appointed king human appointed king. Yeah, son of God is royal king language Interesting and son of man is about a human who is gone completely unified with God Yeah, so good anyway, these are great. It's gonna be good conversations Man is about a human who is completely unified with God. Yeah. So good. Anyway, these are great.

It's going to be good conversations. So those are the same videos. We release Acts, Part 1 and 2 already. Yep. And we're going to finish out Acts. Two more parts. Two more parts. Those will come in Season 5.

So come in Season 5. Some more word studies in Season 5. Yep. We're going to do one more bad word. One more bad word. You got to wait till Season five for the final bad word. Yes. Iniquity.

Iniquity. And then a new series. Yeah, then we're going to do a four-part series in the word studies, which is going to really complement the God video. It will. We'll go on to the God video. I don't know quite what to call it yet.

I haven't called it the deity series. Oh, the deity. Could call it divine beings. Divine beings, I'm insured. I want to do four. One is Elohim, which is the primary word for God in Hebrew. Angels. So basically God, angels, demons, and the cherubim.

Yeah. Yeah. Because angels and the cherubim are different. They are not the same. And they both have really different roles in the Bible. I think those videos will get a lot of views. Yep. Yeah, I'm excited about those.

And then we're gonna finish the How to Read the Bible series. We're not gonna, no, we're not gonna finish it. We're not gonna, we're gonna get close. We're gonna do five more episodes. We're gonna do five more episodes. Which will get us most of the way. Alright. So how to read the Psalms, how to read the prophets, how to read law, biblical law, and then how to read the Gospels.

Those are the five episodes in the How to Read series. Yeah. Those are all going to be awesome. Let's see. We have one more outstanding read scripture video. Oh, we wanted to go back and fill in. Yeah. It's like an overview of the whole New Testament.

Yeah, we released the Tonak Old Testament overview, and this is going to be a similar overview of the whole New Testament. But then, as I got into writing, really the first third of it is about the story of the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. So it does become a video about the whole Bible. It will be a story about the whole Bible, but particularly about how the New Testament is designed to carry all the themes and design patterns of the Hebrew Bible forward. That's exciting. And that'll be in the read scripture style. Oh yeah, and then we're going to do a video on generosity. And we want to do one video. It's kind of like a theme video, but not necessarily a theme that goes from page one to the end, but it's an important idea in the Bible. Developed at key moments, and that's a topic of generosity.

So that is 20 videos, season five. And then we'll stop, and then we'll do season six. What a great season, that's good videos, man. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. So I'd love all of these. We'll outline this in the fall quarterly for the people who are donors to get that. For the summer, we'll have other content so behind the scenes stuff, but wait till the fall quarterly for the people who are donors to get that. For the summer, we'll have other content

just behind the scenes stuff, but wait till the fall. Yep. There's one more thing that I think would be cool to update everyone on. And I actually mentioned it, an outro of a podcast, maybe a month ago. Oh yes, that's right, you did. Because we're looking for a position to coordinate this project. And we call it classroom. Classroom is going to be an online seminary level education on the Bible.

I guess it's seminary, so that's the level. Yeah, that's right. And it's gonna be free. Yeah. And we're gonna produce it. At least we're gonna try. Yeah, that's right. And it's gonna be free. Yeah, and we're gonna produce it at least we're gonna try. Yeah That's right. Yeah, but I mean really how this started was you teach adjunct at Western and I love to teach a seminary here in Portland seminary here in Portland. Yeah great school You love to teach and you always get so much energy from teaching For me is both the prep for a class that I learned a ton,

but also it's just the live teaching environment is a really important learning lab for me. This is where I test drive ideas, test drive illustrations. Yeah, there's a lot of dialogue. For analogies, but in a way, there's different, when I was preaching like every other Sunday, it was kind of the same thing, you know, you're test running, all kinds of things. But it's a monologue.

But it's a monologue, and what I love about the classroom is, you can throw an idea, develop an idea, and then field questions and people you can sharpen each other. So I love teaching for that environment, so that's one key thing. Yeah, you're telling me how much you love teaching and I've been thinking about this project. Like, we always expect that one day we're gonna be done. Yeah. Making videos, we don't have an infinite list of videos

we wanna make. The list keeps growing. Yeah. But it is a finite list, I suppose. And so when you said that, I was like, oh, that's one thing that can continue on is we could create, in my mind, oh, that's one thing that can continue on is we could create, in my mind, it just was Tim's teaching corner.

It was like, we have a space here at the church that we office in that would be great to just invite some students in, host a class, host a class. And then we're like, well, cool, we should videotape it, videotape it, videotape it, actual tape it. Video tape it. Actual tape. Yeah, we're going to use tape. We'd video capture it. We're going to capture it on the video. Record it. Record it professionally and allow anyone to watch it.

So not just the people that come. Yeah. And we started scoping out video equipment and thinking it through. I remember we went to a friend of mine, John's place of business and he was helping us figure out how to do all this AV stuff and he was like, man, this is gonna be really great system. This is gonna be as good as it gets in for what you need. How often are you gonna be using it? And we're like, oh, yeah, I made a few times a year. Maybe. He's like, what? So then it was like, oh, yeah, maybe a few times a year. Maybe a few times. He's like, what?

So then it was like, well, maybe this is bigger than we were thinking. So we're going to start with just you teaching classes, recording it, but who knows what it'll get beyond that because we'll have a really cool setup going. Yeah, that's right. Yep, that's right. And also part of it, just in terms of a motivation, or something driving me was, I've loved my years of teaching at the mostly graduate level, seminary level. However, I've also become more and more aware

as the years go by that the people who are able to sit in that room and have access to that level of just interaction and learning about the Bible is a really small, yeah, small group of people who have money and time to go sit in these seminary classes. For me, a big part of the Bible project is making biblical scholarship and scholarly informed learning about the Bible available to everybody for free.

That's just so exciting to get to be part of that. And so for me, this is just an extension. I think learning classrooms where people are thinking thoroughly and deeply about scripture and through a whole book of the Bible is literary theological holes. That shouldn't cost thousands of dollars for you to move across the country to have access to that kind of stuff. And so for me, that's a big part of it too. But there is another, there's actually another, the idea is developed as we've continued

to think about it. Yeah, you mentioned also that it's usually a pretty niche demographic that you're teaching to. Yes. We live in the Northwest. Yeah. Portland's a very white city. Yep.

Most of the classes that I'm teaching to are majority white male. Yeah. Which is just, is what it is. But it's also a reality about a whole layer of American Protestantism that I think is troubling. It's a reflection of our larger culture that white male leadership is still the dominant paradigm in many, many parts of our culture. But that is not true and should not be true of the global body of Christ. Should be diverse.

It is diverse. It is diverse. It is diverse. We celebrate that. The majority of the world's Christians are living in the cyber-thin hemisphere and they're mostly not white males. And so Philip Jenkins, the social historian, is done incredible work on this.

And so what we are going to do is actually not just pack out the classroom, but we're going to really limit it to a pretty small circle, and every person in that room is going to reflect a really different kind of demographic, different background, different ethnicity, different spiritual tradition within Christianity. I have never had the experience of teaching in that hyper-diverse of an environment. So I'm excited for the experience, too. This was actually your idea. You brought this up one day.

And then the moment I heard you say it, I was like, we could do that. That sounds awesome. Well, the small number, I think, is strategic because I want to see that this isn't just you monologuing. That's right. There's a lot of interaction. And if there's a lot of interaction, I'm thinking of the end user,

the person not in the room, but the person watching this on their tablet or computer, whatever. You want to kind of know who's in the room. And if it's a small enough group, you can kind of get to know, you know, if it's like 10 hours of class with that same student group, you're going to get to know those 12, 10, 12 people. And then the way we're going to build it is, you know, they'll also have a little bio.

So you know, they're spiritual background background there where they're from all this stuff It become more intimate that way. Yeah, also for us We want to you know, the selection process is gonna be a big deal. Yeah to make sure we're not only it's a diverse group But it's a group of people who are familiar with scripture probably are teaching it in their context Yeah, but our learners loved ask good questions. Yeah kind of like have my DNA of like Just wanting to just dig in and figure it out. Yeah, that's right. That would be great. Yeah, a room of ethnically diverse, Christian tradition diverse, a room of people who are as passionate about asking questions as you are. And I want to be in that room, but long term we would love also then to grow the library

and grow the group of teachers to get larger, to have more and different kinds of teachers. But one step at a time, we just want to get the idea. Yeah, we're going to pilot it out. There's lots of people experimenting with online education. Yes. There's lots of people making their lecture material monologue or talking head with PowerPoint. Yeah.

Slides going, there's a lot to content like that. So we're excited about capturing a classroom. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're gonna have five camera set up. That's right. Around the Bible, doing biblical theology and learning together in a room. I think it'll be really cool.

Totally cool. I'm excited about it. And if you've wanted to take a class with him, this is your chance, it'll be online. And you don't even have to come to Portland. You don't even have to come to Portland. You can stay in your pajamas. Yeah, totally.

So that's classroom. So the recording room itself, the class room, physical classroom itself, we just finished the remodel of the room like this week. Yeah. So I'm mostly done. Yeah, it's gonna be done in the next few months and then our hope is to have our first kind of few trial classes by the end of this year and then have the idea rolling in 2019. Yeah, sometime next month I'm going to make an announcement to get applications for students. Cool. And then we'll hopefully get a good mix and we'll select for the first go. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's it. Classroom. I think that's all we wanted to do on this episode. Just kind of give that kind of update on what we're doing. So cheers, there you go. You guys, thank you for listening to the podcast and spreading the word about it. It's so helpful for John and I. We love hearing from just people who are listening and how much hearing John and I walk through all these ideas and greater depths.

It's been formative for your spiritual journey too. So cheers to that, because it's been formative for your spiritual journey too. So cheers to that, because it's been formative for our spiritual journey. So we're glad it can be helpful for you, and so thank you for listening. Whenever I say that, you listening, it's weird, because we never do that. We just talk.

We rarely acknowledge that we don't acknowledge the listener, because it's actually scary to me to acknowledge that there's lots of people listening. But every time I say it, I look over the computer screen like they're supposed to be right there. At the end of the day. Well, yeah, thank you for listening to this. Thank you for being part of this.

It is our pleasure to work on it. That's it for this episode of the Bible Project podcast. Thank you for being okay. That's it for this episode of the Bible Project Podcast. This is a nonprofit organization where Portland, Oregon, thanks for being a part of this with us. Hello, my name is January. So, we have theoy, and I'm from the Philippines, but I live in Okinawa, Japan. I use the Bible project with our Asia Pacific Nazarene Youth International page on Facebook, and I share the videos there for young people.

And what I like best about the Bible project is how they turn all of these Bible lessons and Bible stories and the overviews of the books of the Bible in a very interesting way. So people would understand it easily and they won't get bored and see all of these awesome, you know, drawings. And I read the scripture using the app and so it's really nice to watch the video first that you have done before reading the scripture for the day. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowd-funded project by people like me. Find free video study notes and more at thebibelproject.com you you