🔥Youth Ministry Planning: Weekend Service vs. Midweek Program

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DESCRIPTION
🤔 What is the best day to meet with our youth group students
🖐️I’m ranking my top 5 curriculum resources
⚙️Finally, I’m going to share my top 3 interactive, and creative programming hacks
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📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/088

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/TTQXsananwI

BEST TIME TO MEET?
//SPORTS & EXTRA CURRICULARS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/087

TEACHING
//STUDENTS WANT OWNERSHIP & BELONGING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqOPjD5hN-g

//HYBRID STRATEGY
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

//OPUS.PRO
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

1) CO-LEADER
https://www.coleader.co/pricing

2) YM360
https://youthministry360.com/collections/sermon-series

3) GROW CURRICULUM
https://growcurriculum.org/

4) XP3
https://store.thinkorange.com/collections/xp3-license-category

5) DYM LIBRARY
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com

//MEMBERSHIP PRICING
https://www.dymmembership.com/pricing

3 PROGRAMMING HACKS
//USE SIDEKICK FOR INTERACTION!
https://www.sidekick.tv/

👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry
Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

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🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
📅 "The Full Hybrid Ministry Strategy"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

📨 Full Proof Recruiting Email
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🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut

😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis

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🛠️TOOLS
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products

//BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

AUTO POD
https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv

TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Programming Your Youth Service
00:54 The Pros and Cons of different Youth Group Meeting Days and Times
05:04 Three Questions to Ask when deciding when to meet for Youth Group
07:51 The Top 5 Youth Ministry Curriculum Resource Sites
13:44 3 Creative Youth Group Programming Hacks

TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;20;40
Nick Clason
Last summer I had a leader say I thought that was a stupid idea. However, I later realized how genius it really was. What was it? I want you to stick around to the end, because this is actually one of my favorite youth group programing hacks. In addition to that, we're going to be talking about selecting the optimal youth.

00;00;20;40 - 00;00;44;48
Nick Clason
Time for you, your church and your youth group is at Wednesday night. Is it Sunday Night? Is it Sunday morning? Subscribe. If it's Wednesday night for you. Like if it's Sunday night and hey, hit the bell. If you have to be at your church on Sunday morning, I think that pretty much covers all of us. I also want to rank my top five five youth group curriculum providers and resources links down below in the show notes.

00;00;44;50 - 00;01;10;49
Nick Clason
And finally, I'm going to share with you my three favorite creative and potentially hybrid creative programing hacks. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show and the best time to meet. Like I remember when I started as a youth pastor, I was working at a church and I was inheriting a youth ministry that was run by volunteers. And so high school was on Tuesday night, middle school was on Wednesday night.

00;01;10;49 - 00;01;31;23
Nick Clason
And I met with my pastor early on, like my very first week on the job. And he told me, he said, Hey, listen, you can do whatever you want, which is an absolute dream for a youth pastor. But as a young youth pastor, the decision was actually agonizing. Do I meet Wednesday night? Do I keep meeting Tuesday night, which is when the high school are meeting?

00;01;31;23 - 00;01;53;35
Nick Clason
Do I switch to like a Sunday night vibe? And so Wednesday night, Sunday night, Sunday morning, like and I did have a Sunday morning component and so like you have to, you know, kind of navigate and know like what is going on within your church. But I had an advantage at that church because the youth ministry pretty much ran the place during midweek.

00;01;53;49 - 00;02;21;05
Nick Clason
There was no midweek kids, kids ministry programing. Kids ministry did AWANA on Sunday night at like 4:15 or something. And it was kind of an odd time, which I did end up way down the road years later, jump into Sunday night. But early on I made a decision to just stick with Wednesday. So let's chat through the pros and cons of Wednesday night, Sunday night and Sunday morning, and then maybe another day of the week in there for you.

00;02;21;10 - 00;02;42;41
Nick Clason
But the pro of of Wednesday night to me is probably your most traditional youth night. It's been a lot of churches, a lot of youth groups have done for years. And like down here where I live in DFW, Dallas, Fort Worth area a lot of churches do. Wednesday night and I came from Chicago. Not many churches did did Wednesday night.

00;02;42;41 - 00;03;03;20
Nick Clason
And that's just kind of a cultural thing, right? But the pro to me is it's like a midweek kind of jolt of energy, a mid-week connection point from if you're typically meeting on Sunday morning, you get back together in the middle of the week. That's helpful. The con of it, however, and we talked about it here in the last video, is youth sports and extracurricular activities.

00;03;03;20 - 00;03;31;44
Nick Clason
People are just getting busy. And so it makes attendance and it makes the accessibility, I believe, of a Wednesday night trickier, Sunday Night, however, the pro, I would say is probably one of the most unscheduled night for teens. Like more and more extracurricular activities, more and more sports are invading Sunday night, but it is probably the most free night that your teens have when you're looking at it from a vantage point of the majority of the availability.

00;03;31;49 - 00;03;50;55
Nick Clason
The kind of it, however, is not only for you, but for you and your teens and your leaders. It makes for a long day. You were at church Sunday morning and you've got a little gap in the middle and then you have to come back. And that returning to church like that's that is always a hard hurdle to jump I’ve found.

00;03;50;59 - 00;04;09;17
Nick Clason
If you have a kid who's not regularly planning on being at church, you say, hey, come back tonight, do like I got homework and all the things and families kind of have Sunday dinners. And so Sunday nights do tend to kind of make for a long day and then in a lot of our cases, we all have to be at church on Sunday morning.

00;04;09;22 - 00;04;35;00
Nick Clason
Some of us do our youth service on Sunday morning. Some of us have more of like a Sunday school kind of curriculum, them that we have to adhere to or carry out. The pro of Sunday morning is it's probably the easiest to gather crowd. You're going to have your most captive audience. In fact, in a video that I talked about, the decline of church attendance, most teens are attending church because they're coming with their parents.

00;04;35;00 - 00;04;52;19
Nick Clason
And so if their parents are coming to church, they're coming to church. And so Sunday morning is a great time for that to happen. The con of it is, while it may be the most captive audience, you may have the most amount of people the teenagers tend to be and feel and the environment just feels a little more tame.

00;04;52;19 - 00;05;18;29
Nick Clason
It's not a youth ministry. It's more like we are a ministry of the overall church here on a Sunday morning. But when you're making these decisions, okay, because in my case, I was talking about when I started that job, I really could decide whatever I wanted. But in a lot of cases, you don't have that that luxury. And the reason might be because you're coming into a more established church, you're coming into a more established youth group.

00;05;18;29 - 00;05;43;15
Nick Clason
And so the other like three questions to ask in this setting are, number one, what is expected of you? For example, are you even allowed to not have Sunday morning as an option? Like what is the expectation of your church and do you have the freedom to pull certain programs, pull certain time slots that you meet? So you need to make sure you know that before you make a decision and get yourself potentially in trouble.

00;05;43;20 - 00;06;13;35
Nick Clason
Question number two is what's the rest of your church doing? For example, I went to a church and and my pastor told me that this is different. I had the the freedom to make this decision. I did not have to meet on Wednesday night and I made that decision. However, once programing started in the fall, I realized that I had made a pretty big mistake because the entire church, adults, kids, preschool, everyone came back to church on Wednesday night and the only group not there, the only group not meeting ended up being middle schoolers.

00;06;13;35 - 00;06;34;06
Nick Clason
And so I had parents of middle schoolers really, really upset because they felt like their kid was not being cared for and that their kid didn't matter. In the life cycle of the church. So what is the rest of your church doing? You need to weigh that out. And if the whole church coming together for midweek, then you probably should have something there for the youth as well.

00;06;34;06 - 00;06;55;37
Nick Clason
And the third question is where do you have natural momentum? Like I said, the church, I made a decision between Wednesday night and Tuesday night and all that. I ended up landing on Wednesday night, but then years later I switched over to Sunday night and I split apart middle school and I split apart high school. And when I did that, I pulled away a little bit of momentum as well.

00;06;55;38 - 00;07;20;44
Nick Clason
Middle school was fine because it stayed on the night that it was on Wednesday night. But high school struggled because we tried to move on the Sunday night to become more adaptable to their schedules. However, at that church I was in, my students had become used to a certain rhythm and so moving, making that decision that made them have to adjust their schedule and adjust the way that they attached and that they connected to our church.

00;07;20;48 - 00;07;46;22
Nick Clason
And here's thing none of that matters, right? In your youth ministry. If you don't have students who feel connected and don't feel like they have a piece of ownership in helping growing your youth ministry into a vibrant community, which we talked about in a previous video, how to actually teach well, course you need those two components before your teaching is really going to matter.

00;07;46;22 - 00;08;08;55
Nick Clason
So let's talk about the five best curriculum resource sites, which we talked about. Students want to feel a sense of ownership and they want to feel a sense of belonging. And those two things need to exist in your youth ministry before your teaching is really going to start to matter. Wherever teaching and youth ministry, they're not going anywhere.

00;08;08;55 - 00;08;33;15
Nick Clason
It's part of what we do in youth ministry. And the fact is, you work too hard to let your messages die on your hard drive after you've delivered it to a full or maybe even potentially full or half full or less full or not as full as you'd like. Room of teenagers. And so that's why I recommend linked right here down below in description, my completely free hybrid strategy.

00;08;33;15 - 00;08;53;22
Nick Clason
If you're a youth pastor, you need to start posting your entire full length messages to YouTube. And I hear you're thinking like, I don't have livestreaming capabilities. I don't have livestreaming equipment. Hey, listen, most youth ministries don't. I certainly don't. But what we do is we actually do a YouTube video, sit down direct to camera. Honestly, very similar to what you're probably watching here.

00;08;53;27 - 00;09;14;23
Nick Clason
You can watch it on a phone, a tablet, TV, a computer, whatever it is, but you post a full length video to YouTube, you get it down to 10 to 15 minutes in length, post it. You can do some basic after editing if you like. If not, just post it on up there. But then what that does is it also helps give you an anchor for your social media curriculum.

00;09;14;33 - 00;09;33;43
Nick Clason
And so the message doesn't have to just die on a Wednesday night, on a Sunday night, on a Thursday night, whatever night of the week is your youth night, but it can live on in perpetuity. And as you teach certain series, you know how it is when it's like a students like I have a question about a particular topic and you just wrapped up a series, but they weren't there.

00;09;33;48 - 00;09;51;04
Nick Clason
Now guess what? You can share them that link and be like, Hey, I actually just talked about I'd love for you to take a watch and then let's get back together and let's, let's chat about it. But that, that bedrock of that YouTube video that can that sort of establishes the framework for all your social media throughout the week.

00;09;51;04 - 00;10;12;20
Nick Clason
You can post fun content and you can also post teaching clips now because you have a fully filmed wide screen based video that you can then clip up. You can use a service like Opus AI or Opus.Pro link down below. Description Check that out if that’s something you want AI will clip up your messages for you and do all the editing.

00;10;12;20 - 00;10;35;33
Nick Clason
And it looks masterful. It looks it looks great. But let's talk about my five favorite curriculum resources. You may be creating your own curriculum as a youth pastor, but you don't have to. And if you don't have time for you don't want to do it, this these five resources will all save you tons of time. But they may not save you tons of money because they each have a different price tag attached to them.

00;10;35;38 - 00;10;58;37
Nick Clason
So my number one favorite resource curriculum provider right now is coleader.co. That is from Download Youth Ministry and they have three sort of different tiers of billing. You can get a free version where they'll just give you access to it and you'll get 40 free credits to begin and to explore. The good thing about coleader is it plans your whole program.

00;10;58;37 - 00;11;29;41
Nick Clason
It doesn't just give you a teaching script. Then they're premium version. It's about $249 a year billed annually, which breaks down to about $10 a week, again, including all of your programing and messages and songs and small group questions that gives you about 26 or so weeks of programing. So maybe this would be good if if you're doing like school year Wednesday night from like September through May, but you're not meeting in the summer and you have a lot of like gaps and Christmas parties and Thanksgivings off and stuff like that.

00;11;29;46 - 00;11;49;45
Nick Clason
And maybe you do actually teach some of your own content and you sort of supplement in there, but you need something to pull from when you're in a pinch. And then premium plus is about $399 a year. Billed annually breaks down to about $8 or so per week. And premium plus also gives you access to the new sidekick Beta, which is amazing.

00;11;49;56 - 00;12;10;39
Nick Clason
My number two on the list is the YM 360 sermon library is just a website which has kind of like an ala carte vibe. Where you go, you can grab different lessons three and four week series that have been taught by and taught by different youth. Pastors usually break it down to about $35 per series. So check that out.

00;12;10;39 - 00;12;38;33
Nick Clason
Link down below in the description. My third favorite one is the Grow curriculum. And it is. It looks great this week. It is modern. Have full disclosure. I've never used it. Mostly price tag reasons. And in most churches that I’ve been at, we've had some other provider already. But I love the what they guys what the guys over at stuff you can use do what they stand for and so you can check that out link down below in the description.

00;12;38;33 - 00;13;08;22
Nick Clason
My fourth is XP3, orange. It is probably the Cadillac of all youth ministry curriculums is also probably the most expensive on their website. Their annual license for it is anywhere from $449 a year all the way up to 2700 per year. And that's going to be based on your average youth group size. And then number five, my fifth resource is honestly just DYM library, similar to the YM360 model.

00;13;08;33 - 00;13;27;23
Nick Clason
You can just go get a DYM membership. They've started at $12 a month, gold at $26.99 a month, and then gold plus at $40 a month. Gold plus gives you sidekick phone connections so you can scan the code on screen. Do live poll voting. One of my favorite hybrid ways to do youth ministry these days. But you can just hop on there.

00;13;27;28 - 00;13;49;10
Nick Clason
They also gives you store credit when you have the membership. So whether you have a membership or not, you can ahead of time and you can find series there typically for anywhere from $5 to $12 per series for anywhere from like 3 to 4 week teaching series. So now here we are. What is my favorite youth group programing hack?

00;13;49;15 - 00;14;05;24
Nick Clason
Well, number one link the times that you meet by purpose, right? In a lot of cases, you may not be making a decision for youth ministry. You have like one singular time to me. Is it Wednesday? Is it Sunday? Right. Like you may already have to meet Sunday morning and then you're having to figure out when else to meet.

00;14;05;28 - 00;14;24;59
Nick Clason
And so instead of having to channel like supply curriculum for each and every one of those things, what we do in our current setting, I'll just tell you is Sunday morning is connect groups. And that's for the entire church adults, kids, students, everyone. And when I got here, we were like supplying curriculum for connect groups. And then on Wednesday nights we taught out of a different curriculum.

00;14;25;13 - 00;14;50;10
Nick Clason
And so on Wednesday nights now we teach a message and then on Sunday morning they discuss the message. We have more students on Sunday morning and a lot of our students on Sunday morning don't attend back over here on Wednesday night. So because we pre film our curriculum, we will play a little clip, a teaser, also a reminder for those students who did actually come on Wednesday night to help the Sunday morning people be able to have the discussion.

00;14;50;15 - 00;15;11;12
Nick Clason
All of our leaders are able to then watch the videos in full to be able to teach the lesson. If they didn't make it on Wednesday night and you're able to have that discussion. But also, if you did come Wednesday Night, it doesn't feel like a retread or a repeat. I can't remember who said this, but I remember someone someone saying at a a conference is something like think about all the times you meet.

00;15;11;12 - 00;15;37;35
Nick Clason
If you have especially in student ministry of like main church service, you have youth Sunday morning and then you have youth Wednesday Night. And if every-- if a student comes every single week, 52 different times per year, then that is 52 times that they are taught a sermon and challenged to make an adjustment in their life and change. That is another 52 times when they come to the Youth night that they are taught a sermon and challenged 52 different times to change.

00;15;37;40 - 00;16;06;52
Nick Clason
And then the third time they come to the youth other thing and they are challenged 52 different times per year and preach a sermon with some content and challenged to change their life. I don't do math on the fly very well, but that's like well over 150 times that they're supposed to do something different with their life. And just think that when you tie these to Wednesday night, Sunday morning, whatever your thing is, when you tie them together with purpose, if you have to have both meeting slots, that helps you, right?

00;16;06;52 - 00;16;33;58
Nick Clason
Streamline your teaching. But that's also helpful to the students. It's not a laziness thing, right? In my opinion. It's not like you're just trying to get out of doing more. It's stewarding your budget, but it's also helping like most like disciple your students. Because then when your teaching is in alignment, everything can be in alignment. Your social media for that week, whatever you taught on Wednesday, that's the topic on your your social media, that's a topic on all of your digital hybrid resources.

00;16;34;03 - 00;16;55;42
Nick Clason
Right? Number two, my favorite hack is interactive teaching. Let me just share with you right here on screen tonight. I am teaching live in the room at my church and we are in a series called How to use the Bible. And in that we have been giving them like, you know, reasons for why the Bible is reliable, reasons for why we can know that we can trust the Bible.

00;16;55;47 - 00;17;19;41
Nick Clason
But then we're also like helping share them, like actual hands on tactical, like guides on how to use the Bible. But tonight I'm talking about filtering God's Word or filtering culture through the lens of God's Word in everything that we do. So what I am doing tonight is I'm starting out with a Pawn Stars video clip talking about someone who brought in a fake Babe Ruth baseball card.

00;17;19;46 - 00;17;36;13
Nick Clason
And then from there, I'm telling them the hook straight away. I'm like, Are you a Biblical Christian or are you a Cultural Christian? And then we have tables in our space. And so I'm letting them talk about the difference between a Biblical Christian and a Cultural Christian. And how can you tell me give them a few minutes to chat that out.

00;17;36;18 - 00;17;59;10
Nick Clason
Then I'm going to have a poll on the screen with Sidekick. We're asking them this question that says, Do we agree or disagree? Do we? Do we view everything in our life through a filter? Right? And then I'm going to give them three filters I view my life through Dad filter, Colts Fan filter, coffee filter, Shout out to coffee.

00;17;59;10 - 00;18;23;51
Nick Clason
My brand new Valentine's gift, the Moca-master coffee maker first cup out of it this morning. Delicious. Ten out of ten would recommend. Then from there I am going to show them a picture of like a one of my kids watches for Christmas that they got. And talk about how scientists say that the same process that happens when you learn a new language is also what's happening when we're spending time on our screens.

00;18;23;56 - 00;18;55;17
Nick Clason
And then I'm going to give them the definition of a cultural Christian versus a biblical Christian. And then I'm going to build a poll asking them what their favorite drink is like caramel macchiato, coffee, chocolate, milk, and they're going to have a chance to vote on that. All the while, all of my notes are in a thing that we call digital notes, and we use the YouVersion Live events plan that is a completely free tool that you can use, but your church can set up live events and so kids can have their phones and they can be following along with the scriptures and taking notes.

00;18;55;17 - 00;19;19;03
Nick Clason
But then we're going to take them to Daniel. Chapter one. I got one more poll in there from Sidekick. I got another turn n talk. I got a map of where they go from Babylon to to from from Jerusalem to Babylon. Let's see, then I got some reasons why you oppose the food in Daniel Chapter one. I say what scholars think the age of this Daniel was, which is 11 to 17.

00;19;19;03 - 00;19;37;09
Nick Clason
And so my question is, how does a teenage boy end up in a foreign land? His parents are likely killed and he's opposing the king. How do you think he did that? How does he have enough wisdom to know what to do and what to oppose? And then I'm going to bring a coffee pot on stage and talk about how what we put in the pod there is what we filter.

00;19;37;09 - 00;19;57;18
Nick Clason
What spits out right, is a true form of of Christianity or it's not. But the Bible has to be the filter through which we do that. But the only way that matters if we truly have a desire to follow Jesus. Now, I don't like my whole reason for sharing All that is simply just for you to see all the different like I have sent them off to, to take questions.

00;19;57;18 - 00;20;26;54
Nick Clason
And then we have digital notes for them to follow along with. And we have polls on the screen and then we have a break in between. My first part of my teaching and my last part of my teaching, which is my third hack, and that's the one the leader said. I thought that was the most stupid idea because what I would do at summer camp last year is I teach for a little bit, share a little story in opening illustration, and then I would open it to a question and then I'd send them off in their small groups right there in that space in audio auditorium style seating at camp and say, Find your small

00;20;26;54 - 00;20;44;26
Nick Clason
group and your small group leader and answer these two questions and it would break for 10 minutes. And he said, I thought we were going to lose them. Like I thought like, man, that's dumb. Like, we are going to lose. These kids are going to go crazy. But what it actually did was it helped us have longer sessions and deeper teaching because we gave a break.

00;20;44;37 - 00;21;05;56
Nick Clason
I wasn't just sitting and teaching for 20 straight minutes, 30 straight minutes, 40 heaven forbid, straight minutes, because I gave them a break and I let them contribute to the conversation, which is what Gen Z is looking to do. Right? And so that one of the challenges to good creative teaching, because like I said, we use tables in our space most Wednesday Nights.

00;21;06;00 - 00;21;30;02
Nick Clason
It's one of the challenges to that right is navigating shared space, shared space in youth ministries, which is actually the next video it's going to be linked to right here on the screen. It’s a huge challenge and a problem facing youth pastors. How do you navigate it? What are best practices linked right here? Take a look at that, because we're here to try and make digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible.

00;21;30;02 - 00;21;32;26
Nick Clason
So as always, stay hybrid.