I mentioned the interview on Facebook and a friend commented about her own personal “Grammar Girl” in high school. I too had my own Grammar Girl in college.

English never was one of my strong subjects (come to think of it, I don’t know that I had any except skipping classes). I guess I speak English well on a basic level, but knowing the rules and making the right choices on tests always eluded me. High school English did not go well and neither did college.

Since then I have had good friends who have helped me clean up several usage errors. Learning a foreign language has been a huge benefit too. However, before I got to the point of getting help I had to take freshman English in college. Mrs. B was my tormentor teacher.

I sat on the last row to the teacher’s left. We were in alphabetical order and Penny O sat in front of me. Mrs. B allowed us to grade each other’s quizzes. We were welcome to trade papers with anyone around us. I found a sympathetic soul in Penny, so always chose to trade papers with her. I never remember Penny ever making a mistake on her quizzes. However, she almost ran out of ink each time she had to correct mine.

The fact that she never missed a question impressed me enough to soften the blow of how much work she had to do to grade my quizzes. She would turn around with a very sympathetic look on her face as if to say “Oh, you poor boy.”

Maybe I am the reason Penny became an English teacher. Perhaps she couldn’t stand the thought that there were other people in the world like me.

Brad Rhoads is a computer programmer who is using his skills as a missionary for Mission Aviation Fellowship. MAF is most known for their program of delivering missionaries and supplies to remote locations. However, Brad works in a division where they deliver Bible training into either closed countries or locations where pastors and Christians don’t have access to Bible schools.

The shows I checked out were listed as “religious.” Other than knowing their name and that they should be religious in some way, I knew nothing about the shows. Some I did not even go to because their name told me that I would not be interested (that’s a good thing) or I couldn’t figure out what the show might be about based on their name (that’s a bad thing). As far as a name goes, I think Missionary Talks is a good name for a show. It does not tell you exactly what the show is about, but I think most could figure out that it has something to do with missionaries and that it is conversational or instructional rather than musical.

When I arrived at the websites of the shows that passed the first test I had trouble finding information immediately on the front page that tells about the show. Most had the standard blog post with a few words about the episode and an audio link. But I still had trouble figuring out from the episode posts what the general tone of the podcast was. I did not do this for all the shows, but even clicking through to the standard “about” page left me puzzled about the content of some of them. Is the masthead explanation of Missionary Talks sufficient? Or do I need a little blurb at the top of the sidebar that gives a bit more detail?

None of the sites I looked at gave me any indication as to how long each episode was. I know we, as podcasters, are not bound by a time limit (though I think each one should have a goal), but I could get no feel for how long any of the episodes were without either downloading an episode or starting to play the episode from the website. (This was not always available, nor was the information about episode length always listed on the embedded player.) At Missionary Talks I have the show length stated at the bottom of each post. Does anyone but me care about episode length?

I am curious to get feedback on the impression you get when you go to the Missionary Talks website. I am looking at refreshing the site with some new graphics and maybe a color scheme change. While doing all this I want to make any informational changes that will help potential new listeners become immediately comfortable with navigating the site. Any input is helpful. What bugs you about Missionary Talk? What do you love about it that you think shouldn’t change?

By the way, I didn’t subscribe to any of the podcasts I went to look at. I guess I was too depressed by what I found.

I have heard a few times at that site something that sounded funny to me. Since then I have also noticed a couple of podcasts I listen to make, what seems to me, the same mistake. They talk about “the podcast” when referring to the individual episode. For example one that I heard today was talking about the particular episode (not the series) and said “here we are at the end of an eclectic podcast.”

To my thinking the podcast is the complete package. You wouldn’t refer to one episode of a TV show as the “series”; it would simply be an episode of that series. It sounds odd to call an individual episode a podcast.

What do you think?

One of the questions that I always hope to see on these surveys, but rarely do has to do with preferred episode length. This survey covered it, though not with as much granularity as I would like. My choices were “less than 10 minutes”, “between 10 and 30 minutes”, and a couple other choices. I think anything less than 20 minutes is perfect. If it takes you 20 minutes to say what you need to say, then make the show that long. If you can say it in 2, then 2 minutes is a perfect length.

I would rather have a podcast come out multiple times a week with 2 hours of content broken into 20 minute chunks than to have any 1 episode be longer than 30 minutes. Leo over at TWiT used to have several shows that he tried to keep to 30 minutes or less. There were some that were allowed to be up to an hour in the early days. Now it seems like he has a goal to make some shows 2 hours. Of course his ads can take 20 minutes to get through.

Grammar Girl, you are my hero in the podcast length department. I just wished the advertisements weren’t 1/4 the show length. You run a great network.

The hard part about this survey were the questions about “your favorite podcast.” I listen to a lot of podcasts that I love. I keep going through my list and trying to cut back to just my favorite ones. That list is still well over 50 podcasts. I decided that for this survey I would answer all the questions in relation to Buzz Out Loud which is arguably one of my favorite podcasts but also one I love to hate.

I have listened to almost every episode of Buzz Out Loud since March 2006. Here are my thoughts to Molly and Jason going forward (Tom is cutting back to part time and will soon be gone).

Can’t you guys get back to the good old days when the shows were chock-full of tech news and lasted only 15 minutes? Now you have 4 tech stories and then rant about how it effects your online game play and who you will vote for in the next election. You also somehow can’t keep your shows under 35 minutes any more. I don’t mind commentary, but you guys irritate me. Yet, somehow I still managed to choose you as the one I called my favorite in my survey answers.

*sigh*

I took a happy survey story and turned it into a Molly Rant.

I found Travis’ name and looked up his website. Come to find out, while I did not know him personally, it seems that we had a lot of mutual friends in the ministry. I sent him a quick email and he replied positively about doing an interview. When we got on Skype together I asked him what he knew about Missionary Talks. Turns out he had never even heard of Missionary Talks previous to my email. That is not unusual for the missionaries I interview, but the fact that he was gung-ho about doing the interview with me made me think he probably was a listener.

We are in the middle of trying to get ready for our move to Argentina while also being involved in a pastor’s conference this week, traveling to a church in Kentucky this weekend and spending most of next week in a mission’s conference in Tennessee. I am trying to do anything I can to distract me from the fact that I should be packing for a major move in 13 days. So, I spent all morning yesterday recording an interview and editing it. Seemed like the responsible thing to do.

As an added bonus to this episode, if you go to the Missionary Talks fan page on Facebook you can listen to a clip of the interview that did not survive the editing process, but was a very interesting section of our conversation. Don’t forget to become a fan if you go there.

Yes, the above linked Twitter account is the account where I say more mature type things as opposed to my other Twitter account which is the real me.

Through email earlier this week we worked out the details for me to call him and record the interview. We were both very surprised when I went to pick up my son from youth meeting on Wednesday and saw Andy standing at the front of the church. Neither one of us had a clue that the other was in town. We enjoyed catching up and sharing some of our conversation with the listeners.

The next episode I put out I hope will be one of the new Missionary Chats formatted show. I will try to alternate these as much as I can, but there may be more Talks than Chats at times, or vice versa.

There are a few podcasts that I listen to listed there, but there are several other good podcasts that should be there. I should compile a list and contact my podcasting friends to get their shows listed there and help grow the community. The site is fairly new and needs help getting some momentum pushing them the right way.

The reason for doing a video version is that many of our friends are Deaf. This would allow them to get content in their language while still making it accessible for the hearing. Meaning that I would both sign and speak each one of the updates.

I don’t plan on this being a traditional podcast in that I will provide content that the general public might want to consume. Rather it will be simple, short updates about what is going on with us.

What do you think? I know that those who pray for us would like more regular content so that they know how better to pray. Is this the best way to deliver that content? I have intentionally avoided using my prayer letter mailing list as an “update” medium. I would rather those who are more connected with us go to the website and get that additional information. Do you agree?

**What is meant by “podcast”? This is a format for providing content that the “subscriber” can receive automatically via software that grabs the new information when it is available. All the content will be available at the website to view on-line, but by making it a podcast that simply means that the user could go to one piece of software to consume all the content, i.e., iTunes.

The interview with Mark Coleman is an interview with a friend. I have known Mark for several years. I was pleased to spend time with him in his church recently and find out a bit more about how he got involved with Deaf ministry. Mark and I started learning sign language about the same time; 20 years ago. I think you will enjoy hearing him talk about how the Lord led him into working with the Deaf.

Getting interviews has been a bit more difficult than I expected while we have been home. It seems that it is easier to do a phone interview than a face to face one. Until recently, I have not had the ability to do phone interviews because my equipment was not set up in our transitional housing. However, I found a new solution for doing an interview via phone. This should allow me to get more interviews up in the next few weeks as we prepare to move to Argentina. Though the move will complicate any kind of schedule I have for a while.

I have another interview recorded that I am working on editing. Some are easy to edit, and others are not. The one with Mark was easy, and therefore was put up within a few days of recording. The other one I have had for 3 weeks and have worked on it a bit at a time, but I still have several more hours of editing to go on that one.

A new idea has been rolling around in my head for Missionary Talks too. I may change up the format a bit. I will still keep the missionary interviews as they currently are, but may add another type of conversation/interview into the mix that will have me talking regularly with some of the missionaries I have already interviewed once. I will keep you posted on what I decide to do.

While this is not an actual application of GTD to running a church or ministry, it does track heavily with what David Allen teaches.

The thing that I find most difficult to manage in my ministry is “crisis management.” Both Allen and Chappell talk about how that we sometimes get sucked into the trap of managing what is urgent and not what is important. I sometimes allow other peoples’ crisis become my top priority and neglect what I should be doing.

This installment of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast was a practical application of how to define planning based on the roles being played.

Here is my list of excuses:

• I have been traveling and had to dump my recordings to a different computer. That computer got unplugged when we moved (hours before we left on this last trip). I was not able to access my previously recorded interviews.
• Then we were in several great meetings, but none of them were mission conferences. I had no missionaries to interview.
• To make matters worse, I can’t do phone interviews on the road. I don’t carry the equipment I need with me for that.

So there you have it, my list of excuses as to why this has been so long in coming. I will get an interview out soon. We will be traveling again over the next month, but traveling does not keep me from working on interviews. It is the fact that I had none to work on that kept me from getting them up.

In this listener feedback episode I talk about what is going on in my life, what the future holds for Missionary Talks and give a big thank you to the listeners. While one listener stepped forward with a very generous monetary gift, I know that other listeners value the content of Missionary Talks. For that, I say thank you.

At the end of the episode I share some audio from a recent interview. Missionary James Menkhoff shares a story about how God used him to speak a word of encouragment to a pastor who later became a missionary in Africa.

Missionary Talks episode 65 was a conversation I had with Jonathan Reed. Jonathan and his wife are going to a remote area in northern Brazil to work with an indigenous tribe on the Amazon River. They will be leaving in April and are excited about the ministry the Lord has led them into.

Episode 66 is an interview with Bob Ingram who works with soldiers at Ft. Benning, GA. Bob does a great job in describing what he and his wife try to accomplish with these men in the short time they are able to minister to them. He also talks about what we can do to help his ministry or other serviceman’s centers around the country.

I was able to interview both these men at a conference I was at a few weeks ago.

This interview was recorded during a rain storm. Since we were recording in my car, we got quite a bit of noise from the droplets. I was able to keep the rain noise out of the recording for the most part. But when I ran it through Levelator (which I try to avoid when possible) the rain showed up in a bad way. I manually leveled the audio and came out with a pretty good recording. But there was quite a bit of inequity in the volume between us. I think it came out pretty good in the end.

I already have 3 more interviews recorded from a mission conference this last week. I should be able to release them fairly regularly over the next few weeks.