# SemperFideles' teaching series on Romans



## Semper Fidelis

OK, so the title may not be all that exciting but I did record myself teaching Romans 2 yesterday. Finally started a podcast for the Church and added that teaching as the first. You can download the mp3 directly and listen or subscribe to the podcast on this page:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching.html (Click on the link to Romans 2:1-3:8)

Incidentally, I used an iPod thing that attaches to my iPod and allows it to use the iPod as a voice recorder. The quality was excellent.

The teaching was 1 hour and 20 minutes long. I've got to tell you that this teaching series has about 80% attendance from the men of the Church at 8 am on a Saturday morning. This is a Southern Baptist Church in Okinawa, Japan and I'm working with the Pastor to train men in the Church.

Let me know what you think if you happen to listen to it.

Blessings,

Rich


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## Herald

Rich - I'll listen to the entirety of it later. I just heard the audio quality. Very good.


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## Chris

I'll listen later. You need to be careful teaching Romans - a proper understanding of it may convert them to Calvinism. 

Thanks for posting this.


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## JonathanHunt

Rich, you maniac, no wonder the quality is so great, its SEVENTY FOUR MEGABYTES!!!!!!!!!

When I finish downloading it (round about Christmas) I'll listen.


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## Ivan

joshua said:


> Who's bangin' on the trash can in the background?



Hmmm....the restless Arminian natives?


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## Semper Fidelis

JonathanHunt said:


> Rich, you maniac, no wonder the quality is so great, its SEVENTY FOUR MEGABYTES!!!!!!!!!
> 
> When I finish downloading it (round about Christmas) I'll listen.



 Yeah, you know what though? When my iPod saved the file initially it saved it as a WAV file and was 800 MB! I realized after I converted it to MP3 that I should have used a lower bitrate. I'm also going to figure out how to stream the file.


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## Semper Fidelis

Chris said:


> I'll listen later. You need to be careful teaching Romans - a proper understanding of it may convert them to Calvinism.
> 
> Thanks for posting this.



The Pastor already is. He was liberal coming out of a Baptist college and went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He said that a majority of the profs are Calvinists and he became utterly convinced. He's also not dispensational if you can believe that.

I listened to myself this AM. Maybe I'm just being critical of myself but I notice a lot of accidental mis-statements that I make and points where I catch myself. It's the way I talk and I wonder if it causes a lot of confusion but a lot of people say they find my teaching very good so it might just be self-loathing. I would appreciate feedback if there are "ticks" that I could work on that I haven't already noticed.


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## Herald

> I noticed a bit of tripping up in the beginning, but it seemed to clear up pretty quick.



There isn't a single time that I take the pulpit without fear and trembling. I honestly say to myself, "Who am I to proclaim God's word?" I have butterflies each time I preach. But after a few minutes they usually start flying in formation.


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## Semper Fidelis

BaptistInCrisis said:


> There isn't a single time that I take the pulpit without fear and trembling. I honestly say to myself, "Who am I to proclaim God's word?" I have butterflies each time I preach. But after a few minutes they usually start flying in formation.



My problem was, in this case, a difficulty in presenting so much information in a short time. It's not always easy to "package".

I'm actually doing quite a bit of teaching right now - teaching through a Book of the Bible each week during Sunday School and then every other week I'm teaching on a Chapter of Romans. I obviously will never teach at the caliber of a scholar but I am reading some really good Commentaries to help me.

I taught on Job this past Sunday so it's always a challenge figuring out how you can condense something so theologically rich into less than an hour. Add to that, I was trying to prepare to teach Romans 2.

What ended up happening in some portions of my teaching on Saturday was that I would read the portion of Scripture and then struggle to remember the salient issues that I wanted to draw out and so I was "reaching" for them. The previous week, in Romans 1, was much easier to condense and express.

I think my greatest "fear" when I teach is taking a large amount of theological material and condensing it to fit a time period without compromising the quality of instruction. I think, like you Bill, I'm fearful of misrepresenting God's Truth and leaving out a piece of information He would have me instruct or distorting information by condensing it.


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## bookslover

SemperFideles said:


> My problem was, in this case, a difficulty in presenting so much information in a short time. It's not always easy to "package".



As I'm sure you know, it's always much better to have too much material than not enough. It's easier to have to leave something out because you're running out of time than it is to have to "pad" in order to fill up the time because you ran out of material.

What's _really_ frustrating is knowing you have to leave something out, but what you've got is so good you hate to leave _anything_ out.

We have a young man in our adult Sunday School class who has just started a 6-part series on Habakkuk. Today was his first day, and he did a really good job - except his voice was hoarse because (as he explained) he's
the coach of his son's 8-and-under soccer team, and yesterday was their first game (he said it was a lot like herding cats).


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## fredtgreco

Any preacher worth his salt will tell you that what is hardest, and what makes for a good sermon, is know what to _leave in the study_ and not put in the sermon. Not how to leave bad stuff out, but _good stuff_. You can't say everything (or you'll overwhelm people, even if you have 1 and 1/2 hours!) and cutting is key. It is also really hard.

On another note, I converted the file to a 56k 22kHz MP3 file. It is now (still!) 30MB large. But I did not detect any noticeable loss of quality. I wonder what others think (kind of an audio experiment). I have uploaded it to my site (or it will be in 10 minutes), and you can download the 56k file at:

http://www.tulipfaith.com/files/Romans2-20070310.mp3

I think I will also convert it to 32k and see if it keep decent quality. I typically use 32k on my sermons (www.cckpca.org/sermons/


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## Semper Fidelis

fredtgreco said:


> Any preacher worth his salt will tell you that what is hardest, and what makes for a good sermon, is know what to _leave in the study_ and not put in the sermon. Not how to leave bad stuff out, but _good stuff_. You can't say everything (or you'll overwhelm people, even if you have 1 and 1/2 hours!) and cutting is key. It is also really hard.
> 
> On another note, I converted the file to a 56k 22kHz MP3 file. It is now (still!) 30MB large. But I did not detect any noticeable loss of quality. I wonder what others think (kind of an audio experiment). I have uploaded it to my site (or it will be in 10 minutes), and you can download the 56k file at:
> 
> http://www.tulipfaith.com/files/Romans2-20070310.mp3
> 
> I think I will also convert it to 32k and see if it keep decent quality. I typically use 32k on my sermons (www.cckpca.org/sermons/



Thanks Fred for the thoughts and for cutting it down. I think I'll take your version and put it on my server. No sense in wasting bandwidth.

By the way, what program do you use to convert? It's been some time since I've messed with uploading sermons and my tools are quite old. I'm hoping to find a nice freeware app that does the job nicely.


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## kvanlaan

Just finished downloading it. Will have a listen during/after lunch.

74 Megs of Rich. In stereo. Hoo-rah!


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## fredtgreco

SemperFideles said:


> Thanks Fred for the thoughts and for cutting it down. I think I'll take your version and put it on my server. No sense in wasting bandwidth.
> 
> By the way, what program do you use to convert? It's been some time since I've messed with uploading sermons and my tools are quite old. I'm hoping to find a nice freeware app that does the job nicely.



Rich,

The 32kbps version is up as well here. I think it sounds fine, and is only 18.5MB (that is about right for the length of the audio. My personal opinion is that streaming is a waste of time - no one I know sits at their PC to listen unless they have no choice. With podcasts, MP3 players, etc., fast downloads are the way to go.

I use dBpoweramp. I like it a lot. You can download and install all kinds of codecs, even one to convert from Realaudio. The hardest thing to do (surprise! can you say proprietary?) is to convert anything to/from Apple format (remind me again why Microsoft is big brother and somehow Apple is anti-establishment?). dBpoweramp is fast, flexible and free. It also has some small addons (Power Pack) that you can buy. I've used just about everything for converting, including Adobe Audition, and dbpoweramp has the right combination of ease, price and results.


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## Kevin Lewis

*Conversion tools*

Rich,

I have used Audacity to convert and do some editing on files. It is freeware. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

For free it does a pretty good job.


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## Semper Fidelis

fredtgreco said:


> Rich,
> 
> The 32kbps version is up as well here. I think it sounds fine, and is only 18.5MB (that is about right for the length of the audio. My personal opinion is that streaming is a waste of time - no one I know sits at their PC to listen unless they have no choice. With podcasts, MP3 players, etc., fast downloads are the way to go.
> 
> I use dBpoweramp. I like it a lot. You can download and install all kinds of codecs, even one to convert from Realaudio. The hardest thing to do (surprise! can you say proprietary?) is to convert anything to/from Apple format (remind me again why Microsoft is big brother and somehow Apple is anti-establishment?). dBpoweramp is fast, flexible and free. It also has some small addons (Power Pack) that you can buy. I've used just about everything for converting, including Adobe Audition, and dbpoweramp has the right combination of ease, price and results.



Cool! Thanks. It's always good to have a fellow techie who's looked into some things.

Good point about streaming but, you're right, it needs to be much smaller!

Blessings,

Rich


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## fredtgreco

SemperFideles said:


> Cool! Thanks. It's always good to have a fellow techie who's looked into some things.
> 
> Good point about streaming but, you're right, it needs to be much smaller!
> 
> Blessings,
> 
> Rich



A suggestion: if you go below 32kbps 22kHz mono (which is about 10MB per 45 minutes of audio), I have found you start to get "tin sounding" voices and warbling. I think there is a HUGE dropoff from 32kbps to 24kbps. (that is the main thing I don't like about sermonaudio) I would break the file up into multiple pieces (say three) and have part 1, 2 and 3, each being like 6MB.


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## Semper Fidelis

Wow that 32K version sounds really good! (Well as good as my voice can sound at least)


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## Semper Fidelis

OK. Thanks to Pastor Greco, the file is now 18 MB. Sorry to tax some of your measly internet connections. Not all of you have 100Mbps fiber connections in your home!


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## Chris

A few comments:

1) First and foremost, I learned a couple of things from it. Thanks for that. 

2) My personal opinion - worth only what it cost - is that with Romans 2 being one of the most universally condemning passages in Scripture, I would have approached it with a little less humor and caricaturization. It's a very, very serious passage. Of course, you know your audience, and I do not. 

3) Everyone stumbles at first. I can't count the times I've stood in front of a group and thought 'hey, dummy, you're butchering this'. Even polished teachers stumble and misspeak. Personally, I think you did great. (see point #1). 

4) I was surprised by the questions the class asked. The confusion of moral vs. ceremonial law was handled well. As for that bit about 'MY gospel', it just reminds me that on a mission field, people hear all sorts of crazy stuff and it's our job to cut through it. The same applies to the US mission field, too.  On a related note, your class is much more aggressive about asking questions than a similar class in Thailand would be. Slight differences in culture, I suppose. 

5) You brought up a point I struggle with - namely, how _American_ Christianity is not much of a testimony to the power of the Gospel when compared to buddhist social structure and morality. 

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Were I a member of your class, I'd come back next week.


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## Semper Fidelis

Thanks Chris.


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## jaybird0827

Heard it.


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## Semper Fidelis

Romans 3 teaching can be found here:
http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans3-20070324.m3u

I wish I wasn't so clumsy in my speaking at times an forgive the "OK's" and "You know". I tend to multipy those when I'm having difficulty with my words. Listening to myself afterward reminds me of some things I need to work on.


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## Semper Fidelis

Sonya and I listened to it this afternoon. I winced at the portion where I kept having to go back and correct myself but the men I'm teaching are really appreciative of it and I hope it edifies some of you .


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## Herald

> ...the men I'm teaching are really appreciative of it and I hope it edifies some of you .



Rich - this is the main thing. The more you listen to yourself, the more you will improve on your delivery. But it seems as though the message is getting out and building up the saints. May the Lord continue to use you in proclaiming His word. Stay humble and stay bold.


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## Semper Fidelis

I taught on Romans 4 yesterday. 

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans4-20070414.m3u

I'm frustrated because sometimes I can speak very seamlessly but knowing that I'm being recorded is throwing me off a bit. I also think I'm a bit more careful about not wanting to teach error in the Book of Romans. I listened to myself yesterday, and though rough at spots, I think I captured the main points. Listening to my teaching is instructive because I tend to stop sentences mid-stream as I catch a thought. I need to stop doing that when I teach and slow down. I'm surprised that people don't get more confused but I think I make up for it by reiterating things so much.


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## Semper Fidelis

I taught on Romans 5 today:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans5-20070428.m3u

The teaching flowed much more freely today. I've decided to work less from the notes I'm preparing myself with and the results are much better.

Hope you're edified.


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## Herald

Rich - I'm going to be preaching on Romans during the summer (nine messages). I can appreciate your studies. May God continue to bless your time in His word and those who listen to your teaching.


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## Semper Fidelis

I covered Romans 6 today:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans6-20070512.m3u

Wow, what a comfort Romans is when you really start to unpack it! This morning before I woke up I reminded myself: You are not a slave to sin but a slave to Christ.


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## Semper Fidelis

Romans 7 was covered on Saturday, 26 May:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans7-20070526.m3u


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## etexas

I need to give it a listen!


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## Semper Fidelis

Romans 8:1-17 taught and uploaded:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans8pt1-20070609.m3u

Reminder that you can subscribe to the podcast here:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching.html


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## Semper Fidelis

Taught on Romans 8:18-39 this AM:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans8pt2-20070623.m3u

How Providential that I should be teaching about how God works all things together for the good for those who love Him; for those called according to His purpose.

My recent struggles underlined today's teaching in a very profound way for me today. If it sounds like I'm passionate about the Gospel in this teaching then I think you're understanding me properly.


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## Semper Fidelis

Taught on Romans 9 this AM:

http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans9-20070811.m3u


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## Semper Fidelis

Taught on Romans 10 yesterday:

Listen: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans10-20070825.m3u
Download: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans10-20070825.mp3


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## Semper Fidelis

Taught on Romans 11 on Saturday:

Listen: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans11-20070908.m3u
Download: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans11-20070908.mp3


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## Semper Fidelis

Taught on Romans 12 on September 29th:

Listen: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans12-20070929.m3u
Download: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans12-20070929.mp3

Taught on Romans 13 today. It was actually very comforting to my soul in light of everything going on:

Listen: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans13-20071110.m3u
Download: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans13-20071110.mp3


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## Semper Fidelis

Taught on Romans 14:1 through 15:13 yesterday:

Listen: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans14-15-20071124.m3u
Download: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans14-15-20071124.mp3


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## Semper Fidelis

Romans 15:14 through Romans 16:27.

Listen: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans15-16-20071208.m3u
Download: http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching/Romans/Romans15-16-20071208.mp3

Fin!

The entire Series can be viewed here:

» Romans Central Baptist Church, Okinawa, Japan: Spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Okinawa


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