Hybrid Ministry - Episodes Tagged with “Church Ministry”

Episode 089: ⚠️ Sharing your Youth Room with other Church Ministries

Nick Clason — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 04:00:00 -0500

⚡ [FREE] Hybrid Reach More Students Strategy Guide⚡

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

======================================
DESCRIPTION
🗑️ Have you ever walked into your youth room after another church ministry had an event in there?
Was it clean?

Probably not.

🫧 Was it put back how you preferred it to be?
Probably, also, not.

⚠️ But you don’t have the authority to tell people not to use it.
How do you share a space well?
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/089

//YOUTUBE VIDEO

SHARING SPACE
USE PORTABLE THINGS

//20 FOOT INFLATABLE GAGA BALL PIT
https://walmrt.us/3I2TZy7

//15 FOOT INFLATABLE GAGA BALL PIT
https://walmrt.us/3T7h5tS

//CASTLE SQUARES
https://castlesports.com/products/9-square-castlesquares

//RETRACTABLE WALLS
https://walmrt.us/3wkTYD9

LETTING OTHERS BORROW YOUR SPACE
//CLEANUP MANUAL
https://docs.google.com/document/d/0B3QjZyq-R_p5ZHZFTDhGV2IxZU0/edit?resourcekey=0-7FDtkR7NDnODgipiMQ7SLw

CONSIDER GOING HYBRID!

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

👉 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

======================================

🆓 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
EMAIL: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/recruiting-email

🍩 "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

======================================
🛠️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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Sharing Youth Rooms with Outside Groups
01:26 Three Hacks to Using Shared Church Space
07:08 3 Hacks to Letting Others Borrow Your Space
10:30 1 Idea that doesn't need space!

TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:13
Nick Clason
Youth Pastor, have you ever walked back into your youth room after a church ministry or just an outside group? Use your space? Was it clean? Probably not. If this has ever happened to you, if you're watching on YouTube, give us a like and well, was your room put back to the way that you preferred it to be? Probably also, no.

00:00:25:15 - 00:00:45:30
Nick Clason
So if you've ever had to pick up after a messy group, then give me a subscribe. And if you don't have the authority to tell people how to use you youth group or not, and if you've ever been put in this position, well then turn the bell on, because we're right now in a playlist called Youth Pastor Problems.

00:00:46:00 - 00:01:09:08
Nick Clason
So how do you share your space well? We're going to give you three hacks for how you as a youth pastor can share a space that is a shared space in your church. It's not your youth room. It is the church's room, and the youth just use it. We're also then going to give three hacks for when you do have a youth room that you actually have to share your space with or allow guest groups to come on in.

00:01:09:08 - 00:01:39:13
Nick Clason
What are some three hacks to make sure that you don't come into a wild mess disaster the next time? And then I'm going to give you one final idea and one final hack that actually negates the need for space altogether. Welcome to the hybrid ministry show. Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the hybrid ministry show. My name is Nick Clason and I've been a youth pastor for 13 years in full time, part time and vocational ministry all together.

00:01:39:13 - 00:01:58:03
Nick Clason
And early on, one of the churches I worked in, we were given a place to meet is our very own. It was disconnected from the building. It was actually attached to the maintenance garage, and so we called it the shed. What teenager doesn't want to be meeting in a place called the Shed? But eventually we outgrew that space.

00:01:58:03 - 00:02:20:10
Nick Clason
And so when I started we had just a handful of kids. And then towards the middle of my tenure there, we were running a good 30, 40, 50 something kids, and they just couldn't cram into this small shed anymore. And so we actually had to start using the church's main auditorium, the main sanctuary area, and we had to set up in there every single Wednesday night and tear it down.

00:02:20:12 - 00:02:37:15
Nick Clason
But the sanctuary was too big for us. And so we sort of had to pivot and adapt and we had to make this thing work for us in a way right there. Like it wasn't optimized to work for, it was optimized for a Sunday morning main church service. And now we, the youth, are coming in and were using it.

00:02:37:15 - 00:02:55:17
Nick Clason
So I have three hacks for what to do. If you are borrowing or sharing a space within the church that's also being used. But other places in the church hack number one is set up as early as you can. In fact, linked right here at the very top of my video is my full proof 100% completely free time management technique.

00:02:55:23 - 00:03:10:17
Nick Clason
Go ahead and take a look at that if that's something you're interested or navigating. But if you manage your time in such a way that like let's say you meet on Wednesday night, Wednesday morning, this is what I would do, I would come on in and I would set the room up first thing 9 a.m. I work for a little bit.

00:03:10:17 - 00:03:33:06
Nick Clason
And then honestly, I would go home and I would take a break a gap in the middle of the day from like lunchtime until about 330 or 4:00 in the afternoon before I would come back and start to get the final touches ready for youth. But if I had set the room up early and if I did it first thing in the morning, then I was never running out of time to really get the room all the way set up.

00:03:33:06 - 00:03:57:00
Nick Clason
If it was taking me longer than expected or if I was adding another element into it, like I would know that because I was working on it first thing in the morning. The second idea that I have for you is use portable things linked down below in description are some links to a few different things, like a portable Gaga pit that you can inflate and deflate.

00:03:57:00 - 00:04:17:26
Nick Clason
And so if you're using a space that you can't keep it set up all week long, this is perfect for you. And if even if you are using a space that you can that you do set up and tear down, this is also a really great place number, really great thing. Number two is a portable nine square and it's not like super duper portable, but it's called Castle Squares.

00:04:17:28 - 00:04:41:20
Nick Clason
And so instead of having the downspouts in every single spot, you just have the four kind of the base four that go up and then across you just have some straps. You can get it set up in under 10 minutes and torn down and even less time links to both of those things down below in description, or if you're in a podcast, catch your head to the show notes HybridMinistry.xyz/089

00:04:41:28 - 00:05:01:17
Nick Clason
Another thing that I did in my church where I was borrowing the sanctuary was we had those portable retractable accordion walls. I did put a few portable wall descriptions down below. They're not exactly the same thing, but they could work in your space, just check them out. And then we bought a lot of banners and so we would use a vinyl banners.

00:05:01:17 - 00:05:25:24
Nick Clason
I'm pretty sure we just used them off of like Vistaprint or something like that. But we would hang those with just like thumbtacks into those portable walls. And they had like our high school logo and our middle school logo and our student ministry logo and just some like other phrases and things that we would use. And so we would line the sanctuary because it had three seating sections, so we'd line the two aisles with those walls.

00:05:25:24 - 00:05:42:30
Nick Clason
So we would we would block off the seating in the wing, so it would forced everyone into the middle. And then those walls we put some of like our logos and our graphics and stuff like that to sort of liven the space up and just make it feel a little bit more youth ministry specific hack number three.

00:05:42:30 - 00:06:10:24
Nick Clason
So one was set up early. Two is use portable things. Three is be respectful full, right? Like I have this picture right here if you're watching on YouTube, a bunch of Nerf guns in a French press coffee maker. And the reason for that along with the rubber duck is that all of these things sort of encapsulate a church that I used to work at and I worked at this church and the Duck was our mascot, and a friend gave me this coffee pot.

00:06:10:24 - 00:06:32:26
Nick Clason
But the reason for the Nerf guns was because every single Thursday morning when I would come back into my office after youth night had happened the night before, on Wednesday night was a handful of Nerf darts laying on my desk because one of the junior high boys groups would meet in the lobby and they would do their discussion for about seven and a half minutes.

00:06:32:29 - 00:06:57:04
Nick Clason
And then as soon as the discussion was over, they would play Nerf and the facilities people would always find like anywhere from 3 to 8 Nerf darts. And so any given week I'd walk into my office and boom, on my desk. Right were just a handful of Nerf guns, be respectful, not gun darts. Be respectful, clean up as best as you can.

00:06:57:04 - 00:07:22:03
Nick Clason
In my defense, I was trying to clean up, but I just wasn't seeing them and make sure that the space that you were using looks as good or better. I know it's cliche then the way that you got it when you got there. So what do you do if you are letting others borrow your space? Let's say you have your very own dedicated youth room space, but you're letting other groups, other ministries come in and borrow it.

00:07:22:04 - 00:07:50:19
Nick Clason
Well, one space that once we outgrew even the sanctuary, we actually bought a small Baptist church on the other side of the road. So we had to different buildings and the church across the road. The difference in their like main auditorium, main meeting space, was that they had chairs so we could take the chairs down and get that whole space completely wide open where in our main building the the pews were bolted down to the floor.

00:07:50:27 - 00:08:11:19
Nick Clason
So all that meant was that our area was incredibly desirable, so people wanted to use it. And so what I actually did was I created just like a manual. You'll see it right here linked on screen. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening to the podcast, hit the link on the YouTube description there in the description of the podcast and go check this part out.

00:08:11:19 - 00:08:34:25
Nick Clason
But it was basically a how to step by step with photos to replace and put back the room the way that it needed to be. So that it was ready for us when we got back together. You see, what I have noticed in most of my time in ministry is that people that don't set the room back up, they're not doing it because they're frustrated or they're mad at you.

00:08:34:25 - 00:08:51:24
Nick Clason
They're just they're just putting it back how they think. Because people guest groups often come into your space and they immediately start making it ready for their thing or their event or their birthday party. And then when it's time to clean up, they're like, shoot, where was this basket? and Oh shoot. How did it look over there in that corner?

00:08:51:24 - 00:09:09:11
Nick Clason
Because they don't remember, because they're so focused on their thing, and rightfully so. Like, I'm not I'm not angry at them for doing that. Right. But what the manual does is it tells them exactly, this is how I want it set up. This is how it was when you came in or this is how it should have been set up.

00:09:09:14 - 00:09:34:25
Nick Clason
And so when there's a group, they have the exact right replica for how to put it back together. The problem is, if you've changed any of your minds since you've made that manual, it's going back the way the manual is, right, even if you've adjusted some stuff. And so if you do make changes, if you do like, you know, move the ping pong table or the foosball table, make sure you update that also in the manual that you hand off to guest groups.

00:09:34:26 - 00:09:57:28
Nick Clason
Number two is have a clear cut cleaning policies and or potential rental fees. One of the tricky things about sharing space, especially in church, is that you are going to need to have custodial support for said event for said space when you give it away, especially for groups coming in on a Saturday and the custodian had already planned and had it cleaned.

00:09:57:30 - 00:10:20:21
Nick Clason
And so you're going to need to figure out like who is paying for it. The custodian is the guest you're going to pay for and what is that going rate going to be? And the third and final hack for letting others use your space is be respectful and be understanding back. Right. Just like I said, they're not thinking about your space and that, but they're also probably not doing it intentionally.

00:10:20:24 - 00:10:43:05
Nick Clason
If they are being disrespectful, then that may be time to have a conversation. But in most cases they're just doing their best. And so also try to have a understanding of grace and respectfulness for them. What is an idea that you might never need to use space ever again? Well, that idea, of course, is go hybrid and listen, I'm not saying to completely abandon your in-person meetings.

00:10:43:05 - 00:11:10:25
Nick Clason
In fact, that would go completely against the hybrid strategy, because hybrid is melding together of your digital presence in your in-person presence and making it one in the same, but linked right here on the screen and down in the description or wherever you're getting this or hybridministry.xyz/089 is my 100% completely free strategy Guide it is my e-book on how I build out a full fledged digital strategy.

00:11:10:30 - 00:11:47:08
Nick Clason
It's mostly focusing on a done for use social media strategy, but it's anchored by the long form teaching video, which takes place and is posted weekly every time we teach pre filmed messages on YouTube direct to camera, I tell you and explain how to do all of it in this e-book. And so I would love to encourage you to grab it, take a look and try at least implementing some pieces of it, because what it will do is it will allow your youth ministry to to not be tied and not be tethered to a physical location.

00:11:47:08 - 00:12:13:00
Nick Clason
And it won't be tied or tethered to events and attendance. Only you will be able to start reaching students with the hope and with the message of the Gospel far beyond just your in-person events and far beyond just your in-person physical locations and gatherings. In fact, my entire strategy in this episode links right here on the screen for how to go hybrid, how to implement it, what to do is right here.

00:12:13:00 - 00:12:20:29
Nick Clason
I would love to encourage you to take a look at that. Give us a subscribe. And don't forget and as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 079: 🤷 Youth Pastor: Event Coordinators? or Disciple-Makers?

Nick Clason — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0600

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📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
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2024 [FREE] Youth Ministry Masterclass on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

========================================

DESCRIPTION
📈 How do we get more people to show up to our events?
How do we grow our group?
How do we attract and retain teens?

57% of American Church Goers, according to Pew Research, don’t even attend church once a month!!

👌In this episode we’re going to explore 3 key shifts in our thinking
⚙️And I have the ultimate tool to accessing and resourcing people/students in the digital age.

Subscribe to our channel and don't miss any more videos from the 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass FREE on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

========================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/079

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

SHIFT #1 FROM PRODUCTION TO ACCESS
//PEW RESEARCH ARTICLES ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/22/more-houses-of-worship-are-returning-to-normal-operations-but-in-person-attendance-is-unchanged-since-fall/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rel%20-%2022-03-22%20worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0d3j0000112o9deae

//TERRY PARKMAN
https://www.terryparkman.com/

//GEN ALPHA DATA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHpeDaLS3oo

//PRO CHURCH TOOLS
https://prochurchtools.com/

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

SHIFT #2 FROM PERFORMANCE TO ENGAGEMENT

//EVERY YOUTH MINISTRY NEEDS A GOOD DIGITAL PRESENCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxepdu4iiM

SHIFT #3 FROM QUANTITY TO COMMUNITY

//THE QUESTIONS OF BELONGING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHpeDaLS3oo

//WORLD'S GREATEST DONUT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ryhkIRyDb4

//MASTER YOUR TIME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlS1kWcQBS8

========================================

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

🎅 "The Ultimate (and FREE!) Christmas Party Gude"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/christmas-party-run-sheet
PRACTICAL YM TIPS: https://www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips

🍩 "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

========================================
🛠️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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:21 Event Coordinator? Or Disciple-Maker?
01:21-07:18 SHIFT #1 from PRODUCTION to ACCESS
07:18-09:20 SHIFT #2 from PERFORMANCE to ENGAGEMENT
09:20-16:14 SHIFT #3 from QUANTITY to COMMUNITY

✍️TRANSCRIPT
Try Transcribing for Yourself at Rev.Com
http://www.rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa

Nick Clason (00:00):
Youth pastors. How do we get more people to show up to our events? How do we grow the size of our youth groups? How do we attract and retain teenagers? See, all these questions are common questions. They're things that we're all facing at least at some level. And regardless of if you think that the attendance debate matters or not, we talked about it in our very last video linked up here in our playlist, in our youth ministry 2024 masterclass that we are going through completely free all here online on YouTube. Love to have you subscribe, check it out, and make sure you don't miss another one. We talked about the church attendance conundrum because 54% of American Christians are not attending church according to Pew Research at least one time per month. So in this episode, I want to talk to you about three key shifts that are going to help us reach the next generation as we explore this question.

Nick Clason (00:50):
Are we in the event making business or are we in the disciple making business? And I also have the ultimate tool that I believe can help you become more accessible in resourcing both your people and your students in this new found digital age. Like I said, we'd love to have you subscribe, like leave a comment, leave a rating, leave a review. All of those things help us get found and make sure that you can get the very next episode as soon as it drops episode 80 in our 2024 Youth Ministry masterclass. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, everyone, my name's Nick Clason. I'm a youth pastor in DFW Dallas Fort Worth. Been in youth ministry now being January of 2024. Mark's my 13th year in youth ministry and I've most recently went to a conference with the Gen Z guru himself. Terry Parkman. If you don't know Terry, he's amazing, but he talked about some of these shifts, so I just want to kind of elaborate on them and kick some of them around a little bit more.

Nick Clason (01:46):
But he talked about the difference that Generation Z and now subsequently generation Alpha, who if you didn't see in our last episode, we classified them being born somewhere between 2010 and 2018, probably more than 2012 rage, which is what Pew research kind of settles on as the origin date of generation alpha. Nonetheless, Terry Parkman specifically talking about Gen Z, talks about the shift in thinking from Gen Z who thinks more in a digital age, digital mindset versus all of US millennials and older Gen x boomers and so on and so forth, who are more raised in a industrial aged way of thinking and industrial age way frankly of living. And so what the first shift that is important that he talks about is we need to shift from an industrial minded way of production, which is an industrial value to one of access. The way that we talk about it is just simply build access points onto your ministry, so an industrial way of thinking and the production value production kind of mindset.

Nick Clason (02:54):
Think about seeker style churches back in the early nineties or early two thousands where you may open with a secular song, one that's familiar, one that's relatable. You may try to go for relevant lighting, you may really try to put the entire screws down on the production, the value of how important production is, and that a really well-produced thing will draw out consumers, it's almost like the mentality if we build it, they will come. It also comes down to simply how much can we produce the amount of production value that we can add? The more production value that we can add, the better, the greater, the higher the number, the more that we can produce, the more that we can attract. That's an industrial way of thinking. Meanwhile, a digital way of thinking, they don't necessarily Gen Z Gen and Alpha and the generations that are coming on behind, they don't necessarily want those things.

Nick Clason (03:49):
They're looking more for access. They're wondering, do I fit here? Can I gain access to this place and how can I let my gifts be utilized and flourish and shine here? Honestly, one of my number one pet peeves in churches is when we from a volunteer aspect say things like, we need you to do our job. That is not enticing in any way, shape, or form, and it's especially not enticing to the next generation. What I think they otherwise might more importantly, more interestingly want to hear is, Hey, we want you to shine here and how can we partner with you to make a difference in this world? It goes from US centric to them centric, and I get it. I'm hearing you scream on the other side, but that's not what a disciple of Jesus does. Correct. However, how are we ever going to be relevant and make any sort of inroads with the next generation?

Nick Clason (04:46):
If the way in which we posture ourselves is fundamentally and vehemently different than them, are we asking them to acquiesce to us as opposed to us finding ways that it's not that big of a deal to make a subtle shift? Because in the same way, we can still ask Gen Z and Gen Alpha to serve, we are just making it them centric instead of US centric. And again, you might be screaming that they shouldn't be them centric, but isn't it just as Unbiblical and Christlike for us to be US centric, organization centric, pastor centric in the land of access points. Our church right now, honestly, probably right now as I'm recording this on a random night in December, we have these things, these events, and they're amazing and they get talked about and they get promoted and they're all over social, and someone asked me how do I sign up for it and do you know what?

Nick Clason (05:37):
I said? I work there at the church, I don't actually have anything to do with it, and obviously I'm not there right now. I said, I have no idea. We have these events. There's sort of this lore about them, but how to actually access it. It's confusing, and I frankly haven't tried, so that's probably on me, but point of it is, is your church accessible? How easy to navigate is your website. I love what Brady Sheer and all of them at Pro Church Tools up in Canada say all the time and say, make your website, be a one stop shop. Don't for one thing, go sign up via the bulletin for the other thing. Send an email for the third thing, head to the website and for the fourth thing, find someone in the lobby. You never know what to do, where to go, and so only the most loyal and only the person with the most headstrong sort of stubbornness is going to ever actually find anything out.

Nick Clason (06:29):
Anybody else who comes upon any sort of roadblock or opposition, all of a sudden it's just really easy for them to crumble. And here's the fact, I don't believe I have all the answers, but one of the ways in which we are trying to create more access points in our ministry is through our digital strategy, which I have completely laid out in my 100% completely free ebook free for you. Grab the link, go download it. All I need is your name. All I need is your email and that's it. It's yours to use. It's my strategy that I've used to grow YouTube channel in a year from zero subscribers all the way up to almost 400 subscribers. It might be even past 400 by the time that this video actually drops, it's completely laid out. It's basically my social media masterclass and guess what I gave it and I'm giving it to you for free, and I would love to encourage you to just grab it, try it, implement it, and check it all out.

Nick Clason (07:18):
Shift number two is we need to shift from performance based and industrial way of thinking to more engagement based. So if you think about an industrial way of thinking where performance is king, think about the best, the prettiest, the nicest, the smelliest people on stage with a good swath of diversity and all those things, or just even in youth ministry, we've all sort of had the basis of like, let's just have some fun, and if the kids have fun, then they'll definitely want to come back. If we perform really well for them and we don't screw up, then they'll be like, man, that place was so good. I just want to come back. That's an industrial way of thinking, and here's the problem. If you are a youth pastor and you're my age or you're a millennial, that's the way that you think because that's the way and that's the age in which you were raised in.

Nick Clason (08:03):
To think that that's what is valued, but the next generation that's more in a digital age, they're not worried about performance. They want to know, am I able to engage with this? When it's all about performance, think about a conveyor belt and a factory. The way that that goes is if there's a certain part in the conveyor belt that's causing a backup, what do we do? We just stick another person in there. We don't care what that person does, who that person is, what that person can do for us or our organization. We just want to know, can that person keep the conveyor belt from stopping? Can that person keep the performance going? But a digital way of thinking, a digital shift when you go from performance to more engagement based thinking is you're wondering, Hey, how can we create good content that students want to engage with?

Nick Clason (08:48):
Which is why I link right down below or right up here on the screen, whichever one, I'm not sure if I've used my card yet or not in this video, but every youth ministry needs a good digital presence. It's my full YouTube strategy. It's my full social media strategy. It's the one that's tied to my ebook. It's the video explaining the ebook if you want to go check that out. Again, I don't have all the answers. It's just my way to sort of attempt to try and engage more with our students who are different, who are digital thinkers, who are Gen Z and coming quick behind them, generation alpha. The third shift is we need to switch from a value of quantity to a value of community, an industrial way of thinking. We are entirely built in most churches for quantity. Think about it. If you have a church with auditorium style seating, the goal of that room is to get the most amount of quantity of people in to listen to one captivating speaker, wax eloquent for a week, and listen, honestly, no shade thrown.

Nick Clason (09:48):
Most pastors, you're really good at your job, you're good at crafting sermons and you're good at delivering sermons, but the fact of the matter is, while you may be awesome at it, that's just not what's as highly valued in our world, especially in the world of digital. With audio, podcasts, YouTube podcast, people can listen to audio books, sermons. They can listen to the best preachers in the entire world. Again, no offense to you at the drop of a hat, instantly binging them, never actually running out of content. That's how accessible all of this stuff is, and so when people come to church, they don't want to just be another number kind of filtered into the auditorium to look at the back of someone's seat. That's why I believe link down below in the show notes. In this episode, we talked about why churches are dying.

Nick Clason (10:32):
I think churches are not adapting to the new issues and the new way of thinking that this next generation is so adamant about, and again, that generation, this next generation, this digital way of generation, they're not looking for a room to come and consume some more content. They're looking for community. And so if our rooms are built for quantity, thus they're not then built at least optimally for community. I mean, I know I worked at a church one time that we had Longwood ews and they were bolted to the ground. We couldn't do anything about those things, and even if they weren't bolted to the ground, they were heavy as sin. Man, I could not lift one of those things because once we finally did try to lift them, I was like, dang, who got these in here? It's like a five man job. The goal was get these things in here, never to be moved again.

Nick Clason (11:22):
This room is for one purpose and one purpose only, and the purpose that most younger people are looking for is not that. A dangerous way I believe of thinking is that we often value a Christian culture more than the Christ of the culture, and so therefore, I believe that what we're trying to do is we're trying to force people into a way of thinking, and when community trump's performance, we actually get a messy, authentic, real interaction with other believers who love Jesus and are trying to pursue and follow him. And so in a digital way of thinking, I think people who value community are looking for asking questions like, where do I belong? And are these people at my church? Are they my people? The students, they're asking those questions and they may, like we said in our last video and this masterclass in video two, this is not video three, they may be asking, are these people my people?

Nick Clason (12:15):
And they may be coming to your youth ministry, and just because they're there doesn't necessarily mean that they're engaging in religious practice. And it also doesn't necessarily mean that they're there because they want to be, because almost 50% of no, it's 65% of students come to church with at least one parent. That's where they're coming to church. They're not coming to church. They love God. They're not coming to church. They love you. They're not coming to church. They love your youth ministry. They're coming to church. They're coming to church with their parents, but if they can find a real captivating community that they can't say no to, they're not going anywhere. So it's not about what you produce, it's about the community that's available to them. We live now with the very first global generation. Students spend on average, shockingly five to eight hours on their phones screens per day.

Nick Clason (13:06):
The church world was built for consumers, and what's happening now is in that generation what's being internalized, they want to find a place to externalize it. And so one of the ideas that I have, again, I don't have all the answers, I don't know if this is a good idea or not. We did it in our space. It seemed to work well. It's a hybrid event. It's called the World's Greatest Donut, completely free event guide right here. You can click it, and it's just an opportunity to engage with students beyond your program times because I think a lot of times what we try to do is we try to get as many people, as much quantity into a room and call that success. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to expand the relationship beyond just the one time per week, and that's what this event is all built on.

Nick Clason (13:46):
It's a one-time event for an in-person event, however it lives on for an entire month. Not only live in the room, but it also lives live on your social media. That's the in-person versus the digital creating a hybrid moment together. Hey, the ultimate tool that I teased at the beginning of this video is, and I've already said it, it's my ebook. It's my full digital strategy. The fact is I don't have it all together, but the way in which you can utilize that is you have to become a master of your time, which is a video that's linked right here on the screen. It was a couple of videos ago, and the next video in this playlist is how to implement a good social media strategy where you're not simply just posting announcements. Click either one of those and we would love to see you on the other side. And as always, my friends stay hybrid.

Episode 078: 📈 Youth Group Growth: Reaching Gen Z & Gen Alpha

Nick Clason — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 04:00:00 -0600

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DESCRIPTION
📈 Youth Ministry Growth and Attendance

🔢 Do number really matter?

😤 It’s an agonizing pursuit that all of us as youth pastors and leaders are constantly feel the tension.

Whether we buy into the debate or not, pressure is real.

Maybe pressure from your senior pastor
Maybe pressure from other parents
Maybe even pressure from yourself

And furthermore, according to Pew Research, one in five church goeers in 2022 participated in virtual church once a month.
However, 57% did not attend in person or watch online per month.
Not just anyone in general.. But Americans who TYPICALLY attend services.

How do we reach Generation Z or Generation Alpha students?
Especially in light of this new reality?

Subscribe to our channel and don't miss any more videos from the 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass FREE on YouTube

========================================

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📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/078

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/BHpeDaLS3oo

//PEW RESEARCH ARTICLES ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/22/more-houses-of-worship-are-returning-to-normal-operations-but-in-person-attendance-is-unchanged-since-fall/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rel%20-%2022-03-22%20worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0d3j0000112o9deae

//DATA ON GEN ALPHA
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/generation-alpha-guide

//DR. ELMORE'S BOOK
https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Unfiltered-Challenges-Anxious-Population-ebook/dp/B07YQ9XT8N/ref=sr_1_2?hvadid=580669290679&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9027211&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8887138684661202423&hvtargid=kwd-831658052586&hydadcr=24309_13537702&keywords=gen+z+unfiltered&qid=1701783263&sr=8-2

//TEEN CHURCH ATTENDANCE PATTERNS
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/09/10/u-s-teens-take-after-their-parents-religiously-attend-services-together-and-enjoy-family-rituals/

//TEENS AND THEIR PARENTS
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/09/10/10-key-findings-about-the-religious-lives-of-u-s-teens-and-their-parents/

//4 CHAIR DISCIPLING
https://www.amazon.com/Chair-Discipling-What-Jesus-Calls/dp/0802418813/ref=asc_df_0802418813/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=266167140404&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13879828523234723627&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027211&hvtargid=pla-557460291481&psc=1&mcid=c72abb3a6997315793653dc9cbd8d965&gclid=CjwKCAiApuCrBhAuEiwA8VJ6Jry6x6cwpQRcpt1hnTOOVAIdS6r9rmBPSQleT8QwxqgYzqAeu6RyuBoCFo4QAvD_BwE

//GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT FOR A HYBRID STRATEGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlS1kWcQBS8

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-02:05 Do numbers matter?
02:05-05:30 Who are Generation Z and Generation Alpha?
05:30-07:13 Attendance Finding 1: Teens share religion with parents
07:13-10:48 Attendance Finding 2: Teens go to service, but don't engage in religious practices
10:48-16:22 Attendance Finding 3: Teens attend church with one or both of their parents

✍️TRANSCRIPT
Try Transcribing for Yourself at Rev.Com
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Nick Clason (00:00):
Youth ministry growth in attendance in the age old Questions do numbers really matter? Here's what I know. I was one time called by a church that said, Hey, just a couple weeks ago in our church of multiple thousands, we've had only eight students show up. So whether you buy into the debate or not, the pressure is always there. Maybe pressure from your senior pastor, maybe pressure from youth parents, maybe even internal pressure that you just put on yourself. And what's even crazier is according to Pew Research, one in five, churchgoers back in 2022, participated in a virtual church service at least one time, which is a good thing. I mean, heck, we're in the hybrid ministry podcast, you know what I'm saying? However, 57% did not attend church in person or watch online during the course of at least one month, which means greater than 50%, not just of anyone in general of churchgoers are not typically attending church services.

Nick Clason (01:05):
So how in the world with that as the framework for church attendance and the way that youth ministry attendance is going, how in the world do we even reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha students, especially in light of this brand new reality? We're going to be sharing in this episode three key findings about teens and their attendance trends. And furthermore, I'm going to share with you one way that I as a youth pastor am shifting my thinking and maybe you can also shift your thinking about reaching this next generation. And finally, I have a bonus tip that I think is going to actually be the number one game changer in this entire conversation. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. You're in youth ministry, or if you're just a church leader and you're at least overseeing at some level some capacity, generation Z generation alpha, it's important because we're talking about youth group attendance and it's important to understand who we're actually talking about.

Nick Clason (02:01):
So Generation Z and Generation Alpha are kind of the two generations in play in this conversation. In fact, I have a video linked at the top of the screen. Go ahead and check it out where we did a deep dive into Generation Alpha and started to explore them. And quite frankly, it's one of the only videos I know that's out there about Generation Alpha. The data is still really new and still really young because the fact of the matter is that according to exploding topics.com link in the description, if you're watching on YouTube, you might be able to see some of these things online. If you're not watching on YouTube, you should definitely check that out. But Gen Alpha is made up of people born between 2010 and 2025. Wait, what? 2025? Yeah, you heard that, right? They're not even born yet. Okay. And so the fact of the matter is that that data actually is in opposition to some other experts such as Tim Elmore, who by the way, I have a chart right here on screen.

Nick Clason (02:53):
Again, if you're not watching on YouTube, go grab it or link in the show notes. It's from his book, generation Z Unfiltered, the Nine Hidden Challenges of Facing the Most Anxious Population of All Time. This chart is absolute goal, but you'll notice that he draws the line for the end of generation Z at 2018. So we have exploding topics at 2010. We have Tim Elmore at 2018, all of that to be said, Elmore's book is a little bit dated, and so I think that more research and just time we've honed in a little bit and gotten a little bit closer. And so while this chart is gold, you should definitely look at it and inspect it and learn a little bit more. Elmore doesn't talk about Gen Alpha. They're not on his radar yet when he wrote the book. And so according to this chart, pew research draws the line for Gen Alpha at 2012.

Nick Clason (03:40):
But again, the reason why any of this matters, not to bog you down with dates and things like that is that if you're a youth pastor or if you're in church leadership, what you need to understand is that the conversation we're having is like, do we take Elmore's date or do we take Pew Research's Day or do we take exploding topics day? Whatever it is, the reason this matters is because this is a difference between is that kid in kid's ministry or is that kid in youth ministry? And if we're talking about youth group numbers and youth group attendance, we need to understand Gen Alpha, but we also need to understand Gen Z. The kicker on this is that Gen Z, really the youngest Gen Z that we have is going to be freshmen, sophomores in high school, and now after that they're waving on up, they're in college already and they are entering the workforce.

Nick Clason (04:23):
So if you are not a youth pastor, but just like a regular pastor listening, no longer is Gen Z, something that the youth pastor needs to try and understand and uncover this matters for you. This is important for you as a pastor. And so if you've gotten value so far out of this video, I would love to encourage you to like and subscribe and hit the notification bell because we're actually in the middle of a series right now, the 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass, this is section number two in that class. The rest of them are going to be dropped in the playlist that's linked down below in the description. So if you have not seen every single video, go back and check out video number one. We talked about time management, but without any further ado here, let's dive into the three key findings about Generation Z, generation alpha and church attendance in youth ministry moving forward in 2024 and frankly beyond.

Nick Clason (05:12):
All right, so the three key findings that are really important to understand about Generation Z and Gen Alpha is a lot of this data pulled from Pew research articles pulled and included in the description, whether you're in a podcast catcher or on YouTube, if you are not watching on YouTube, you will notice that some charts and graphs and stuff like that are going to show up on screen here on YouTube. If you're not watching, you're just listening, you can go grab the link in the show notes at http://www.hybridministry.xyz, and this is episode 78, so slash 0 7 8. But the first key finding that I want to share with you is this is that most teens share the same religious affiliation as their parents, meaning this, your attendance as a youth pastor, youth ministry leader is highly derived from the adult attendance in your church.

Nick Clason (06:00):
You've probably heard this before, but that's why it's important that we don't have silos. It's just as important for you as a youth pastor to lean in to what is going on in the rest of your church. You can't neglect it, you can't forsake it, and you can't take on a posture of arrogance that what you're doing is better than the rest of the church. Even if you low key think that the fact of the matter is that your youth ministry attendance is highly, highly tied to your adult attendance. So if your church is growing, odds are your youth ministry is growing, and if your church is struggling, odds are your youth ministry might be struggling. The biggest dropoff that you'll notice in this graph here and in this research from Pew is that the biggest dropoff from parents who attend church to teenagers who attend church happens in mainline denominations where the highest proportion is in evangelical churches.

Nick Clason (06:53):
Key finding. Number two, teens are just as likely as their parents to say that they go to services, but when it comes to more personal forms of religious expression, teens actually appear to be less devout and less religious. I have a stat I want to share with you from my own context, my own anecdotal experience in our church, cross Creek Church located in Colleyville, Texas, we have four parts to a four-part discipleship pathway. So we have explore, which is people who are far from God looking for God or maybe seeking God connect. And so once they've made a decision, cross the line, faith, connect with Jesus, connect with this church, connect with community, grow, grow in your faith, get closer to God, learn to walk with God, learn to invest in a few, learn to multiply. And then finally, the fourth one is a multiplier.

Nick Clason (07:38):
Someone who is not only making disciples, but making disciples who makes disciples. So we're very christocentric, disciple making, Bible-based church, all that to be said, we explained all of that one day on a Sunday morning to our students and we asked them to self-identify where they would put themselves in the pathway, explore, connect, grow, multiply. We used kind of pulled from one of my favorite books, link in the show notes, Dan Bader's book four chair discipling. So we used four different chairs to illustrate the sections of the pathway. The explorer phase was illustrated by a camping chair because it's really mobile portable. You can get close to church, then you can pull it back away if that's a decision that you want to make. We talked about how the connect chair is actually like a recliner. People tend to get across that line of faith and then get very fat and happy.

Nick Clason (08:23):
The grow chair is one that's marked by suffering and sacrifice, and so we got the hard metal chair, the one that hurts your butt when you sit in it for a little bit too long. And then finally the multiply phase was illustrated by a couch because the goal of it is to bring people back onto that couch with you, go back down through the pipeline, go back down through the process. So we illustrated that and we asked students to self-identify. We had 40.76 of our students say that they were in the connect phase, the recliner phase, but the overwhelming majority said that they were in 45.2% said that they were in the grow phase. So nearly half of our students self-identified as being in the grow phase where only like 4% said they're in the explore phase, and 9.5 said they were actually all the way in the multiply phase.

Nick Clason (09:07):
Now we have identifiers in our church metrics that we say if you've done these three or four things, then you are in this phase and you've moved on to the next phase. So we can pull that data on our students as well, but this is just them classifying themselves. I now lead a group of four other guys on a Sunday morning in our grow phase, we have a book that we go through a curriculum, and we just got done with the first book. There's three totals. So we just got done with the first book. It's seven weeks. It's daily reading. I mean it's a high bar. Every single one of them. At the beginning of this time, they said, I read the Bible, I pray I do all this stuff. Now that we've actually been in it, now that the rubber has met the road.

Nick Clason (09:49):
At the end of this, all of their summarization of it was like, man, this was a lot more than I'm used to. And one of the kids said back to this, teens are just as, they may go to service, but they may not practice religious expression. Part of the problem is they've gone to church so much, and so they know what the right answers are and they know what they should be doing. And so even when you ask them, how do you grow in your faith? What are you doing to grow in your faith? They would answer with the right answers. Well, I pray, read the Bible, but they all admitted at the end of it, you always said that, but we weren't really actually doing it, at least not at this level. So that just bears it out in that key finding. Key finding.

Nick Clason (10:29):
Number three, most teens report attending religious services with either both at 40% or one 25% of their parents. Again, meaning your attendance is again highly derived from your adult attendance. Again, in my own context, our own experience or Wednesday night, we would mostly say that that's classified under the explore classification. So let's bring outsiders and we probably, we average somewhere south of 45 to 40% of our Sunday morning attendance, which is our second step in our pathway, our connect phase. So I would not say that we have more students in connect than in the explore phase. What I would actually say is that Sunday morning is more convenient and that's when parents, and that's when students are also naturally making Sunday morning or just any church attendance a priority. And so that's the reason why I believe that our attendance is a little bit out of balance between Wednesday night and Sunday morning, and that's not a problem to be solved.

Nick Clason (11:29):
It's more attention to lean into and be managed, but it really just underscores this point that most teens attend church with either a parent or a single parent, meaning once again, like I said, your students are attending church either with both parents at 40% or one parent at 25%. Again, as much as we think that our programming is so relevant, captivating, so much better than the rest of the church, the reality is our success as youth pastors is often tied to the overall success of the church. However, I do think that there is something that matters and that there is something that we need to focus our mindset to shift a little bit on. So let's dive into that into the next section. All right, so the shift that I believe all of us should consider if 57% of born again claim Christians, self-proclaimed Christians are not attending church online or in person at least one time per month, I think that you and I should consider finding a way to go hybrid.

Nick Clason (12:26):
And I know you said, Hey, hey, hey, that last stat that said they weren't going online or in person. When I say hybrid, I don't just mean streaming your services. That can be an element of it, but I really believe that's a small portion of a good digital strategy. And again, I hear you. You're like, dude, I don't have time for it, and I get it. It is a lot of work and it's going to require a little bit of time management, thankfully, linked down below, I have this playlist where the last video I talked about good time management, but a good digital hybrid integrated strategy is more than just putting a camera in the back of the room and letting someone watch what's going on in the room. You're not interested in that, frankly, and neither am I. We want something that's made for the internet, something like this, something that's more relational, something that's more direct to camera, maybe something that's a little bit more interactive, but find a way to make it more hybrid.

Nick Clason (13:18):
Find a way to make it more integrated. I also hear you on the other side, but churches of family church should be about one-on-one relationships, and I agree with that. Full fledge, a hundred percent church about relationships. The best, most dynamic experiences I ever have is when I'm rubbing shoulders or sitting knee to knee with somebody. However, I'll also make the argument that churches are in the content creation and content production business. Think about it. What do you spend the majority of your time on? Programming, message prep, planning, worship services, small group, all things that are content based, and especially pastors, senior pastors, no offense to you, but Sunday morning services are some of the least relational moments in the entire week in the lifecycle of a church. Here's my deal. I'm a youth pastor, so I get in early, I get set up. Sometimes I'm a little bit late because of my setup into church.

Nick Clason (14:12):
I walk in, I sit down, I sing some songs, I sit down, I stare at the back of someone's head, I listen to a sermon for 30 something minutes. I get up early because I have stuff to do as a youth pastor, to get ready for the student ministry that meets during the last two services of our three service Sunday morning set. I'm not talking to a single human being in that entire service, but what I could do is I could consume all of that digitally. I could listen to it, my headphones on a run. I could listen to that honestly, while I'm across the way in the student building, getting things ready, having the Facebook live stream on in my ears while I'm getting things set up. I'm not saying that I should do that. I'm not saying that that's a recommended strategy, but I am saying the content consumption side, so much of what we're producing content-wise, can be done digitally.

Nick Clason (14:57):
So as youth pastors, as we're trying to reach Gen Z, as we're trying to reach Gen Alpha, a completely different generation, I wonder if it's worth considering a shift from focusing only on to finding a way to be a little bit more hybrid, which is why I've created this 100% completely free ebook right here on the screen, linked down below in the description. Also, you're going to see that as I bring about this bonus question. This is really the crux of this entire kind of argument. The question is this, are we as youth pastors, are we as youth ministry leaders? Are we in the event business or are we in the disciple making business? And you know what the fact of the matter is, we're actually going to dive even deeper into that question on the screen linked right here. So go ahead and take a look at that. If you're interested in exploring more about my hybrid strategy, that ebook, as well as that episode is linked right here on the screen as well. Hey, check you on the other side. Continue to enjoy this free masterclass, and as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 046: How to be Present with your Social Media Presence

Nick Clason — Thu, 25 May 2023 04:00:00 -0500

What is Incarnational Ministry? It's Jesus' involvement in our life. How do we embrace the same philosophy of Jesus' ministry in our own ministry contexts? And how do we do so in a hybrid and digital way to show up where our church people, members and congregants and spending their time?

Follow Us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Show Notes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/046
FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

SHOWNOTES
THE ARTICLE BEING READ & REFERENCED:
https://youthministry360.com/blogs/all/how-to-be-present-with-your-social-media-presence

MY STUDENT SOCIAL MEDIA:
https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekchurch?lang=en

10 FREE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE TIKTOKS:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4n40o5080lblih/Spiritual%20Practice%20TikToks%20-%20Nick%20Clason%20and%20Bailey%20Fore.zip?dl=0

TIMECODES
00:00-02:18 Intro
02:18-07:24 How to be Present with your Social Media Presence
07:24-12:19 How do we Show Up Where our People are Spending their Time?
12:19-12:58 Don't post Announcements on Social Media
12:58-14:01 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Well, hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. Thrilled to be here again with you. And just let me let you know little bit of a shorter podcast today I'm actually gonna do something a little different, a little unique. I recently wrote an article for YM Short for Youth Ministry 360, um, titled How to Be Present With Your Social Media Presence. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop the link to that here in the show notes, but I'm actually just gonna read it for you, um, and also give you some author commentary as I, uh, am reading it through. So expect like a 10, 12 something minute pod. You probably already saw that. If you already downloaded this, if you're on YouTube, welcome in. Glad to have you. Excited to be with you.

Nick Clason (00:48):
And here's why. Honestly, um, this may release the week before, week after, not sure yet in the order. I'm doing a little bit of some batch pre-recording because my family and I are getting ready to go to Disney and I'm looking to just completely unplug from work, from this, from podcast side hustles, all the things I'm doing. Uh, so excited about unplugging, excited about getting ready to send and go and be with my family in Disney. Um, that being said, I, the, the craziest thing about this article is I wrote it, I can't even remember how long in advance, and then it dropped months later. Like I, I wrote it, I know when I lived in Chicago and it dropped just a couple weeks ago now when I'm living here in Dallas. And so my life has changed immensely. And when I heard it, there were elements of it that I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Nick Clason (01:34):
Oh, I don't know if I would've said it that way. And then there are other things I was like, yeah, I definitely still agree with that, you know, so I thought it'd be fun to bring to you all because I wrote it before, I think I wrote it before we even had a podcast going. So these thoughts, like, just think about that. If you've been on this journey with me listening to, to me in your ear ball holes for a while, think about this. These, these thoughts that have been ruminating inside of me and brewing inside of me. Uh, anyway, all that to be said, show notes, hybridministry.xyz. Subscribe to us on YouTube, follow me on TikTok Act place. And Nick also five star review if you would be so inclined. And without any further ado, let's dive into how to be present with your social media presence.

Nick Clason (02:19):
All right, here we go. How to be present with your social media presence. Read by the author himself, Nick Clayson. Here we go. Incarnational ministry. Did I lose anybody yet? Now before you go dust off your lexicon, you probably already know and embrace this as a characteristic in your life and in your ministry, right? Here's the thing. And I said this cuz I knew that, that pastors, youth pastors, who's ever gonna be reading it, primarily, this is a youth pastor. This isn't aside by the way, in case you didn't know primarily youth pastors reading this. They embrace and embody this, this characteristic, this idea of incarnation ministry just may not use it. You know, super frequently in our vocabulary anyway, in the gospels, we see Jesus going to be with his people that he encounters. So if our ministries are going to be a mirror of Christ's incarnation life and incarnation ministry, we are required to go and be with the people that we're ministering to.

Nick Clason (03:16):
And if you and I were youth pastors in the nineties, well we'd probably be found at the mall sitting next to a Chinese restaurant that's handing out free samples of their bourbon chicken and browsing hot topic on our way out the store. You know, you remember, however, if your towns anything like mine, well, the mall I just described as a of it, former of its former self. So where are all the teenagers hanging out? According to some statistics, 45% of Generation Z report that they're online, as they describe it as almost constantly, 45%, 24% of teams report feelings of discomfort if they go more than just one hour without access to the internet. And finally, on average, generation Z allocates two hours and 55 minutes per day on average to social media. So let's just be honest for a minute. The mall has gone to there, and let's be honest and frank, our pockets, it lives on our phones and the students that we're trying to reach and spend their time, they're online.

Nick Clason (04:26):
Regardless of your opinion of whether or not you believe that this amount of screen time is healthy, advantageous, it's probably not. It is where our students are spending the majority of their time. Let's pause for a minute. Um, a quick aside from this, I was in a recent Barna CoLab group on how to disciple Gen Z and their, they're sharing some recent findings, super interesting, super fascinating stuff. One of the things that they shared, um, actually it was a guy that they interviewed from a church and he said, uh, if Generation Z is the first digitally native generation, then generation alpha right behind them. By the way, if you're youth pastor, that is fifth and sixth, seventh, eighth grade, maybe not as high as seventh and eighth grade, but definitely like sixth, fifth, and on down. So they are the youth ministry of the future.

Nick Clason (05:13):
So if generation Z is the first digitally native generation, then that means that generation Alpha is the first digitally dependent generation. Crazy to think about. And so a lot of times, let's be honest with our generational age gap and difference, even as I'm a millennial, even as some fellow millennials, Xers, boomers on up, what is our constant, like, what are we constantly asking generation Z and younger to do? We're asking them to get rid of their phones. We're asking them to disconnect and unplug from technology. And while I think that there's advantages to that and it's advantageous for people to learn the disciplines of being able to break away, find some silence, find some solace and solitude, um, away from social media culture, away from online culture, I think all of that is well and good. I just think that you have a generation that is dependent on it.

Nick Clason (06:06):
It is literally their alarm clock. It's their calendar, it's their actual phone. It's where they communicate with all their friends, whether it be text message, Snapchat, be real, but it's, it's their their map, it's their navigation system. It's the way that they check their grades. It's how they pay for their school lunches. Like it's everything. It's not like, I'll give you this example. I am recording this podcast when I'm recording it in preparation for my trip to Disney World. Everything at Disney World is now online. It's in the my Disney Experience app Genie Plus, which is the replacement of Fast Passes, lightning Lanes, um, checking into my resort, making mobile food orders, like everything is on my phone. And you are at an amusement park with your family trying to unplug, trying to disconnect Bif, do you have to be on your phone? And there are people who are like, I'm done.

Nick Clason (06:56):
I'm not gonna do that. And that's fine. But the reality is we are moving more and more towards that than we are away from that. And so if this generation is dependent upon it, what we have to do is stop villainizing the phone and we have to start looking at it as an opportunity to teach them and disciple them through how to have faith with a phone through that lens. And I think that's my heart in this article, and that's what's coming through. Let's read the next section. So here's a question for you. If in the nineties you would've gone hung out at the mall to connect with students and teenagers, how in 2023, which is one of the articles written, how in 2023 are you showing up where your students are? See, I'm not necessarily proposing that the digital church replaces the in-person experience hybrid far from it.

Nick Clason (07:47):
But if your students go home after school and spend almost three hours on their phones, which is what the statistics told us, then couldn't you make an impact with your students or your people online? All right, so here's some ideas how to do that. If you've been listening to this podcast any length of time you've heard it, I'm gonna say it in idea and then I'm gonna riff on it. So I'm gonna say idea number one, idea number two, so that you're clear, okay, idea number one, share a devotional thought. Guys, you can hold your phone out in front of you and you can give either a recap of, or you can give a completely new and different from, not different cuz come, gonna come from the Bible, hopefully, but different from your sermon or from the lesson that week or whatever the case might be.

Nick Clason (08:29):
You can give just a devotional thought, boom. Hey guys wanna give you quick encouragement, 60 seconds or less. People don't want longer than that. Anyway, you can do a deep dive into an encouraging, um, or challenging passage of scripture. Again, 60 seconds or less. I, I think maybe it was Mark Twain, I'm not sure, but it was him who said, Hey, I wanted to write a short letter but I didn't have time. So I wrote a long letter. See, it takes more time to make something quick, concise, and short. Idea number three, have fun, create fun and funny posts. Hey, if you're not following us on TikTok on our student ministry, I would encourage you to, you can go check it out. We are Cross Creek students. Um, hopefully now we are at Cross Creek students. If not, I may still have it set as at Cross Creek Church cuz TikTok won't let me switch my name over to Cross Creek students, but that's ultimately the goal.

Nick Clason (09:18):
I've had a hard time switching it over. But we do fun and funny posts. I literally, right as I was walking into this spare bedroom of my house to record this podcast, I was literally posting a video of a girl drinking ranch dressing flavored soda and trying to guess the flavor of it. Like it's just fun. And honestly, what I do is I toss out the invite on a youth ministry night. Hey, you wanna be on TikTok tonight? Sure. They all come into the room. I have six bottles of soda with weird flavors. I have a game cud up on my laptop. And another thing with the filter on on TikTok, it gets me like 20 pieces of video content that I just store, bank and pull back out later when I need it in my calendar. Idea number four, film answers to theological questions, right?

Nick Clason (10:02):
People are inspired by answers to deep things that maybe you don't wanna put online, but things that students are dealing with. Like, why do bad things happen? How do I develop a habit? Why, how do I spend time with God even if I don't want to? Why would I go on obeying him and living a life of sinlessness or the goal of that if he's always just gonna forgive my sins? Anyway? You talk about that every week. What's the point of it? What does God think about gay people? Does God require me to be a democrat? Does God require me to be a Republican? What would Jesus think of our current political landscape? You get the idea. Idea number five, encourage spiritual practices and disciplines. I don't know if it's gonna get accepted or if it's out yet, but I recently submitted, if it is, I'll drop a link to it in the show notes.

Nick Clason (10:48):
I recently submitted 10 TikTok videos. Actually, you know what I'm gonna do? It's on ym, um, or I submitted it to d y m I don't know if they took it or not. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop a link, uh, to that resource, the Dropbox resource in the show notes here, completely free charge. Just go grab it and use it. It's, uh, memorize scripture with me. Practice meditation, sit in silence, have a praise break, all kinds of different things. 10 different spiritual practices that that students or people or adults can use. It's not branded. So you can use it. Just download it and post it wherever you, uh, manage social media free for you. Uh, let's see. Are we on six idea number six, you can do recap posts or videos. Just take, literally you only need 3, 4, 5 seconds worth of of videos and you get like 10 of those real fast at the beginning of the night, um, or during your program.

Nick Clason (11:40):
And then you just put 'em into TikTok. Auto cut. Boom. You got a less than 22nd recap video. Phenomenal way to do that. Idea number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, less idea Number seven, give shout outs to leaders and volunteers. Figure out how to do that on social, whether it's static graphics, whether it's motion graphics, whether it's you talking graphics, whether it's voiceovers, give shout outs to leaders and volunteers. Finally, you can quiz students on their Bible knowledge. Uh, one of my favorite ways to do this is on the Instagram story editor with the story sticker, uh, uh, multiple choice story sticker. You can put it in there and you can ask them bible questions and test their Bible knowledge. Super fun way to go about doing that. Those are just some ideas to name a few. I don't know your context, but here's one thing that I do know, we're back to the article, is that I want you to notice that not one single idea that I mentioned above was an advertisement for an event.

Nick Clason (12:32):
We've gone into this, if you've listened to me for a while, you've heard this before. But what if we could use social media to encourage students to actually take the next step in their faith to engage with you or with your ministry, to challenge them to deeper more meaningful ways and a more meaningful walk with Jesus. It's not just another communication platform, which is what we often default social media into being. It's a means to help accomplish a more incarnation form of ministry. So that's it, that's the article. Love to know how you are using social media in your ministry context for more than just announcements to encourage people in their faith to show up where they are. But the bottom line is we are rooting for you. We are cheering you on. So glad you're in here. Hey, listen, if you didn't know this, 2023 is the year of short form video content, vertical video, short form content, less than 60 seconds. If you're like, man, I don't even know how to get this word out there, we got you right here. Link the description. If you're watching on YouTube or go grab our 100% completely free e-book titled, have I already ruined my Church's TikTok account? No. But this book will help teach you how to post one from start to finish all the way through doing it all on the phone in your pocket. So we're here for you, rooting you on. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a loyal listener. And as always, we never forget.

Episode 024: Rob Shepherd on Starting, Growing and Making a Viral TikTok Account and Videos

Nick Clason — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 04:00:00 -0600

SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick sits down with Pastor and TikTok Creator, Rob Shepherd. They discuss how he started out on TikTok, where his ideas come from, and the boundaries he needs to set up so that he doesn't become addicted to the TikTok world and keeps it all in check!

Full episodes and transcripts available at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Come hang with Nick on TikTok http://www.tiktok.com/users/@clasonnick
Or subscribe on YouTube for his new e-book coming out soon! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g

SHOWNOTES
Follow Rob on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@robshep

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I am your host, Nick Clason. Excited to be along here with you and I'm excited today to bring you a guest. And so, um, this, this is Rob Shepherd. Um, he is pastor at Next Level Church out in Virginia. And, uh, Rob and I connected, you'll hear a little bit about how we connected, uh, but we connected cause uh, we have a mutual, um, friend, coworker. I mean, it's his sister, um, who, uh, I worked with his sister at a church I worked at in Ohio. And, um, we came together through just like some circumstances of, uh, doing a thing for his nephew. Um, a kid that was in my, uh, student ministry for a while. So, um, we met and just kind of became friends on Facebook or whatever. And then recently connected, um, more on TikTok.

Nick Clason (00:56):
I saw just a bunch of what he was doing on TikTok and, uh, kind of got onto his account. And, uh, I told him last week, Hey, I am stealing all of your ideas, uh, for our student ministry account because we needed a little bit of a refresh, um, in our posting, uh, rhythm, I would say. Uh, we had, we had done this thing where we were all kind of in charge of a segment of our, our TikTok posting calendar. Uh, but my, my coworkers were just having a hard time staying up with it. They weren't and aren't as, uh, TikTok and, you know, creating of TikTok savvy. Um, they just didn't do it as often as I did. And so, uh, posting would take them longer and they would avoid doing it cuz they didn't want to do it. Um, and it would take 'em longer than they wanted to, all these things.

Nick Clason (01:46):
So, uh, I started seeing Rob's videos and he had tons of fun stuff with just his kids and little games and competitions, a minute to win at stuff. And, um, so I went to his profile. I stole a bunch of his ideas. We started doing a lot of his things and then I just reached out to him. I was like, bro, you should come on my podcast. And he's like, I would love to. So I'm excited to bring you this interview with Rob. Excited for you guys to get to meet, uh, him. He personally has a TikTok account that's really active. He has a lot of followers, a lot of viewers, a lot of action, a lot of traction. So if there's a new for you, um, he has a kind of a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to, uh, run, manage, and grow a TikTok account. So, without any further ado, here is my interview with Rob Shepherd. Hey Rob. How's it going?

Rob Shepherd (02:37):
Awesome, man. Thanks so much for having me. I'm honored.

Nick Clason (02:39):
Absolutely. Hey, give uh, all tens and tens of my listeners. Just a quick, uh, overview who you are, where you are, uh, to what you're up

Rob Shepherd (02:48):
So. Yeah, I'm, I'm Rob Shepherd. I'm the lead pastor at Next Level Church. It's a church plant that I started 10 years ago. Um, I'm an author. I've written three books. My fourth book will be coming out in 2023. I have a wife, Monica, we've been married for 22 years and we have twins. They're 11 and they're in the sixth grade.

Nick Clason (03:06):
Awesome. So, uh, you and I connected cause uh, uh, your nephew was in my youth ministry in Ohio. Yeah. Um, and we did this super fun thing that I preached about and then your sister actually took me up on where, uh, a bunch of different people kind of invested in, in his life. And so we had this kind of culminating moment, uh, and that's where, that's where you and I met and I think we became friends on Facebook or something like that. And so I, I get on TikTok, um, when I moved here to Texas because I, before that I was just using my ministry TikTok account. Sure, sure. And I figured like, oh, I should probably make my own since I can't keep using my old ministry's algorithm anymore. Um, and you know, of course TikTok does that thing where it's like, you might know this person. Yeah. And so that's, that's how I, uh, you know, found you on there through that, through some linked contact thing, which I keep telling them not to do that yet

Rob Shepherd (04:01):
Somehow. Yeah, me too.

Nick Clason (04:02):
Here we are.

Rob Shepherd (04:03):
Yeah, it's so weird.

Nick Clason (04:05):
It's sketchy or something. I don't know. That's how they're, they're learning all of our information. They're gonna take over our world

Rob Shepherd (04:10):
A hundred

Nick Clason (04:11):
Percent, but that's fine. It's okay. It's okay. Um, and so, actually, you know, Rob, I just started watching your videos cuz so much fun. Oh,

Rob Shepherd (04:21):
Thank

Nick Clason (04:21):
You. Um, yeah. And, and then of course as a youth pastor, I was like, I'm gonna steal all of these ideas, . Um, and we did, but, uh, tell me just a little bit, how did you end up on like, TikTok? Was it like just for fun or are you doing it for like, ministry reasons, purposes to get your author like information out there? Like what's your, what was kind of your reasoning behind all that?

Rob Shepherd (04:45):
Yeah, so a hundred percent it was 2020. The whole world shuts down . Um, and like I have more time on my hands than than normal. Um, cuz we're not having public services. We can't be in the office. Um, like literally everything is shut down. Yep. And I kept seeing people post TikTok on Facebook and Instagram and I was like, what is this? Like, I don't get it. Like, how do they know these dances? And like, , how, like, what I don't, I don't understand. Like, it, this app doesn't make any sense to me. So I downloaded it out of boredom. Okay. And the first, I mean, the first few times looking at it, I was like, this is a, this is an app for 12 year olds. Like, I'm not, you know, there's no way. Like, yeah, I'm just not interested. But then, you know, there was like a couple nights where I couldn't sleep or whatever, and I would just like, let me see this TikTok thing and, and I would get sucked in.

Rob Shepherd (05:39):
And then you start watching videos and you're like, why is it two in the morning? Like, yeah. What is happening here? Um, and so after about a week of just kind of stalking and watching videos, I was like, you know what? This looks like some fun. And so 2020 was stressful for a lot, lot of people. Mm-hmm. , um, as a lead pastor, navigating, shutting down church when to reopen, um, it was very stressful for me mm-hmm. . And so starting to make these videos was a creative outlet. So I just started making, um, literally just to have fun. Just something to get my mind off of the stress. And then one thing led to another and we got a couple followers and that's what happened.

Nick Clason (06:19):
And there we are. Yeah. So that's your, like, that's like your personal, like that was something that you just kind of did for fun. Yeah. Have you dove into it, uh, at like a ministry or church-wide level yet? Or is it mostly just something you're doing on your own?

Rob Shepherd (06:33):
Yeah, so, um, TikTok is interesting to me because if, if you start it like, like your youth group's, TikTok, you can gain a following because people that are gonna follow you are probably other youth pastors or churches or they're interested in it. Mm-hmm. , because I started, um, doing just silly like games and, and that kind of stuff. My out of, you know, my 157,000 followers, they don't give a rip about what I do. Right. Um, anytime I post personal things, videos, tank mm-hmm. and no one's like, oh, you know, um, there's a few times in lives, like any, anytime I go live, I I'll tell people, Hey, I am a pastor and um, you know, and you don't have to be a Christian to follow me, but, um, and you know, there'll be some people who will say, oh wow, that's interesting that you're a pastor. But like, I've posted about my books before. Nobody cares. Yeah. Um, posted about our church, nobody cares cuz I didn't start it as that ministry, the ones that have success on it. Start it with like, the intent of I'm gonna start it for ministry or, you know, books, selling books or, or whatever.

Nick Clason (07:38):
Yeah. Absolutely. Um, I, I, yeah, I've even noticed that too, you know, with my own, like, it's, the thing that the algorithm has done is like TikTok has absolutely changed the game on social media, right? Mm-hmm. , so like before a church would have a page or an Instagram account or whatever, and then they'd tell their, their church people come follow us. And then we would all just post announcements about like our church potluck and Yeah. Doing things like that. And now TikTok and subsequently reels on Instagram and Facebook, YouTube shorts, like they're all about just like discovering people that you've never discovered before. Yeah. Like, you know that on your homepage there's the following and the four uab and like I'm never in the following.

Rob Shepherd (08:25):
Yep. It

Nick Clason (08:26):
Only puts me there after I post a video and then I'm like, these are a lot of people I know. And then I'm like, oh, that's cuz I'm in the following section. And they just did that to me. Yeah. So it's, it's such a different, and so from a like a ministry standpoint, it's such a different mindset of like, what are we doing on here? Sure. And like, who are we trying to serve in a lot of ways. Sure. It'ss almost like a, it's less of like nurturing your own people and more of like trying to reach people, you know? Yeah. And is there merit to it? I don't know. It's so, so new. Yeah. And that's the thing. Sure. So

Rob Shepherd (08:57):
Yeah. I I think, oh, go ahead. Do you have a question? Nope. I don't wanna interrupt you. Go ahead. Yeah, I, I think to that point, um, so, you know, in Jesus' day and age, the gathering point would've been like a well mm-hmm. and it's where the people went mm-hmm. . And so we see at times Jesus would go to where the people are. He would go to the well, like, you wanna go and gather an audience. Well, for a lot of a long time the church has acted like our building is a well, but no one in the community is coming to our, well no one has. That's

Nick Clason (09:27):
Good. Yeah.

Rob Shepherd (09:27):
But where is everybody? They're at the well called TikTok. Mm-hmm. There's over a billion people on TikTok. Mm-hmm. Over a billion. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, you know, I've had some success on social media, on, you know, Facebook or Instagram, but nothing like TikTok. Um, you have the greatest chance to reach people now. It's a lot of hard work. It's not a guarantee that you'll reach people, but you have a greater chance to reach people and influence people and be around them. And so my TikTok is not explicitly like, I'm not a Christian TikTok, um, but I will subtly try to, you know, I'll wear a a a t-shirt that says, you know, a Christian message on it or, um, you know, I'll try to highlight in kind of a subtle way to say like, I've got all these thousands of people watching, um, let me try to gain influence. It's a long game. It's, it's slow. It's, you know, it's not a, a quick, you know, thing, but that's where people are. So I wanna gather around them and try to gain influence with them.

Nick Clason (10:20):
Yeah, absolutely. Like I, and like I said, it's, you know, how, so someone's scrolling through, they stop on your video and then the next one they're onto some like, stupid trend or stupid dance. So yeah, I think there's the pushback, you know, from other people is gonna be like, well, are you really making a difference? Or, you know, whatever. Like, is that 32nd clip enough to like influence and change someone's life? And like I said earlier, I don't know, um, sure. But what I do know is that the, a the landscape of social media is changing. B the landscape of our culture post covid, gen Z and the digital mindset is completely shifting. So this is the, the direction everyone's headed. And I'm sure there'll be some adjustments and pivots along the way. But for the first time in like social media history, every major platform is all in on this style of video. And I think the unique position that churches find themselves in is that, uh, this actually lends itself very well to what pastors, speakers, church people do on a regular basis. We create and produce content on a weekly basis. So for the first time we can take snippets of what we're doing and re-broadcast it. And also for the first time we can do that basically across the four major platforms without any consequence. Cuz they're all sure they're all going all in on this, you know? Sure,

Rob Shepherd (11:40):
Sure.

Nick Clason (11:41):
So the thing, like, the thing that stood out to me about you, uh, was like just the amount of fun that you have on it. Right. And I think a lot of times in this conversation, it depends where you land, right. But especially if you're like a church trying to like do digital ministry, you feel this need and this pressure to like share this deep theological truth, um, on TikTok. And if you don't get millions and millions of views, like you're, you, you didn't do it. It wasn't sure. Beneficial, advantageous. Um, so what, like, what predicated for you? Just like going all in on like, just the jokes, the fun stuff, the games, the competitions. Like I just love watching your family, like just having a blast together. Yeah. You know, doing things.

Rob Shepherd (12:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, for us it was just really natural. It was, um, we like filming these type of things. Um, we, we like doing, uh, coming from a youth ministry background there, a lot of the stuff that I do is recycle games that I used to play with, you know, my students and Yeah. Now my, my kids are, you know, 11 years old, sixth grade. And so, uh, we recycle, uh, uh, a lot of that. But I will say bigger picture for me is that there are a lot of church circles where it, it, it is almost like, uh, it's almost like God doesn't have a sense of humor. Like Yeah. Everything has to be serious. And, and I think there is a seriousness and there is a, a reverence that we should have towards God. But if you read through the scriptures, there's, there's whole festivals that God told people to have.

Rob Shepherd (13:15):
Mm-hmm. And in our culture, we have lost, uh, no one looks to the church to have fun. No one looks to the church to have fun, like parties. Like, if you wanna have fun, go get drunk, go out to a club. Yeah. But like, why, why shouldn't we set the standard towards no. Like, we've got the greatest news in the world. If anyone should be joyful, it should be Christians. And so let's have, let's have some fun, um, and, and do and show people like, Hey, you can have a great time and you don't have to cuss. Um, you can have a great time. You don't have to be half naked. Uh, you can have a great time and, and you, you don't have to be drunk. Like you can have good, clean, wholesome, fun and do it in the name of Jesus.

Nick Clason (13:50):
Yeah. No, that's really good. So, uh, couple, I now just want to get like specific and ask some like, just kind of fun questions. So what is, what video, uh, have you posted on your TikTok that has gotten like the most traction, the most likes? The mo went the most viral.

Rob Shepherd (14:07):
Yeah. So, uh, so, um, uh, you know, I was on TikTok for, uh, I wanna say, so I got on in 2020. It's 2022. So going on two years, it'll be three years I guess next, next March or, um, so for my first year, um, I had decent success, but it was nothing crazy. Um, I gained, uh, in, in year one I got up to 10,000 followers. Um, but I never had a video that had a million views. I had a few that like, were close 800,000, 900,000, but I never hit a million. Um, year two, uh, it was the summer, uh, Olympics and my wife said, Hey, we should do an at-home Olympics competition with our family. And so we invited a couple friends over and just did like, almost minute to win it type games. Yeah. But we called it at Home Olympics.

Rob Shepherd (14:58):
And I did like eight of these videos. And, uh, most of them didn't do great, but like, one of 'em was like the fourth one, uh, it, it took about two or three weeks, but it, it hit over a million views. Yeah. Um, and that's when I was like, okay, people like watching us play these, these games. And so we started doing some more of those. And then, uh, by November of of that year, um, I, I posted a, um, there was this trend that kind of went around, uh, like imposter where you have like, uh, you know, three waters and one vinegar mm-hmm. , and, you know, people gotta, you gotta guess who, who drank the, the vinegar. Um, so we were like, Hey, that would be fun to do with our family. And when I was a youth pastor, um, years ago, I, I used to do this thing called Dr.

Rob Shepherd (15:45):
Dare, where I would trick the students. And so, uh, if you take, uh, like a, a tub of vanilla ice cream and you scoop out all the ice cream and you fill it with mayonnaise and then you freeze it, it scoops just like ice cream. Okay. So back when I was a youth pastor, I would say, Hey, we're gonna have a ice cream eating competition. And, you know, I'd get my two volunteers and I'd scoop it out and they would think they're eating two scoops of vanilla ice cream. But then I would say, ah, you know, Dr. Dare gotcha. This is mayonnaise. Let's see who can eat the most mayonnaise. And then, you know, set a 32nd timer and they have to eat the most. And so, um, I was thinking about this imposter thing. I was like, you know what, we could freeze, uh, mayonnaise and do three ice creams, one mayonnaise, um, and let's just, let's just do an imposter.

Rob Shepherd (16:26):
Yeah. Um, and so we did this imposter video and I closed my phone and we went out shopping and, uh, we were at Target and I was like, I told my wife, I said, Hey, can I, can I look at your phone real quick just to see, uh, I wanna see how our TikTok is doing. And, um, it was like an hour later and it had like 17,000 views. And I was like, wow, okay. That's, that's pretty crazy. Uh, by, by like, you know, that night, um, it was like 800,000 by the next day it was, uh, like up to 2 million. Yeah. Um, that video currently, I don't look at it, I, I've kind of lost track of it, but last I checked it was at like 59 million views. Wow. Um, and so it has gone, it like there's people that are speaking Chinese and German, like there's all sorts of languages that have hit on this video in the comments Yeah. In the comments . Yeah. But that, so that imposter one, um, we've, we've had multiple now that have gone over a million. We've had a few that have hit, uh, you know, 10 million, uh, 6 million. Uh, but the biggest was that imposter one with the mayonnaise and it, it's at like, I think 59 million.

Nick Clason (17:33):
Yeah. And like I was telling you this week, like we, we tried a couple year of those. Right. And so we've, uh, we've done a few of those like on our team. Yeah. Um, and so our first one hit this week and we had an event last night and it was just fun cuz there's a lot of people like kind of talking to us about it. Yeah. Like, I totally thought she had it, I didn't Yeah. Like, you know, all that type of stuff. And so I think, you know, sort of like my heartbeat, uh, behind this podcast right, is like, I don't think that, um, digital ministry only is necessarily the best way to approach reaching people. I think it can happen. Um, but I think it's difficult. I think Covid showed to us like some of the limitations of it a hundred percent.

Nick Clason (18:19):
However, like the completely reliant on, on, uh, in-person, um, without any sort of digital expression at all, um, is very much like, Hey, come, like you said, come to our gathering place once a week and then we'll see you next week. Right? Yeah. Like, people still live lives 367 other hours of their, their week. And so how do we show up in, in those spaces, in those dead sort of spaces? And like you said, where people are, they're online, they're, they're jumping on their phones. Um, oftentimes, let's be honest, they're jumping on their phones to be entertained or maybe inspired. Um, but they're not jumping on their phones to be reminded about the church potluck in two weeks. A hundred percent jump. They're jumping on their phones to watch something silly. Like, I don't know about you. Like me and my wife will just get on our phones after the kids go to bed and she'll be on hers, I'll be on mine and we'll share stuff to each other like across the couch.

Nick Clason (19:12):
Yeah. Like, Hey, did you watch that thing I just sent you? Um, or we'll, you know, I'll turn it and show it to her. And so I think that sort of archetype of just like fun, entertaining, um, your church can, can be that, you know, you can set that example, um, and do it, uh, just for fun. Like I said, if nothing else, not even necessarily to try and go viral. Um, sure. But for your people, it's a way to, to engage. And like I said, so one of the way, one of the things I'm doing is I'm taking all that TikTok stuff. I'm also putting it on reels. Yeah. But then I can use that, uh, on our, our Instagram feed or our Instagram stories, which is often we're more of our actual followers are coming across our content. Yeah. So like I shared that imposter video that we did, uh, but I shared it to our story and then I just put like a, uh, the poll question sticker, like, who do you think it was? Yeah. And let people vote, right? Yeah. And so it's just another kinda layer way to like engage with your people. So even if you're listening to this, you're like, I don't know, I don't know if my goal is to reach 12 million people, like you don't have to like, that doesn't mm-hmm. that doesn't have to be the end game or the end No. The end goal in all this, you know, so

Rob Shepherd (20:19):
Well, and I, I would say to that fact, if you go chasing views, TikTok will drive you crazy mm-hmm. . Um, because the videos that I've put a ton of time in and I'm like, this is great. We've edited this. Like I've spent so much, I scripted this out, they flop mm-hmm. , um, you know, and a video that you don't even think about. Like I, I had a video, we did a video, we, we do this thing for my kids' birthdays, for all our birthdays where we flip a birthday cake. Yeah. And, um, my daughter flipped hers and her, her facial reaction was so great cuz she didn't, she, she caught it upside down. And I posted that video on their birthday, which is March 30th. Um, it did nothing mm-hmm. Like literally did nothing. Two months later it went viral. Hmm. Um, and it's that 6 million views right now, but if you chase views, if you do something for the views, you'll be so disappointed.

Rob Shepherd (21:08):
Yeah. Or I, I would say for anyone listening this, um, you don't have to duplicate someone else's TikTok, be authentic to who you are. Do what, what interests you. My family likes doing these games. Yeah. So it's very authentic and real to us. But if you don't like doing those games, don't go chasing that. If you don't like dancing, don't do dances on TikTok. Like Yeah. Don't do that. There is a niche for almost or niche, however you say it. There is a, a, a niche for almost everyone. Yeah. Um, you've gotta find it and be consistent. And when it's authentic to you, you can find an audience. But it, it takes, it takes time and a lot of work.

Nick Clason (21:39):
Yeah. All right. So that, so then another question I have, so those are your most viral videos. Yeah. What's your favorite video? And maybe like you said it, you put a lot of time into it, effort into it, and it didn't, it didn't do anything like, but what's a, a favorite video or two that you've done that maybe didn't go viral, but you're like, yeah, this is really cool. I still really liked it.

Rob Shepherd (22:00):
Yeah. Um, so I might have like recency bias, but there's one that I filmed a few weeks ago, uh, with my kids and my son does not love being on camera. Um, my daughter will, will she, she's more of a little bit of a ham, so she'll, she'll jump on with me. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we did a video to, uh, uh, a sound, we, so we didn't create the sound. Um, but she is playing, um, she has wrapping paper rolls and she's hitting my head and it's making like the drum noise. And my son took a cardboard cutout that we have of elf and he puts it into the background so he's controlling that she can't see him, but it gave him something to do. And, uh, it was just the three of us that, that made it. And it was so fun to make. Yeah. Um, it has not taken off at all. Uh, and so first I posted it once and it, it, it did not take off. And so like a week later I posted it a second time just hoping it would like, kind of take off. It hasn't taken off either, but that was the, probably the most fun I've had. And, and one of the ones that I'm like, I love that cause I did it with my kids.

Nick Clason (22:59):
Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit like just nerdy kind of like strategy stuff with that. So yeah. Uh, talk about what you've seen in the algorithm and um, and views and whatnot about, you know, you said like re reposting it. So are you like deleting the original video or are you just never taking it back onto your feed to try and like catch catch that lottery ticket again? Yeah. Um, and like, how, how many times would you do that with a certain video? Would you do it more than two times? Um, or what have you done, you know, that you've seen work?

Rob Shepherd (23:35):
Yeah. So here's the thing about TikTok, what you said earlier is what almost everyone does. No one hangs out on the following. They hang out on the for you page. Yeah. So if, if your videos don't get on the for you page, people aren't seeing them over and over again mm-hmm. . And so it doesn't hurt you to repost something and just see like, Hey, did this, you know, did it flop because no one, you know, is the wrong time of day or whatever, or Hmm. You know, whatever. So it doesn't, it doesn't hurt you to repost. And if you'll notice the people that consistently go viral, they repost the same type of video over and over again. Yeah. It may have a new tweak to it, but once they find out what do people like, they just do that over and over again. And then eventually they'll come up with a new, you know, twist or whatever.

Rob Shepherd (24:19):
Um, but there's a family that I, I follow that they've got, you know, like 2 million followers and when I scroll through their page, like I go to their direct page, it's the same video once every four videos. There's like, they just repeat it over and over again. Yeah. Um, and so yeah. I, I think, I think go for it. If you, if you, it's not like Instagram where people will, will criticize you or say, I've already seen this or Facebook, uh, it's all reliant on the for you page. And so if it didn't go viral, probably no one saw it on the for you page. You just repost it again.

Nick Clason (24:52):
Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Man, that's so, that's so interesting to think about cuz we've been so conditioned by the curated feeds, you know? Yeah. And everything that Instagram and Facebook were like, it's just, it's an, it's a brand new day out there on social media. And, and the reason I can say that like confidently Yeah. Is cause every other platform is ripping TikTok off right now. Like mm-hmm. , every other platform is going all in Instagram about three months ago, converted every video to a reel. Yep. Um, YouTube tried shorts didn't work and they, they took it down and they're tweaking it and bringing it back. Not because they don't want to work. They, they did some stuff I think on their backend to promote it even more. So everyone is saying this is, this is the new wave. So it's it, but it's a new wave of thinking too. Right? Yeah. Um, yeah. So it's, I that's so, that's so crazy to think about. Um,

Rob Shepherd (25:49):
Yeah. And I, as far real quick, as far as taking, taking down a video, um, so I know Instagram ingrained in a lot of, especially teenagers, that if it doesn't have a certain amount of likes take it down. Um, cuz they're like mm-hmm. a ashamed of it or, or you know, whatever. Um, do not do that on TikTok. I think it is a massive mistake. Mm-hmm. Very few people are just scrolling your profile and give a rip about how your videos are doing. That's good. Um, but what happens is, especially now, cuz this year TikTok has converted itself to be more of a search engine. Mm-hmm. , it wants to be more like YouTube. So like I have videos from last Christmas games that we played that are going viral right now Mm. Because people are searching for Christmas games. Mm. And so, like, I had a video that had a few thousand views last year. Right Now it's, it's, I mean, it's got thousands upon thousands of views from this year, year a year later because people are now searching for Christmas games or, or, or whatever. Mm-hmm. So I, I don't delete, I don't delete anything. There's been a couple that I have privated or I've turned to like friends only mm-hmm. , um, you know, but, uh, I, for the most part, once it's out there, just like see what happens and it could be six months to a year and then it'll take off.

Nick Clason (27:02):
Yeah. That's so good too. Think about it, the, it's come in like a search engine, so churches, church leaders, like you can answer questions that people might search like Yep. Questions about God, about faith, about theology, about like, some deep existential things that, like

Rob Shepherd (27:21):
Marriage relationships

Nick Clason (27:21):
You're all going to be looking at. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you can show up in Yeah. In those searches. So that's good. Yeah. All right. So the last, just the last little thing I wanna touch on here before we we sign off is how do you personally, uh, not get sucked into the addict addictive side of social media? Like the fact that, you know, you can be chasing likes, views, like it's, I mean, it's scientifically proven that they're built, our smartphones are built to be like dopamine hits, which are the same things that like drugs, uh, or pornography give us, right? Yeah. So like, what are some just sort of personal guardrails or things that you do to protect yourself or your family or your screen time or those types of things as you're, um, also producing different and lots of content?

Rob Shepherd (28:10):
Yeah, yeah. You know, so I a hundred percent got sucked in, in, into that, um mm-hmm. . And, uh, I would say the, the first thing that really, uh, impacted me is when we first kind of started going viral. Um, I thought, you know, this is it. Like, and it was so nice. Every time I opened my phone I had 99 notifications and it was so cool. It was like, man, you know, people are loving it. But then after a couple months I hit a dead zone and my videos, everything I posted, it didn't matter. It just flopped and it messes with your head. It's like, well, what's wrong with me? Does my content stink now? And like, it's not the case. Like, I don't know what happens with the algorithm, but the algorithm giveth and it take it away. Like there are, there are just seasons where it's like, no matter what you post, no one's gonna see it.

Rob Shepherd (28:57):
No one's gonna care. Mm-hmm. . And then there's other seasons where like you could sneeze on, on camera and it's gonna go viral. And so, um, that kind of seasoned learning helped me say, okay, I, I don't need to, I need to get off my phone. I don't need to be obsessed with it cuz I can't control it. Mm-hmm. , once the video is posted, I can't control if it goes viral or not. And so typically when I post a video, I shut my phone off and I don't get on TikTok for a while. Um, and just kind of let it sit and then, you know, I'll, I'll open it later. Um, also try really hard, uh, for family time. Um, which the nice thing about making tos with my family is that we get to do something together. Yeah. Um, before they started making 'em, it was me by myself.

Rob Shepherd (29:39):
Yeah. And that, my wife and I, we had to have some hard conversations cuz it's like, you know, we're watching TV and I would go make a TikTok and it would only take 15, 20 minutes, but it's 15, 20 minutes away from them. Mm-hmm. now we make a lot together. And so that, that's also been, but yeah, trying to shut off the phone. Um, trying not to, to let it consume your, your mindset and it'll make you go crazy if you're, if you're looking for likes or looking for, how's this video doing mm-hmm. now I just post and, uh, just let the album do its thing. Yeah.

Nick Clason (30:09):
No, that's good. I think, I think it's just acknowledging like they are trying to suck you in. So Yeah. A know that and then b like as a social media creator, pastor, producer, whatever, ministry leader, just have this self-discipline to put it down, walk away. Yeah. Maintain that walkaway power. So yeah. All right, man, let us know, uh, where can people follow you on TikTok? Tell us about Yeah. Your book coming out, like where they can grab all that type of stuff.

Rob Shepherd (30:39):
Yeah, so, um, I am, uh, at Rob Shep on TikTok, uh, Instagram. It's at Rob underscore Shep. Um, Facebook, I'm Rob Shepherd. Um, so, and I'm on all those. Uh, I don't ever check Twitter, but you can find me on there too, . Um, but, uh, yeah, so TikTok is at Rob Shep. Um, new book will be out, uh, hopefully by February, um, February, March. And you'll be able to find it on Amazon. But it, uh, all my books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere you go to buy books, especially online. Yeah. Um, you, they, you can get a copy of, of my book. And so I've had, uh, three books out. The first one's called, even if You Were Perfect, someone would Crucify You. The second one's called You Misspelled Christian, and the third one is called Kill the Jerk. And so, um, those are my three books. And then, uh, fourth one is about, uh, when offense knocks and about not getting so offended. So,

Nick Clason (31:31):
Mm. That's good. Love it. All right man. Well thanks so much for your time

Rob Shepherd (31:35):
During Yeah, thank you. Crazy

Nick Clason (31:36):
Busy Christmas week. Um, for sure. Appreciate you making some time for it. Talk about TikTok a little bit. Um, yeah, some fun stuff. So, and uh, yeah man, we'll talk to you next time.

Rob Shepherd (31:45):
All right, sounds good. Thanks for having me on.

Nick Clason (31:47):
Yeah. Later, bro.

Rob Shepherd (31:48):
All right.

Nick Clason (31:50):
Well man, I hope that you guys enjoyed that conversation. Uh, I know even as I was having the interview with him, I learned a couple of things and he made me think differently about a couple of things in managing, uh, my TikTok reels, YouTube shorts, all the different accounts that, um, are promoting short form videos. So I hope that was beneficial and advantageous for you. Hey, if this was helpful, go uh, share it with a friend. We're gonna be posting some clips of this over on my personal TikTok at Clason, Nick, uh, check that out. And here soon. Um, I will be dropping a video, um, I believe next week, um, at the start of the new year on the framework, um, for posting a TikTok. It's called, have I Ruined My TikTok account yet? A guide for posting a TikTok from Start to finish.

Nick Clason (32:38):
Uh, it's gonna be complete with an ebook, um, as well as a tutorial video. And so excited to have you guys check that out. You can head, uh, to the show notes hybrid ministry.xyz/ 0 2 4, uh, to subscribe to my YouTube channel and, uh, to join my TikTok follower list, if that's something that interests you, or if you just want transcript notes from the show. We provide transcripts for every single episode completely for free at zero cost to you. We hope that you find it beneficial and advantageous. And also, would you just do us a favor, share this podcast with a friend, subscribe, rate. All those things will be an incredible gift to us here in the weeks after the Christmas season. Um, our gift to you is to continue to deliver meaningful and useful content every Thursday. Um, and a gift back if you so desire would just be, uh, a rating.

Nick Clason (33:35):
You would love that so much. Just open your purple podcast app on your phone, give us a five star and, uh, that would be incredibly generous and we would thank you so much for that. So, um, like I said, anytime you need anything hybridministry.xyz, there's also a, um, articles tab there. We're gonna start posting some more articles and writings and things like that. So, um, that's where the ebook is gonna be found. So just check that out. That's so interest to you. But until next time, we'll talk to a happy New Year and see you in.

Episode 021: Social Media in 2023 with new rules, remaining healthy personally while using social media as a tool, and the Best YouTube strategy of 2023 and Beyond!

Nick Clason — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 04:00:00 -0600

SUMMARY
In this episode Nick discusses how to approach the new wave of social media, which is more about discoverability than it is about a custom curated feed. Additionally, Nick wades into the topics about remaining personally healthy while managine a social media profile and strategy. Finally, Nick discusses his personal favorite YouTube church content strategy for 2023 and beyond.

Follow along at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Or on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick

TIMECODES
00:00-01:59 - Intro
01:59-10:46 - How do we approach this new wave of algorithim based on discoverability?
10:46-17:31 - How do we navigate boundaries with social media?
17:31-23:30 - The Best Church YouTube strategy for 2023 and beyond
23:30-24:48 - Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
What is going on? Hybrid Ministry podcast. My name is Nick Clason. I am your host. Excited to be back with you again. In today's episode, I wanted to just touch on three different topics. Number one, how do we as content creators, as social media managers, as uh, church marketing, uh, aficionados, though none of us really probably went to school for church marketing. How do we handle the new phenomenon that we are in with a discoverability algorithm as opposed to a curated four year followers type algorithm that we used to experience or we were so accustomed to experiencing with Facebook and Instagram? The other thing I wanna look at is I wanna talk about how do we handle and navigate the fact that these, uh, phones and social media apps are so, uh, addicted, they literally mess with our brains. How do we navigate that? How do we handle that?

Nick Clason (01:02):
And is the means with which we are using to push out our content, is that the actual message? And what does that communicate to our church people? And then lastly, uh, I want to, I wanna lay up for you what I think to be the best small church and potentially even bigger than just small church YouTube strategy for churches in 2023. So let's get this thing started, but before we do, don't forget, like, subscribe. Um, you know what I switched over from, uh, focusing on my attention over on Twitter? We are now, um, at my personal Instagram, um, @ClasonNick, uh, on TikTok for, um, all the things that we have. Social media, also swing by hybridministry.xyz, which is the home of this podcast where you can find everything that you ever need, including show notes and transcripts. Those are there every single episode for you for free.

Nick Clason (01:56):
Let's get this thing started. So, how do we handle, how do we approach a discoverability algorithm? So the first thing you need to know is what is a discoverability algorithm? TikTok is the, um, is the platform that made this discoverability algorithm famous. You'll know if you're on TikTok, that there's a friends panel and there is a fyp or a four you panel. The reality is most of the content that you see on TikTok, it's probably done by people that you have discovered as opposed to people that you are actually friends with. What that means is the algorithm is smart and it understands that it knows who you interact with, what videos you watch the longest, which ones you share the most, which ones you like the most, which ones you save the most. And it highlights those. It indexes those and then it comes back and it feeds you more of that content.

Nick Clason (02:44):
It's honestly astonishing and bewildering and a little bit frightening how smart it is at knowing you and knowing me. So how do we as churches in 2022 and beyond handle, uh, approaching platforms with discoverability algorithms? Cuz here's the thing. You at the church might be thinking, well, that's fine, but I'm not on TikTok. The problem is every social platform, YouTube, Facebook, and now Instagram are going all in on short form video discoverability platforms in an attempt and in an effort to keep up with the phenomenon that is TikTok. So what do we do about that? Because, uh, you can choose to ignore it. And I would imagine that some churches are going to do that because, um, they might see TikTok is dangerous or it's perilous, or it's just another platform that they have to manage and they don't have the ability, effort, bandwidth to go in and make it happen.

Nick Clason (03:41):
But what do you do? Because honestly, it's a very different approach. Let's think about Facebook circa 2008. You would get people to like your page from your church, Hey, go like us on Facebook, click on notifications. And then what churches auto almost automatically did was they used and viewed social media as an extension of their communication strategy. So then churches, um, and organizations like churches got very, very, uh, complacent to just simply post announcements, Hey, come to the church potluck, Hey, come to the, the live nativity that we're having. Hey, come to the, uh, churchwide, you know, Frisbee golf championship. Yeah, I don't know, whatever. Right? And it's just announcement, announcement, announcement. Why? I think a couple of reasons. I think number one, um, the, the whirlwind is fierce in churches, you got an event once a week that you are hosting and pulling off.

Nick Clason (04:36):
That's not to mention any of the special events that you have all throughout the year. And so it can feel like you're in the event planning and facility rental or facility usage environment or, or space. And so those things are, um, just fierce. They're just coming at you hot every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. And so then therefore, as opposed to crafting and curating a tailor made for you social media, um, first strategy, it's just like, oh, the Johnson said they didn't know about the Frisbee golf tournament that might they follow us on Facebook. I know that you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna post an announcement, make sure I never miss an announcement. Here's the thing. The reality is those aren't the type of fees that we have anymore. If you as a page want to get seen, in most cases, you're gonna have to pay, and that's gonna be a sponsored thing.

Nick Clason (05:28):
It's advertisement at that point. So, uh, and you can't do that as a church if you have the budget dollars to do it. And it's advantageous to you to get more people to the Fri be golf tournament. But here's what I would argue. If you are going to start paying, um, then, then what you're looking to do is you are looking to reach a unique audience. And that's the thing that this discoverability, this fy p this four you type thing that TikTok has made famous but has since been adopted by all these other platforms. Um, that is what you have the opportunity to do. You have an opportunity to reach a different audience than those who already follow you. So what you need to know is, number one, uh, it may not be the most advantageous for you to go into your TikTok and just continue to post a video announcements from your church to the things that are aimed at your inside people.

Nick Clason (06:19):
You're gonna wanna post things. If you do, do any sort of announcement type things, um, that are hopefully able for other people that do not go to your church to discover it, to find it, and to hopefully then take a, a next step, an action step towards you or towards your church. One of the other things that makes it fun is that TikTok is all about trends. And so one of the best ways to get discovered is show up in people's FY P is do the things that are already popular on TikTok. And so grab a trend and, and, and put your church event kind of stamp on that thing. If you do want more people at the Frisbee golf tournament, then go on, find what songs are viral, find what trends are happening a lot, how do you do that? Spend time on there.

Nick Clason (07:04):
And if you spend a little bit of time on there as a consumer, um, all you gotta do is just click save, save, save, save, save. Then they'll save onto your profile, whether that be your church profile or your individual profile. Either way, you can kind of go back and create an archived kinda library of things that you don't want to forget. Then use those throughout the week as you're posting. But here's the other thing, beyond just like announcements or beyond just like events, is you now have the opportunity to sit and speak into a camera and broadcast the message of Jesus to those around you. Now, you might be thinking like, that's not a very advantageous strategy because I'm a church located in the local demographic, and I don't want to just reach people that are miles and miles away from my church and will never have the opportunity to attend.

Nick Clason (07:48):
I get that. One thing that's actually really cool that we've discovered about the TikTok algorithm is it actually does prioritize and highlight a local geographical spreading. It's a little bit like a bullseye, and so it'll pump it out to people that follow you first, and if it performs well, it'll pump it out to people in your local geographical region. And then a little bit further and a little bit further, and finally a little bit further can tell you're like all the way viral. If you're obviously all the way viral, it's not, it's gonna be reaching people yes, that are far away from your church, but know that those first couple of layers are a little bit more like localized to where your environment is. And so as we are pro uh, producing and putting more content out on these platforms, I just wanna encourage you to think a little bit differently, think less about the Johnsons who missed the announcement for the Frisbee golf tournament, and be thinking about people who may be far from God, who may not have a faith background just yet.

Nick Clason (08:42):
And how can your church help spread and share the message and hope that's found in Jesus through a simple means and a simple unpolished not, uh, super well produced or super organized selfie style cell phone based video that honestly doesn't take that long for you to do. The opportunity is amazing. I'll just say anecdotally speaking, I started doing this stupid thing on my TikTok where I try and get, um, 2000 total touchdowns from, uh, players who played in the nfl. So I saw a guy do it, and it's got this filter where it puts a team and they cycle through the teams. They go on my forehead and it stops. And then I pick a player, any player that ever played for that franchise, and then I go and I like look up how many total touchdowns they've ever had in their career. My goal is with two quarterback slots, two running back slots, three receiver slots, and two tight end slots to be able, uh, to, to come up with 2000 touchdowns.

Nick Clason (09:39):
It's honestly quite hard. And really, like you have to, you have to get the heaviest hitters, like the top of the quarterback position, top of the running back, top of the receiver to even ever get there. I've done the math, like, is this ever gonna be possible? But those videos have gone freaking bananas, like, I don't understand it. And more and more and more and more and more people are following me and, and like coming into contact with my content. And so now I'm like, Hey, wait a minute. Like now there's a little bit of an audience here. So what if I use this to start helping show, push, promote, and talk about this hybrid ministry digital ministry type of ID idea? And so it's just so fascinating to see how that algorithm works. Like once something catches, it catches and you have absolutely no rhyme or reason or understanding of why that might be the case, but if it does, it does. And so, uh, don't get discouraged. Keep producing, keep saying faithful. Um, and eventually something's gonna pop. And um, it, it's never gonna be the thing that you expect it to be, but once something does, then the things that you do want pushed the things that you do wanna put on your channel, uh, those will become more and more and more accessible, findable, adaptable to your audience.

Nick Clason (10:48):
All right, so what do we do? Uh, with the fact that we, uh, know that our cell phones, we know that our devices are smart technologies are literally flooding our brains with dopamine every single time that we open unlock, um, and light our brains up with just this hit of like, Hey, this is, this is a good thing. And how do we handle that? I wanna approach this on two fronts. Number one, how do we personally handle that? And then number two, um, what does it communicate to the people that go to our church that follow us, that we're trying to promote good, solid, um, healthy practices, not just spiritually healthy, but but physically healthy and emotionally healthy and, um, you know, healthy, uh, like purity wise, like all those types of things. Like how do we handle that is the means. TikTok, for example, probably first and foremost, which has a very addictive, uh, sort of, um, framework built into it.

Nick Clason (11:46):
Does that communicate something that we don't really want to be getting behind or that we want to get, um, that we wanna be, be promoting, uh, to the people that follow us? Well, first and foremost, you need to know, right? That like, that decision lies squarely on a couple people's shoulders, your own that your own personal convictions, um, need to be kinda weighed out and, and challenged, I would say. And also if you go to a church where it's very much frowned upon or you've even been told not to, um, you know, en engage in that sort of platform, um, then those things are gonna kind of be done. Like for you, those decisions have been made for you, especially if it's done at the church level. Um, but how do we personally handle it? I would, I would say that, um, it's probably pretty, uh, tempting to spend just a lot of time on your cell phone, uh, because you are the social media content person.

Nick Clason (12:42):
And so what are the personal boundaries that you need to put in place for that? So, um, just this week, uh, I got a, I got a new phone recently. A couple of things I've tried. I have a Google Pixel, uh, pro seven and every night, 10 o'clock, I turn my phone to a nighttime mode and it turns everything gray, which is an absolutely maddening thing to have happen when you're on your phone and all of a sudden it just flips to gray. But it does, it turns off all that, all that blue light stuff, right, that we know keeps us awake, that keeps our brains kind of like firing and stuff like that. And it hopefully calms it down. It also to me sort of signals like, yo, I start to wind, it's time to start to wind down, you know? Um, and, and it is not an enjoyable thing to look at my phone when it's gray.

Nick Clason (13:26):
The other thing I did was I put timers on certain apps, apps that I was spending, um, more time than I wanted to. You know, you get the screen time report or whatever, so you can put timers now on apps. And so as my, as, uh, in my ministry, I'm the primary content person, so I need to have those social media apps on my phone. Um, at least right now, unless, you know, I get a phone that's purchased only for the church or whatever, but like for right now, I need those on my phone, but I'm only limiting myself. It's like a half an hour a day because, uh, I can get everything I need. I can find content in the future and I can even spend a little bit of time like personally perusing social media. But if I'm on longer than an hour, cuz honestly, um, Instagram a half an hour and TikTok a half an hour, that adds up to an hour.

Nick Clason (14:10):
That's, that's a good chunk of my day, honestly, probably more than I need it to be, you know? Um, and so I may even evaluate that even after talking into this podcast here and, and back that down a little bit. But here's the thing, the reality is this, is that there are tools built into the phones and the devices that, um, that will help you maintain those boundaries. What, what then it really comes down to where the rubber really does meet the road is are you going to honor the, your own boundaries that you at one point in time set for yourself? Or are you gonna break them? Because you can of course go in and change the time or turn it off, snooze it, whatever. Um, but I would challenge you, I would challenge you to do that because we know that, um, it is not better for us to be people that are reliant upon technology.

Nick Clason (14:57):
Technology is a tool. And I would argue that, um, I'm very passionate about this hybrid, um, approach, this digital ministry sort of, um, phenomenon. But the reality is this is, it is simply a tool to share the message and hope of Jesus. And that's it. And if it is abused, then that is, that's not obviously the goal. And so, uh, it's simply a tool. It's simply a vehicle. And you know what? One day there's gonna be something that's more effective. Back when the Apostle Paul was writing the method and the means were letter writing, nowadays we don't really write letters. It would not be that effective for me to write a letter to a 15 year old to try and tell them about the gospel of Jesus. But it might be effective for me to post a 5, 10, 15 second, uh, video that talks about Jesus that they can, um, check out and that we then give them another kind of opportunity to then take a next step and to learn and dive deeper into the message and hope that's found in Jesus.

Nick Clason (15:49):
And so, uh, then that leads me to the next question is the means the message. And I think, yeah, that is a dangerous and potentially very slippery slope. And that's again, something that you have to sort of navigate and wrestle to the ground at your own personal context in which you serve. But if we are wanting to reach people and if we are using this platform to reach people, is it a tool that can be harnessed for good? Absolutely. It absolutely can be used and harnessed for good. Is there evil in it? Sure. Is there bad stuff that you can find on the internet? Absolutely. Is there, uh, evil, evil and and danger when you do, uh, an overnight lock in with a bunch of teenagers and the potential risk for promiscuity and misbehavior and drugs, alcohol and stuff rises also? Yeah. Is it dangerous to get in the car every day and drive to work?

Nick Clason (16:44):
Yeah, it is, right? Like, so there are dangers and so you personally need to be smart. You need to model good digital hygiene. And I would also argue that we should be teaching our teenagers how to do that as well. We should be using that and viewing that as a discipleship moment to help craft and shape them. Like, Hey, how would Jesus handle technology? And um, I think he, I think he would, I think he would use it to exalt and glorify God the father. And honestly, that's what I want to do as well. But as I'm doing that, I don't wanna lose myself. I don't want to become addicted. Um, and I know, like I said, I just got a new phone. I know how addicting it has become. And so that's why I wanna put in more safeguards, more practices for me, uh, to navigate and handle those things well.

Nick Clason (17:33):
Or I wanna talk about the best church YouTube strategy that I can think of. If you don't wanna go all out on a bunch of crazy gear, um, I would recommend this. I would recommend, and I talked about this a couple episodes ago, but I would recommend pre-filing your YouTube, um, your message content. So everything that you deliver every single week, sit down, get in front of the camera that is on the back of your cell phone that is sitting in your pocket right now that you're probably using to listen to or watch this video, okay? And then I would buy one, one primary piece of equipment that you need to get this thing started. A road video mic, m e c usbc, directional microphone for smartphones. Now, if you don't have a USBC connection, then just google the connection that you do have on your Apple iPhone pot, probably because you don't have an Android.

Nick Clason (18:24):
Um, and use that shotgun mic in a controlled environment to have someone sit down in front of a set that looks nice, that has some decent lighting. I guess another, uh, potential piece of equipment that you may need is, um, a tripod to hold your phone up to aim at you or whatever, but prepare your content that you're gonna preach and prepare and teach in front of your congregants, whether it be adult students, whatever your context and deliver it before you get up on the stage to deliver it to the live room. Why? Well, two things. Number one, unless you already have the infrastructure for live streaming, then if you do, I would ignore this part, but if you do not, which, um, I talk to a lot of youth pastors who their churches may be live streaming, but they themselves are not live streaming.

Nick Clason (19:10):
And I would argue that if there is a demographic that's worth, uh, putting content out to it is teenagers, it's Gen Z and soon to be, by the way, cuz they're right on the cusp. Generation alpha, okay? And so we should be trying to reach the natives, our, our teenagers, gen Z Alfa in their native tongue. And that's video that's digital. Now the thing is, you, if you're a youth pastor specifically, you're probably not meeting in the main room where you have access to all the live broadcast equipment. And if you are a church that you are the main pastor and you don't have that equipment yet, then I don't think that that's an issue. Cuz here's a couple of things that we know. The best performing YouTube videos fall somewhere between 12 and 18 minutes. So if you get up and you preach a 35 minute sermon and you post that entire thing to YouTube, that's not exactly, um, optimal for YouTube.

Nick Clason (20:03):
And so what you can do when you pre-fill is you can adapt it so that what you're preaching, you're still preaching the same content, but you're pairing it down so that it fits into that 12 to 18 minute video. It's gonna perform best on YouTube that way. The other thing that it does is it lets you, um, focus on the camera. If you're watching this right now, you're watching me focus directly into the camera. I'm not preaching to a room of people behind me. You have no idea that behind me is, um, a giant bean bag and a chair and a dresser and a baby's crib. Um, that's not what you see, right? You're seeing what I want you to see, which is myself and the chair that I'm sitting in. The reality is that you can do all that. You can create a set, you can create something that looks kind of nice, something that's gonna catch a watcher's eye on, on a platform like YouTube.

Nick Clason (20:47):
And you can speak directly into the camera when you just rip off your live stream, you're catering to the room. I remember when this happened to me one time, I was preaching a large, uh, multi megachurch from the broadcast location. And um, after I got done, the feedback I got was, Hey, pay more attention to the camera, right? Like, when I got up there, my natural propensity was to preach to the people in the room, which is what most of our natural propensities are, but they had a camera in the back and they were live streaming it. And so they're like, don't forget, you need to look down the barrel of that camera. That wasn't a natural experience for me. And if you're gonna start live streaming, that's probably also not a very natural experience for you, I would argue. Um, or at least I, I would make the bet that that's the case, right?

Nick Clason (21:32):
And so what I want to propose and what I want to promote is I want you to just consider and think about what would it look like if you pre-filed your stuff. It would help you, uh, get it to the time and length that it needs to be to perform best on YouTube. And then it would also, uh, help you focus on the audience that's right there on the other side of the camera. The third thing that it does, and this is just um, something that I've, I've personally been experiencing learning and using is, um, it helps me get familiar with my content. So by the time I do step foot on the stage, I'm actually much more comfortable with the content cuz I've already dealt with it. I've already been in it, I've already delivered it one time. Um, and so then that way all I need to do is get up in and deliver it again, live to the room.

Nick Clason (22:18):
But I'm not as, um, I'm not as tied to my notes like I maybe would be otherwise because I've gone through 'em. I'm aware I, you know, I mean like, I get the flow, I get the rhythm. And so if you're a primary communicator, you, you probably understand that being more familiar with your notes than, as opposed to being less familiar. And I mean, a lot of pastors, a lot of good preachers, they do sit down, they do spend some time pouring over their notes before they get up live on the the stage. Why not have just one of those times? It's you doing it to a camera. So then what that does with the, the nice microphone, it gives you good audio, decent video. Even if you don't have the most up to date smartphone. There's a lot of really, really good, um, there's a lot of really, really good, uh, camera phones out there that take really good videos.

Nick Clason (23:02):
And here's the thing, the reality is this video's probably gonna be consumed on a phone, you know what I mean? So, uh, you're shooting it on a phone to another phone, I don't think that's gonna be a gigantic deal. Um, don't let your creative department tell you otherwise. Uh, and then, uh, what that does is that then also helps you as a communicator get another shot at it. So that's my personal right now. Favorite YouTube strategy for 2022, 2023 and beyond. Hey, once again, thank you guys so much for hanging out on this episode. I cannot believe we are into the twenties already. Uh, had had fun having Kerry on the last couple. Um, been fun having a couple guests. Probably gonna try to get a few more guests here and there, but love having this, love having these conversations. Appreciate you all man. It would be amazing if you could give us a, like a rating, um, subscribe so that you get this delivered for free every time to your inbox. Check us out at hybrid ministry, um, on, uh, our hybridministry.xyz on website. Like I said at the top of the show, we have free transcripts that we provide to you for every single episode. Hopefully you find those, um, helpful. Go check them out. And until next time, talk to you later. See you.

Episode 019: Kerry Ray on doing ministry like Jesus did, and how technology has changed the way we ministry and communicate to teenagers in Gen Z and Gen Alpha and beyond

Nick Clason — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 04:00:00 -0600

SUMMARY
In this episode Nick sits down with his friend, and YM360 General Editor and Content Director, Kerry Ray. Kerry is a veteran with over 3 decades of experience in church ministry, all in student ministry. Kerry and Nick talk about the ways in which technology has changed and shaped the ways of doing ministry. And Kerry also talks about the importance of going to a teenager's "turf" or showing up in their life, relationally.
Come hang out with us on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry
Or grab show notes and transcripts at http://www.hybridministry.xyz

SHOWNOTES
YM360
http://www.ym360.com
MINISTRY TO PARENTS
https://ministrytoparents.com/
MY YOUTH MIN
https://myyouthmin.com/
EPISODE 016 ON HOW THE IPHONE CHANGED THINGS WITH DERRY PRENKERT
https://merry-swamp-3547.fireside.fm/016

TIMECODES
00:00-02:49 Intro
02:49-05:55 Kerry's Intro and Experience
05:55-09:12 What it's like no longer being in the trenches of ministry
09:12-13:44 What was life in ministry like before the cell phone and after?
13:44-16:22 Is technology what created FOMO?
16:22-21:00 What is contact work?
21:00-32:58 Can we use technology to our advantage in ministry efforts?
32:58-34:27 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast, episode 19. We've been doing 19 of these. I can't freaking believe it in your catcher. It might be 20, because we posted as Double Zero pilot. I kind of hate when people do that, and then I, I went and did it. So, anyway, uh, as always, I am your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And today you're in for a treat because number one, I'm not just gonna ramble in your ear holes the entire time, like I have been for the last several episodes, but two, I'm bringing on one of my really good friends. His name is Kerry Ray. He is the director of editing and publications right now at YM 360, which is, YM Youth Min, right? Youth Ministry 360. And he has 30 years of church ministry experience, particularly in the student ministry and youth ministry space.

Nick Clason (00:58):
So, let me caveat all of that to say this is a ministry podcast, not specific in particular to youth ministry. However, that being said, um, you know that I am a 12 year youth ministry veteran, and so a lot of my connections and conversations come in the youth ministry space. And so, um, I just will caveat all this to say that today is going to be a very youth ministry centric conversation. Um, but all of it is going to be couched sort of in, uh, digital, right? And, and so what Kerry is gonna be talking about, um, and what I did is I, we had an interview and it went really well, and it went really long. And so I decided, I think I'm actually gonna bite, uh, split this up into two more bite size pieces. And so, episode one is gonna come out this week, episode two, or part two of this, I should say, is gonna drop on Thanksgiving Day, so you can enjoy it on the way to your, um, grandmother's house over the river and through the woods.

Nick Clason (01:59):
So in this first part in particular, he's gonna talk a little bit about his experience, um, what he's seen and how he's seen digital play a role in that. And then he talks about, um, a thing that I first learned from him, but he says he's still primarily from young Life called contact work, right? And if you've been around this podcast at all, you've known, we talked about showing up where they are, um, which is what Jesus did, honestly, right? He, he showed up where we were, he put on skin, he became human. And so that's what he talks about, and he kind of gives the basis for it and why it's important. Um, and so that's gonna be today. Um, so hopefully you enjoy it. And so, without any further ado, we're gonna get started. And you'll notice just how well I am as a host when we plan this thing, when you hear how we get started. So here we go. 3, 2, 1. Check it out. Hey,

Kerry Ray (02:50):
Is whoa gonna go first on,

Nick Clason (02:53):
Man? Come on. Doesn't even listen to instructions.

Kerry Ray (02:57):
I did. I thought you said, I'll do a thing later. And then you go ahead and introduce

Nick Clason (03:02):
Yourself. I'm keeping all this in. This is Kerry, everybody. Kerry, introduce yourself to the tens and tens of listeners that I have.

Kerry Ray (03:10):
Hey, tens of listeners. My name is Kerry Ray. I am the director of publishing for Y M 360 in Birmingham, Alabama. Uh, YM 360 Youth Ministry 360. Uh, before that, uh, this is my first year actually as a director of publishing, whatever that means. Uh, I did, uh, before that, I did, uh, right about three decades in the student ministry seat, um, in multiple denominations of churches, in churches, multiple states, uh, different sizes, churches, different size, not sizes, different size churches, um, multisites single sites, uh, single sites that wanted to be multisite, uh, . I've been, I've been around the block and, and seen a lot of things, man. Um, but yeah, I've been in the youth ministry for right at 30 years. And, um, this was my first, actually at the time of this recording, this was my, this last Easter was my first Easter, uh, in, in here in 2022, was my first Easter in 30 years, not to be on staff at a church.

Kerry Ray (04:15):
So it was quite the different thing to sit in there as a regular person who could see all the things going wrong, but uh, was not responsible for, for fixing any of them. Um, and so it was great. It was, it was really great. Um, it's weird now on Saturday nights after, you know, you get in a routine for 30 years. Uh, Saturday nights are kind of a weird thing because you go to church on Sunday mornings, but you're not going to work, you know, to do all the things. Um, so, and you go with a family on, on a Sunday morning, it's whole thing. Just a different world, man. So I've, uh, like I said, I've been, I got to wife 360 in October of 2022, um, and started a, a new thing. We, we work in, uh, Y 360, if you don't know, we're, we're part, um, publishing.

Kerry Ray (05:06):
And, uh, we create content for student ministries, youth ministries, all over the world to use. Um, and we also do camps. We have a, a generate by Y 360, uh, which does camp all across different locations. We had this last summer, summer of 2022. We, I believe we were in 20, 23 or 24 locations, um, running camps, 20. We had three different teams spread out all over. Uh, so it was great. My, my section of that, we create all of the, uh, written material, all the devotional material, all of the, um, all the written material for camps. Um, so yeah, it's been a lot of fun. It's very different. And then I get to, uh, coach student ministries, youth pastors, all across the place. Um, I've been doing that for around seven years, so, yeah. Nice. Yeah. Lot of fun. Lot of fun.

Nick Clason (05:59):
So let me ask you this, just, this isn't one of the questions I sent you. I'm already going off script, but, uh, do you enjoy Saturday nights and Sunday mornings not being responsible for stuff, or is there like an element of you that misses it at all?

Kerry Ray (06:15):
Oh, absolutely. I think anytime you do something for a significant amount of your life, um, there's a part of you that missed that, um, that misses, um, you know, just being around and, and, and knowing all the faces and knowing who's where. And, um, yeah, there's just part of it that you kind of miss a little bit of it. There's some part, and maybe this will make sense for some of you listening who've done anything for a significant amount of time, there's parts that you miss that you don't know why you miss, or you don't even know what you miss. You just say something's weird and off and just seems a little different. Um, yeah. But yeah, there, there's pieces and parts. There's definitely pieces and parts that I don't miss.

Kerry Ray (06:56):
You know, I don't miss, you know, being gone all day on a Sunday. Um, I don't miss, um, I the whole getting to be a part like you go as a family and do stuff with as a family, uh, that's really brand new. Yeah. Um, and, and it's, it's been great. My, my kids, I, my wife and I have two kids. We have an eight year old and a 14 just turned 14 a couple days ago. And so this is such a significant time in both of their lives mm-hmm. that it is great to be, you know, just a dad and not a staff member. Um, and to get, to get to sit in, I'll tell you, you know, a little bit of a confession. It's also difficult. Um, we're at a smaller church now, and, um, having been in large church ministry for so long, um, now that my daughter is participating in ministry, and, you know, that ministry is, you know, trying to figure itself out and mm-hmm. and, and go through all the, you know, all the growing pains of, of a growing ministry. And I'm sitting on the sidelines and thinking, gosh, , that's awkward. I can help that, but I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna white knight, you know, come in when my, on my high horse and, and quote unquote fix it for them. Especially with,

Nick Clason (08:16):
You're fixing it as the YM 360 guy. Are you fixing it as Madison dad, as dad? Are you fixing it as a church volunteer? Like, what, yeah. What's

Kerry Ray (08:26):
Your role, right? Or are you fixing as the guy that quote unquote knows it all right. So, you know, you don't, you don't wanna be that guy. Um, so yeah, it's, it's just been, it's been weird. That's, that's kind of the honest thing is to have done a thing, and I think this is true at anything, not just ministry, but having, you know, if you were, if you were a cabinet maker and you walked in and people were, you know, fumbling around with a hammer trying to build a cabinet, and you're just biting your, you know, biting your closed fist, going, oh, no, that's not how you, you do it . Um, so it, it's that, I mean, and not saying that they're not doing a great job. Um, they are, they're doing well in figuring it out. They're just, you know, figuring it out. Um, and they're going through some, some growing pain in that process. So yeah, that's, that's what we're doing as a family right

Nick Clason (09:13):
Now. So I'm, I'm curious, Kerry, like two or three episodes ago, I'll link it, you know, in the show notes, but I had, uh, my friend d Pinker on, and we talked about, um, how he, he has a similar longevity track record that you do, and he talked about how the invention of the iPhone was a pretty monumental, like, milestone marker for him in youth ministry. Like he kinda remembers ministry before the invention, um, and widespread use of the iPhone, and then post the invention and widespread use of the iPhone. Do you have, would you say you have a similar, um, experience with that? Like, did you, did you notice that being a pretty big milestone thing in student ministry and in your career noticing how students interacted? Did that change things? Did you, um, have to program or think about things differently because of technology and it's, you know, interwoven into the culture?

Kerry Ray (10:11):
Um, honestly, I, I think the iPhone changed not programming so much as it changed, um, advertising. And I know that's a big no-no word. You know, in the church world, you're not supposed to see the things you're doing as a quote unquote product or something you are promoting. Um, but you are, you're, you're promoting a thing, um, come be a part of this, whether it's a camp, a Wednesday night, a Sunday morning, you are trying to tell people this is a thing we have, um, otherwise you're sitting there by yourself. Um, and so I think it changed, I think it changed dramatically how we engaged with, with students. Hmm. , um, I don't think so much at all. It, it really changed programming. Um, but it definitely changed the way we engaged. It definitely changed, um, the level of intentionality that you had to put behind, uh, promotion and how you promoted and how you celebrated.

Kerry Ray (11:15):
Uh, it also gave you kind of an open door, you know, whether you want it to be or not. A lot of youth ministry is word of mouth. Yeah. Um, I always used to kinda call it the skating rink effect when I was a kid. You know, the skating rink was, was a thing. , sadly, that'll show you my age. The skating rink was a thing, and we didn't, in middle school specifically, you didn't know why it was a thing. Yeah. You just knew that's where everybody was. Mm-hmm. . And, uh, but it was word of mouth, you know? It was, it wasn't the, the skating rink when I grew up, the skating, it was called fun time, skate land. Uh, it wasn't that fun time. Skateland had this giant marketing, you know, this this monumental system or this, this thing that they were doing. They were like, come to fun time.

Kerry Ray (12:01):
It was just, it was word of mouth. And the middle school, you know, that that's where everybody was going on on a Friday night. They were going to fun time. And you talked about it in the hallways, and people do, and I think in cinema ministry, whether we want it to be or not, it, it's always been a word of mouth. You know, I'm, you know, why do, why do so many kids show up to this one event, this all nighter that you do? Well, because the word got out that these people are going and the other people wanna go. And then it snowballs into this thing. Um, and I think the word of mouth became digital. Word of mouth. Um, and you could, you could digitally have a megaphone to, to broadcast that thing versus just relying on word of mouth. Yeah. Um, and so that changed the game.

Kerry Ray (12:47):
So it changed. Um, the only thing I would say in programming, uh, uh, that it would change was that you had to be, or you started to be a little more intentional about recording the things that you were doing mm-hmm. and putting them out there for people to see later. Yeah. Uh, and to advertise with. Um, that's probably the only way it really changed. And I would say it changed programming. It would just, Hey, we want to capture certain things. And so we would talk about, as a team, uh, what are the things we wanna maybe capture tonight and, and broadcast so that people can see it and try to leverage the fomo, you know, the, the, that FOMO piece mm-hmm. is, is a real deal, the invention of the iPhone, Instagram, now TikTok, um, even, even be, you know, be real. It is that FOMO piece of what's happening in the moment. Who's doing what, Ooh, I wanna be a part of that. Mm-hmm. , that's what changed. I think that's what changed.

Nick Clason (13:45):
So would you say before that, that fomo for someone my age, who's only done ministry in an iPhone generation, is fomo a recent phenomenon since the invention of technology and things like that? Or was that always a part of it? Now you just can see it with your own eyes that you Oh, you're right now missing out.

Kerry Ray (14:07):
Yeah. No, FOMO has always existed. Um, it wasn't called that, but you know, there was always that, you know, nobody wants to be left out. Everybody wants to be, um, they did say it for hundreds, hundreds of years. They've been saying for years, you know, that, um, when you walk into a building, but think about yourself anytime, iPhone or not, you walk into a restaurant in a busy time of the day for a restaurant mm-hmm. , and you're the, there's maybe one other person in the restaurant. There's something inside of you that goes, it could be the greatest restaurant ever. It could be the best food, best atmosphere, but there's something inside you that intrinsically goes, huh, yeah, something's wrong. What's wrong with this, this ? And, and I think that's, I think that's who we are as, as human beings. When you walk into a store, there's nobody shopping there. When you, when you go to a gym and you work and there's, you're what, what's midnight? That's if you're doing it in a time where typically there would be people there, whether we walk into a church now, um, and there's, you know, there's nobody really attending. You go, huh? When you walk outta that, you don't say, you know, man, that was great. You go, man, that was great. I wonder why nobody goes.

Nick Clason (15:27):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting, right? Cause none of that's based on the actual content maybe. Nope. Of like, oh, that was a great message I really resonated with, or whatever. Like what you're noticing is like the social equity landscape of like, what's going on around you, looking around, no one's there. And

Kerry Ray (15:44):
It is a thing, and it is a thing. I think that thing has always existed. And I think whether it's the iPhone or social media, um, has just exacerbated that and made it, yeah. A more prominent thing turned the volume up, if you will, uh, has made it a more prominent thing, more obvious thing. Um, the, but I think it's always been there. Uh, I think it's, you know, when you were eight years old and didn't get invited to a birthday party and you knew other people did mm-hmm. , that's, you had fomo, you were missing out. Um, I think that's just a, a human thing.

Nick Clason (16:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So you and I connected, you were at a church in Cincinnati. I was at a church in Cincinnati, and we were on the doorstep of working together. Um, and so in that process, I guess, I mean, I guess it was even formal. We had formal interviews and stuff. Um, you explained to me, uh, a thing that, I don't know if you came up with this or coined it or whatever, but you called it contact work. Um, so explain a little bit to our listeners, like what that is, where it comes from, maybe the theological or biblical basis for it. Um, and, uh, like then I wanna kind of explore, is that type of work, is that type of ministry, is that possible more and more as we enter into this digital space? But first of all, give us just a little bit of like a background of like, what is it, um, what are you talking about with contact work? I think when I heard it, I never heard it called that, but it was very intrinsic to me. Like, I was like, oh, yeah, this makes sense, right? As a youth pastor, like, this is what I'm trying to do. I just never kind of put this label to it. So explain that a little bit.

Kerry Ray (17:32):
Yeah. Well, I definitely did not, uh, coin the phrase contact work. Um, that is, um, I served for a while, um, in young life, and that is a, that is a big, big piece of young life. If anybody's listening who has ever been a part or knows anything about young life, contact work is one of their core tenants. Um, they put a lot of, a lot of energy and effort and strategy

Nick Clason (18:00):
Into Andre good at contact work. That's, that's probably what they're best, I would say.

Kerry Ray (18:04):
Oh, they're, yeah, they're excellent at it. And it's because they value it. It's such a high value, um, for them. Like I said, it's one of their core tenants. Um, it's such a high value that they do it well. Um, and so borrowing that phrase from those guys, um, I just learned it and saw it done really well and saw it valued. Um, and so I, I kind of adopted it into early on into, um, what I was doing, and it was, it was going where they are versus expecting them to come to you. Hmm. Um, contact work at, at its core is, uh, young life would call it earning the right to be heard. Um, but it is, or maybe you hear them say, um, doing things on their turf mm-hmm. , um, so to speak. But basically it is, it is going to where the students are mm-hmm. versus sitting and expecting them to come to you, and then you're putting in the time with them in their places where they feel comfortable and confident, and where they maybe kinda run the show versus your place behind these walls, behind this door where you're in charge and are expecting them to, to do certain, certain things. Um, contact, contact work. Oops, sorry. Contact work is something that is something that we have done for years. It's an expectation.

Kerry Ray (19:37):
Sorry, my headphones went out for a second.

Nick Clason (19:40):
Oh, no, you're good. Contact work is sounds great to me. So,

Kerry Ray (19:42):
Okay. Contact work is, is something that, um, I have, you know, expected is the best word to use of any staff we have I've ever had on, on a, on a church staff. Um, it is, it's that big of a deal. Um, for example, when I had interns and, you know, we were only allowed, you know, what, 15 hours with an intern mm-hmm. mm-hmm. 10 of those hours with contact work, and I would ask them to, you know, fill out a form that tells me where they were going, what they were doing, who they, who they hung out with and talked to. Mm-hmm. , it was that big of a deal. I wanted them to value it. Um, that's when I first started in ministry. Early on, we didn't call it that. Um, but that was my role. Um, I had an older youth pastor who kinda looked at me and sat me down and said, Hey man, I, I'm too old to go run with the Bulls. Um, so , I'm gonna ask you to do that, and I'm gonna expect you to be in the school. I'm gonna expect you to be the one at the games. I'll still be the guy preaching, but, and you know, teaching, teaching you how to do those things, but, you know, you're the guy that's gonna run around with 'em. You can call it Tide Piper, whatever you wanna call it, but it is going and building relationships with students, with teenagers on their turf where they are at instead of expecting them to come to you.

Nick Clason (21:02):
Yeah. I think, and I think, like for me, man, the basis really of me starting this whole podcast is realizing that, uh, digital can play a role in that. You know, I think for churches, a lot of churches, uh, get stuck into their, like, programming schedule. It's Wednesday night, Sunday morning, whatever, and not realizing that there's another 167 unclaimed hours that students are living life doing their thing. Um, you know, so that can obviously be done in person, but how would you say, have you seen that be either possible, or would you say like, yeah, that's not even really a possibility, uh, to show up on their turf in like a digital or more of like a hybrid type of way?

Kerry Ray (21:53):
Lemme back up for a second first, and I can say that one, it's, it's part of what we're called to do. Mm-hmm. , if you're in ministry, um, we're supposed to be following and living as Jesus did. And what you never saw in the New Testament was Jesus just sit still somewhere and say, you know, everybody come to me. Mm-hmm. , I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna sit here , you know, in Jerusalem. I'm just gonna sit here and expect you to come to me. He traveled, he, he went around from town to town, place to place sharing and talking. And part of that was, you know, just getting around the people. Mm-hmm. , um, the people that, you know, he came to this place to die for was just to be amongst and, and interact with those people. Um, and that's part of our calling we're, we can't just sit in a church.

Kerry Ray (22:43):
You could have the greatest program in the world, but you sitting in a church and just expecting people to come to you is one arrogant too. Mm-hmm. , it's foolish. Three, it's ineffective. Um, it just doesn't, it's not the thing you can't, that's not who you're called to be. You're called to, to be out and about. And with people, people, these students are, you're calling, they're, they're coming to know Christ is your calling. And, and it can't be, I'm just sitting here and the kids that get here, that's great. The kids who don't hate it for them, um, that that's not okay. Yeah. So let's start there. Uh, number two, um, it, it matters to your community. Um, you hopefully want your church, your ministry, your student ministry. You want that to, to have such an impact on the lives of the people in your community, no matter their age, that if it disappeared, people would care. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (23:40):
. Yeah.

Kerry Ray (23:41):
And to do that, you can't sit in your ivory tower literally and, and expect that to happen. You've got to go out and make some sort of impact, some sort of influence. Uh, and I think in the world we live in the, with the, um, deification, if you will, you know, all of the, you know, I am, you know, de deconstructing my, my religious experience. Um, people are weary. People are weary, people are leery I'll rhyme there. Uh, they're both, they are, they're, um, suspicious mm-hmm. of church. Like, what do you, you know, what do you want from me? Oh, you just want my money. Um, and we've got, if you're talking about students and general teenagers, uh, we've got, this is the first group generation that was raised by students who bowed out years ago. You know, statistically they're, they're called the nuns. N o n E S, not n u n S.

Kerry Ray (24:42):
But the parents are the people who were in student ministry, you know, maybe. And then they bowed out and their parents didn't, you know, didn't raise them in church. And so now they're having kids of their own. And, and so it's, it's blank slates. So you've got parents who don't know, who don't know church. You've got students who don't know church. Um, they're blank canvases. And so, uh, we are, should be out and about if nothing else trying to, trying to show and be the hands of Jesus Christ, the hands of beauty of Christ in these communities in which we are called the love administer to, um, digitally, um, I, I, let's be honest, we watched these last couple years with Covid shutting everything down. Mm-hmm. , we watched the churches who, and the student ministries who had embraced a, a different philosophy versus the come to me.

Kerry Ray (25:40):
Um, they transitioned better. I won't say, well, I will say they had, they made it through the Covid piece a little better mm-hmm. than the churches and the student ministries who lived in the come to us mentality. Um, but let's be honest, I think everybody struggled with it. Uh, because even young life, uh, who is excellent at contact work, I watched Young Life struggled to find themselves because they couldn't do that anymore. Yeah. They couldn't do the face to face interaction, and they had to try to do it in a digital format, and it didn't work as well. Sounds, um, it, it failed. Um, yeah. And it struggled. I mean, some of it, I mean, he, it kinda worked. Not really. I, I would say it failed. Um, even, you know, the big players in, in student industry, the people who were doing this, the guys out like, you know, um, fields and Josh, Doug Fields and Josh out in California went to a digital format.

Kerry Ray (26:38):
And I don't know, I, I haven't talked to these guys about it, so I'm gonna assume, but I, I would assume if you, you asked those guys, they would tell you that it was not what it was. Mm-hmm. , did they do the big digital thing? Well, sure they did. Yeah. But I don't, I don't think it was what it was before that. Yeah. I don't think they got the same interaction. It's a, it's a lot of work for a little payoff. Um, I know at the time of covid, I was in, uh, church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and our middle school ministry was tied to the weekends mm-hmm. , and it was kinda a show up to church, and you go to this thing, but our high school was built offsite. Um, and we had had multiple years where the students had built communities, it houses across the city, and those communities met offsite, and it was in that community that those students lived in with small group leaders that lived in that community that those students lived in.

Kerry Ray (27:33):
And those students were showing up and inviting people into this thing because it was their thing. Mm-hmm. , um, it was kind of their turf, but with our, uh, blanket over the top of it. Sure. It was, but it was still their thing. Um, and when Covid hit, I got to see firsthand middle school, they come to us, we shut that down for a little bit, then we tried to do it digitally. It just didn't fly. Um, it was a struggle to put, you know, 10 kids in the room, in, in a digital room, uh, high school. I don't think, if I looked at the numbers, and I tracked them every week, I think in total we lost two students. Wow. Two, why? And we actually picked up a few. Why? Because they had already built this community that was not attached to the come, come and see mm-hmm. ,

Kerry Ray (28:31):
It was, it was a community. So when we took that community that already existed and just moved it to a digital format, they, they still do the same people. It was still, it was built on a different thing. Mm-hmm. , it was centered around community and not centered around come and see Yes. Or come and participate. Yeah. Um, so it, it, it, it mattered. It, it changed. And I, like I said, I watched, um, during those, during the covid years, got to see, you know, there were plenty of churches that that died. There were plenty of churches that are still, you know, where a year out now when this is being recorded. And they are still struggling with putting the pieces back together. I don't think, I don't think ministry, I don't think church will ever quite be the same. Um, post covid. Interesting. But, and I think youth ministry is harder, um, because I think students got realize they didn't have to be there.

Kerry Ray (29:25):
Mm-hmm. , uh, the church kids stopped going. The, the non-church kids never went. Uh, and we had a generation now that has been raised at least for a couple of years, you think of a sixth grader, they went through sixth, seventh, and part of grade without ever being in a so ninth grade in that time where it's already hard to be a part of a community because you drive for the first time, you've got some freedom in ninth and 10th grade. Yeah. Depending on your age and your state, uh, you start having freedom, you start working, um, you start doing other things. It's already hard in the, in the youth industry world. For those of you listening to this that are in, in ministry, you know, that time is already difficult anyway. But now you've got a group who went three years without engaging at all mm-hmm. ,

Kerry Ray (30:08):
Uh, and then behind them is another group that went three years without engaging at all. And behind them is another group that, you know, hey, which is babies at the time. So it's going to be a difficult dig out. Um, and I think that that actually makes this contact work piece even more relevant. Mm-hmm. . Now to your question, if, can it be digital? I don't know. I, I have not seen that work super well. Um, now I will tell you this, we all know that, um, for a teenager, uh, when you, and I think of the friends we make, you know, they say, well, my friend, you know, you like, you think my friend that I play, you know, call on duty with, you know, that lives in California. You're like, you never, you, you live in Alabama, you don't know that kid , but you're like, no, I play with them every day.

Kerry Ray (31:00):
I, you know, I spend hours with them on a headset, you know, shooting people and, and you know, talking about stuff over the headset to them that is a real friend. Yeah. Um, that barrier has dropped mm-hmm. to us as adults. You know, I think, you know, for those of you that don't know, those of us, you know, over the age of, let's call it 27 ish, you know, we're digital. We're digital immigrants. Mm-hmm. , we're, we come with baggage of how technology works and how it should be used and utilized, and, uh, where our teenagers and below, or digital natives mm-hmm. , there's never been a time where they did not know technology. There's never been a time where social media was not interactive for them. Um, and so we as adults, as digital immigrants, let's use that instead of adults, us as digital immigrants, we look at, um, online friendships, online relationships, um, and go, that's weird.

Kerry Ray (32:03):
Um, that's not a thing. But to them as digital natives, that has always been the thing that has always been very real. Um, dating apps and, you know, swiping left and right. And I mean, that went from like a silly thing. Like, you know, this is those of us, again as digital immigrants, look at that and go, come on. Um, you know, you're just, you're just, you know, trying to find a hot dude or hot girl and hook up. But for them, they're like, no, I, I'm trying to find a relationship. I get to know people this way. Yeah. Um, it's, it's fascinating. Yeah. Um, so I think there is, there, there's gotta be a way for that to happen mm-hmm. , and we've gotta figure out this, and I'd go back to contact work. There's gotta be a way for contact work to happen in a digital context. But there is some, there is something to set for a loss of the, the face to face because the face to face is so significant.

Nick Clason (32:58):
Wow. Well, wasn't that awesome? I'm so excited for you to hear and learn from part two. Um, anything and everything that Kerry mentioned, uh, YM 360, my youth min, um, all those things. Um, and also Derry's episode. I'm gonna link all of those in the show notes, which you can grab a in your podcast catcher or be over at hybridministry.xyz. And I would really encourage you, because he said a lot of really good things. And if you're like me and you listen on 1.5 or two times speed, uh, you may have not caught it, or you're driving or you mowing the lawn or whatever you're doing, head to hybridministry.xyz and you can grab a full transcript of this episode so that you can have and use to utilize at your discretion. That's a thing that we do and produce for you, um, for a hundred percent free.

Nick Clason (33:49):
So we just wanna let you know that that is available there for you to check out at http://hybridministry.xyz If you found this helpful and I'm sure that you did, please give it a share. Send it to someone that you know, maybe in youth ministry, um, and leave us a rating or a review. That would be really, really helpful for us. We would love to, uh, hear that. So, um, we will chat with you guys next time. Excited to share with you part two of this episode. But until then, we'll talk again later by.

Episode 012: Why Email and Social may not satisfy the on demand world we live in. Is Social Media for your church even worth it? And are Big Events only for the Pastor's Ego?

Nick Clason — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 04:00:00 -0500

SUMMARY
In this solo pod Nick explores three big ideas. Why Email and Social may not satisfy the on-demand world and culture that we currently live in. Is Social Media for your church even worth it Especially if you just are using it as an extension of your announcements? And are Big Events only for the Pastor's Ego? Or do they still have a place in our churches? All that and more on this week's episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast!

Follow along at http://hybridministry.xyz
Or come hang out on Twitter at http://twitter.com/hybridministry

TIMECODES
00:00-04:34 - Intro
04:34-13:07 - Why Email and Social may not satisfy the on demand world we live in.
13:07-18:39 - Is Social Media worth it in your church?
18:39-27:09 - Big Events are for the Ego of the Pastor, not the People
27:09-27:50 - Outro

SHOWNOTES
http://Nucleus.Church

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
What up everybody? And welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I am your host, Nick Clason, this morning solo pod from my new house in Dallas, Texas, and my guest bedroom closet because, uh, none of my stuff is in the house yet. And so every single place I go is gonna be echoy and the least echoy place is the guest bedroom closet. As best as I can tell, you'll have to let me know, cuz honestly, you're on the hearing side of this. I'm on the talking side of this. And so, uh, this is my best attempt. Um, I've mentioned it in previous episodes, Uh, gonna be a solo pod today. Uh, both me and Matt are actually in the middle of moves. Uh, we, my wife and I, uh, we got a little bit of a jumpstart on him and his wife, and so they, I believe his truck is maybe coming today.

Nick Clason (01:07):
Um, and so anyway, so today on this episode, I wanted to just chat about a couple of hot takes. Um, three in particular. I wanted to do three hot takes. And number one, I wanted to talk about how we now live in a more on demand world and how social media, um, or email marketing may not be the best way to approach some of that on demand world. Wanted just chat through and brainstorm some stuff with you guys. The second hot take was, um, social media might not actually be worth it, um, in your churches, uh, if you do some of these things I'm gonna talk about. And then number three, I think that big large scale events are actually more for the pastor's ego than for the actual people who are going to be consuming them. So we'll dive into those a little bit, um, here in just a second.

Nick Clason (02:04):
But like I said, uh, just a quick like, update. So when, when we got this sucker up, up and rolling off the ground, I, uh, recorded, uh, pre-recorded five podcasts. And so I had five in the queue before we ever even launched episode one. With all the hustle and bustle moving and just the absolute impossibility has seemed for Matt and I to be able to coordinate our schedules. Um, I am now recording this episode one day before it will release tomorrow, Thursday morning, October 6th. And so, um, I to keep things rolling, to remain consistent, my goal is to give you something every single Thursday morning. Um, it's, it, you know, I'm just letting you know like that. That's sort of why, like, I could wait and Matt and I could get on the same page, but we're gonna miss a couple posts. Um, and so I'm gonna keep bringing you guys some stuff.

Nick Clason (03:02):
Um, and when life settles down for the both of us, we will make this happen. But like I said, I'm on the tail end of a move. Um, my family and I rolled into town last Friday, closed on a house here in, uh, Fort Worth, Texas, uh, to start a new job at church in the DFW metroplex area. Love it. Super excited working with, um, former boss of mine who, uh, so it's, you know, it's a great ex experience, um, and also feels incredibly familiar even though I'm in a new church. I'm in a similar youth ministry environment, so that's really exciting. Um, and then Matt's actually gonna be stepping into a different role as well, and I'll let him talk a little bit more about that. But his first, uh, day on the job is actually gonna be in Spain. And so, uh, who knows, you know, how soon we'll be able to be together on the podcast again.

Nick Clason (03:56):
But our goal is to continue to bring something to y'all, um, and continue to bring both of our voices. I I'm not a gigantic fan of these solo pods. It feels like just a lot of rambling into an empty microphone with very little feedback, pushback, conversation. Um, but I'm gonna do my best in learning and I'm trying to make it something that is gonna be worth everybody's while. So without any anymore explanation for all that, um, I'm just trying to give you a little quick update, some housekeeping stuff. Uh, I wanted to dive into a couple of ideas. So let's go, let's make this happen. All right. Idea number one, we live in an on demand world. So is social media and is email marketing the most effective way to communicate? Think about this. Uh, we live in a Netflix as opposed to a cable TV centric world.

Nick Clason (04:54):
10 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago, the only way to consume your favorite TV show, if you wanted to watch Seinfeld, you had to tune in on Thursday evenings at 8:00 PM I'm not actually sure if that's true or not. Actually, what I do know is true is the Office, right? Every Thursday night, sometime between eight or 9:00 PM I remember, cause I was in college and we didn't, we weren't, um, allowed, We were at a Christian university. We were not allowed to have, uh, televisions in our room. And streaming, um, was available, but it wasn't available until the next day. And so the only way to watch the office at my Christian university was to go find a lounge with a tv. The lounges were allowed to have TVs and cable, uh, or satellite, but none of the rooms were. And so Thursday night was on demand viewing opportunities.

Nick Clason (05:48):
People would come in and flood the lounges. It, there was literally not a seat in the house. If you wanted to sit and watch the office, you had to get there a couple of hours early in the anticipation of it. And you probably had to sit through the NBC Nightly news and you probably had to sit through a couple other sitcoms like community or something like that before the office ever even came on. Now, I compare that to the idea of the way that Disney Plus is releasing things. Like if I wanna watch the newest episode of She Hulk, I can get up at three o'clock in the morning the day that it releases and watch it from the comfort of my own house. But in the fact that I've been moving and traveling and I took my family to Disney World last week, two weeks ago, like, I'm not caught up on She Hulk, but I will, I'll get caught up on it or Stranger Things, right?

Nick Clason (06:38):
When Stranger Things comes out, it is a all day viewing experience. It is an on-demand, it is a binge worthy experience. Uh, so much so that Netflix has recently adjusted the way that they released it. And so they released it now in two different parts. Now, I just wanna think about how that behavior there, the Netflix versus the cable experience, how that behavior has changed the way that we as humans, um, expect to consume content, right? Like, think about it. I, in a Netflix world, I want information when I want it. How many of you in ministry have sent some sort of email newsletter and then you still get the question from a teenager or a parent, Hey, when is the deadline again? And you're like, I communicated this. Like, this has been so clear, This has been so obvious. The reason why I think is when you send it to them, you're sending it to them in a, a cable centric mentality.

Nick Clason (07:47):
Like, I will send you this email every Tuesday at 9:00 AM That's if you are even that discipline, a lot of us, we're not, we're not sending emails with that amount of consistency and regularity, and I don't know that I'm ready to abandon the whole email idea, But what I do know is that we don't live in a cable TV centric world where Thursday night at 8:30 PM is on demand, uh, must watch tv. Very few people live that way. And that's gonna be the same way with your emails. And that's gonna be the same way with your stage announcements. And that's gonna be the same way with your social media announcement posts. And so how do we switch to a more on demand way to consume content or way to find community? Again, I think another beautiful example of this is joining a small group outta church.

Nick Clason (08:44):
I think a lot of churches have the small group process basically be, Hey, if you wanna join a small group, go talk to Carl. And then Carl plays matchmaker. And I like, if I want to sign up for a small group, I wanna just go browse the available options and I wanna sign up for a small group. You may call that consumer of me, but I, I actually appreciate it in and like to anticipate the control or the ability that I have to make that happen on my own. I, I will, if I'm finding a new veterinarian or if I'm finding a new doctor, if I'm finding a new dentist, if I'm finding a new counselor, like I prefer to find those things by going to those people's websites and creating my own appointment. Like one of the things that I absolutely hated, this may be the millennial me, I don't know, but when I was looking for quotes to move, um, I would find these websites and they're like, click through here to get an instant quote.

Nick Clason (09:49):
And I was like, Oh, awesome. And so I put in on my info, you know, four bedroom house, this estimated amount of stuff, whatever. And then they would say, Awesome, your quote is ready. Call one 800, whatever, whatever, whatever, to get your quote. That's not on demand. No, it's not. No. Now I have to talk to a customer service representative. And the problem is that the, when the default is you, hey, you gotta talk to customer service representative. Yes, I'm not trying to hit away from the, uh, talking to other people the importance of that, right? We know that human connection and human conversation is important, but what I am trying to say is we can, we live in a world and we have tools, digital tools and things that can make it possible for people to find those resources and come to that on their own.

Nick Clason (10:41):
So how can we do that in churches? What are ways that we can make that happen? A couple of ideas I have, I talked about this a couple podcasts to go where I said, Hey, here's what I'm pitching for my new church. Um, create a central hub strategy. And I don't wanna take any sort of credit for this. Like Brady Sheer and the guys over at Pro Church Tools, they have been preaching this for years. And they have, they have a website tab, boot nucleus, uh, called nucleus.church, check out their product and you can build your own central hub style website where, and it's a, it's super easy to edit. It's one of my all-time favorite website editors. Uh, but b it looks so good, it's so sleek, it's mobile friendly. Like that is, that is where you can, um, send emails still and send social media things, but you can direct and drive everything back to the website where it's consistent every single time.

Nick Clason (11:33):
And you're saying, Hey, for more information, head to fill in the blank. And that creates, um, that puts the, that puts the onus back on the user. And you're saying, Hey, if you want this information, if you want it on demand, if you wanna watch it like you consume Netflix, here's where to go. And that, what that does then is that makes it the impetus beyond you or on us as the church leaders to make sure that those websites are updated. I think more often than not, the um, the, the website is one of the last things that we think to edit. And I think in this new world that we're moving into, and in this on demand world, websites almost need to be the first thing that we edit. It's interesting, like I said, I'm starting a new job, but with an old boss and just before him and I both left, um, we were both working at, at my last church, I was like, we need to, we need to tighten up the website.

Nick Clason (12:30):
And he said, Ah, I, he's like, I always think of the website as a last, last ditch effort. He's like, But you're right. We need to switch. We need to make that first. And so here we are now in our new gig and he asked me yesterday, What's your, what's your digital strategy? Do you have one? And I said, Yeah, but it's gonna be contingent independent on the website. And you know, if you're a pastor or you work in church ministry, you know how this is, right? And I said, So that, that requires us to have a conversation with communications and get them on the same page cuz we're, we're, uh, dependent upon them to kind of get some of this stuff that we want flushed out, finished out. All right, take number two. Social media is not worth it unless you're willing to try some new things.

Nick Clason (13:22):
I think a lot of churches are just doing social media as an announcement extension. And man, I would just say if that's all you're doing with social media, just keeping the ship afloat, just doing things because it's what you feel like you should do need to do. Everyone else is on social media. They're telling you to do social media, but you're really, you don't have anyone invested in it. You don't have anybody tracking it. You don't have anybody watching the metrics to see what's growing, what needs to be having port gas pour onto it, what needs to be cooled and slowed and changed. Who's watching trends? Who's listening to the Pro Church Tools podcast? Who's listening to the Hybrid Ministry podcast to stay up to date on what's going on on social media and to you, like, as a church, you have to be willing to try things that are gonna be different because social media, digital ministry is a new way to reach people.

Nick Clason (14:19):
And I think it's effective. And so I I would actually push back and say, I do think it's worth it, but I, but the reason I don't think it will be worth it is if you're, if you're just gonna stick it on autopilot. I think there are very few ways to, uh, post and, and do social media type things without, um, being willing to be a mold breaker, without being willing to take some risks, without being willing to rethink some of the old ways of doing things. A lot of the traditional methods on social media are not effective anymore, right? Like when, when right now, um, the entire focus on all of social media is discoverability, right? TikTok brought into this, brought into us this advent of finding content from people that you don't know. And so when people at your church, um, want to follow you or your account, uh, but you're posting reels or tos, things that are needing to be discovered by hopefully them, but also other people, like what are you gonna do?

Nick Clason (15:33):
Like, how, how then what's the call to action out of a real, out of a TikTok, right? Like, and so we gotta figure out as church, um, digital hybrid marketing people what our win is and what the purpose of doing it is, because it is, is just a really bad announcement extension. Like it can be that, but it's gonna be pretty lame and it's gonna be pretty ineffective. And people are really not on social media now. Um, or I, I should, I should watch what I say. I was gonna say, people are not on social media to follow people that they're friends with, and I don't think that's true. Um, but I think that the most popular form of social content right now is to consume videos, short form videos in particular of people that you're not friends with. Like when I'm on TikTok, I spend 95% of my time on the four UAB and I'm only over on the friends tab to clear that pesky red notification.

Nick Clason (16:43):
And then if I'm over there, I might see a video or two of some friends I follow and then I'll, or I'll see a few videos in a row of friends I follow and I'm like, Huh, this is crazy. Or friends I know like my sister and my friend Isaac. Um, and then I'm like, Oh, that's cuz I'm on the friends tab. Of course back over for you, right? Like, I don't know about you, but that's how I am behaving with it. And so I just, what I'm saying with this is, I'm not saying social media's not worth it, but I am saying you gotta be willing to take risks. And I think if you're unwilling to take risks or you don't have somebody who's willing to take risks and, and look at your individual church data, I don't know that it's gonna be worth it.

Nick Clason (17:28):
I don't know that it's gonna yield for you the results that you're looking for. Sure you can post some stuff, you can have some announcement adjacent stuff and you can just do some, you know, Facebook page type things. But, but is it really gonna be worth it? And are we really like gonna see the results that we're looking for? So get out there, break some stuff, stuff, try some stuff, be creative, be willing to take risks and don't put the breaks on your creatives or don't put the breaks on the people who are interested in this because listen, like this avenue in particular is going to be, um, the way and wave of the future and the way that you've been doing church and particularly the way that you've probably been doing social media is not gonna be what's a part of the next wave.

Nick Clason (18:18):
So let somebody who is comfortable with taking risks and comfortable with trying things, let them go fly, try and do some things, um, and don't get stuck in a rut and don't get stuck on autopilot because when you do, that's when things become far less, uh, interesting and far less effective. I take number three today in our final one. Big events are for the pastor, not the people. All right, now hear me out on this one, right? I think that a big event, filling a giant room is really a win for the person on the stage because it helps the pastor. And I'm a pastor and I would agree with this, it helps me feel successful. I look out across the landscape of the room and I say, Man, there's so many people here. Look how effective this event is. Look how many people are here.

Nick Clason (19:16):
I think the reality is though is that man, we really like, we are seeing a shift away from that like big event idea and that big event desire. Like we actually just, uh, talked to some of our juniors and seniors last week at the church I'm in. And um, you know, the church I'm in like, is, man, it is, is much different than the, the church as in before church as in before, is very, very much in a post-Christian world. Now we're in the Bible belt. Um, but what's fascinating is these students who are Gen Z are basically saying the same things. And they said like, we don't, we don't need this like, big event. It feels very, um, like almost forced, like what we want really for like our friends. Like we wanna just like invite them to like our small group and like if they're like exploring faith, like we wanna actually explore faith and give them something actually challenging, um, and have a hard conversation, not just a like Christian platitude.

Nick Clason (20:24):
And I was, I was actually, I was watching a show last night, uh, a house flipping show, um, and this couple is having a smaller wedding, um, and they're doing it in like a newly renovated and remodeled house. And so, you know, of course like the, the whole premise of the show is will these people renovate in this house, get it done in time for the wedding? And um, they were talking about like how this house, it's an old, is gonna be a renovated Victorian style house. So for those of you who are not super up on your HGTV of Victorian is, um, smaller rooms, um, and like just really ornate and elaborate kind of like decor. Um, but like not the whole open concept kind of idea. And so as these people were touring through the house, like, Oh, this would be good for our friends to have these smaller rooms, these smaller, more intimate gatherings so that people can actually stop and pause and have conversations with one another.

Nick Clason (21:37):
And that, that honestly was kind of the impetus for this hot take this morning cuz I was like, Wow, like those, I mean, they're, they're younger, right? Like they're probably in their twenties getting married, maybe thirties. Um, and they, you know, they got a little bit more of like an eclectic kind of vibe to 'em. But the reality is, is as like, I do think that that is far more what people are looking for. They're looking for intimacy, they're looking for connection over content. And so the big room gatherings were a content dump. It would get everybody in. And so that the pastor could deliver his content in the most efficient way possible, the most efficient way possible was to have a large auditorium and crams many people into that large auditorium as you can so that they all could hear what the pastor has to say.

Nick Clason (22:34):
Guys like that is, that is no longer the most efficient way possible. Is it effective still? Perhaps? Uh, but there's a greater efficiency out there, right? A pastor can talk into a microphone in his closet much like I'm doing right now and deliver that same level of content. So then if that has more efficiency, then what is the purpose of the Sunday morning gathering? And I know like, I'm a pastor, I get it theologically, Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, let us not give up meeting together as somewhere in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching and you're like, that's the, that's the reason for the church gathering. And I would agree. I honestly though, like I'm not, no offense, like I've been at this church now for a month. Um, so I've been to, uh, I think a total of three, maybe four weekends, Sunday morning services.

Nick Clason (23:34):
Like I don't, I have to work, right? So like, uh, soon as the first service is over, I'm actually, I've, I've actually never been in the service long enough to be dismissed from it. I've slipped out every single week, uh, because I need to get over to student ministry section of the building to be ready for our thing, right? I don't talk to anybody really in the service. Like that encouragement, that admonishment that spurring me on like the, the Sunday morning gathering is, is not when that is taking place. Listen, I'm also, I'll be honest with you too, I'm a traditionalist. I enjoy that. But what is, who is it for? I think in a lot of ways it might actually be for the ego of the pastor. Um, I think I've mentioned this on here before, but at our last church, um, we saw a higher, um, percentage of engagement with students when we offered a smaller gathering.

Nick Clason (24:36):
Um, and we saw a better value in conversation with students in their smaller groups as opposed to in a large, a large scale gathering. I think, you know, we still saw success in the larger scale gatherings because kids like to come together. They still like to have fun together, they still like to play games together. Um, and so that obviously that's important. That fun is a value too, right? Um, but I, I remember telling a friend of mine who said, if I want to come back together, um, and bring everyone back together in the room, like I want to do that if I'm honest, like that's a value of mine. Like I enjoy that. However, if this talking about the small group system and setting is more effective, more efficient, um, and more what students want than I need to put my ego and my pride on the alter and be willing to offer to students what's better for them, even if it's a not, not what I want.

Nick Clason (25:42):
Alright? So let's put purpose over preference and then b um, I have to be willing to level up and train my, my leaders and my volunteer team to execute this plan or this play. Um, and it's gonna take more work on my part to develop them as leaders, uh, than just bring them all back together and we preach a message at them from, from the stage, right? Again, if that's what I want and that's what's easier, but it's not. What's better then? Let's actually give our students what's best. Why not? Because we're trying to be effective grow numbers. Look at metrics because we want students to have a meaningful encounter with the God of the universe to come to a knowing, saving knowledge and relationship with Jesus Christ, who is the way back to the Father is he says in John chapter 14, He's the way, he's the truth, he's the wife.

Nick Clason (26:44):
And if big events are hindrance to that or a Gen Z eye roll, like, uh, another one of these again, then let's not give it to him. Let's give them what they're going to use for the betterment of their faith in the betterment of the, their friends' faith as their friends try to explore what it looks like and means to follow Christ. Well, hey everyone, uh, hope you enjoyed today's episode. Tried a little bit of a different format here. It's, it's tough. Hang on to alo pod, like I said. So I wanted to give a couple of kind of hot takes and just, uh, express what to my heart where I'm coming from. So if you enjoyed it, let us know. Um, rate review. You can go to hybridministry.xyz. We are also on Twitter. I'm gonna try to start, um, being a little more active on there beyond just posting when episodes drop. So come over, give us a follow, come hang out with us. It's at hybrid ministry on Twitter. And, uh, love hanging out with you guys. Uh, let us know, uh, reach out, let us know if there's anything you'd like to hear specifically. And, um, until the next time, talk soon. Bye.