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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Assassin Game with Clothes Pins
03:41 Social Media While You’re Busy
05:02 Assassin Game Rules
06:20 Ways to Play the Game
09:31 Pro-Tips
13:42 No Prize? No Problem - Do this!
14:30 Pro-Tip #2
18:52 How are you going to play, moving forward?
19:37 Could you play this game at summer camp?
21:50 Two Final Assassin Rules to Follow
23:47 FREE Lock-in Survival Guide

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.378)
Well, what's up everybody? I'm here with Andrew. Andrew, how you doing this morning, bro?

Andrew Jansen (00:07.725)
doing good. God is good. It's a good morning. Getting into my emails and excited to talk about the game thing that you want to talk to me about.

Nick Clason (00:17.39)
Yeah. I'm glad, like, I hope that talking about the game thing is more exciting than your emails. That's, that's, that's my hope for all of this. Um, but yeah. So I, you know, I, you and I, we've known each other for a couple of years now, mostly through zoom, but we've hung out two times in person. And one of the times that we hung out in person, I was at your church. Um,

Andrew Jansen (00:26.057)
I hope so too. Yeah. Definitely.

Nick Clason (00:44.974)
Helping you out with like a like a retreat conference. What would you call that thing? It's a conference, right?

Andrew Jansen (00:51.297)
Yeah, it's like a student conference between like 250, 500 people give or take which year you're at the conference. Yeah.

Nick Clason (00:58.21)
Yeah, that's a big, that's a big range. But one of the things that you guys did that I loved was you had this game happening in the background of the conference, I guess. It wasn't like a stage game, though you had stage games. It wasn't like a big thing that in the main general session that took a lot of time, if any time.

Like aside from maybe just like explaining the rules. it was like, it was this like assassin type game. tell me, like just explain to the people. Cause what I loved about it was that it was an activity to do in the margins and ongoingly throughout the weekend that kind of kept you, kept students engaged and having something, you know, to kind of like focus on and do like above and beyond just like all the normal conference attend attending like stuff. So.

Andrew Jansen (01:33.39)
Yes.

Nick Clason (01:55.478)
Where did this idea come from? How did it go? Like, let's talk about it.

Andrew Jansen (01:56.152)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (02:00.139)
Yes, so like all great ideas, I stole it from, I believe we played this game in my youth ministry growing up. So my youth pastor, question mark, shout out Jake Lindhart. He's a great youth pastor. But I'm sure he stole that from somebody as well before him, but it's the original game was played with rubber bands and you would like, you would like snap a rubber band on. So I grew up in the nineties.

Nick Clason (02:18.446)
Yeah

Nick Clason (02:24.568)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (02:29.701)
early 2000s youth group era where we did all kinds of things that would get you fired nowadays, but where you would literally snap people with rubber bands and if you snapped them while they weren't looking, then they were assassinated and they would give you their name that they had been given at the start of the game.

Nick Clason (02:34.67)
Okay.

Nick Clason (02:43.04)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (02:50.432)
Was their name like their name or a name of like another person?

Andrew Jansen (02:54.145)
It's the name. So let me let's explain the game real quick. And then we can kind of go into the like a little bit more of like what we change rules, that kind of stuff. So the game is essentially everybody signs up and then you take everybody and write their name down and then you assign their name to somebody besides them. It's easier to make a list and kind of just go like numbered.

Nick Clason (02:57.805)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:05.272)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:20.024)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (03:23.693)
And like, so number one would have name number two. And then if you have 50 students, number 50 would have number one. And the goal is to assassinate that person and a bit like you win if you get your own name. So that's the, like if you get handed your own name and you've been playing it for a while and it's not like the first person you kill and something that just means your youth pastor messed up and that's okay.

Nick Clason (03:27.181)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:31.694)
Okay.

Nick Clason (03:39.426)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (03:49.137)
give grace. But if you get your own name at the end, then you are the assassin champion. And that's kind of the concept behind the game.

Nick Clason (03:56.461)
Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And so like I was saying, like I was watching kids at your conference, like running around, like, you know, hiding from each other. Like one kid came up to me and was like, can you go get that girl over there? Cause she like knows like I'm coming for her, you know? So was like sort of all sort of like strategy and like gamesmanship. So how did you adapt it then for, for this one?

Andrew Jansen (04:25.688)
for sure.

Right. So I believe we did this a few years ago at the same conference with Nerf guns, but I had a whole bunch of like clothes pins at our church that we use for various things. feel like every time we need clothes pins, we just went and bought them until we had thousands of clothes pins. And I was like, we got to do something with these clothes pins. But it's funny when you act, when you're like, Hey, we talked about this assassin's game.

Nick Clason (04:35.671)
Okay.

Nick Clason (04:47.822)
hehe

Andrew Jansen (04:58.366)
It did not go the way that I was like hoping it would go or the way that I was planning it to go. I think they had fun. They had a blast. Like kids were running around like crazy, screaming, like getting really into it. We had to tell a couple of kids to calm down, which that's, I'd rather tell kids calm down than be like, Hey, come on, like get into it.

Nick Clason (05:00.046)
I'm

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:16.386)
Right, you should, yeah, you should care about this more, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (05:20.33)
Right. They were very into it. I kind of talked about it with some of the volunteer board members and kind of figured out what is something that can happen. I think of it as like a meta event. It's always just constantly in motion. Obviously, you don't want to have it happening during praise and worship time or while you're in small groups or the speaker is speaking. all that in between transition, walking around time.

Nick Clason (05:29.358)
me.

Nick Clason (05:38.647)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:42.167)
Right.

Andrew Jansen (05:49.625)
we gave students clothes pins and those clothes pins had the name of their that they wrote their name on the clothes pin and then we handed them their target clothes pin and that was the person that they were trying to go get so you had to clip on the clothes pin

Nick Clason (06:03.63)
Okay, so in theory, if every kid comes in, signs up, writes their name on a clothespin, then that's your pool of contestants. because one of the things you guys did was you didn't make this required for everyone. You're like, if you want to play, swing by the table and sign up.

Andrew Jansen (06:09.666)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (06:22.978)
For sure. Cause I mean, if you have, if you make everybody do it, you're going to have like 10 people that are just like, I'm just going to throw away this clothes pin and then they're, they're out. They're not, you're like, Hey, I got you. Where's your clothes pin? And like, I threw it away. Cause I don't care about this at all. Cause I'm a punk eighth grade student or whatever. And like, so, so it's, we wanted to make it be just, if you're, if you're interested in playing this type of game, you know, go, go sign up. We,

Nick Clason (06:37.438)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (06:53.572)
started with them writing their own names. And then I think it turned into kids can't write at all. And like, we were like, who, what is this? What is your name? Like, it was like, my name's Steve. And I was like, that does not say Steve at all. And that is not cursive or that I don't know what font that is, but you need to practice writing. But we ended up making that list and then writing their names down.

Nick Clason (06:56.832)
Okay.

Nick Clason (07:00.972)
Yeah. What fart? geez.

Andrew Jansen (07:21.472)
And then we handed them out at lunch, I think. We made the order and we're like, OK, this student is getting this kid's name so that the list was in a circle, so to speak.

Nick Clason (07:23.872)
Okay, yeah.

Nick Clason (07:34.038)
Now, you need to like, there any, are there any like hacks that youth pastors need to think about with like assigning it or is it just like, just do it randomly and it's fine?

Andrew Jansen (07:44.993)
Yeah, I had it so that was the part that I think went that was the craziest because originally we were just write your name and on the pin and then take the neck though like the last person that wrote their name down take their clothes pin so they just were in order as they went but that got Completely they just started chucking them into a bucket and they were like I signed up and then ran away

Nick Clason (08:02.498)
Gotcha.

Andrew Jansen (08:11.928)
So I would say have that like it would be easiest to do. All right get in line Go to a sign-up station get signed up and do either alphabetical order or do the order in which you signed up is the order in which you You know like are trying to get the next person

Nick Clason (08:31.981)
Yeah. So is that, I mean, that's a pretty like administratively heavy task, right? So like if you're a youth pastor, you're running an event, you're running a retreat or a D now, like would you recommend having a really organized person facilitate some of that off to the side so that you're not having to get sucked down into the weeds on that?

Andrew Jansen (08:51.21)
Absolutely. Yeah. If you have an intern, definitely that's a great intern task is just sit there, get all the students signed up and write their names down on a clothes pin or how whatever assassin's weapon you're using. But we use like a Nerf gun, I think a few years ago, probably can't get away with rubber band anymore, but yeah.

Nick Clason (09:06.936)
Yeah.

Okay.

How did the Nerf gun work? Like how did that, like was it successful would you say? Or was clothespin like a better idea? what, cause I let one of the things, like in a couple of episodes I'm actually gonna talk to another guy and he created an AI like app for taking pictures, like an assassin picture game. So if like, if you can be confidently sure that everyone has a cell phone, that's a great opportunity, like a great way to do it. But.

Andrew Jansen (09:34.754)
Nice.

Andrew Jansen (09:38.434)
Yep. Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:40.302)
Like I like this one being analog, right? In some way, because if kids don't have phones or like whatever, they're able to still do it. How'd the Nerf gun thing like work? Like, was it confusing? Was it like, cause I would imagine if you're on the other side of the room, you get like hit by a Nerf dart. Like, do you know for sure who shot it? Like what if multiple people shot it? Like, you know what mean? Like that type of stuff. was it, was it, did it, yeah, how'd it go?

Andrew Jansen (10:06.882)
I think it went well. was, they did popsicle sticks and you had a popsicle stick with a person's name on it and you were collecting popsicle sticks. I thought it went well because if you're shooting the Nerf gun and you hit your target, you're gonna immediately go up and be like, hey, I hit you. Like that was my dart that hit you. If it's like crossfire or something like that, I mean, middle schoolers are gonna cheat for sure. Freshman boys.

Nick Clason (10:10.721)
Okay.

Nick Clason (10:17.271)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:24.835)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:31.853)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (10:35.96)
typically will be like, I've killed everybody in this room already. I'm like, no, you haven't. We haven't even started yet. that like, like, I'm like, nice try. But the, the, the nerf, I think it worked well because it, the first of all, the nerf gun was very low power. So you had to be, I think you had about five feet to, to like be able to like shoot it and, and hit them. And then, and it was also fun because

Nick Clason (10:36.738)
That's, yeah.

Ha!

Nick Clason (10:51.459)
Yeah.

There you go.

Nick Clason (10:59.938)
Right.

Andrew Jansen (11:03.192)
There was one this will haunt my dreams forever because I think it was like a junior high school girl was like carving numbers in her little plastic nerve gun with how many kids that she was like assassinating and she I think yeah, I was like Yeah, I was like Let me know when you're not in the same town that I'm in so that I can sleep well Yeah, it was terrifying but they they got into it which is they this seems to be some

Nick Clason (11:08.514)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:15.55)
my gosh. That is like what horror movies are made of, bro.

Andrew Jansen (11:32.832)
a type of game that it's a meta happening all throughout the conference, all throughout the event. And they really, really love trying to assassinate their friends.

Nick Clason (11:38.925)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:44.77)
Yeah, and if you don't have a budget for a prize for the winner, these types of events are a great way to pit churches or youth groups or small groups or color groups or however you want to break it up against each other. And you can just give 1,000 points to the winner, and 1,000 points is free for youth pastors. And then, yes. Yeah, dude.

Andrew Jansen (12:03.565)
Yes.

Yep, I love points. have unlimited points in my budget. It's great. have trillions and trillions of points.

Nick Clason (12:12.288)
It's truly the only unlimited thing we as youth pastors have access to, you know, aside from maybe Bibles that were discarded or old couches. But other than that, points are for sure unlimited. So, all right. So is there anything else, any other like pro tips that you would have if someone's like, all right, this sounds like a cool idea. You know, just something to kind of like run on in the background of my D now or my summer camp, my retreat, like.

Andrew Jansen (12:17.016)
for sure.

Nick Clason (12:40.556)
You have any pro tips that you'd give a youth pastor so that doesn't flop and fail or like to maybe help them avoid middle schoolers trying to cheat or is that just an inevitability?

Andrew Jansen (12:49.56)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they will cheat for sure. But I would say that have your like sign up sheet, your sign up, like the starting of the Assassin's Game, have that organized and fleshed out before you start, because that's the hardest part of getting that train to leave the station is just getting every student signed up and then assigning who their target is in a way that allows it to go like.

Nick Clason (12:53.666)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:09.902)
Mm.

Andrew Jansen (13:17.068)
Number one has number two and then all the way through like number 50 has number one. Because if you get off in that process, then you're going to get like someone's going to go, I won because I got my own name. And then you're like, no, how do I fix this? got switched? What got swapped? What happened?

Nick Clason (13:20.588)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:35.358)
Is there, so is there no mathematical way for them to get their own name until they win? Like is that how it should work? I'm like, I'm not a statistician, so I'm not over here able to like think of this on the fly. So, okay, so there's no possible way for them, like if they get their own name and they didn't win, it's messed up somehow, yeah. Yeah, cause I did remember seeing the guy behind the desk, cause it wasn't you.

Andrew Jansen (13:42.508)
That's how it should work. If you number them...

Andrew Jansen (13:53.997)
Something, yeah, something messed up. Yep. So I would say do that either.

Nick Clason (14:02.434)
But the guy behind the desk, he was like, way to just throw him under the bus. I was trying not to do that. But he was like, like I just saw him like an internal like moment of panic when like some people were like giving him things. He's like, that's, that might not be right. Like that right there was like, this game seems amazing and intricate, but like that moment, like every youth pastor has been there where they have an amazing game. And then there's that moment of panic where they're like thinking, crap, I, something isn't working right.

Andrew Jansen (14:02.614)
Yeah, it was Dawson. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Andrew Jansen (14:15.735)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (14:31.998)
Mm-hmm. for sure. No, loved Dawson was a youth leader of mine and he you know He's a youth pastor at the church that I was at. So no, I love Dawson. He did a great job It's my fault. I didn't lead him well in executing those things. So it's all it's all on me No, it was it definitely there's a moment of panic when a group of students are like, hey I got like my friend like my friend and I got each other's names and we're not

Nick Clason (14:46.798)
There you go.

Andrew Jansen (15:00.396)
the first and last person. And that was all the, that was all the clothes pins were jumbled up in a bin and we did not have a good like start and then like sign up the way, like the best, not, not that it wasn't good. We just didn't have the best version of that that we could have, could have rolled out. And then I would say that one of the reasons why it didn't go exactly the way we had hoped was we had flag football.

Nick Clason (15:02.349)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:12.556)
Right.

Nick Clason (15:16.93)
Right, Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (15:29.944)
and open gym at another location during that free time where they could play assassins. So a quarter of the conference was over at the gyms and everybody that was playing assassins that didn't want to go play flag football or open gym was at our church. And they, if you got a name of somebody that was over there, you couldn't like, was like, well, it was raining.

Nick Clason (15:33.41)
Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:56.558)
Mmm.

Andrew Jansen (15:58.999)
They, if you weren't over there, yeah, it was a little bit too far to walk, especially in the rain. So it, that, was one of the things of making sure you have an extended free time where you're not like off on different locations or different parts of town or anything like that, where you have like, if you're at a camp where everybody's on campgrounds, it's a good game to play throughout the week or like we're doing a lock-in for New Year's Eve.

Nick Clason (16:00.104)
It was like too far to walk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:16.408)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:22.112)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (16:27.03)
And we're doing this, we're actually doing, I'm doing the Assassin's Game with the students at the lock-in when we're gonna try to revamp and correct some of the things that we noticed that did not quite go as planned.

Nick Clason (16:33.902)
There you go.

Nick Clason (16:39.926)
Okay, so that's a great, that's a great, so like the things you're talking about is like making sure you have it like the sign up and the assignments of who gets who a little more fleshed out, right? Like that was one of the things you talked about. Are you doing it with clothes pins or like how are you playing at your lock-in?

Andrew Jansen (16:48.641)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (16:58.616)
Yeah, I still have, we have 900 clothes pins instead of a thousand. we're still looking to get rid of some of those clothes pins. But I think it'll work out well because it's gonna be a smaller group. We're not gonna have 250 students that are running around like crazy. So we're gonna have them sign up. I have a list of all of-

Nick Clason (17:18.456)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (17:27.008)
I know these students because they're my students. So I'm going to have like some options and a set chunk of time where they can really, you know, get after it and assassinate their friends with clothespins.

Nick Clason (17:30.402)
That helps, yeah.

Nick Clason (17:35.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Now, is this a game that you could envision happening? Like if someone wanted to do this over like the course of like a week long summer camp, let's say like a three, four, five day summer camp. Can it last that long? Do you think or does it need to be like a quicker spur?

Andrew Jansen (17:51.33)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (17:59.001)
I think the more time you have, the better it can go because then you can be a little bit more methodical. People can get into it. I've seen people army crawl through like cafeteria chairs to like get there like is here's another hack for the game. Make sure you let them know what parts of the body are allowed to get assassinated or not because obviously we don't want

Nick Clason (18:02.008)
Okay.

Nick Clason (18:10.13)
Hehe.

Nick Clason (18:14.059)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (18:28.238)
Probably good, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (18:29.036)
to, yeah, we don't want to have a horrible situation with some clothes pins or whatever you're using. Definitely the rubber band game needed that. I saw kids like army crawling through cafeteria chairs to like slowly go get their friends like shirt sleeve because it was throughout the week instead of just that like five or six hours over the weekend of the conference where they could play. So I think it lasts for sure. At least two days.

Nick Clason (18:36.895)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:47.032)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:51.629)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:55.894)
Yeah. So then on like a game, so then on like a gameplay side, like if you, like if you assassinate someone, you get their clothes pin. So you're only at any given moment. You're only carrying around one, right? Like you don't, you don't walk around with like a big handful of clothes pins at any moment. So that way, cause you, bring it back to like home base or whatever to let someone know like this person's out.

Andrew Jansen (19:15.734)
No. Yep.

Andrew Jansen (19:22.978)
Yeah, and that lets the person that's doing the sign up and has that list allows them to kind of see like, okay, this person's making their way through all of these people. And you kind of can tell like, okay, and you know, if somebody loses a pin, you have a better chance of going, that was this person. They lost their pin at this point and you can just write the next person's name and give them that pin.

Nick Clason (19:32.226)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (19:47.052)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, nice. All right, anything else that someone who's trying to do this needs to think through or that you learned seeing it be done?

Andrew Jansen (20:01.362)
For sure. I would say the two quick things that we didn't really touch on is clear boundaries, like out of bounds, when they can and cannot assassinate somebody is really important. Obviously, hearing about Jesus and praising Jesus through worship music takes precedent over the praising Jesus through fun. I mean, it's still praising Jesus. It's just a different

Nick Clason (20:09.132)
Mm.

Nick Clason (20:23.266)
The game, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (20:28.268)
way that we're doing that and we want to have Jesus be the main thing. So making sure that they're not assassinating each other during small group time, praise and worship time, or any of the main session type times is important. So let them know like, hey, we're only doing this during free time, lunchtime, game time, whatever. And have like, I would say have like lights out if you're at a camp for a week. Like, hey, once it's lights out, would.

Nick Clason (20:38.231)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (20:56.972)
That's just, you're asking for trouble. Like, Hey, why were you in the girls dorm? I was trying to get her like, no, like that's we're not playing at night time. So I would say that would be one. And then making sure like the, out of bounds, like, Hey, we're not, you're not going to be off camp property. You're not going to be off church property. No, you cannot get on the roof. No, you cannot crawl through the drainage pipes and like all of those usual things. Like what can I like,

Nick Clason (20:57.09)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:02.917)
Yeah

Andrew Jansen (21:24.16)
latch on underneath the church van and then crawl onto the windshield and like I'm like no what you're gonna die that thing that's don't do that. They get really into it so making sure that you you kind of have those you know outlines of like what the boundaries are for both like physical where they can play the game and then also the times in which they play the game.

Nick Clason (21:29.102)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:44.364)
Right. Yeah, that's good. It's Nice. And you mentioned that you're going to play this at your lock-in, most any now, how many years have you been youth ministry again, Andrew? So most youth pastors who have at least hit the 10 year mark in youth ministry are team anti lock-in, but for some incredibly weird reason, your team pro lock-in.

Andrew Jansen (21:52.769)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (21:59.513)
Ten years.

Andrew Jansen (22:13.342)
I am pro. Pro lock-in. Yes.

Nick Clason (22:13.492)
And so, yeah. So as I said at the beginning, you have a completely free lock-in guide planning sheet down below. If any one of you is insane enough to do a lock-in like Andrew, this can help you. I will not be a customer of this sheet, but I will let other people know that it exists.

Andrew Jansen (22:23.17)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (22:38.434)
For sure. Yeah. And it, it's just everything that I've learned over the years. I love lock-ins. we did lock-ins at, in our youth group growing up, think almost every year are I'm from Wichita, Kansas. And we had a big like Wichita area citywide lock-in with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students that would, sign up for all of this crazy stuff. So, this is just all the stuff that I've learned kind of, some hacks, both attending a lock-in, putting on a lock-in.

Nick Clason (22:57.901)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (23:08.188)
And I've added some things to it over the years. So yeah, if anybody has any questions, they can email me or reach out to you and you can give them my info or whatever. But it's really helpful.

Nick Clason (23:11.948)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (23:22.156)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, man. Well, yeah, dude, go for it. Give a give a little bit. Give a give like a sneak peek.

Andrew Jansen (23:26.232)
Do you want me to talk about it or is that good? For sure. A sneak peek. one of the...

Nick Clason (23:35.47)
But don't give it all away, because we still want them to go get it, you know what I mean? So like, make it a big old teaser, like cliffhanger, of ultimate proportions.

Andrew Jansen (23:39.764)
Absolutely. For sure.

So first of all, shout out to my wife for making it look super amazing and incredible because honestly, yeah, she's amazing. I wish that I would hire her tomorrow if that were possible.

Nick Clason (23:49.112)
Dude, your wife is, this shirt right here, your wife designed. Yeah.

Yeah, she...

Yeah, but she works for you for free, so why would you do that?

Andrew Jansen (24:02.082)
That's true. It's not for free. do. I have to like rubber feet and like get her food and take, make sure she's locked in on all that stuff. speaking of lock-ins, the, the number one hack from my lock-in survival guide, and this is an exhaustive or, perfect in any way, there's definitely stuff that can be added to it. But I would say that at the end of the night, I always start with, or end with a movie after cleanup.

Nick Clason (24:06.286)
there you go. Yeah.

Nick Clason (24:30.582)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (24:31.692)
Because once you clean up, you get through all of the things, you're exhausted, you're tired. Hey everybody, it's time to clean up. And then by 5 a.m., 6 a.m., whenever you're winding down the final hours of a lock-in where your body is running on Monster Energy Drink and Tylenol mostly, then you can really let them say they're gonna watch the whole movie and they will probably fall asleep.

So you cut out quite a bit of lock in time where it's still like you give your leaders a break. You can get breakfast stuff ready to go if you want to do breakfast, but always do clean up, everybody clean up. And then we're going to go watch a movie. And that really helps. It's still fun. There's still those crazy kids that are like, I just drink four Mountain Dew Code Reds. How am going to sit still during this movie? And they're still like able to have something engaging, but most of the kids will nap and parents will show up and it's just a win.

Nick Clason (25:01.728)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:28.75)
Bro, a code red doesn't even touch like your level of tiredness at 5 a.m. if you haven't slept. Like I don't care how wired up on sugar you are. And then there's always those kids, right, that it's over. like, I watched the whole thing. It's like, no you didn't, bro. You were snoring logs over there. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (25:37.095)
yeah.

Andrew Jansen (25:44.886)
Yep, yeah. How did you watch the whole thing where you were completely submerged under chairs and blanket and pillow? yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:51.03)
What's that drool next to your face? What's that from? Is that from your code red? Yeah, no, I've done that before. I have done lock-ins, to be clear. I always end with the movie as well. It's the best way to just calm everybody down and just get to the finish line. That's what that's called. It's called survive and advance onto the finish line. Nice, dude. Well, hey.

Andrew Jansen (26:04.682)
Mm-hmm. yeah.

Andrew Jansen (26:12.514)
survive in advance. I love it.

Nick Clason (26:16.726)
I appreciate you hopping on. If you're listening, like go grab Andrew's Locket Guide, play Assassin, let us know, let him know if you did it and what other hacks you might have down below in the comments. until next time, my friends, thanks for being here. See ya.

🎬 THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS MOVIE SHOWDOWN
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-ultimate-christmas-movie-showdown/christmas/christmas-games-9784.html

DESCRIPTION
🎄 It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Ready to throw the BEST Youth Ministry Christmas Party ever? 🎉 In this episode, Nick Clason of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast spills the peppermint-flavored tea on how to make your event unforgettable! 🏆 Whether it’s the Ultimate Christmas Movie Showdown, hilarious games, or social media outreach, this guide has it ALL.

🌟 Grab the downloadable Christmas party resource on Download Youth Ministry—complete with voting brackets, social media assets, and everything you need to pull off a high-energy, crowd-engaging event that doubles as a killer social media strategy. 🎅✨

👇 Grab the resource now: DownloadYouthMinistry.com

🎬 Watch till the end for tips on engaging Gen Alpha and crushing it on YouTube. And as always, my friends, stay hybrid! 🚀

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/126

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//CUSTOM COACHING
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Make Your Christmas Event Pop This Year!
01:59 How to Use a Bracket?
03:56 The Ultimate Christmas Movie Showdown Explained
05:25 The 16 Movies
06:20 What's Included in the Download?
10:00 How do you Crown a Winner?
12:27 Our Hybrid December Plans
14:14 YouTube for your Youth Ministry

--------------
✍️ TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Student

00:00:01:16 - 00:00:06:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
ministry Christmas party. I mean, it is the preeminent

00:00:06:05 - 00:00:08:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
event of the year. You play

00:00:08:18 - 00:00:19:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
dozens of games, you eat even more sweets, and you serve hot chocolate. Maybe you play a Christmas movie. What if I told you that I had the

00:00:19:09 - 00:00:26:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
event that was going to make your Christmas party? Absolutely pop? Well,

00:00:26:09 - 00:00:26:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
here it is. It

00:00:26:29 - 00:00:31:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Oh.

00:00:36:02 - 00:00:40:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and incorporate this style of event, along with all of the other ways

00:00:40:29 - 00:00:50:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that if you don't want to use it for your party, or it's a little bit too late to lead in to your party, that you can use this style of resource if you scrub ahead,

00:00:50:00 - 00:00:55:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I am going to go ahead and offer this resource to you so you can go ahead and check that out.

00:00:55:08 - 00:01:18:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching here on screen, you can see that timestamp. If not, just hit the link down below in the show notes or head to Hybridministry.xyz/127. But we are going to talk Christmas party. We're going to talk outreach and we're going to talk social media. And this event has all of those. And this product has all those wrapped into one single thing.

00:01:18:21 - 00:01:18:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're

00:01:18:27 - 00:01:23:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Oh.

00:01:23:03 - 00:01:36:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
meetings and things you have to do. You got to come up with games and lessons and and manage parents and volunteers and senior pastors and oh yeah, social media and oh yeah, the Christmas event and. Oh yeah, and oh yeah. And oh

00:01:36:03 - 00:01:36:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
yeah.

00:01:36:19 - 00:01:48:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And oh yeah. But in this event guide, you will have the ability to crush, social media outreach and your Christmas party all in one fell swoop. It is going to be amazing.

00:01:48:01 - 00:01:52:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Oh.

00:01:54:25 - 00:01:56:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:01:56:21 - 00:01:58:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Tis the season. Let's hop in.

00:01:58:14 - 00:02:00:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So in

00:02:00:26 - 00:02:02:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:02:18:19 - 00:02:25:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
here at the top of the YouTube video, I did the ultimate event guide to the World's Greatest donut that,

00:02:25:10 - 00:02:42:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in that video you can download my event guide. It's complete with a shopping list and all those types of things. And also sends you to download Youth Ministry where you can buy this voting style event. But this has been something that has been a staple of my ministry and a staple of honestly, what I've done for years.

00:02:42:17 - 00:03:04:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And essentially I'm borrowing from the like, wave or the popularity of like a march madness bracket style voting. And so, like in our space, we have this big window that opens into like a small sort of like half court indoor gymnasium sort of deal. And we printed a custom size vinyl banner, for six, for a 16 team bracket.

00:03:04:04 - 00:03:22:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we put, those things we just, you know, print them out on computer paper or whatever, cut them out. And we do these, like, style events 2 or 3 times throughout the year. So like I said in that video linked, just a second ago, we have done like the world's greatest donut. We have voted on the best.

00:03:22:26 - 00:03:34:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We did last March Madness. One year we have voted on the world's best, like, mascot. And then that mascot became our official student ministry mascot. Shout out to Pugsley

00:03:34:11 - 00:03:38:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
the platypus! We've done all sorts of different like voting

00:03:38:02 - 00:03:49:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and challenge based style things. It's just like a fun way to sort of like, create, competition and conversation around something for like several weeks in a row.

00:03:49:06 - 00:03:50:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in this particular instance, we're

00:03:50:29 - 00:03:56:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
doing the ultimate Christmas movie showdown. Now, by the time that this video drops, you're

00:03:56:04 - 00:03:57:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:03:57:24 - 00:04:13:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Christmas party or even slightly beyond your Christmas party. But if you have not made it yet to your Christmas party, then what you can do. And this is what we did. We did a Christmas movie watch party, but we're allowing the students to vote on the Christmas movie.

00:04:13:20 - 00:04:37:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's what's really cool, is we actually at our costume party on the 30th of October, we revealed that the Christmas bracket was now live, and then the students could vote on it. And the best thing about this is, again, if this is already past, your party's already past. You can do something like this just very simply on social media, during sort of the holiday lull, you can do, every week is a new round or you can do it.

00:04:37:14 - 00:04:42:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Every day is a new round. And that's the thing. Like so even if like you download this now

00:04:42:22 - 00:04:52:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and then you go and you play a movie at your Christmas event next week, you can do every day on social media as a round. And there's all sorts of different ways to capture

00:04:52:24 - 00:05:04:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Elf white Christmas elf faces off against White Christmas. That's the one seed versus the 16. They're not listed there. But you know, and once the students start voting, you can tell who the overall one seed is.

00:05:04:24 - 00:05:31:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Then in the eight nine matchup we have Frosty the Snowman versus the year without a Santa Claus. Then in the four I think 13 413 matchup, we have Christmas vacation pairing off against Christmas with the Kranks Muppet Christmas Carol versus Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer, Home Alone, which is the two seed versus It's a Wonderful Life A Christmas Story, which is a seven versus Polar Express, which is a ten, the Santa Claus, which is a three, versus Jingle All the Way, which is like a 14, I think.

00:05:25:00 - 00:05:26:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:05:31:25 - 00:05:42:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then Santa Claus is Coming to Town versus How the Grinch Stole Christmas in the six versus, I think, 11 match up there. And so this PowerPoint file, you can very simply edit the winners. Right? So if elf beats white Christmas in the voting, you can move it ahead. And you can use that in your space to write these in.

00:06:18:28 - 00:06:20:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:06:20:18 - 00:06:26:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right? So if elf beats white Christmas in the voting, you can move it ahead. And you can use that in your space to write these in.

00:06:26:25 - 00:06:35:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I have the winners sort of as like placeholders. In there that you can like, you know, make sure that you can move them on. But

00:06:35:13 - 00:06:43:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
here's the thing. Every single round in every single context is going to be different. Maybe you are a big white Christmas church, and all of your students are going to pick White Christmas.

00:06:43:25 - 00:06:52:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's great. Then go with it. Go for it. Okay. Additionally, you can, use and use this, like I said, on social media. So a couple of my

00:06:52:21 - 00:06:53:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
favorite ways to

00:06:53:12 - 00:07:03:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
do it are on Instagram Stories. And also now for Generation Alpha, who is, widely and widely adopting YouTube as one of their platforms of choice.

00:07:03:09 - 00:07:08:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can post on your YouTube posts page section, a voting poll option with images

00:07:08:29 - 00:07:22:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and stuff like that. And so I've included some social graphics that are still. And so it's your title to your overall bracket. You can write in the winners each round and then, round one graphic, an elite eight graphic, a Final Four graphic, and a championship round graphic.

00:07:22:19 - 00:07:43:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then you just very simply stick the question sticker on that graphic. I also have social media videos which, pair and look similar to the widescreen video. So there's a title graphic with, you know, some kind of like distance sleigh bells chime in like some Christmas like, chiming things and then like a round one graphic, elite eight graphic, a final four.

00:07:43:29 - 00:07:55:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All these are videos and championship. And then there are profile cards. And so these are really fun. Every single movie, there's 16 movies. Every single movie has four different

00:07:55:00 - 00:08:05:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
profile cards, both for social media and for, your widescreen in your room. And so, for example, in round one, you might put up the Elf profile card, the very

00:08:05:17 - 00:08:11:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
first Elf profile card versus this and next to the very first white Christmas profile card.

00:08:11:07 - 00:08:31:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So like right here, if you're watching on the screen, you'll see it says like elf, released in 2003, Will Ferrell shines as buddy, a human race, as an elf who travels to New York to meet his real father. But there, like I said, there are four different profile cards because in the next round of elf advances, you will use the second, fact.

00:08:31:02 - 00:08:49:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you're not just sharing the same fact every single week, week in, week out. So this next one is about who Jon Favreau, who, helped. The movie grossed over 220 million worldwide on a $33 million budget, became a Christmas favorite. The third one's about, Will Ferrell's improv skills, and the fourth one is a fun fact that

00:08:49:09 - 00:08:55:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
his iconic walk through New York was done candidly and is capturing real reactions from New Yorkers.

00:08:55:13 - 00:08:55:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now

00:08:55:28 - 00:09:17:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you're like, okay, that's great, but what if White Christmas wins? That's why there's four for White Christmas. Now, if White Christmas loses, you're obviously not going to be using fact two, fact 3 or 4, right. But in the event that upsets happen, in the event that that movies keep moving on, there are four because there's four rounds round one, Elite eight, Final Four, and then championship round for you to share those graphics.

00:09:17:10 - 00:09:37:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And so we have that for social media for still graphics. We have social video graphics. We also have widescreen graphics that you can use and put in your space. Along with those profile card kind of things that you can also put in your space video as well as stills. And then there's paper voting as an option.

00:09:37:18 - 00:09:52:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we'll get to the ways that you can do voting here in just a minute. There's Photoshop files. If you do happen to have Photoshop editing skills. And then finally there are some just like transparent, no background, assets like the logo and the round one, elite eight, all that type of stuff. So

00:09:52:00 - 00:09:55:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
all of that is included in this download, just a few bucks.

00:09:55:21 - 00:09:58:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And like I said, how can you go about

00:09:58:03 - 00:09:59:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:10:08:26 - 00:10:15:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of my podcast, Hybrid Ministry ten as a discount code, and you get 10% off your purchase of either Premium or Premium Plus.

00:10:16:01 - 00:10:32:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But if you're using sidekick, you can use the phone connections and the voting option, and students can vote live right there directly in the room. And so you can do all of your matchups right there. And you can do that week in, week out. Now, what do you do about students who don't have phones? Well, that's one of the reasons why I included the

00:10:32:00 - 00:10:39:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
paper printable bracket so that those students aren't left out and so that they have an opportunity to also let their voice be heard.

00:10:39:12 - 00:10:57:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, you might be thinking, well, what happens if, my Christmas party has already passed or I don't have a way to get this, done? In the amount of weeks we have leading up to our Christmas party, no problem. Download this and just post them on social media. And then when people show up to your Christmas party, you'd be like, hey, we're watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas because it was voted on by you.

00:10:57:29 - 00:11:15:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The people on social media. Congratulations to the Grinch. And so you could do this in just four days. Round one, Elite Eight, Final Four, and then the championship. And then you have your event. So if your Christmas party is in seven days, you can theoretically crush this and get this in any time of year if you want to launch it.

00:11:15:07 - 00:11:32:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, depending on when you're watching this, if you have enough time, you can launch it all through the month of December leading into your movie. Or like I said, you can do it all on social using either Instagram voting or the YouTube post. Now here's the good news about that is when you promote it in the room, like, hey, voting is live!

00:11:32:04 - 00:11:39:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
One of the things I've done, I'll show you a graphic of what we're using. It's not included in the download because it's it's custom to us. But just to give you an idea, I just

00:11:39:23 - 00:11:50:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
linked a QR code to our link tree, which has all of our different social handles. And so it says, hey, voting is still live and the winning movie will get, we'll get watch it.

00:11:50:16 - 00:11:55:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our Christmas party on you know, December 4th or whatever. I've sent that out in our text list. We've sent it out to our parent

00:11:55:13 - 00:11:55:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Patreon. If you didn't know, we just launched a Patreon and it is going to be walking through my weekly lessons and it's, or a different bonus podcast every single week. It's $4 per month and you get a different bonus podcast per week. So essentially it nets out to a dollar or even slightly less than a dollar per podcast episode.

00:12:24:28 - 00:12:26:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:12:29:00 - 00:12:45:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you didn't know, we just launched a Patreon and it is going to be walking through my weekly lessons and it's, or a different bonus podcast every single week. It's $4 per month and you get a different bonus podcast per week. So essentially it nets

00:12:45:13 - 00:12:51:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
out to a dollar or even slightly less than a dollar per podcast episode.

00:12:51:02 - 00:13:08:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I think it's a very modest amount. I would love to encourage you to go over there and check it out. I think you can probably find four bucks a month in your budget, but even if you can't, I just want to let you know that, like we're going to use it to invest deeper into the podcast gear and all sorts of things like that.

00:13:08:17 - 00:13:27:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I'd love to encourage you to go check that out. But we're going to be walking through these lessons, and this is what we're going to be talking about over on that Patreon is what what are the Christmas at the movie lessons? And then, what are the we're also doing? Like we're avoiding the big announcement time before we break into small groups.

00:13:27:01 - 00:13:46:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so our students are going to go into our sort of like small group rooms directly at the end of the countdown. And each of our rooms has a TV on a cart, which is brand new. And so we're going to link that to a YouTube playlist, and there's going to be a small group activity. There's going to be an announcement corner filmed and put there on that playlist.

00:13:46:00 - 00:13:48:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then the teaching where we may teach a

00:13:48:09 - 00:14:01:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
little bit, pause for questions, teach a little bit, pause for questions, teach a little bit, pause for some more questions. So we're really trying to lean in sort of to that kind of hybrid thing. And I'm going to detail and explain all of that what we're doing over on that Patreon.

00:14:01:27 - 00:14:10:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I would love to have you go check that out. There's also some other kind of bonus perks and stuff like that. And as I'm describing this, you might be hearing me talk about YouTube in

00:14:10:29 - 00:14:11:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
all

00:14:11:11 - 00:14:13:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Ow ow ow! Oh!

00:14:15:20 - 00:14:16:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
YouTube,

00:14:16:00 - 00:14:22:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
because I think it's important to put spiritual and evergreen content over there on YouTube for our students.

00:14:22:26 - 00:14:43:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, Generation Alpha is now saying that YouTube is now their preferred search engine, even over Google. And so there's value to that. And, I actually offer either some custom coaching to help you level it up or communications done for you, or I'll actually just do it for you if that's something that you're interested in, go ahead and check the show notes or the link down below in the YouTube description.

00:14:43:13 - 00:15:12:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The link to right here on screen is my complete and full strategy of how we launched and developed a YouTube for youth ministry. It's the free version of that coaching, and then the coaching will take you sort of into that. More customization, but I hope that you grab this product if you have an amazing Christmas event, I hope you can use it to knock outreach out of the park, to have an amazing event, and also crush social media, whether you're using it for the event or just during the lull of the holiday season.

00:15:12:26 - 00:15:18:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Don't forget my friends and as always, to stay hybrid.