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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Best Event Ever?
00:20 Youth Ministry CPR?
05:16 Why I use this Event Type Constantly!

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:07 - 00:00:26:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Planning a fall youth ministry kickoff event. Don't get lost in the pumpkin patch. Instead, plan an event that students actually show up for and one that returns dividends down the road. How? Glad you asked. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet.

00:00:26:15 - 00:00:50:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
My name is Nick Klassen, a 15 year youth ministry veteran. And in this episode, I want to share with you my all time favorite event archetype for youth ministry fall kickoffs. In fact, included in the link down below is everything that you're going to need, including shopping lists, graphics, and, the rundown in order to execute and pull this entire event off.

00:00:50:06 - 00:01:11:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But before we dive into that, I do want to talk just a little bit of youth ministry, philosophy and strategy. So if you're only here for the event guide, hit the chapter mark down below and jump to that part of the episode. But for the rest of us, like I want to ask this question like, is doing an event like, what is the purpose of doing an event in youth ministry?

00:01:11:14 - 00:01:32:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, I grew up under the tutelage of a ministry philosophy called Sun Life. Shout out to Sun Life. And they're still around. But, they are not as predominant or as prevalent as I remember them being when I was in middle school or high school. You know, my dad was a youth pastor, and he was closely associated and affiliated with them.

00:01:32:24 - 00:02:10:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so thus I went to like student based trainings and conferences. And they have a ministry philosophy called, spiritual CPR. And each of the letters in that are like an acronym for different things. So the C in spiritual CPR is like cultivate this idea of building and investing in a relationship. Like think about a friendship. And probably one of the things I remember the most from this was like, if you had a neighbor and like every single time you're outside, like gardening or getting the mail and you like bumped into your neighbor, and you're trying to, like, share your faith with them and share the gospel with them, like you probably wouldn't every

00:02:10:24 - 00:02:28:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
single time you talk to them, like, hey, if you died tonight, would you know exactly where you're going to be? And the sun life kind of strategy then implemented that back over into student ministry and is like, hey, every time you have an event, every time you especially have like an outreach event, like you don't have to necessarily share the gospel.

00:02:28:16 - 00:02:46:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Part of it is trust building and cultivating that ongoing relationship. And that might be a polarizing opinion, but that's sort of like the strategy and the philosophy that I've, you know, seen my youth ministries kind of thrive under and that I've sort of like adopted as a youth pastor, and also one that I grew up in as like a teenager.

00:02:46:11 - 00:03:09:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, like, this event is a cultivate style event. It's one where the goal is to like, cultivate and build relationships. Meanwhile, the P then stands for plant and that's like a regular like youth night. That's one where like you will, you know, obviously like teach a Bible lesson from Scripture and you're going to kind of be planting the seeds of like faith in about Jesus and like about what people understand.

00:03:09:04 - 00:03:25:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then finally, the R stands for reap. And so CPR, cultivate, plant reap. It's going to kind of have that like gardening kind of metaphor. But the reap right is like a farmer when it's time to harvest like they go out and they actually like take the dividends, take the yield from the harvest of what they cultivated the soil with.

00:03:26:00 - 00:03:53:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Of what, like they planted and then how that grew and then what was officially time for them to take that. And so this style of event that I'm about to share with you is a like a classic cultivate type of event, an event where the goal is to like just build a relationship and earn trust. And I especially think like a lot of times, I don't know about you, a lot of times I feel like youth pastors think the goal is to like earn trust with like the first time guest and like, well, we want to do that.

00:03:53:22 - 00:04:23:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I think more than that, the goal is to build trust with the student who's bringing their friend who already calls your church home. It's like that student wants to know, like, can I bring my friend to something at the church? And it not be weird and it not backfire on me and my church, not do something that makes me or my friend feel a little bit uncomfortable or like, because what you're asking someone a student to do is you're asking them to lay down a pretty amazing amount of social capital in order to bring their friend to this event.

00:04:23:10 - 00:04:40:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we say it all the time as youth pastors, right? Bring your friends, bring your friends, bring your friends. It's like a common youth ministry sort of moniker. And so one of the things I like to do, and I only do these probably 3 or 4 times per year, is a strictly cultivate event. And now you might be thinking like you don't have curriculum, you don't have content.

00:04:40:13 - 00:05:04:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's one of the reasons why I link down below my hybrid strategy. Like recommends filming your messages. And so we've done before where like we didn't have the message, but we still had like a message for that week. It's still tied to our Sunday morning curriculum. And so like as students were leaving, we'd share like just a little clip and say, hey, this is on YouTube, scan this QR code, just go subscribe to our YouTube.

00:05:04:07 - 00:05:28:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's a great way to kind of accomplish both of the things that you're looking for. So with all that being said, with that philosophy sort of late as a groundwork, what's the best fall outreach event idea for youth ministries? Let's check it out. So some of my favorite Cultivate Event style of outreach events are centered around and, predicated on this idea of a bracket.

00:05:28:13 - 00:05:46:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you've, you know, been new to my channel at any length of time, you can go back and look at some of these former episodes linked here on screen or down in the show notes. But I've detailed an outline these bracket ideas several different times. In fact, I have an episode strictly dedicated to this exact event that I'm going to kind of like rehash here.

00:05:46:29 - 00:06:10:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again, it's this, world's greatest donut bracket. In fact, there's an entire a product centered around this on Download Youth Ministry. And here's a couple of the reasons why I like this style of of that. First and foremost, when I feel like when youth ministries get larger than 30 to 40, you basically have to just create like a themed gathering or a themed party of sorts.

00:06:10:09 - 00:06:29:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, like, whatever that party is like, you just kind of like chop that check in and like rehash it and like reuse it in different ways. But like, we do all sorts of different things. And actually this is the start of a master class like fall, fall youth Ministry Masterclass playlist. This is episode number one here on YouTube.

00:06:29:00 - 00:06:47:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to be giving you a A completely for free. But like step number one is having an a, an amazing kickoff event. And so at these kickoff events, this particular one is going to be donut themed. And so as we take this donut themed event, what are the ways that we utilize it and use it throughout this this night.

00:06:47:11 - 00:07:02:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now here's again, here's the reasons I like these bracket style events. Number one, it's a voting style event. And so, it's like a winner advances and the loser is out. But you can use it for multiple weeks in a row. I love things that like, can carry on throughout. So like this might be a great like launch night.

00:07:02:29 - 00:07:22:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're going to launch all 16 of the different like donut options. But in the coming weeks you're going to vote them out. And so that has and promotes a carryover effect for students who may want to like bring their friends to this event. But then the friends come back and then again in the weeks that follow. Those events are those nights, I'm sorry are going to be more like standard youth ministry night.

00:07:22:02 - 00:07:49:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're going to be teaching a message, you're going to be having a small group. You're going to be having discussion around what the Bible has to say. Meanwhile, this kind of donut themed thing is going on in the background. The other reason I like it is because it promotes social media. And again, you're going to want to subscribe because at the end of this five part masterclass, we are going to be talking about how to continue not only with this spark of social media, but how to then carry that on into a more regular rhythm, and one that you as a youth pastor, you may have to get up off the ground, but then you

00:07:49:28 - 00:08:11:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
fully hand it off to students because, you see, this world's greatest donut event is all meant to and aimed at pushing students to go check out your social channels, whether it's YouTube, TikTok, or over there on Instagram. So in the event guide, you're going to get a full service order. So we have a five minute countdown timer. It's a world's greatest donut themed countdown timer.

00:08:11:15 - 00:08:30:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It is available in the Download Youth Ministry link, again included in the show. Notes down below. And then at the beginning we like welcomed people. We told them that it was time to like, start voting, and we gave away some door prizes and some giveaways. We did some worship songs, and then we played a game called Guess That Donut.

00:08:30:19 - 00:08:48:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we gave the winner like a big box of, like a dozen of, like, custom craft, like, you know, special curated donuts. And then we played the donut on a string game. That's where, like, you have a friend up above, like on a chair or on the stage with, like, a donut on a string.

00:08:48:02 - 00:09:09:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then the person down below has to be the first one to eat it. That's a super fun game. And then we and we're going to detail this fully in a future episode. Again, make sure you're subscribed. But we give our students like open kind of like rec free time in the middle of our event. So we have all sorts of different things in there like donut decorating, find the donut, steal the donut, donut tattoo stations again.

00:09:09:07 - 00:09:30:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Subscribe. We're going to go over that in the future episode. Then we called everybody back in and we gave away a grand prize of sorts. And so as you're looking ahead and as you're thinking about planning, I have like links, I have downloads, I have what you need in order to take this event to the next level that is downloaded and available for you completely for free.

00:09:30:12 - 00:09:54:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Go check out my free donut event guide. Go grab the World's Greatest Donut Guide, over on Download Youth Ministry and start planning your fall kickoff and your fall calendar, so that you have an event that is going to not only be amazing and fun and sweet, obviously, because donuts are amazing, but also you're going to start creating and building the groundwork for a strong hybrid and a strong social media presence.

00:09:54:24 - 00:10:10:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this is the perfect way to kick off your school year with this. And again, reminder at the end of this playlist, I'm going to be dropping something huge that you are not going to want to miss out on. So make sure that you're subscribed. And until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.

https://share.hsforms.com/1UrHggOX1Q3mH_A3F3f8dWwnumis

💥Erik w/a "k" Channel [Practical Youth Ministry Tips]💥

www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips

======================================
DESCRIPTION
We all want more people at our events, but how do we get more people at our events without promoting things to Social?
In this episode Nick and Erik, fellow youth pastor and youtuber, sit down to discuss better event promotion as a part 2
(Check out Part 1: erikyoutubechannel.com) of this super mashup episode exploring the value of outreach events and how to get the word out.

In this episode we'll explore a better more wholistic social media strategy for 2024 and beyond, as well as how to write better emails and create a culture of invite amongst students in your youth ministry.

Finally, we'll explore how to build out a social media and hybrid strategy for your 2024 youth ministry school year.

Tap in to check it out!

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 IDEA #1: Stop Promoting Events on Social Media
04:48 Two Types of Social Promotions
10:38 IDEA #2: Write Better Emails
14:00 IDEA #3: Create an Invite Culture
17:10 A Wholistic Hybrid Approach
--------------
✍️TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;24;21
Nick Clason
Well. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. And in this episode we're going to talk about better event promotion as well as a holistic digital and social media approach for your church and your youth ministry. And this is actually part two. Part one is linked right here at the top of the screen over on another channel, because we're doing a massive mash up collab.

00;00;24;28 - 00;00;49;07
Nick Clason
And I am joined today by my friend Erik with the K Erik.

Erik w/a "k" Williams
Good morning bro. How you doing? Good to see you Nick. So excited to be on your channel. Love what you're doing bro. So so good.

Yeah, well if you weren't listening or privy to the conversation that we just clicked stop and now rerecord on, we talked through an entire, like, outreach strategy, right?

00;00;49;08 - 00;01;08;17
Nick Clason
Yeah, well if you weren't listening or privy to the conversation that we just clicked stop and now rerecord on, we talked through an entire, like, outreach strategy, right?
You gave out a bunch of games. You gave out a full run sheet on, like how to do a great outreach style event at your church. And one major piece, right? In all of that, in churches and in youth ministry is promotion. We want people to come to our event. It's natural. It's a human nature, you know what I mean?

00;01;08;20 - 00;01;31;07
Nick Clason
And so one of the ways that we're always trying to get people to come to our event is through social media. Yeah. Is that not a normal like strategies and a normal thought process? Erik, for the average American youth pastor.

Erik w/a "k" Williams
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm totally I've totally used social media to promote events like for a long time. Yeah.

00;01;31;13 - 00;02;03;02
Nick Clason
And is it effective?

Erik w/a "k" Williams
I don't see a lot of likes on those posts. Yeah. And, I don't know, I'm not seeing, sharing and whatever. Yeah, I think I think it's just if, like if you look at in the past, a lot of my social media stuff for youth ministry, it tends to be mostly promotional. Okay. And watching your channel, one of the things I've learned is that's not a great idea because then it's just promotion.

00;02;03;02 - 00;02;25;00
Erik w/a "k" Williams
And it's not like, hey, because I looked at this, I'm going to get 20% off my next event, right? Right. It's just an announcement. Yeah, yeah. And that's what I am trying to steer youth pastors, church communicators away from, because if we're not careful, we're going to view social media as another announcement channel. And it's really not built for that.

00;02;25;00 - 00;02;46;06
Nick Clason
And if you treat it that way, it's not going to be incredibly successful. And so you should still get the word out and you can still use social media. But before you do, I want you to tweak and adjust your strategy on it. And so the first I have three ideas for better event promotion for your event, Erik, that we just talked through.

00;02;46;14 - 00;03;07;00
Nick Clason
The first one is don't post announcements announcing announcing it on social media. And what I mean by that in particular, because I'm going to get a little nuanced here, is I still think you can and should announce it, but don't just post your graphic that you cooked up on Canva or on Instagram Stories or wherever you cooked it up.

00;03;07;00 - 00;03;27;22
Nick Clason
Like, don't just post that because you will probably see as you see, as you said, two, three, six likes on it and likes aren't the only metric, you know, get the word across. Of course, like people will still see it. But you got to think about, our habits. Why do you, Erik, why do you get on social media?

00;03;27;24 - 00;03;48;25
Erik w/a "k" Williams
I want to be entertained, all right? I want to catch up with people, but I want to. I want to be entertained. That's. It's one of the things I love scrolling. Super. Particularly scrolling through videos. Right? Is I want it to be funny. Yeah, yeah. And, if you're watching this live, the month of August, your download youth ministry, I think it's like, God, an up or maybe silver and on up.

00;03;48;27 - 00;04;04;17
Nick Clason
I provided the mystery item for the members, and it was a let's go free e-book on how to crush your social media. And so one of the concepts in there, and if you know you're not a member or you missed the download perk, I'll drop a link in there. You can get it for just a few bucks, down below in the description.

00;04;04;17 - 00;04;27;05
Nick Clason
But one of the stats I included is that reels or short form vertical video TikTok style videos account for get this 90% of the internet's traffic. And so you're right, we get on social media to to be entertained or even to be inspired, maybe learn some stuff, but we don't get on there to catch up on our announcements, to catch up on what's the latest on our church.

00;04;27;05 - 00;04;52;20
Nick Clason
So stop posting static announcement graphics and start posting the types of content that people get on social media for i.e short form vertical based video. If you make it less than 60 seconds, you can post it on any of your social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and even YouTube shorts. And so if you are going to post about an event, I would recommend two styles of posts.

00;04;52;20 - 00;05;13;29
Erik w/a "k" Williams
So there's one. It's like the cap cut meme. Have you seen this before? The different cap cut style memes? absolutely. Lovely. I'm not. I haven't really gotten into using them yet much. Yeah, but I love I love using that like the, the the one where the guy who is The Mandalorian, I forget his name. Yeah. where he's laughing.

00;05;13;29 - 00;05;32;05
Nick Clason
Yep. Like really hard with that other guy. Like, I love that meme where you, you can put stuff in the background, right? Because it's kind of green screen concept. so, so good. Yeah. So find a way to, to catch the wave of a trending kind of like cap cut meme. And if you don't know, ask one of your teenagers, they'll help you.

00;05;32;08 - 00;05;53;15
Erik w/a "k" Williams
Speaking of speaking of cap cut, like, That's something. Now I use Final Cut to do most of my video editing. Yep. But when I'm doing, stuff with my phone, like, I do, like, screen like words on the screen, all that stuff, I use cap cut all the time. So last year I decided to invest in paying for it's a yearly fee.

00;05;53;18 - 00;06;19;17
Erik w/a "k" Williams
I think it's like 75 bucks. Typically. They almost always have some sort of save a certain percentage off. So I paid 50 bucks last year. I just got a reminder that my subscriptions almost out. So they're giving me a 36%, 34, 36% off of the yearly yearly fee. So grab those, grab those discounts when you can. But for me, it's been a totally worth it expense because I use it all the time.

00;06;19;20 - 00;06;39;27
Nick Clason
Yeah. And and I don't pay for it. My youth, ministry, doesn't pay for it. So I'm still using the free version, and you can still get a lot out of of cap cut, even if you don't want to go that paid for out. So the other one, the other idea I have, and these are like on the rise right now with in churches and stuff, are the like, transition videos.

00;06;39;29 - 00;07;00;07
Nick Clason
and I don't know the other way to, to describe them, but essentially it starts with, a video like, a popular video of some sort. And the one I've seen a lot recently is the guy running away from, like, a bull in the streets. It must be like a running of the bulls thing in Spain or whatever, and he gets speared in the back and so on screen.

00;07;00;07 - 00;07;22;07
Nick Clason
You see, this guy just gets speared right in the back and just fly forward, and then it cuts out to your church or another church and some dude or girl getting, I guess, jumping or thrown into like the row of chairs. And then they like, you know, get up all, like, hurt and then turn around, look at the camera and they invite, you know, invite to church.

00;07;22;07 - 00;07;40;23
Nick Clason
And so there are, you know, a bunch of different ones of those. And I discovered there's so many more than I even thought, because I got on one of my accounts and I started just kind of creating a library of them, sharing them over to my church account. And the more I shared them, the more the algorithm kept feeding me those.

00;07;40;25 - 00;08;04;07
Nick Clason
And so now I've gone around with students and stuff and I'm like, hey, film this, walk into this chair or dive into these. These couches, or, you know, we'll spill one of the other ones. There's like a baby puking on screen and you see all the puke come out and then it like it dive the the milk dumps into the cup and you hear the little splash, and then someone takes a drink of it and it's like there's always free coffee at church.

00;08;04;07 - 00;08;27;02
Erik w/a "k" Williams
Something like that. Like, oh, so gross, so gross, but so funny. And, really, really popular right now. And so that's another way to invite someone to your event, but again, in a way that leans into what social media is built for and made for. Yeah, I love the one where somebody is running and jumping does like a cannonball into into, a pool.

00;08;27;08 - 00;08;53;03
Erik w/a "k" Williams
Yeah. And then the next scene is like sugar cube dropping into a cup and it's like, yeah, like much smaller. Yeah. They're just funny. And again, you can still get the word out, but with like a little tweak. Right, a little adjustment. Don't just post your cooked up Canva graphic but include faces on social media include entertainment and entertainment style elements on social media.

00;08;53;03 - 00;09;10;27
Nick Clason
So that's that's my first kind of point. Do you have anything else to add there before we I just say,

Erik w/a "k" Williams
you know, you just said it in to include faces like students love to see themselves. Yep. I think that's brilliant. The more you can get students in there instead of just you same face over and over, talking head kind of thing all the time.

00;09;10;29 - 00;09;27;21
Erik w/a "k" Williams
I think that's brilliant. I love that dude. Yeah. And in addition to my doing my book, I got one here on my channel as well. It's free. It's down. The show notes. It will lay out this whole, this whole thing. So if you haven't grabbed it yet, go check that out. My site. I just want to support that, by the way, because that's I've downloaded that.

00;09;27;21 - 00;09;54;18
Erik w/a "k" Williams
That's been super, super helpful to me. You give so much inside of that e-book, bro. I absolutely love it. Well I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure help churches do better and get the word out that. What's up everyone Nicholas in here hopping into the middle of this episode to say that as I was ending it, I got this idea that I just wanted to give you my top six favorite transition videos and my top six favorite cap cut template.

00;09;54;18 - 00;10;14;10
Nick Clason
So if you hit up the link down below in the description and YouTube, it will give you a word document. it will just, the form will drop it into a drop box for download that word document, and it will give you six links to the Instagram videos, six links to the cap cut videos, as well as websites that you can use.

00;10;14;10 - 00;10;37;22
Nick Clason
Once you post those to either TikTok or to Instagram that you can download directly from that social channel, and then repost it without the tick tock or Instagram Reels watermark. out to Facebook or YouTube or wherever else you want to cross post things. I hope it's helpful to use these in your next event promotion. Without any further ado, back to the rest of them.

00;10;37;23 - 00;10;56;22
Nick Clason
So that's the whole goal of it. Yeah. Speaking. Getting better, getting the word out. write better emails. People like, if you're anything like me or any of the churches I've been in, we've done things like, you know, such and such church weekly student ministry update. And then in that, of course, you're like announcing your back to school event.

00;10;56;22 - 00;11;17;29
Nick Clason
You're announcing your costume party around Halloween time, you're announcing your Friendsgiving event. But nobody, who doesn't if they don't open the email, they don't read that content, they don't see it. And so it misses them. And so a new idea I had, and this is relevant because it just happened to me this week at our church, in our children's ministry.

00;11;18;02 - 00;11;39;00
Nick Clason
They were having an event I didn't know about. And the the subject is, you know, my church's kids ministry update, and I never read them. Guilty. All right, I work there. I'm a dad of kids in the ministry, but I never read them because I figure there's really nothing new in there. But there was something new, but I didn't open it.

00;11;39;02 - 00;11;54;09
Nick Clason
And you can look at it two ways. I'm I'm to blame or they're to blame. And most churches would be like, I'm to blame because they look back at open rates and they see that they're really low and they're like, well, you don't know what's going on because you don't open it. All of that is true. Guilty as charged.

00;11;54;12 - 00;12;30;06
Nick Clason
However, no, this most open rates, like a good open rate for like a business is like in the 20 to 30%. And so if you're a church, yeah, you're probably higher than that. But if you start putting some of what's going on, even in the subject of the email, even if people don't open it, then if their eyes ever glance through their inbox and they ignore your emails, but they still take a glance or a gander over at the subject, they'll at least be aware of what's going on in your in your youth ministry, and so you can prevent your outreach event to your parents and to any of the students who are subscribed to

00;12;30;06 - 00;12;51;22
Erik w/a "k" Williams
your email list with just better subjects and intake in inside of that when they open the email. Because, I mean, I've been guilty of this. I've seen I've been on emails from churches that it feels like I mean, you've got a template which I think is good to have a template. So you have to keep recreating something every single week.

00;12;51;24 - 00;13;15;06
Nick Clason
But it sometimes it can feel like I've seen all this information every single week. so I don't even bother opening. Yeah. Anything you could do to to kind of freshen inside of the email. Yeah. I mean, and you don't want to get clickbaity or sensational, right. But the more interesting your subject is, the the the more prone people are to open it.

00;13;15;09 - 00;13;33;08
Nick Clason
Keep in mind, too, that people want to people want to just like, social media. They want to interact with people. So if they're getting it from your ministry, like they they may be a bot in parent or student that wants to know what's going on in your ministry, but that's not enticing to them to correspond with the brand of your ministry.

00;13;33;11 - 00;13;52;19
Nick Clason
So send it from your name. Send it from your senior pastor's name. Like those types of things, you will see an uptick in engagement in that way. If it feels personal, like they're getting an email from a person as opposed to getting an email from an organization. So. Good. Yeah. the third thing, and I don't want to belabor it because we did we hit it in your episode.

00;13;52;19 - 00;14;15;24
Nick Clason
So go check that out. But really, I think the key to getting more people to your event, beyond just promoting it on social media, is really like creating a culture of invite, where students from your church will invite their friends to your church and you got to build that culture and over time it's going to take time. So if you're brand new, like just keep working it, keep working the soil, keep doing the thing.

00;14;15;27 - 00;14;36;05
Nick Clason
Create a safe space that your students know they can trust you. If they bring a friend to an event, you're not going to do something weird on them, and you got to do that a few times to prove it, to prove to your students that you're going to do that. But then eventually they'll start to realize that, like, oh, this is going to be a safe place and a safe event for me to bring my friend to.

00;14;36;07 - 00;14;57;26
Nick Clason
And they will start bringing students. And you know how it is like a word of mouth invite is so much more valuable than, static graphic that they scroll across on social media. Yeah, I think I think so. I mean, if you're if you run lame events, that word is going to get out to a. Right. So you want it's got to be a good event and that invite culture.

00;14;57;26 - 00;15;24;00
Erik w/a "k" Williams
I think is an interesting conversation. And I just want to say a real quick thing about it. Nick. Yeah, is I remember when I came to a church and, we had this annual event that had been happening for a long time, and, the high schoolers were coming because it's really, like, competitive. experience. So there was there was like, students were showing up no matter what.

00;15;24;03 - 00;15;58;19
Erik w/a "k" Williams
But the middle schoolers, we hardly had any middle schoolers that were showing up. And so we talked about that, like, why is that? But there wasn't a there wasn't a culture of invitation. So we at that, that meant we had to do groundwork within the youth ministry to go, okay, there's an importance for our students that come regularly to understand they they need to be inviting their friends, because this is an easy, open opportunity for them to be able to share their faith with their friends by letting somebody else kind of set the groundwork for it.

00;15;58;19 - 00;16;14;06
Erik w/a "k" Williams
They show up to something fun. Then they have this conversation, then in the car ride home or whatever. Hey, I know we had a lot of fun with some highlights, but but it was so fun. Were telling your parents whatever, but what was something that you heard the the youth pastor talk about this? What did you think about that.

00;16;14;09 - 00;16;39;09
Erik w/a "k" Williams
Yeah. And then having that conversation. So setting them up for success, if you will, rather than just show up and and do it and then don't ever talk about it again. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And that's, that's just going to take time. And if students are not bringing their friends to events, then maybe ask them why they're not and be prepared for the gut check of their honesty.

00;16;39;11 - 00;16;57;16
Nick Clason
yeah. But they'll be if they're honest with you. That is just absolutely good information that you have to, like, grab Ahold of, take to the bank, and then try and figure out what you need to do to create more of a culture of invite. So, so good. Well, here's the thing, Erik. Right. So like, we just we promoted this event.

00;16;57;16 - 00;17;20;20
Nick Clason
We did a few like fun Instagram Reels. We did a few different like, emails. And we got students inviting students. But my my recommendation is more than just like a blitz. Like a marketing blitz on your social media for your upcoming Back to School bash, your upcoming Halloween party, your upcoming fill in the blank whatever event. Like you should be doing this on a holistic strategy, you know?

00;17;20;20 - 00;17;40;09
Nick Clason
And in the book that I referenced earlier, I lay out a very detailed and very like high level strategy, like it's it's a high bar and it's often and it's like a full time job. But recently episode 106, I'll link it down below in the show notes. I scaled it back and that's what I also put in, like my doing my book as well.

00;17;40;09 - 00;18;08;03
Erik w/a "k" Williams
And I said, hey, listen, if you're just getting going like focus on three times a week and I think three times a week is much more attainable for youth pastors. And I would guess, and I love you to speak into this. Like, I would guess that most youth pastors can look around and see other social media accounts are doing well and want to do that, but are just thinking, bro, I don't have the time.

00;18;08;06 - 00;18;24;04
Nick Clason
And I would imagine that that's the boat that most youth pastors are and would. Would you agree with that or disagree with. Absolutely. I, I think of that for just myself. Like if I'm going, man, five days a week, I mean, there's so much to do. Three days a week feels a little more a little more comfortable. Yeah.

00;18;24;05 - 00;18;44;27
Erik w/a "k" Williams
I'm a big fan of like batch recording where you just I'm just going to take an hour on Monday and I'm going to record these three videos. Yeah. And then take the time. I mean, it does take time, right? But like some of those cap cup meme videos, that's not that's not much time at all. You're just kind of putting that information in and taking something that's already been used.

00;18;44;27 - 00;19;06;24
Erik w/a "k" Williams
And on the green screen you drop your information and like that's that's more simple. But I love I mean, dude, you're crushing it with how you do it with your youth ministry. I love like the, the, drafting videos and the seven seven questions to try to figure out what is it? I'm thinking of those those kind of things I think are so brilliant.

00;19;06;26 - 00;19;28;21
Erik w/a "k" Williams
It takes some time, but if you batch it, record it, do it all in one day, like I know on Instagram you can schedule videos to, to, to, to, yeah to go at specific times and dates and all that stuff. Yeah. So it takes time. But I think it's important and there has to be a, a belief in the value of it, for you to actually do it.

00;19;28;24 - 00;19;52;20
Erik w/a "k" Williams
You're not going to see the return on your investment overnight. Yeah. That's a, that's again another time. Just like the invite culture. It's going to take time to build your channel and students getting on it. Yeah. But you get those students involved with it both on screen and owning the the shooting of the videos and editing. Because there's you're going to find students that are that like to do that even if they're decent.

00;19;52;22 - 00;20;17;27
Nick Clason
Yeah. You can do some training with them. Yep. Give somebody some responsibility and go, hey, I want you to take on one of these a week or whatever. Yeah, that's on it. That's exactly right. And that's exactly what we've done. So I got it up and going all by myself. Proof of concept, sustainability, all these things. But now I've started recruiting other students, you know, and to your point, we just batch record.

00;20;17;27 - 00;20;37;00
Nick Clason
So anytime it's a Wednesday night we'll we have a four week strategy now. So one week we'll do those draft style videos. If you're watching here on YouTube you can see some examples. and we'll film as many of those as we can with as many students as we can. So I like to walk out of the night with anywhere from 4 to 6 of these different style of videos.

00;20;37;03 - 00;20;55;12
Nick Clason
Then the next week we'll do our seven question style video and same kind of concept as many students as we can. As many as we have time for will knock them out and, you know, get 4 to 6 in the hopper to edit later. we'll do the next week. I do like a man on the street style of walking out the microphone, interviewing kids or whatever.

00;20;55;12 - 00;21;10;29
Nick Clason
And so that's getting out of our room that we film in and more like on the streets. You can kind of see what our youth ministry looks like and everything. And then the last one is we'll just walk around, we'll do this. Those transition style invite videos. So hey, this week we'll do the one where the kids getting rammed by a ball.

00;21;10;29 - 00;21;29;23
Nick Clason
Next week we'll do the one with the the baby puking or whatever. And you do a few of those. You get. We got, last night, two nights ago, we got six of them, you know, in the hopper. And so. And I'm not doing that like, I got it set up. I got all the infrastructure built, but now I've handed it off to one of my students.

00;21;29;23 - 00;21;50;17
Erik w/a "k" Williams
And so he's doing it while I'm running the youth ministry program out playing basketball on the courts. And he's somewhere else in the building filming these these videos and that. Then the night he hands me the camera, I pop out the SD card and we're off. We're off to the races. And the good news in all of that, right, is that you can train up students and they want to help with.

00;21;50;17 - 00;22;09;18
Nick Clason
And when we look at it like the growing Young Study and Fuller Institute and all these things like keychain leadership is the key to sustained faith. So it shouldn't just be you as a youth pastor, like cooking all these things up, like bring about your leaders, bring about your volunteers, and and bring about your students, man. Like they want to help.

00;22;09;18 - 00;22;28;25
Erik w/a "k" Williams
So let an A side side bonus on that. You start handing some of the stuff off to students. They some of them are going to get like an excitement for doing that. And it could build into something even more. I had a student who I taught him how to do some PowerPoint stuff this like early on, and then I showed him how to shoot and edit video.

00;22;28;26 - 00;22;53;02
Erik w/a "k" Williams
Yeah, he went into marketing as a business. Yeah. Like all because he learned that stuff in youth group in middle school. Yeah. And the principles transferable beyond just social media, right. Like you might get kids are not interested in that, but they're interested in other things and isn't our job, as the apostle Paul puts it, to train the saints and equip them for works and acts of service.

00;22;53;02 - 00;23;10;21
Nick Clason
It's not our job to do all the works and acts of service. And so in the same vein, while social media feels like this maybe foreign kind of concept punch fear in the face just get started. And like I said, link down below. Episode 106. I'll detail an outline how to do all of that and just get those steps taken.

00;23;10;25 - 00;23;32;22
Nick Clason
Love it. Anything else? Erik, before we wrap this week up,

Erik w/a "k" Williams
I just say on the social media world, just just make a decision to do it. Like John, John Acuff is a guy I love to read and listen to. He talks about the hardest part about running is putting your shoes on. Once you put your shoes on, you're committed.

00;23;32;25 - 00;23;53;11
Erik w/a "k" Williams
Actually, when he's going to run in the morning, he puts his whole running outfit on the floor the night before. And then when you put your shoes on, that means you're going to actually run. So I'd say pick up your phone and, you know, sketch a few ideas and then go actually do it. Yeah. And then you start getting into a rhythm and it becomes a lot easier once you get into a rhythm of it.

00;23;53;18 - 00;24;12;06
Nick Clason
Yeah, that's 100% right. Well hey everyone, so glad that you made it all the way to the end. if you haven't, go check out part one. Erik's got a bunch of freebies there. And youth ministry, you're definitely going to want those. Those are premium level freebies. But until next time, and as always, stay hybrid. See you.