Episode 072

🧑‍🚀 New Frontiers in Digital Discipleship for the Church: Message Enhancement 💬

00:00:00
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00:21:39

November 23rd, 2023

21 mins 39 secs

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About this Episode

🔥SURE FIRE RESOURCES TO LEVEL UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME 🔥

📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS
OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

🧑‍🚀 EXPLORING NEW FRONTIERS PLAYLIST
Exploring The New Way to Approach Ministry, Full Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLQ3UpL1HRb3FFtEu-7S1XZ

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DESCRIPTION
Preaching, Teaching and Youth Ministry
It’s part of what we do in the church.

You’ve also heard that this generation, according to crossrivertherapy.com has an attention span of just 8.25 seconds. Which is 4.25 seconds LESS than we experienced in the year 2000.

Famously, that’s less than a goldfish

But teaching and preaching the Bible, is not only an integral part of youth ministry, but learning the Bible is important to the discipleship and developmental process, not only in teenagers, but in anyone who claims to follow Jesus Christ as their savior.

So how do we take the Hybrid approach to teaching and preaching.
Hybrid is not just your physical gathering
But not ignoring it in favor of your digital experience, either.

It’s both.

In this episode we’ll explore the how to preach and teach to a TikTok Generation.
What we’re up against.

What we can learn from culture

And finally, 3 Hybrid Solutions you can implement THIS Wednesday night.

churchattendance #hiddentruth #unveiling #2023 #church #truth #revelation #faith #spirituality #religion #worship #community #christianity #belief #sunday #sacred #divine #belief #sermon #christian

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🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

😨 "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

========================================
🛠️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
//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

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS

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

👉 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

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/072

//View all the Charts and Graphs via YouTube
https://youtu.be/iIgEtxPLGBg

//Mr. Beast on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA

//Alex Hormozi
https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi

//Steven Furtick
https://www.youtube.com/@stevenfurtick

//Research on Attention Spans
https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/average-human-attention-span
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/advan.00109.2016

//My Youth Min by Ym360
https://myyouthmin.com/

//The Learning Triangle
https://www.educationcorner.com/the-learning-pyramid.html

//Solution #1
https://sidekick.tv/

//Solution #2
https://my.bible.com/events

//Solution #3
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit


🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:36 Preaching to the Generation with the Shortest Attention Span in History
01:36-03:33 Teaching, Preaching and Hybrid Ministry is vital to the next generation
03:33-11:15 Teaching to a TikTok Generation
11:15-15:46 What can youth pastors learn from culture?

15:46-21:39 3 Immediate Hybrid Solutions

✍️TRANSCRIPT
Try Transcribing for Yourself at Rev.Com
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Nick Clason (00:00):
Preaching teaching and youth ministry, they go together. It's just part of what we do. But what do you do when you're trying to preach and teach to the generation with the shortest attention span of only 8.25 seconds? Famously, you've heard it's less now than a goldfish down 4.5 seconds from the year 2000. And is there a way for us to digitally enhance through hybrid means the way in which people learn and listen to our teaching and our preaching now in this generation because teaching and preaching is not only an integral part of youth ministry, but it's an integral part of the way in which we disciple our students and help them understand the claims, values and teachings of Jesus. So how do we take this hybrid approach, not just digital, not just in person, but melding of the two together to increase awareness and to help bring about a better retention of our teaching and our preaching to our students.

Nick Clason (01:08):
In this episode, we will answer how to preach and teach to a tick talk generation and what we as communicators are up against. Additionally, we'll explore what we can learn from the culture that's around us. And finally, I want to offer for you three hybrid solutions to help engage and increase teaching and preaching and awareness in your context that you can implement tomorrow. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everyone. Welcome back to another edition of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always am your host Nick Clason. I'm a 13 year youth ministry veteran now currently located in the DFW Dallas Fort Worth area. Excited to be with you. I've been teaching and preaching my entire career, but I've also been engaging with the importance of hybrid ministry. I've been aware of that and aware of the digital revolution ever since I started in youth ministry, which is why we have this playlist right here linked at the top of the screen that you're a part of as we are exploring new digital frontiers.

Nick Clason (02:12):
The last video was all about games and how we can implement hybrid into our games and into the fun in our youth ministries. And this episode is about enhancing the messages. So I hope that you'll stick around to the very end of the video because in addition to that, I have a sure surefire resource linked in the description below. That's not only going to help you win on social media and bring about your messages and all those things to your students and help bring that to them the other hours of your week, but it'll also help you have fun with them like we talked about in the last video. And so I want to encourage you to I you to subscribe. Those things are free for you and they mean a lot to me, and I want you to do that because we do drop resources, like I just mentioned, 40 done for you, an entire month's worth of social media, but not just a bunch of graphics.

Nick Clason (03:04):
This is you actually getting in front of the camera, getting in front of a video, using yourself, your students, your leaders, whoever you want to help change the game on your social media platform. And so those types of things are coming at you every single week. We'll drop a new episode every single Thursday, so like subscribe, can't wait to see on the other side, but hey, we are going to be diving into teaching to a TikTok generation. Let's explore that together. So famously, this generation has an attention span of 8.25 seconds. It said that that is less than the household goldfish. So I don't know if any of you guys have gold fishes or teenagers in your house, but if you do, your teenager has a shorter attention span than a goldfish. What is going on nowadays though is the short form video revolution ushered into us by TikTok during the pandemic has changed the way in which we engage with content online.

Nick Clason (04:07):
It just has our attention spans are getting shorter. The need and relevance for a really, really crucial opening section of your video is what is going to determine if someone sticks around in your video or if they're going to leave. In fact, I want to share with you three examples from three very different classes and creators and just like different pockets of YouTube, but all three very good, three people who know what they're doing on social media. And I want to point out to you, we're going to watch 'em right here live on screen. I want to react to how well their hook and how well their intro does. So the first one up is a Mr. Beast video. So let's check this out together.

Nick Clason (04:54):
Hundred million mankind, okay? He's just taught, he's just B roll. He's got Justin Timberlake on there. Whoa, got those waves with his editing's great all the way to this barely functioning house, more of a shed. Well, why does this house cost a dollar? Yeah, we get another storm. It's probably going to, he's already into the content now of his video. He's only 38 seconds in. It feels like the intro. It just seamlessly moves straight into the content. Mr. Beast is probably the best at the opening ones. This one is more of a entrepreneur guy, guru trying to help you win online. So let's check out his video. This is my most brutally honest advice to my, you beat 99% of people zoomed out without media advice to my younger self and

Nick Clason (05:57):
How I, you're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress. He's catering to the difficulty of what he does and what the people that follow him need to do. He's got B roll, he's got light transitions, all that type of stuff. Great. Now this one right here, this is Churchill from Elevation Steven S check this one out sitting on that you're not using today. That's not the beginning of his sermon, but it's the beginning of this video. Arrows, you should have taken everything God gave you kept striking until you saw it to. They edited it so that it started there at what they considered to be the most interesting part, artillery to be defeated. It was his lack of drive. The reason I want to show all of you that is that the first 30 seconds or less of every single one of those videos, all very different, but all very good.

Nick Clason (06:56):
Everyone who edited that video knew exactly what they were doing. So I actually have a video that I just released on a platform called My Youth Men, which is a membership tier of YM 360. You can check it out, link in the description for a seven day free trial. But the video is about discipling students and teenagers through the usage pitfalls and platforms with cell phones as opposed to a way, and I show you those videos because I want to say that's what we as communicators are up against. Your students are watching those for entertainment, for fun, even maybe for inspiration with a Steven Furtick. And then you and I get up as their youth pastor and we start teaching at them in all of our old seminary taught ways. I think as I said in my video, that there are new ways of doing it.

Nick Clason (07:51):
In fact, this is a educator's tool. It's going to be up here on the screen. If you're listening to the podcast, make sure that you hit the link in the show notes so you can see everything on YouTube with all of our video overlays and all of our things flying in. But this is called the knowledge pyramid, and there are two sections to it. There's the passive teaching methods and then there's the participatory teaching methods. And most of us in church are using the passive teaching methods and the percentages are broken down by the knowledge retention rate. So how well this style of teaching helps people retain that type of teaching. And so the lowest at 5% is lecture based style. You might think 8.25 seconds is low, but I'm just going to admit to you, I am bored after a lecture after only 8.25 seconds.

Nick Clason (08:42):
You have to be really killing it, and I have to be really interested in that form of content. In the lecture style pyramid, 10% of the retention rate is reading, 20% is audio visual. So that would be something like including slides and or video in your teaching. And then 30% is demonstration. That's of the passive teaching style methods. So all of those things are all things that you've been taught probably in seminary of how to teach someone and how to maintain relevance as you teach someone. But then it shifts and at 50% a discussion group, a participatory teaching method is where that learning retention rate jumps up to 50%. If someone practices what they've learned by doing it, it jumps to 75% and then if they teach others, it jumps to 90%. So in most cases, us as youth pastors, we push our students through passive teaching methods, and then finally we get them into a discussion group As a participatory teaching method, discussion group is the lowest of the participatory section of retention, and that is why you and I as we are teaching, we need to differ at what we're doing. Look at what Mr. Beast did, how he looked at all the different houses, right? And he kept it moving. He was only on each house for just a few seconds. He was moving, he was garnering interest, he was keeping you hooked. Even look at fur, he's on the floor with arrows in hand doing his thing. Yeah, it was lecture style, but there's visuals to it. And in our youth ministries, more often than not, we're going to push people in to small groups, which is a relevant and meaningful participatory teaching method.

Nick Clason (10:32):
And so as we know and look at the different teaching pyramid styles, here is my question, what do we do? How do we infuse and use hybrid to help increase the retention rates of the learnings? Because you know that the message that you're teaching matters. It's a truth of God. It's a truth from God's word, and it's been put on your heart by him, and you're trying to help share that message with the students in which God has entrusted to you in your student ministry. So what do you do about it? I think that there are a couple of clues that we can learn from culture, even from some of those YouTube videos that we watch. And so that's what we're going to check out in the next section. Neil Bradbury has a quote. The link to that article is in the show notes. He says, the eight second myth, as he classifies it for attention spans is actually more related to human behavior on websites and on social media and how many seconds the average person spends on a website before clicking away or navigating off of it.

Nick Clason (11:39):
So we have famously dubbed Generation Z and Gen Alpha subsequently as the generation with the tension span lower than a goldfish. And that's true as it relates to social media and Mr. Beast and Alex Har Zi, and even Steven Fer and Elevation, they're trying to capture people's attention on social media. So they do have to make that happen within eight seconds. And we are up against that, I would say, as communicators because that's how students are spending a majority of their time. Gen Z's using their cell phone more than any other screen-based device combined. However, I want to point something out that is a website statistic. And so while that is true of websites, the attention span is a little bit longer because eight seconds is incredibly short. And check this out. Over the last however many years, these are the top five grossing box office movies of all time.

Nick Clason (12:35):
So in 2009, avatar came out, and I think it's even been supplanted by itself for the re-release or something like that, but Avatar, the movie is two hours and 42 minutes. Avengers End Game came out in 2019. Shout out to my favorite movie. I love you. 3000. It is three hours in one minute. I was nervous going into Avengers end game. I was like, I might have to pee. What do I do if I have to pee? And I did. Titanic in 1992 was three hours and 14 minutes. Star Wars episode seven, two hours and 18 minutes, and an Avengers Infinity War, the prequel to end game 2018, two hours and 29 minutes long. Movies are still making money, they're still making them, and they're still releasing them. Also, shout out to Disney for owning four of the top five of those properties. All that to be said though, if it weren't lucrative and if it weren't making money, Disney and the other major motion picture companies in America wouldn't be making movies at that length.

Nick Clason (13:43):
So what does that mean for us? We got this eight second thing, but now we got movies that are going longer than three hours. How do we reconcile the difference between those two? My contention is this, if it's good, people will pay attention. It's that simple. And here's the reality. Most research, including Ted Talk and that organization say that a sweet spot for lectures is anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. That's optimal. However, if it's moving, if it's keeping attention, if it's changing things up, even just going back and watching Mr. Beast intro video, how if it's moving and adapting, you can keep the attention of your audience. But here's a gut check. If Avatar and Endgame and Star Wars and Titanic are keeping people's attention, but you're losing them after only eight seconds, then the gut check moment for you and I as youth pastors might be, we might be more boring than we think we are.

Nick Clason (14:46):
In fact, I've been recording videos on this YouTube channel for six months, eight months now, and that's been a gut check moment for me. When certain videos get less views, I'll go back, I'll look at the analytics and I'll go and re-listen to it myself. And you know what? I'll notice, man, I'm boring, right? I have to learn how to be more captivating. I have to learn how to be more interesting. I have to learn how to keep and retain my audience longer throughout the duration of my videos. Not only is that true for me as a communicator via YouTube via video to y'all, but it's also true for me as a youth pastor. But going back and looking, watching those videos, which by the way, if you are not prerecording your messages or recording them at all to go back and look and learn, you are missing out on the easiest way to become better as a communicator.

Nick Clason (15:31):
But there's another hack and there's another little silver bullet that's going to slide in here because we are going to be exploring three hybrid ideas in this digital frontier to enhance our messages in the room. Let's check it out. So what are these hybrid ideas? Like I said, it's not just physical. It's not just digital, but it's a melding of the two. So in my mind, you're teaching live in the room, but you're putting things on their cell phone or putting resources on their cell phone for them to use later because they're taking their cell phone with them for the other 165 hours beyond just the one hour that you've been in your program. And most of us as youth pastors, we're not good enough to contend with cell phones. So instead of contending with them, using them, leaning into them, we just forced them to lock them away or get rid of them.

Nick Clason (16:20):
But one of my favorite solutions from my favorite people over at Download Youth Ministry is sidekick. Check it out, sidekick TV link in the show notes. I get zero kickback from this, but I'm a power user and they just released or they're going to release and listen. I may be letting the cat out of the bag a little bit, but they're going to be releasing a polling feature. So you can put a QR code on the screen, students can scan it, and they can vote live time, and you can show it live from the stage. And better yet, you can now control sidekick from your phone or your iPad if you don't have a tech person running back in the back. And so you can do live interactive types of things to interact with your in-person and letting them use the digital means in front of them.

Nick Clason (17:08):
So you can ask like, Hey, what is the best Thanksgiving food? Is it stuffing mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, Turkey or ham? Let us know. Scan this QR code, and then you can get live results from your audience. You also, just like the learning pyramid showed, in addition to your lecture style, you need to be bringing visual aid with it. Use your screens, use your multimedia to your advantage. Use the things that are common to your students, like memes and tos. You can even pull out things like, Hey, show the most interesting photo from your last week in your camera roll. And one of my all time favorite ways to be hybrid is any sort of call to action, a camp, sign up, a discipleship, sign up. Even now, the sidekick voting thing use QR codes. They've had a resurgence since the pandemic, but people now can scan QR codes with just their camera app and their phone.

Nick Clason (18:02):
It will pull a link up and boom, you are off to the races. Use QR codes to your advantage. Use sidekick, use digital media, use your screens to interact and make things hybrid. The next idea that I have for you is you version events in our space, we call them digital notes. And so we link our YouVersion live events. If you didn't know, YouVersion is the Bible app made by Life church, but they have a events portion. And so what happens is if someone is in your church, it will pull geographically all the events that are live and they can get in there and there can be notes. Your main points scriptures you Additionally, my favorite reason for it is you can create call to action. So you can put your camp signup, you can put a Bible reading plan so they can be on the digital notes.

Nick Clason (19:01):
They can be taking notes in the space in your room as you're teaching, as you're preaching. And then at the end, you can be like, and hey, if you are learning right now and enjoying this message about prayer, but you want to grow even deeper into prayer, then I have a seven day prayer challenge plan linked in the you version, in the digital notes, whatever you want to call it. And kids can click it on their phone and write their sign up for a Bible reading plan. It's a way to help foster discipleship to lean into the hybrid, right? You taught something, but now by just having notes available to them on their phone, you can say, Hey, click accept, and start reading that plan. The third idea that I have for you is use YouTube and use social media. In fact, in the links down below, I have a couple of things, a less than $100 YouTube setup for you to start doing messages similar to this one right here where you're sitting direct to camera and posting your messages to YouTube.

Nick Clason (19:59):
If you have live streaming capabilities, then do that. But if you don't, as a youth pastor, I get it. I don't either sit down, prerecord your messages. In addition to that, you can use a service also linked in the description called Opus Pro to then take your long form and clip it into short form and give yourself a bunch of social media content for the week. And if you then need something to help fill in some of the other gaps, that's where my surefire resource, my ebook, my 40 done for you ideas comes in. And that message can live in perpetuity online as you help answer the specific faith questions of this next generation. It can be more than just for students who miss. It can be for parents to check it out. It can be for students who don't even go to your church.

Nick Clason (20:43):
It can be for students who go to your church to share messages with friends if they would never bring their friends to church, they can share a message on YouTube with their friends. And so those are my three ideas, sidekick in digital media, you versions, digital notes, and finally, utilize and use YouTube and social media to your advantage. The final piece of this playlist is we're going to be exploring and talking about how do we care for students in an ongoing type of way. We meet with them once a week, but then there's 167 hours. How can we, in a hybrid way care for the students pastorally in the ways in which God has entrusted to us? That video is linked right here on the screen. Make sure you check it out. We're making digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, and don't forget, stay hybrid.