Freebie Friday – Audacity

A huge obstacle that is often faced in rural ministry is the lack of funds to buy tools and resources.  To help combat this problem the Rural Ministry Blog has Freebie Friday!  Every Friday we will take a look at a free, or nearly free, resource that could benefit anyone involved with rural ministry.

Today’s freebie is Audacity.  Audacity is a multi-track,  open source audio editor that is surprisingly feature rich and very easy to use.  Audacity allows you to record live audio, record audio from the Internet, edit the most popular audio formats (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV or AIFF), and cut, copy, and splice sounds together.  It even has a feature that will allow you to change the speed and pitch of an audio file!

I use Audacity quite frequently to edit my sermons (taking out long stretches of silence, editing out coughs & sneezes, etc.) as well as changing the pitch on accompaniment tracks.  I’ve even used it to record and edit ads that my church put on a local radio station and was able to easily mix voice, sound effects, and background music.  If you’ve ever had the need to edit audio you will not regret giving Audacity a try!  Audacity is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

You can downloads Audacity by clicking here.  Please note that there are two different links for Windows – one for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and another for Windows Vista/Windows 7.  the Windows Vista/Windows 7 version is still in Beta, but I’ve used it extensively and have had no issues at all.

Disclosure: Neither the Rural Ministry Blog or Harry Colegrove benefit in any way from this product recommendation

Lessons from JoePa

I’m sure that all of you who are college football fans, and many of you who are not, have heard about the death this last weekend of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno, affectionately called JoePa, was truly a living legend. JoePa was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions for 46 years, held the record for the most wins by any NCAA division one football coach, and is the only division one coach to have over 400 victories. JoePa lead the Nittany Lions in five undefeated seasons, and in 2007 was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In addition to these accomplishments JoePa was well known for his emphasis on high moral conduct among his players, as well as encouraging their academic success. JoePa was also well loved off the football field and held in very high regard in his community.

There is no doubt in my mind that JoePa was one of the greatest football coaches that ever lived. Yet despite all of his success on and off the field, there will always be a shadow hanging over his name. In November of 2011, JoePa’s longtime assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was arrested on allegations of child sex abuse. As the story unfolded, we discovered that JoePa was made aware of these allegations. According to reports, JoePa passed the information along to two university officials and then did nothing more concerning the situation. The report was apparently swept under the rug. After these details came to light, Penn State University fired JoePa for his inaction. No matter how many great things JoePa did, his name will forever be remembered as the man who only did the “minimum.” The allegations against Jerry Sandusky were not fully exposed and addressed as they should have been.

The point that I’m trying to make is that all the great things accomplished by JoePa were dwarfed by one poor decision.

This makes me think of a quote that I heard several years ago, “it can take years to build a good reputation, and only one poor decision to ruin it.” This principle is greatly magnified in the world of Rural Ministry. In urban areas, it’s much easier to remain anonymous, and poor decisions can often times be easily hidden. In contrast, when you live in the sticks everyone knows everybody. In addition to everyone knowing everybody, they also tend to know everybody’s business. As I said in my first Rural Ministry blog post, “You know you’re in a rural church if there is no such thing as a secret sin.” I meant it as a joke, but there is a lot of truth in the statement as well.

As rural ministers, we need to make sure that we do everything we can to maintain a good reputation. This doesn’t mean that we need to be perfect, but we do need to be cautious. We need to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be put in potentially compromising situations. We need to conduct ourselves in ways that honor God and show His love to others. We need to be honest in our dealings, and transparent in our lives. We need to live our lives as if there was no such thing as a secret. And, if we ever find ourselves in a situation like JoePa, we need to make sure that we do everything within our power to protect the innocent.

What are some ways that we can make sure we maintain a good reputation? If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation like Joe Paterno, how did it make you feel? Leave a comment below.

Rural Resource – Simon Sinek: Start With Why

After a long hiatus the Rural Ministry Blog is back!

Each Monday on the Rural Ministry Blog I post a book review, article link, website link, video, or any other type of resource that I think would be of interest to the Rural Ministry community.

Today’s Rural Resource is a video that I recently discovered on TED.  In the video, speaker Simon Sinek draws a very interesting conclusion: people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.  Although this video is directed at the corporate world I think the parallels to the world of Rural Ministry are very obvious.

Here’s the link to the video:

Simon Sinek: Start With Why

When I first asked myself the question of why my church does what it does the obvious answer was, of course, to fulfill the great commission.  This should be the primary reason any church exists.  Even though that’s the ultimate goal and primary purpose, I’m not sure that telling people “we’re here to save your soul” is the most effective way of getting them interested in the things of God. I think we need to also communicate other reasons for why we do what we do.  Do we have a passion for our communities?  Do we have a burning desire to provide for the poor?  Do we get excited about building healthy families?  Whatever these other reasons are, we need to find ways to effectively communicate them to our communities.

What was your initial reaction to the video? How can we relate the ideas presented by Simon to our ministries?  Why does your church do what it does?  Leave a comment below.

Reactive or Proactive?

I am convinced that one of the things that separates the great from the mediocre is in how they manage their time.  I can honestly say that this is an area of my life that does not come naturally to me.  By nature I am a very impulsive, free spirited type of individual.  In many ways this has been a great strength to me, but it has caused some struggles in the area of time management.  Years ago I discovered that there are basically two ways that we can live our lives: reactively or proactively.

When I live reactively, I live moment to moment with little thought for what’s coming up.  I am reacting to everything that happens around me, allowing the urgency of the situation to dictate the importance of what is happening.  I can tell you from experience that living reactively is not very effective.  When I live in reactive mode, I am always busy, but not necessarily accomplishing much of anything.

When I live proactively, I do my best to anticipate what’s coming.  I plan ahead and structure my time so that the urgency of the moment does not replace the things that are truly important.  Living proactively also means that I must take the time to identify and mitigate possible problems before they happen.  This can allow me to sometimes avoid the problems altogether, or at minimum it gives me time to think about a proper response.  When I live proactively, I am able to accomplish far more in the same amount of time.

Because of my personality type, living proactively can be a challenge sometimes.  My impulsive and free spirited nature begs to be allowed to live reactively.  When I spoke to my life coach about this, he helped me to realize that I cannot fight against who I fundamentally am – since I am fundamentally a free spirit I need to be, for a lack of a better term, proactive about my reactiveness.  Here’s what I finally came up with that works wonderfully for me.  I started with the concept of time blocking and made sure that I included time every day to be reactive.  About half of my day is structured and proactive, while the other half is left open for me to be my normal, reactive self.  When I follow this plan, I am amazed at how effective I can be.

What do you do to insure that you are being proactive rather than reactive?  Leave a comment below.

Freebie Friday – More free graphics!

A huge obstacle that is often faced in rural ministry is the lack of funds to buy tools and resources.  To help combat this problem the Rural Ministry Blog has Freebie Friday!  Every Friday we will take a look at a free resource that could benefit anyone involved with rural ministry.

As a weekly user of PowerPoint I am constantly on the lookout for royalty free images that I can use.  Vintagechurch.cc is a site that I recently ran across with loads of very high quality free graphics ready to use.  Some of the images are even available in layered Photoshop format for complete customization.  All the resources on Vintagechurch.cc are available for free, provided that you are a non-profit ministry or church whose primary mission is spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can visit Vintagechurch.cc by clicking here

Disclosure: Neither the Rural Ministry Blog or Harry Colegrove benefit in any way from this product review

Setting Priorities

Setting priorities can be a tough thing to do, especially for those of us involved in rural ministry. There are always tons of things that need our attention – usually far more than we can ever get done. How can we make sure that we keep our priorities straight?

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about setting priorities came from H.B. London. He said “there are only two things that last forever: the Word of God and the souls of men.” The first time I heard this I sat back and thought about my typical day to day activities and realized how much time I spend on things that are “wood, hay, and stubble” (1 Corinthians 3:10-15) – i.e. things that really won’t matter in light of eternity. Many of these things are unavoidable, and very necessary in the daily running of a church, however way too often these things fill up our task lists until there is little time left for what really matters.

So how do we keep a balance? How do we make sure that our priorities get the attention that they deserve? It all basically boils down to having good time management skills. When we practice good time management, our priorities fall into line fairly easily. So the next obvious question is how do we effectively manage our time? That’s not an easy question to answer. Different tools and systems work better for different people. Over the course of the next few Wednesdays I will be writing about the specific things that have helped me manage my time. In the meantime you can check out two previous blog posts, The Law of the Vacuum and Too Busy to Matter for some practical tips and encouragement.

How about you – have you ever struggled in keeping your priorities straight? How have you overcome this struggle? Leave a comment below.

Rural Resource – Marriage part 2

Each Monday on the Rural Ministry Blog I post a book review, article link, website link, or any other type resource that I think would be of interest to the Rural Ministry community.

Today I want to continue last weeks topic of marriage resources.  In fact, today’s resource is, in my opinion, one of the greatest tools a pastor could have in his arsenal of marriage counseling resources – the Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage DVD series by Pastor Mark Gungor.  I can honestly say that this DVD series changed the way that I approached marriage counseling and increased my effectiveness tremendously.

Pastor Gungor very humorously and effectively deals with some of marriages biggest issues and goes into great detail on the differences in how men’s brains and women’s brains are wired.  He also does a fantastic job dealing with topics like communication & sex, all in a very humorous and entertaining fashion.  I could go on and on touting the benefits of this DVD series but I think the best way for you to find out how great it is would be to watch a clip that I found on YouTube about the whole “Men’s Brains/Women’s Brains” issue.

 

The Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage DVD costs $59.99 and in my opinion is worth every penny.  You can purchase it by clicking here (uncompensated link)

There are other marriage resources by Pastor mark Gungor that I will be writing about in the future.  If you are aware of any resources, marriage or otherwise, that would be of interest to the Rural Ministry Blog community please let me know!

Disclaimer: The books and articles mentioned on the Rural Ministry Blog are things that I feel contain content relevant to the Rural Ministry community.  This does not necessarily mean that I fully embrace or support everything that the author embraces or supports.  For more information on this topic please read this Rural Ministry blog post – Eat the Meat and Spit Out the Bones

Freebie Friday – Video Conversion Software

A huge obstacle that is often faced in rural ministry is the lack of funds to buy tools and resources.  To help combat this problem the Rural Ministry Blog has Freebie Friday!  Every Friday we will take a look at a free resource that could benefit anyone involved with rural ministry.

In last week’s Freebie Friday post I talked about how you can download free video clips from the Vimeo website.  Unfortunately, many of these clips are in formats that do not work real well with PowerPoint – i.e. mp4, FLV, Quicktime, etc.  To combat this problem I use a free video conversion tool called Any Video Converter.

Any Video Converter, like its name implies, will allow you to convert virtually any video clip to another video format.  It also contains some basic editing tools, which I have not used.  The user interface is very simple and the program works pretty quickly.  I would highly recommend it for any of your video conversion needs

You can download Any Video Converter for free by clicking here.

Disclosure: Neither the Rural Ministry Blog or Harry Colegrove benefit in any way from this product review

Efficient vs. Effective

Prior to entering the ministry full time I worked in the computer industry.  I remember one meeting about 12 years ago in which my boss spent a significant amount of time explaining the difference between two words – efficient and effective.  I can honestly say that that meeting was a life changing moment for me.

Here’s the difference: Efficient means “doing things right” while effective means “doing the right things.”  Although initially that could sound like the same thing, it most certainly is not.  Here’s how it was explained to me – Imagine that you’re in a boat on a lake and the boat starts leaking.  If you’re efficient, you might grab a bucket and start bailing water.  In fact, you could get a whole team of people with special, ergonomically designed buckets that are all very efficiently bailing water on the boat.  With the right kind of training and leadership they could easily be the most efficient water bailers on the planet.  While all this efficiency is going on, an effective person would just plug the hole in the boat.  Bailing water is okay, but plugging the hole is smarter.

You can be very efficient without being effective.  I think that one of the reasons we are seeing so many rural churches in decline is because they are not being effective.  They can be very efficient at what they do without being effective at all.  How can we make sure that we are being effective?  Here are some suggestions:

1) Pray.  I know that this may seem trite, but the fact of the matter is that God still communicates to His people today.  He wants our churches to be very effective in reaching the lost.  We all know James 1:5, putting it into practice is the biggest step towards being an effective church

2) Never say “we’ve always done it this way.”  If you keep doing what you’ve always done you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.  The message of the Gospel never changes, but the methods we use to proclaim that message must change.

3) Be careful when reading books and attending seminars.  Don’t get me wrong, I love books and seminars, but the temptation for many is to think that if they just did everything the author or speaker did, then they will get the same results.  The bottom line is that what works in one community does not necessarily work in another.  We should glean the best ideas and adapt them to our community

4) Don’t be afraid of failure.  If you try something and it doesn’t work, then stop doing it and try something else.  If you don’t make the attempt, you’ll never know how effective it will be.

Can you think of anything else we can do to insure we are being as effective as possible?  What is currently working in your community? Leave a comment below

Rural Resource – Marriage part 1

I do an extensive amount of reading and often come across very interesting books, articles, blog posts, etc. Each Monday I will be posting a book review or article link that I think would be of interest to the Rural Ministry community.

When I became a pastor I was expecting to preach and teach and felt that I was pretty well prepared to do it. What surprised me was how much counseling I found myself doing. In a rural setting there are not many licensed counselors so the natural reaction of many people is to go to their pastor any time there are problems in their life, family, or marriage. I don’t know about you, but I found myself pretty unprepared for a lot of the counseling that I was being asked to do. I started reading books, listening to teaching tapes, and asking the advice of several people experienced in this area. Through this time of learning I ran across several very good resources. What I want to do over the next few Mondays is share some of the best resources on marriage and relationship counseling that I have discovered.

Today’s resource has been out for some time and is one that I’m sure many of you already have in your library – a book by Dr. Gary Chapman called The Five Love Languages. In my opinion this book is a must read for all pastors. I can honestly say that the concepts in this book radically changed my relationship with my wife and transformed our marriage from a good one to a great one!

The basic concept in the book is that people express and receive love in different ways. Just like there are different spoken languages in the world, there are different “love languages” as well. One of the keys to a great marriage is discovering your spouse’s “love language” and speaking it to them often. Dr. Chapman goes through these different love languages in detail and helps you discover your own love language as well as the love language of your spouse.

The Five Love Languages is available in printed format as well as for the Kindle. You can purchase the book by clicking here

Disclaimer: The books and articles mentioned on the Rural Ministry Blog are things that I feel contain content relevant to the Rural Ministry community.  This does not necessarily mean that I fully embrace or support everything that the author embraces or supports.  For more information on this topic please read this Rural Ministry blog post – Eat the Meat and Spit Out the Bones