Part of the Glue

It used to be that everyone got their news from the morning newspaper.  Then came tv and the internet.  Now the chance that you heard the latest headline is from a twitter post or news article mentioned on facebook.  Today more than ever we get our news and information from a wide array of sources and more often it comes from someone we know.

When it comes to communicating news and information to teenagers, we can’t expect to send home a monthly newsletter and that be sustainable.  It’s almost like we have to sometimes use every communication device possible in hopes that the shotgun will hit something.  Below are some ideas and thoughts to communicating to your group.

1. announce it on the website
2. announce it at a large meeting through slide/person
3. create a video announcement for a service
4. twitter about it
5. send a facebook update through your fan page
6. send out a mass parent email newsletter
7. mail out a postcard
8. send out a mass text
9. word of mouth. word of mouth. word of mouth
10. did we mention word of mouth

We just finished a week long local mission trip for our youth ministry called Lead 222 Servant Leadership and one of the things we did this year for it was blog daily on our website.  Doing this helped parents, other students and anyone else who was interested in the progress of the trip see how we were doing.  We posted pictures, videos and wrote about certain experiences.  The hardest part about doing something like this is being disciplined and proactive to update everyday. Because we use drupal as the content management system on our website, setting up the blog was relatively easy.  If you don’t have a blog on your website or don’t have a website you can always get a free blog from wordpress or other blogging sites.  I personally would consider buying a domain name that offers wordpress hosting through the hosting provider.  It really doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to update everyday and doing this really reasures parents that their kids are having a solid time and can get a glimpse of what they are experiencing. After doing this blog we plan to do the same thing with our camp and other events coming up so that we can better tell the story of our ministry.

Tuggle, a youth ministry management web based software now allows for paypal integration.  Tuggle boasts that they’ve created a management tool that is so fun to use, people often mistake it for one of those wildly popular social networks. Before tuggle’s system had sign ups but no way to collect payment.  Now with the simple paypal integration ministries/organizations and schools can connect their accounts to this system and allow their members to pay right there and then.

Below are some screenshots of these new features.

Social Networks have been around in popularity since rougly 2002.  First myspace was the craze then facebook and now twitter.   There are definately pros and cons to using social networks and services like twitter, however the question we must ask ourselves is which one to use as a youth group hub.  I honestly think that youth groups should use all three.  Consider using myspace to connect with middle school students, facebook to connect with high school students and twitter to connect with leaders and parents.  There may be some overlap here and there, but choosing only one network may limit your ability to broadcast to a wider audience.

Recently I noticed we didn’t have a myspace page for our youth group and I didn’t have time to create one.  A girl in our media team enjoyed designing myspace layouts and volunteered to head up our youth group myspace page.  Doing this allowed her to take ownership and feel a part of our team and allow me the freedom to not have to worry about updating a third social network.

Consider finding a couple students or adults who are very social media savvy and ask them to help maintain and update your twitter status, facebook fan page or myspace page.  Having multiple people do this will increase the chance that these networks will be more successful in broadcasting information and connecting students to your ministry.

Every year thousands of teenagers will embark on a camp with their youth group to some foreign land of “camp.”  Some will experience the beach, some the mountains and some like ours will experience one of the largest mud pits you have ever seen.  The question for many youth leaders and camp directors is how exactly they can bring camp home so parents can experience a certain part of what their students will experience during that week. Below are 7 ways you can bring camp home and let parents feel a part of what is going on.

1. live stream your services using ustream or mogulus.
2. twitter your camp #youthgroupcamp and tell students the hashtag to use when twittering
3. blog daily with pictures and articles for parents to see
4. setup computers with internet access for students to update their facebook and twitter profiles
5. have a parent day or night where parents are invited to attend a certain part of the service
6. consider coming back early and inviting all parents to attend the last session with their students at church
7. produce a highlight video of the week and show at a special post-camp service where parents are invited

1. Information, Information, Information….Use it as a free communication tool that can inform parents, leaders and students of upcoming information.
2. Assign several staff/volunteers to be mobile journalist and capture real-time certain events and programs your ministry does through twitpic and text.
3. Use the  #hashtag feature which will allow people in your ministry to see what is going on at #yourstudentministry when they search for it on twitter
4. Have your youth pastor/leaders twitter, which will humanize them and allow parents and students to see how they live their lives throughout the week.
5. Create a twitter account for your ministry and link it to your website….this will help to generate users.
6. Start conversations or ask questions that you want students in your ministry to be thinking about…perhaps something from a previous series).
7. Have an event like camp where you encourage students to sign up for twitter and twitter their experiences throughout the week using a special #phrase. Once setup you would post the tweets on a screen for everyone to see using a special program or website.

www.twitter.com to sign up

1. its free except for the webcam so you don’t have to rent buildings or provide food
2. students are already on the internet so why not capitalize there
3. students can focus easier since their friend is not right next to them hitting them with something
4. new tools such as tokbox, mogulus or ustream make it feasible and possible
5. it may help certain students who have a difficult time speaking in a group to participate easier through the chat box
6. because the internet is a mission field and youth groups are taking online mission trips
7. it provides another touch point in the middle of the week where students can connect with other believers and be equipped to live their faith out in their schools.
8. because its fun to ban students in the chat room when they start to gossip
9. because tony steward believes this is revolutionary

Our staff has been enamored by the common craft show for quite some time.  We decided to take this idea and create our own stop-motion video that would creatively engage our audience this past Sunday.

Friendlist from Sugar Creek on Vimeo.

Tonight I was fortunate enough to lead my first ever online bible study using tokbox.  The study was targeted towards teenagers in our youth group.  In total we had roughly 8 or 9 students attend the online meeting. The meeting went great and I’m pretty sure we’ll continue to meet.  Here are my notes from the meeting…

1. webcams aren’t for everyone – this technology may still be a ways down the road before it is something everyone owns and uses
2. being prepared is a must – leading a discussion can be intimidating without actual people there in the room so having good questions and material saved the meeting in my opinion
3. start earlier – we went from 9pm- 10pm next time I think we will aim for 8:30pm-9:30pm per their request
4. build community because an online bible study can feel impersonal I challenged our group to build community through using twitter, facebook and connecting with others throughout the week
5. takeaway I gave the challenge to most of the students in our group to write a story for the website

Idea:
About a month ago I had the opportunity to participate in some online training (thanks to Tony Steward) to prepare for an online bible study I will hopefully launch in about a week.  Using TokBox‘s video conferencing capabilities video conferencing has never been easier or cooler.  TokBox allows you to have multiple cameras on one screen (don’t forget the headphones).

The Plan:
As of present I am working on polishing off a series on philippians to go through with the group.   I find that personal insight from scripture often times carries over much better than pre-packaged curriculum you get in the stores.  As far as advertising I am going to create a facebook group and then send out invites to everyone on our facebook fan page in our youth ministry. I also might do some print advertising, however my thought is that the tech savvy kids are probably going to be the one’s interested anyways.  We are going to meet every Wednesday night from 9pm-10pm starting the first week of school online.  When we start the sessions my hope is to spend some time in prayer, general discussion, bible study and then really challenge everyone to live their faith out practically throughout the week with a takeaway.  The hope is that at the end of the first 6 weeks in the study some of the people in the online group will be able to start their own studies with their own friends.

The Need:
The more I think about this idea and this plan, the more I feel that this ought to be a strategy that every youth ministry in the world should use for the cause of Christ.  While I’m not arguing that we should move everything online and avoid personal relationships because I’m not. I’m arguing that we ought to be using the tools God has given us to reach a people that that may be connected online but not to Christ.

sidenote: let me know if you are interested in being apart of the study even if you are just curious of how to lead one