Episode 087
✌️The Two Biggest Enemies to Youth Groups
March 7th, 2024
12 mins 32 secs
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About this Episode
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DESCRIPTION
🏅Travel Sports and Youth Group. They have been the bain of youth pastor’s existence for years.
🗓️What if they don’t have to be the enemy?
🥱What about Youth Group Kids who exhibit complacency?
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📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/087
//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/HV6V1GbWEvU
//FREE EBOOK STRATEGY GUIDE
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YOUR MESSAGES ARE BORING
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqOPjD5hN-g&t=8s
STOP IGNORING SOCIAL MEDIA
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slB0Rmf_X0c&t=390s
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 The Two Biggest Enemies to your Youth Ministry
01:46 Extra Curriculuars are Killing my Attendance
05:15 Complancey is also killing my youth group
08:04 The Suprising Solution to Youth Sports and Complacency in your Youth Group
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;32;17
Nick Clason
The two biggest enemies in youth ministry are extracurricular activities and the complacent attitude of your students. Tell me if you've heard this before. Tuesday night is karate so that kid can't come on Tuesdays. If that's when you had youth group and then Wednesday nights is when you have show choir. Thursday night, that same kid also has karate. And of course, you can't do Friday night because that's when the football games are like if you've been in that position.
00;00;32;22 - 00;00;53;10
Nick Clason
Give me a subscribe. If you've had to navigate when you meet for youth night and turn the bell on for good measure because we're starting a brand new playlist exploring all the different issues of youth ministry, and one of them is scheduling. Like how do you schedule around students and their extracurricular activities? What in the world should we meet?
00;00;53;15 - 00;01;17;43
Nick Clason
They're so busy and it almost makes it feel like extracurricular travel, sports, school sports are the enemy. And here’s the fact even when they do show up in the room, you might be so boring that they're not really willing to make your thing a priority. In fact, we have a video right here where we explore all of that and how you can make your youth ministry one of belonging and purpose and serving.
00;01;17;50 - 00;01;43;18
Nick Clason
But I just had a student the other day say, Hey, listen, I just got so much going on. Sometimes student ministry, it just it doesn't make the cut. And unashamedly that was a text that they sent. And so if the two biggest enemies are travel sports and complacency, I want to challenge you to stick around to the very end of this video because I have a solution for each of those two things extracurriculars and complacency.
00;01;43;33 - 00;02;11;00
Nick Clason
Welcome to the High Road Ministry show The Year was 2012 brand new youth Pastor right here. And there were literally three students in my student ministry starting out, one by the name of Brandon, who didn't last very long, one by the name of Megan and then one by the name of Sabrina and Megan and all her friends. And she brought a lot of her friends to youth group.
00;02;11;00 - 00;02;31;58
Nick Clason
So this kind of mattered because she could bring two or three or four different friends with her to youth group. They had show choir and met every single Wednesday night. And so that made Wednesday nights a really tricky night to do youth ministry. But Brandon, the only other boy in the youth ministry, had Tuesday night and Thursday night karate.
00;02;32;03 - 00;02;58;34
Nick Clason
And then of course, Friday nights are like the football game. Like for most towns USA, that's when the high school team is playing its football game. So that really left us with Monday night as an option, which for I can't remember why, but for whatever reason it really wasn't an option. And so I had no idea like what am I supposed to do in to, to make matters worse, I had three kids, so if I choose Wednesday, I lose Megan and all her friends.
00;02;58;34 - 00;03;21;41
Nick Clason
If I choose to, their Thursday, I lose Brandon over to karate. And then the group of three, that's 33% of my students. So like, when am I supposed to plan to do this? I had another student one year who missed summer camp due to a baseball tournament. And then I remember he came up to me after we got back.
00;03;21;41 - 00;03;41;49
Nick Clason
His brother went and all his friends went and so he was at the recap of camp and we shared the recap video and all the students had all their energy and and his tournament had gotten rained out while we were gone. And he came up to me and he said, Next year I'm going to camp no matter what you see.
00;03;41;49 - 00;04;08;43
Nick Clason
Here's what happens once you create some sort of an environment where a student actually wants to be a part and actually wants to belong, it can be a game changer. But the fact of the matter is, especially when you're just getting started out, what do you do when they don't even know you in their thing, their show choir, their karate, their baseball, their basketball, their football, their you fill in the blank, whatever it is.
00;04;08;48 - 00;04;31;46
Nick Clason
What happens when that thing is actually providing more of a place of belonging and more of a place of community than your church? It makes it difficult and honestly, you want to compete with it. You want it to be you want church, you want youth group to be providing more of a place of belonging, more of a place of community.
00;04;31;51 - 00;04;55;39
Nick Clason
But in the life of that student, let's be honest, it really isn't. It's not really providing a place of belonging more than their sport. And so one of the challenges is you are trying to compete with something that is like family to them and you want them to come to something that's already a probably not feeling a little bit like family to them.
00;04;55;44 - 00;05;22;28
Nick Clason
And then B is adding another thing onto their already busy plate of calendaring and activities and things that they have to be committed to doing. And so what do we do about youth sports? Listen, I got an idea. Just hang on. What do you do about complacency? Like you've been there, right, where you have kids, Church kids, non church kids, whatever the case might be.
00;05;22;28 - 00;05;41;52
Nick Clason
And they really like they don't want to be there like you. Like the archetype of student I'm thinking of is the junior in high school comes to youth group hood on air pods in back row. They're just not interested. Like you get up, you got a game, They don't care about the game. You get up, you got a cute video.
00;05;41;52 - 00;06;01;46
Nick Clason
They don't care about the cute video. You see them saying like, how do you reach that kid? And in most cases, that kid is his heart's definitely not in to youth group. And there's a lot of factors for that, one of which might be his level or feeling of belonging. And it doesn't have to just be a him.
00;06;01;46 - 00;06;25;02
Nick Clason
It could be her, right? But we're we're using a certain archetype, and so we'll just keep using that junior boy student with the AirPods in as an example. But nothing's changing. Like just because you have a game, just because you have a cool message, just because you have clever announcements, none of those things are reaching them because he's complacent.
00;06;25;02 - 00;06;55;47
Nick Clason
He's he's not or she's not into whatever you have doing. They're honestly they're being forced to be at church. And here's the thing. That is a really tough pill for us to swallow. Sometimes as youth pastors, is students physical attendance in the room Does not equal an our authentic heart level buy in of what's going on, not only in youth group, but frankly, in faith as it pertains to their relationship with God.
00;06;55;52 - 00;07;17;22
Nick Clason
Because you don't want to just go after their physical attendance, you know what I'm saying? Their physical attendance is not the goal, only their heart being bought into it. Their heart being bought into it is the goal. And so you might be asking, Well, how do I chaste their heart? That's a great question. And in a lot of cases you don't.
00;07;17;27 - 00;07;45;09
Nick Clason
That's the Holy Spirit's role in their life. So you can pray for them and you can try to program creatively in such a way that that they find that and you can try to develop a type of community that's authentic and real and raw that most Gen Z, most Gen Alpha students are actually looking for and that community can take root and that student's life so that they belong to their group before they really truly start to exhibit elements of belief.
00;07;45;14 - 00;08;13;59
Nick Clason
But you can't change their heart. You know that that's the Holy Spirit shop. But just like travel sports and now with an attitude of complacency or just a bad attitude in general, I do have two ideas that I think can change the game in both of those arenas, and we're going to hit that in the next section. So my idea for travel sports and my idea for a complacent attitude is actually one in the same.
00;08;14;04 - 00;08;45;58
Nick Clason
And the idea, of course, is to try to go hybrid. Now, listen, you're like, dude, you're the hybrid ministry podcast. Of course you're thinking that. And yeah, I am. But I have detailed an outline for you in my 100% completely free e-book. It's basically my Nick Clason and the church I'm at now Strategy Guide for Social Media. And it's twofold and the two fold, they actually hit both of the things that we're trying to talk about.
00;08;45;58 - 00;09;12;05
Nick Clason
So the first fold of it is pre film your talks in what pre filming your talks does not only gives you some practice and some opportunity to kind of get ahead of your calendar so that you're not giving up live whenever you're preaching on a Wednesday or Sunday night and looking at your notes for the first time, you've had an opportunity to do it, to deliver it direct to camera, very much like I'm doing right here in this setting, but too, especially for the busy kids.
00;09;12;10 - 00;09;34;24
Nick Clason
It allows them, if they're truly interested in church, to to to consume the message that you've given to them. I know in my show choir example and karate example from the beginning that Brandon I don't really know because he didn't last very long. His family left the church not too long later. But Megan, like her and her family, like they were committed.
00;09;34;29 - 00;09;59;26
Nick Clason
And if I couldn't have offered youth group for them, I know that she would have at least went back and watched the messages because that was something that she was interested in. And so a hybrid approach can actually help the busy kids who can't make it on a Sunday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday, on a Tuesday, on a whatever day of the week, you end up deciding they can still listen to the message and word of God directly from you, from your mouth, from their youth pastor.
00;09;59;31 - 00;10;35;38
Nick Clason
And you can pre film those messages and post those to YouTube. Now you might be thinking like, Yeah, but, but that doesn't really do much for me, especially by way of the kid who's complacent and doesn't really want anything to do with it. And you know, where I would say with that is the other approach to that is when you pre film your messages, it not only gives you some short form message based clipped content that you can post and use and sprinkle in an all throughout your social media, but it also can let you kind of do another set of social media, which is add more of an element of fun.
00;10;35;43 - 00;10;59;21
Nick Clason
And when you add more of an element of fun, you can go after that student's heart and again, still, that's the Holy Spirit's job. But what if the reason that they're not interested is just because you youth ministry is boring? And so one of the things that we'll do in our student ministry is we’ll film some fun, quirky, silly, entertainment based content as a staff, as a student ministry team.
00;10;59;25 - 00;11;24;40
Nick Clason
But then other times we will challenge ourselves to do some sort of social media challenge where we'll will invite students to be on camera with us. And so that will give them an opportunity to engage and interact. And then when we've invited them onto camera with us, they'll have an opportunity. Now to see themselves later on social media throughout the week.
00;11;24;45 - 00;11;47;00
Nick Clason
And so you can take your long form message content and that can solve the the problem for travel sports. And then you can clip those up into shorts and push people who discover them to watch a YouTube video. And then you can also film some silly content to be discovered by your algorithm and to to engage with the complacent student, the junior with the hood on in the back of the room.
00;11;47;05 - 00;12;14;20
Nick Clason
And you can even films from that content with him and post it. And if you take my strategy fully laid out right here on screen, link down below in the show notes, I will detail for you all of how to do that. And I hope that if you go hybrid, it helps of your extracurricular activities and it also helps of your student ministry, complacency, activities and actually, I have detailed for you the entire strategy in the video that's linked right here on the screen.
00;12;14;25 - 00;12;32;31
Nick Clason
So go ahead, take a look at that. Stop posting announcements to social media. Be better, level it up. You can do it because we're trying to make digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So, as always, don't forget stay hybrid.