Hybrid Ministry - Episodes Tagged with “Hybrid Ministry Podcast”

Episode 181: How I Ran Social Media While at a Conference - - DYM 100 Challenge Pt 3

Nick Clason — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 05:00:00 -0600

A Christmas miracle for youth pastors everywhere!
A few months ago I went to the DYM 100 Roundtables, and without lifting a finger, or distracting my entire experience, this is how I regularly posted on my church's social media, while in attendance for the conference!

BECOME A HYBRID HERO
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❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/181

FREE E-BOOK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/complete-guide-142500019

HYBRID HERO LINK
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

WINTER PACK VLOG
https://youtu.be/RkHc0cTTr6c?si=zBPsd9-JWVo2mXIn

2x GROWTH EPISODE
https://youtu.be/ogDlkTHDxew?si=gfcM6cpX6McI0zxs

EXCLUSIVE JOSH BOLDMAN INTERVIEW
https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-josh-144080714?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SOCIAL TEAM CHECKLIST
https://www.patreon.com/posts/social-media-138081327?source=storefront

👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
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🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉
We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!
https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick

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🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
//VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid

//BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.patreon.com/posts/9-amazing-dym-142425755

//OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 DYM 100 & Social Media
00:17 Every Youth Ministry Needs a Strong Digital Presence
01:00 Your 2026 Social Media Framework
02:40 Two Things I've recently learned
04:38 Why Membership is Worth it
05:47 The Winter Pack
06:36 The Patreon Challenge

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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:23:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our social media did this while I was sitting at the do I am 100 conference. I barely had to work and I want to show you how, which is an incredible gift to give you on this Christmas morning. Merry Christmas everyone, and welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Merry Christmas Eve. Pastors. My name is Nicholas. And if you and I have not had a chance to meet,

00:00:23:17 - 00:00:45:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you're not listening to this on the day it drops, which is Christmas, I drop every single Thursday. I haven't missed a Thursday in over three years. And it just so happens to be Christmas morning when this one drops, I want to give you one of the best gifts that I think I can give youth pastors. Most youth pastors know and see and understand the need for a strong social media and digital presence.

00:00:45:18 - 00:01:08:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If not, you should check out my completely free e-book, which is link down below and that will hopefully convince you about why you need a strong social media presence. But the gift that I can give you pastors. And then I want to give you pastors, is a plan and a framework for consistency. I was over at the DUI 100 conference and social media basically ran itself.

00:01:08:25 - 00:01:28:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, full disclosure I still grab my phone, I still download it out of our Google Drive, and I still uploaded it to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. However, those things were sitting there for me, ready to post. I didn't need anything new. I didn't need to do any extra work. When I was out there. They got the job done for me.

00:01:28:26 - 00:01:56:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the baseline and the basis for all of that is my winter seasonal social media pack, which I want you to have now. I'll be honest, it does come with a little bit of a cost because frankly, it's a lot of work to put together. But here's how I've set the pricing structure. The pack costs $17.99, but if you become a $4 per month hybrid Hero Patreon member, you get that pack included.

00:01:56:13 - 00:02:22:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if the pack is meant to last a run of three months, $4 per month for you for three months is $12, and you get a $5 off on that pack as well. As we are trying to hit a goal this month only where we make by next week's episode. As this drops that we make 25 new members in the Hybrid Heroes Patreon tier, and if we hit that to everyone involved in the community.

00:02:22:26 - 00:02:44:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you help, or if you know someone and you share a link we will offer, I will offer a free coaching call on social media to everyone who is a part of my Hybrid Heroes paid tier member. I will help map out your strategy for you. But here's the truth I've been leading a youth ministry leader cohort.

00:02:44:14 - 00:03:05:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Hybrid heroes. Deep dive kind of on why hybrid ministry, why it's important, how to keep it going. And what I realize is that this is all about behavior modification. It's not about tips and tactics. Like, you guys know what you need to know, right? And there may be some areas and some tools that I can tell you about that will help you.

00:03:05:05 - 00:03:26:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But at the end of the day, it comes down to time management and prioritization. And those are boring. Those aren't as sexy as viral reels and viral memes. I mean, the fact is, like one of the girls in our hybrid hero deep dive cohort, she had a real that had 21.2 thousand views not too long ago. Like she clearly knows what she's doing.

00:03:26:29 - 00:03:56:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
She doesn't need me. What we all realize we need is that when life gets busy, when the calendar gets overwhelming, social media is the first thing to drop. And so my pack will help you not drop it. If you have something that is done for you or mapped out for you. And as I displayed in my Winter Seasonal Social Media Pack Vlog Style Challenge eight post challenge video that is linked right here.

00:03:56:15 - 00:04:17:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Top screen. You can get it done in less than 20 minutes per week if you post all eight types. And I'm only asking you to post 3 to 5 times. So actually you can get it done in anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes per week done for you. It's also custom. It's got everything that you need and it's got a calendar that will last you December, January and February.

00:04:17:20 - 00:04:43:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then if you're a $4 a month member in March, that when that, spring pack will drop and boom, you got three more months of seasonal social media and you're just following my hybrid strategy, which also link down. Below is my episode on how following this strategy helped us to x our growth. In addition to that, you'll get all of the freebies and all the things over on my Patreon and my Patreon store.

00:04:43:09 - 00:05:06:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
My exclusive interview where I sat down with Jim, and Collider's Josh Bullman talking about the value of allowing students to disagree. That dropped a couple of weeks ago. So, you know you're going to get access to that, as well as, checklists and parent, communication guides and all sorts of things. Like I went in to doing 100, hoping to just vlog it out and map it out.

00:05:06:03 - 00:05:35:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what I realized was I got sucked into the vortex and we all get sucked into where things get busy. And I saw old friends and I didn't have time to create content. But my pack back home from my youth ministry, my pack helped carry through the types of posts and gave me something to continue to post while I was able to soak in all of the info and all of the goodies from the do I am 100 conference, and I also got this shirt out of it.

00:05:35:24 - 00:06:03:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Actually, this one didn't come from the conference. This one came from Gold Member week. Hey, speaking of that, vlog style video, check this out. Here's what I learned. During that week. Imagine it's six minutes per week. Have your entire social media strategy done for you. I mean, think about it like three months of youth ministry content for just $0.23 a then some weeks it takes me seven, other weeks it takes me five.

00:06:04:03 - 00:06:25:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the point is, and especially at the end of this, as I was sitting in my youth ministry leader cohort, everyone said time management and scheduling was the issue with staying consistent on social. So my recommendation would be take my pack, let it be the the basics of what you do. And if you do get busy, if something else comes up, you have something to fall back on.

00:06:26:01 - 00:06:45:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then when you do have the creative energy to create something more custom and more elaborate, scrap one of mine and put one of your own in there. But mine will at least keep you moving in. So if you want to let your weeks be like that, where when it gets busy, you still have something that's running on autopilot for you.

00:06:45:07 - 00:07:07:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For social media, my winter seasonal social media pack is the key to that, and it's a great gift for you on Christmas morning. And if you consider joining, you can help get us to the finish line. Progress bar is here on screen so that you can see how many paid Hybrid Hero members we've gotten over this last month as we push towards January to that 25 goal.

00:07:07:23 - 00:07:23:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that you can unlock that free coaching opportunity. But hey my friends, hope you've had a great episode. I thank you for being here with us. And until next time. And as always, don't forget stay hybrid. Merry Christmas and we'll see you in 2026.

Episode 180: Josh Boldman Taught Me THIS About Small Groups… - DYM 100 Challenge Pt 2

Nick Clason — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:00:00 -0600

I didn't think this breakout session would have such an influence on me, but it surprisingly did!
And I even got an exclusive interview with the workshop teacher to deep-dive into it!

Plus, free coaching is still on the line for those who join Patreon before the month ends!

BECOME A HYBRID HERO
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/180

30 CONNECTION IDEAS
https://www.patreon.com/posts/30-small-group-141961735?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-josh-144080714?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

//BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.patreon.com/posts/9-amazing-dym-142425755

//OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 DYM100 Thing 1
00:28 DYM100 is the Best!
01:42 Programming Shift
05:46 The Key to Social Media in 2026
06:35 December Patreon Challenge

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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:40:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Regardless of where each individual question takes them. It's this bigger picture of having students being able to ask questions is actually really, really, really healthy. That line alone, plus this llama t shirt was worth the cost of the entire trip. Welcome, everybody to the Hybrid Ministry show. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry shown in this episode, I'm detailing and outlining the three takeaways that I had from the do I am 100 conference in the last episode linked right here, we talked about programing and adding sounds and sound effects and just making our introduction a little bit more lively.

00:00:40:10 - 00:01:07:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what I saw and learned and took away from the D and 100 conference. And in this one, I'm gonna talk about a surprise breakout session that I did not expect. Now, here's the thing. Full disclosure, right? Like when I choose breakouts at a conference, more often than not, I'm choosing it based on the person. And so me and my friend Josh Bowman, like, I saw he was on the thing on the docket to lead a breakout.

00:01:07:14 - 00:01:30:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I just thought to myself, I just like this guy. I know what he's going to do is going to be good. I'm going to go support him. I would not say that the topic listed on the breakout was what interested me. What interested me was the author of the breakout, not the actual content of the breakout. Now, to be clear, I didn't disagree with the content of the breakout.

00:01:30:13 - 00:02:00:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It was essentially like how to make space for students to be able to disagree in your youth ministry. And I was like, okay, great. Like I love that. Like I'm here for that. And I think that that's a great topic. But his breakout was absolutely game changing. And like, I was shocked at not only how much I did agree, but some of the stuff he did that made me really think and wrestle with, oh man, like I'm not doing some of these things.

00:02:00:02 - 00:02:22:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I came back from the conference and I was debriefing, and I was downloading, and I thought to myself, like, that might be my biggest takeaway from the entire conference is how to do a better job of creating space for students to disagree. And now, as this episode drops middle of December, most of us have wrapped up our our fall semester of programing.

00:02:22:23 - 00:02:48:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We got Christmas services on the horizon and, then maybe a week off after Christmas and then we're back for the New year. And this is the perfect time to break something and to add something in. And so I actually got the chance to sit down and have an exclusive conversation with Josh, who, gave the premise for his breakout of why students need to be able to have the space to disagree.

00:02:48:14 - 00:03:07:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then I ask some of the how questions, like, how do you go about instituting this change? How do you handle senior pastors? How do you handle leaders? Go ahead, take a listen in this clip. At first they were really skeptical. And we we, you know, we started like, preparing them like weeks out that this was this was coming.

00:03:07:26 - 00:03:35:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And always, you know, the small group leader is the one that has the questions. So like, really worst case scenario, they can skip it. It was kind of like, you know, like, so that's always like, how did it go? It was great. How did I because we didn't we didn't but we would always like we we started I mean, even in like some, some leader meetings or stuff, doing some kind of, some role playing type stuff where it was like, okay, hey, last week, you know, you all, we're here for last week's teaching.

00:03:35:02 - 00:04:13:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's imagine this was the question and somebody throw me, you throw out a couple things that maybe you think a student might have said. And it was really funny because, at first, even they were like, skittish with because they were in that moment, they were like, you want you want me to point out something you think a student would disagree with that you said, so we're going to try and figure out how to institute this better in our space to help give leaders, the comfort and the confidence to lean in and start asking some of these questions about what students might disagree with and hopefully stop trying to give students the quote, right

00:04:13:21 - 00:04:44:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
answer and start giving students the space to genuinely question and think and maybe even in some cases, disagree. You know, a couple weeks before I went to the do I am 100 conference, my church hosted a thing called the Cross Creek Collective, and I was actually on stage for it. And during that week, while I was in the middle of the busiest week of probably my year on staff, I decided I wanted to put my seasonal social media pack to the test.

00:04:44:28 - 00:05:17:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And at the end of the week, this is what I discovered. Imagine it's six minutes per week. Have your entire social media strategy done for you. I mean, think about it like three months of youth ministry content for just $0.23 a minute. Some weeks it takes me seven, other weeks it takes me five. But the point is, and especially at the end of this, as I was sitting in my youth ministry leader cohort, everyone said time management and scheduling was the issue with staying consistent on social.

00:05:17:18 - 00:05:34:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So my recommendation would be take my pack, let it be the the basics of what you do. And if you do get busy, if something else comes up, you have something to fall back on. And then when you do have the creative energy to create something more custom and more elaborate, scrap one of mine and put one of your own in there.

00:05:34:21 - 00:05:59:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But mine will at least keep you moving in the right direction. So the entire conversation with Josh Pullman is now over on my Patreon, as well as my winter seasonal social media pack. You can jump in for a week free trial to listen to the Boardman episode and to maybe, explore what the winter seasonal social media pack, how it could serve you in your ministry.

00:05:59:11 - 00:06:38:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's the fact you can't ignore social media any longer, and you need something that you can rely on when you get busy. And that's exactly what my pack is going to do. And we are moving towards trying to add 25 new free hybrid Hero members progress bars right here on the screen as of the editing date. And if we hit 25 members by the end of December, the beginning of January, then every single person who has a $4 per month Hybrid Hero member, they're going to get an exclusive free coaching call from me, included as a part of their $4 per month.

00:06:38:16 - 00:07:02:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It is such a great deal. $4 per month gets you a bonus episode, gets you all the freebies on my store, gives you all the paid things on my store, and now gets you a free coaching call $4 a month. That's all it is. It's less genuinely than a cup of coffee. And next week this episode is going to drop on Christmas Day.

00:07:02:02 - 00:07:13:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you're listening live, you'll see it in your feed on Christmas Day. If not, it's going to be linked right here on screen so you can watch that one. But until next time, and as always my friends, don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 179: FREE Christmas Party Surprise! - DYM 100 Challenge Pt 1

Nick Clason — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 05:00:00 -0600

SHOCKING!
In this episode I explore an area of adjustment I did NOT anticipate!

In this series, "The DYM100 Roundtables Summary" Series I explore the 3 areas that challenged me from the DYM100 Roundtables!

Plus, welcome to the December Patreon Challenge!
Become a Hybrid Hero ($4/month), help us get to 25 new members, and get a FREE Coaching call in 2026!

🦸 BECOME A HYBRID HERO
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/179

FREE CHRISTMAS PARTY!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-christmas-143594518?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

FREE SOUNDBOARD
https://crowdcontrolgames.com/products/gameshow-soundboard?_pos=1&_psq=sound&_ss=e&_v=1.0

//BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.patreon.com/posts/9-amazing-dym-142425755

//OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 DYM100 Thing 1
00:28 DYM100 is the Best!
01:42 Programming Shift
05:46 The Key to Social Media in 2026
06:35 December Patreon Challenge

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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I went to the DYM 100 round tables with this goal to find three things to work on and fix in my youth ministry. And today I am sharing with you the first one. Spoiler alert is not the one that I expected. Plus, stick around to the end of the episode because I am giving away a free Christmas party run sheet, complete with the resources and everything you need so you can grab that down bel

00:00:26:29 - 00:00:33:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Link in the description, which will go into detail and explain at the end of this episode. Welcome everybody to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00:00:33:19 - 00:00:44:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I went to the do I am 100 conference where I got this notebook and of course this llama t shirt, which, you know what? When else are you going to need to get a llama t shirt?

00:00:44:10 - 00:01:16:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're wearing it after the Darwin 100 conference, with the goal of coming away with three takeaways, and I was going to vlog it and take videos and explain my process. But man, if you've ever been to one of these events like you know that like you just get sucked into the vortex of friendship and community and conversations. And so I only took like 20 videos and like half of them are like receipt uploads or like videos of the van rental to make sure that they weren't going to scam me afterwards.

00:01:16:26 - 00:01:40:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in these next three episodes, I'm going to talk about not only things that you can use and learn and take away for, like your December Christmas parties, but also things that I and our youth ministry team are going to be thinking about on into the future of 2026 and how we do youth ministry. I also have some freebies and some stuff, going along and that I'm going to be giving away.

00:01:40:18 - 00:02:02:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So pay attention to the link down in the description for all of these next couple episodes. But in this episode we're going to be looking at, and the thing that I took away was programing. Okay. And like in the room, if you've ever been to a do I am 100 event, it is hosted by Doug Fields and Josh Griffin, who are both the masters at programing.

00:02:02:09 - 00:02:21:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like to the point that like I think we had we had one session with worship and it was like a special kind of like unplug, more like chapel and like spiritually charged, focused, kind of like session, but otherwise every other kind of like element within the room was done without any sort of worship or without any sort of band.

00:02:21:16 - 00:02:46:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But you never felt like something was missing. Like it was an amazingly programed event. And like, I have taken pride in my own programing to the point that I have my own Patreon show every single week detailing our youth ministry programing, detailing the creativity that we're trying to do. And in a lot of ways, my 9 to 10 different damn conferences that I've been to over the years have helped shape this.

00:02:46:06 - 00:03:05:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, I've taken a lot of my programing strategy and like things that matter to me from my experience at and under a do, I am conference. But in this event, I brought the rest of my team and one of my guys, his name is Ben. Ben is in charge of programing at our church and he took things that I have.

00:03:05:06 - 00:03:38:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Seen and noticed at conferences before in the past. But he's like, we need to implement that to the point he's like, we're going to make that happen. And those things were like the sound effects included and the music that were both happening simultaneous while any event was happening. Well, announcements. Well, funny bits. While different games like all these things all happening, all with different sound effects or different, music tracks being done in the background, like the sound effects, the booth and the, the stage, the, the, the energy that was happening between the two.

00:03:38:25 - 00:03:55:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
He was like, we need to find a way to do that. And that's that's the takeaway that surprised me because I've seen this before and I thought, there's no way our booth can pull it off or it's going to be too distracting. Or maybe we're trying too hard, but Ben, Ben's like, no, we can do this and we're going to pull this off.

00:03:55:19 - 00:04:13:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you didn't know, I found a link down below, from Crowd Control Games. They have a free, like, audio interface. So all you got to do is load in sound effects or sound bites. You can get them off of, like, YouTube or like a website, like Motion Array, and you can upload those different sound effects.

00:04:13:13 - 00:04:31:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we're going to try those things. And if you head down below, link down below is a completely free Christmas guide. It's actually from an episode linked right here, the top screen, with my friend Eric with the K, who also fun fact was a roommate and a table member at my table that I was leading the, church foyer.

00:04:31:22 - 00:04:51:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Carpet stains. But we did this episode years ago, and, I, I'm putting a little bit of a 2025 spin and refresh on it. And so there's a brand new, completely new game. That should be on the game either now or in the near future. But that's completely for free for you. Those of you that are either free or paid members over on my Patreon.

00:04:51:25 - 00:05:17:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you can, become a free paid member and get that complete Christmas run sheet. If you haven't already had your Christmas party yet, but you can now include. And I'm going to challenge myself in our ministry to include more sound effects and really like part of what made the conference so engaging and so entertaining was the synchronicity between the upfront people, Griffin and Doug Fields, and the booth.

00:05:17:21 - 00:05:38:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And so shout out to to them. And so my friend, my coworker Ben was back there and he was asking all the questions and stuff like that. And then sitting in the the Airbnb with my friend Eric later, he's like, look, you can use this thing from crowd control games, with sound effects. And so we're going to download these and we're going to start using them.

00:05:38:08 - 00:06:05:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think it can just bring about another layer of liveliness and fun and creativity, which is already something that we're trying to do over on our Patreon. So that free Christmas party is linked down below in the show. Imagine it's six minutes per week. Have your entire social media strategy done for you. I mean, think about it like three months of youth ministry content for just $0.23 a minute.

00:06:05:26 - 00:06:26:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Some weeks it takes me seven, other weeks it takes me five. But the point is, and especially at the end of this, as I was sitting in my youth ministry leader cohort, everyone said time management and scheduling was the issue with staying consistent on social. So my recommendation would be take my pack, let it be the the basics of what you do.

00:06:26:14 - 00:06:44:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you do get busy, if something else comes up, you have something to fall back on. And then when you do have the creative energy to create something more custom and more elaborate, scrap one of mine and put one of your own in there. But mine will at least keep you moving in. And hey, we're trying to welcome 25

00:06:44:12 - 00:06:49:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
new paid hybrid heroes before January begins.

00:06:49:15 - 00:07:15:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if we hit that goal, if you help me accomplish that goal. So right now we are, like a handful of of those away, where you want to get 25 by the time January starts. If we hit that, I will offer free 30 minute social media audit and coaching session for every single person who has jumped in at the $4 per month membership tier.

00:07:15:11 - 00:07:41:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Listen, if you put that on your church's like professional or continuing development expense account, it's $48 for the year. It will help you with creativity and programing and all the freebies that I offer through my Patreon at any given time. Or if you don't have the church budget for it, it is, less than the cost of a Starbucks latte only one time a month if it comes out of your own personal budget.

00:07:41:10 - 00:08:11:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Either way is incredibly accessible. And the good news is my seasonal social media pack, which is available for everybody at the cost of $17.99, is available for those of you who are $4 a month, Hybrid Hero members is available to you included in the cost. And if we hit this 25, member benchmark, by the time January hits, I will extend a free coaching call to every single person who is in the Hybrid Heroes coaching level tier.

00:08:11:17 - 00:08:28:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so hopefully that is something that is, helpful to you. And so we're going to try and infuse some of our programing now with some of these things I learned from from the denim conference, just observing the programing and some of the games that they put together and some of the chaos and some of the fun.

00:08:28:25 - 00:08:52:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But all of it was was changed with the audio and the sound effects and the playlists and the music choices. It was it was amazing. It was crazy. It was fun. And I want to try your hand at it and, hand the keys over to some of our students in the booth doing that. But in the next episode, I'm actually going to talk about a small group shift that I learned that, I'm passionate about.

00:08:52:03 - 00:09:12:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the way that Josh Bulman in a workshop presented it absolutely changed the game. And I am sitting down with him for an exclusive interview that you are not going to want to miss. That episode is linked right here on screen. So my friends, go ahead and check that out. But until next time. And as always, don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 140: Social Media that [ACTUALLY] Works | Engage Don’t Broadcast

Nick Clason — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 04:00:00 -0500

🦸BECOME A HYBRID HERO
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✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

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DESCRIPTION
Struggling to make social media actually work for your youth ministry or overall church? In this episode, we’re breaking down a 3-step strategy to move from just broadcasting announcements to real engagement that inspires and connects. If your social feed is just a wall of static graphics, it’s time to rethink your approach—let’s build a social media presence that truly makes an impact!

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/140

PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_NBW-9fOP4&list=PLngXlSr64YaIUQ25aqwTI5__iga2uAe0c

//DYM LIVE STREAM
https://www.youtube.com/live/9EMnJc05ln8?si=-Ivo6HMSdhFu-7AI

//NUCLEUS
https://www.nucleus.church

//CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

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

//STUDIO EPISODE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/studio

//BECOME A HYBRID HERO
patreon.com/hybridministry

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Some of the below links are affiliate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid

BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup

⌚TIMECODES
00:00 Is your Church Social Media on Life Support?
01:50 Stop Ignoring Digital Ministry
04:17 Step #1
06:23 Step #2
09:43 Step #3

TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Is your social media account

00:00:02:24 - 00:00:03:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
on

00:00:03:06 - 00:00:10:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
life support, like just a bunch of pre downloaded graphics or things that you've made in Canva?

00:00:10:17 - 00:00:28:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If it is, rest assured you're probably in the majority of other youth workers or even church communications social media managers who know that there's more for social, but you just don't have the capacity or the bandwidth or maybe the desire to take it to that next level.

00:00:28:26 - 00:00:58:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this video I want to do is I want to help you take your social media from broadcasting a message to engaging the message and in the video playlists that we've been currently in, linked right here at the top of the screen. If you're watching here on YouTube, we've been talking about communicating in your church, communicating with better church announcements, and one of the key elements and areas I think a lot of churches wrongfully default to is posting their announcements to social media.

00:00:58:21 - 00:01:26:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's where you just broadcasting about you. But I want to shift your strategy to engagement. Social media's invention. Social media is existence. Its best existence is not for information transfer. However, it is a good spot for inspiration along with entertainment. So give me a like if you've ever had your social media account look like this that you're seeing here on screen, if you're watching on YouTube or give me a sub if

00:01:26:06 - 00:01:26:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
these

00:01:27:00 - 00:01:35:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
announcement based posts have actually returned and yielded good results for you, the fact is, it probably have it.

00:01:35:10 - 00:01:44:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's why in this video, I want to lay out my three step social media strategy. And as always, here in the hybrid Ministry show, there are

00:01:44:13 - 00:01:45:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
chapters

00:01:45:11 - 00:01:56:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
linked down below. Welcome everyone to the Hybrid Ministry show flavor. Welcome back to the Hybrid Ministry Show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Nick Clayson.

00:01:57:02 - 00:02:26:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I've been in youth ministry for 14 years, and I've always known and seen the importance of a social or a digital media existence and a present presence. However, Covid really, really ushered that in. And as sort of a result of what Covid did, not only like around me, but in me, I decided like, man, I really like I see churches going a certain direction up and down a certain path and like, I want to be a voice that has something to say about it.

00:02:26:09 - 00:02:40:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And interestingly enough, I was on a livestream not too long ago. If you want to go check it out with, download Youth Ministry. And Josh was like, why are you the guy we're talking to you? And I said, it's interesting because I just started recording videos in

00:02:40:11 - 00:02:40:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
my guest

00:02:40:21 - 00:02:41:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
bedroom

00:02:41:05 - 00:02:47:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
early in the morning, and, here I am now on a live stream answering more questions to other people.

00:02:47:13 - 00:03:16:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it but it was because I was so passionate about this idea of social and digital media. And so, I don't think that when we're just posting announcements that we're doing, first of all, any service to our social platforms, to the algorithms, nor are we really serving our audience, especially on social in a, discovery era where people, stumble upon accounts that they've never seen before.

00:03:16:24 - 00:03:29:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But your Canva graphic for the chili cook off, that's only getting a handful of likes that that's not being discovered by anybody new, nor even probably your current church

00:03:29:27 - 00:03:30:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
members.

00:03:30:12 - 00:03:30:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so

00:03:30:21 - 00:03:43:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you really just making double the amount of work for you. And we've been discussing that in the last three videos about more effective communication, where I laid out better communication strategies for all churches and youth ministries.

00:03:43:27 - 00:03:55:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this video, what I want to do is I want to say, okay, so if that's what you're supposed to do, if you're supposed to kind of leaning on email and leaning on your website and leaning on social for inspiration and entertainment,

00:03:55:27 - 00:03:56:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
what

00:03:56:21 - 00:03:58:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
exactly should you be posting?

00:03:58:22 - 00:04:03:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm glad you have three steps for everyone and their social media is is, three steps.

00:04:03:26 - 00:04:21:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Social media checklist. Step number one is make sure that your website is up to date. I've said that in every single video so far that we've been in this playlist. And it's true because when you take away social as an avenue for announcements or when you

00:04:21:00 - 00:04:21:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
reduce

00:04:21:15 - 00:04:21:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your amount

00:04:21:24 - 00:04:30:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of stage announcements, there's still has to be a full bodied, one stop, robust shop for your church people to fall to.

00:04:30:07 - 00:04:49:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think the best spot for that is your church website. And the first video we talked about the difference between Netflix TV and cable TV. And so when your website is a great spot, it can be a Netflix type location, an on demand type location rather than

00:04:49:02 - 00:04:52:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
hopefully they see the graphic that has the info on social media.

00:04:52:06 - 00:05:18:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Hopefully they they saved the email that you sent with the registration link. Hopefully there just have a photograph or you know, whatever the the audio version of that is memory from your staged announcement to do exactly what you want them to do in that moment. And if any people don't have those things, they're just in deep trouble. However, if you have a great website, none of those things matter as much, at least on the information side, right?

00:05:18:25 - 00:05:42:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can still inspire them with the stage announcement. You can still be witty on social media and you can still send a awesome email, but your website is the place where they can go to for that. That information that they really need to download and also move toward action them. And so as we've been talking about, I can actually if that's something anyone's interested in, I can actually do that for you.

00:05:42:28 - 00:06:04:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can build a website for you one time, or you can kind of contact me to just come on and and run that on an ongoing basis, as well as even potentially we can explore what it looked like for me to run that plus your social media. But step number one, regardless of if it's me, regardless of if you use groups, which I recommend your website, just very simply needs to be up to date.

00:06:04:22 - 00:06:27:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I don't care what you use, I don't care who you use, I don't care how you get there, but make sure your website is good and thorough and up to date. Okay, that's the first step in the social media strategy process. Let's move on here to step number two. So your website kind of being up to date, that sort of satisfies the first check in the process.

00:06:27:07 - 00:06:30:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that also makes what I'm going to recommend here on

00:06:30:17 - 00:06:44:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
social, which is the second step here. The second step is you kind of want to become enamored with shorts, reels, TikTok style videos, because when your website is good,

00:06:44:04 - 00:06:44:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you don't

00:06:44:17 - 00:06:44:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
have to

00:06:44:28 - 00:06:54:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
worry about the information. So now you can leave that behind and you can now move ahead towards the era that social is really made for and meant for.

00:06:54:10 - 00:06:58:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, quick hit trip, quick hit, quick trip down

00:06:58:26 - 00:06:59:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
history,

00:06:59:29 - 00:07:00:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
memory lane

00:07:00:25 - 00:07:21:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
2020 TikTok ushered in this new era of of social called the Discovery ERA. It was made popular with an app called TikTok. It is now banned in the United States of America, at least in the App Store right now. But TikTok brought in this brand new style and archetype of video.

00:07:21:00 - 00:07:25:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, it was so popular that not even four years later, according to

00:07:25:29 - 00:07:33:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video, 90% of the internet's traffic is found on short form, vertical based video.

00:07:33:26 - 00:07:34:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because

00:07:34:20 - 00:07:49:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
every other platform then was trying to catch up and keep up with this brand new one called TikTok shorts. Reels. Facebook has Instagram has YouTube has some and even other like places like, Twitter.

00:07:49:15 - 00:07:51:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're even on there, it'll it'll

00:07:51:08 - 00:08:08:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
be on a video, you'll be watching video and it'll auto scroll to the next one. They even built in the scrolling type functionality. And there's a couple pieces of relevant things with it. First of all, it's video based and it's short and it's quippy and it's fun. But secondly, like I said earlier, it said discover re era.

00:08:08:07 - 00:08:37:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you jump on Reels on Instagram, if you jump on your TikTok for you page more than I think 90% of the I believe that's the stat of the videos that you're served are from people that you've never actually even met. And so that's good news for you and I. As churches and youth ministries, we can get on to other people's for you pages without buying their attention or without having them have to follow or subscribe or or know about our channel.

00:08:37:05 - 00:09:02:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The key is producing good content. And so step one website. Step two start focusing on good shorts, which is why I've created down below my hybrid strategy. Got it will not only lay out my plan and what I do in my student ministry, but it will also give you different ideas and types of content that you can use for your social media and for your shorts, you know?

00:09:02:09 - 00:09:21:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like in our student ministry, I post ten different pieces of content, every single week. And it's all different. Kind of like styles of content. And so if you'd like more info on that, you definitely hop down and grab my free strategy guide. It will lay out how we do it, what we do, and how we capture it, how we batch record.

00:09:21:20 - 00:09:25:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I also talked about it in my live stream, a lot of different videos on my

00:09:25:13 - 00:09:38:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
channel. We'll kind of unpack it. And so I'm not going to, you know, bog you down with that info here on this video, but go, go check it out. Go subscribe. Go listen to some more podcasts and we'll get you covered on what exactly we do.

00:09:38:23 - 00:09:39:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Moving on to

00:09:39:28 - 00:10:05:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
step number three then is shorts are great, and if you don't have any capacity and you need to stop there and, and, you know, bolster your strategy and bolster your infrastructure to make that happen. And by all means do that. But then step three, the eye on the prize for all churches and youth ministries is you want your long form primary teaching content posted to YouTube.

00:10:05:18 - 00:10:18:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
90% of teenagers, according to Pew Research, are on YouTube, and so generation Z and Generation Alpha are landing in and making YouTube home. In

00:10:18:01 - 00:10:18:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
fact,

00:10:18:11 - 00:10:18:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
according to

00:10:18:25 - 00:10:40:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a book called Meet Gen Alpha by Mccrindle and Fell, they said that YouTube is actually supplanting Google as the number one primary search engine for Generation Alpha. And so you want to be on YouTube, and if you're running your church, social media for, you're like overall church, you probably have some measure, some version of a live stream.

00:10:40:20 - 00:11:13:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's great. Put that on YouTube. If your equipment is good and working, then great. Put that on YouTube. In student ministry, if you have the ability to do that, then go ahead and put that on YouTube and anywhere else you want to put it. But you definitely have to make sure that you put it on YouTube. And then if you don't have anything, which my strategy guide will lay out exactly how we do this in our environment and in our setting, we don't have any live stream equipment, so we actually sit down before the message several weeks ahead of time, pre-record our message using like a teleprompter.

00:11:13:28 - 00:11:33:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, we've built out like a full studio, so like, I can have all that stuff linked down below. You can check out my studio episode, and you can buy any of the stuff that we have that might be helpful for you. And I also have a Patreon where I'm talking about how I implement my hybrid strategy in my, environment every single week.

00:11:33:14 - 00:11:43:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that podcast is $4 a month. It's one extra bonus podcast per week. Plus, literally, I think I throw in a freebie almost every single week. So

00:11:43:13 - 00:11:52:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I believe that that podcast is a very nominal fee for a lot. A lot of value. And so if you want to kind of go all in on this hybrid strategy, I would recommend that.

00:11:52:14 - 00:12:16:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But we sit down, we pre-record it, and then we post those to YouTube trying to answer some of life's hard questions with our titles, with our tags, and even with our thumbnails. And so again, comes for you. I can help you with that. But the goal then is to take your short content and build an audience that eventually promotes and and pushes people over to your in long form content.

00:12:16:08 - 00:12:45:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the that's the Mecca of your social platform. And what that does is that that reduces the anxiety, that reduces the pressure that is on your social channels to communicate your announcements. If your website's doing its job, then you're short form content, both fun and serious, can point to you and promote your long form content, which is serious, which will also then helps to help answer students big questions about life and faith, regardless of if they're in your context or not.

00:12:45:16 - 00:13:03:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With an eye towards and with the focus on your students or your people in your context, and then like just, you know, a next steps form or some way for them to respond to whatever sort of like message that you have put on YouTube. And what I would recommend again, is that takes us all the way back to number one.

00:13:03:04 - 00:13:26:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Make sure there's a good like digital next steps form, one that's universally used and applied in all of your settings when you're teaching. And then with that link you can just post that in the comments of a YouTube video. And your website is helping serve your holistic hybrid and digital strategy. And that is my three step social media process.

00:13:26:15 - 00:13:27:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Make sure your website's up

00:13:27:17 - 00:13:46:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to date. Lean into shorts. Start producing as many of them as you can that make realistic sense during your week? Just be. Just be consistent with it. Don't have a number in mind. And then all with an eye toward the prize of. Start posting your long form messages to YouTube and and all of that.

00:13:46:09 - 00:14:09:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can help with coaching. I can help by running it for you. I can help on my Patreon. I can help on this channel for free. So give me a subscribe if you would like to hear more about that topic. But until next time and as always, my friends appreciate you being here. Appreciate you trying to communicate in a digital and noisy world, but I want to encourage you to stay hybrid.

Episode 139: The Best Communication Method for Your Church

Nick Clason — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 05:00:00 -0600

📊 HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

======================================
DESCRIPTION
Struggling to figure out the best way to communicate with your church? In this episode of The Hybrid Ministry Show, Nick Clason breaks down the most effective communication methods for parents, teens, and volunteers—backed by real stats and practical strategies. From email to social media to podcasts, find out how to make sure your church announcements actually reach the right people!

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/139

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

//CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

//NUCELUS
https://www.nucleus.church

//REMIND
https://www.remind.com/

//GROUPME
https://www.groupme.com

//CROSSCREEK STUDENTS LEADER PODCAST
https://www.youtube.com/@crosscreekstudents/podcasts

BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup

⌚TIMECODES
00:00 The Best Church Communications Channels
02:14 Adult or Parent Communication Strategy
06:19 Student Communication Strategy
11:48 Volunteer Communication Strategy

TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:28:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like if your church still produces a bulletin and give me a subscribe if it's completely quit producing a bulletin. You know, it's interesting. In my 14 years of youth ministry experience, the first two churches I worked at, they were all about those bulletins. Man, we printed those suckers. Every single week. Interestingly, though, the last two churches I worked at both also post Covid, which I'm wondering if that has something to do with it.

00:00:28:05 - 00:00:51:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Chose not to produce a weekly bulletin. You know, in one of the earlier on churches, there was a week where, like, the secretary was out and somehow I ended up not only producing the bulletin for me, like a graphic like design document standpoint, but then I was also in the office cutting them. And my wife, she called me, said, what are you doing at work still?

00:00:51:16 - 00:01:15:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, I have to cut the bulletin. And as I was doing that, I gave myself this thought. I was like, do teenagers even read this? And now, you know, I was producing this for the rest of the church. But in my mind, and as I was having this conversation with myself, I thought, I don't think that teenagers actually read this, but they're parents, right?

00:01:15:05 - 00:01:36:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's why we produce these things. And so we've been in this series called communication and the Noisy World. Slinked right up here at the top of the screen. And in this video we want to talk about is the particular channels that your churches should be leaning into. We're going to explore three different audiences. We're going to explore the adults in your church.

00:01:36:21 - 00:02:09:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to explore the students in your church. And then we're also going to explore the volunteers in your church and or in your ministry. And what I want to do is in each of those, I'm going to give you my favorite communication method and some statistics that back the reasons up for why you should be leaning into those channels and as always, I want to remind you that there are chapters down below or in your podcast catcher, wherever you're listening to this, so that you can hop ahead to the section of this episode that makes the most sense to you in your ministry and the context in which you're serving.

00:02:09:23 - 00:02:34:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody, to the Hybrid Ministry show. So I've been in youth ministry for 14 years, and so and in all of my experience of being in youth ministry, when I think about adults that I'm trying to minister to, those adults in particular are either parents or volunteers. And so in this particular section, let's chat about parents. And so these are parents of youth ministry students.

00:02:34:26 - 00:03:07:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, if you're a church communications person or a senior pastor watching this like these, what I'm about to share, I believe, also relates to just adults attending your church in general. Okay. Because what I'm going to say, we're going to talk about the adults in your church, the strategy that I believe that you should employ first and foremost and make your number one like major thing that you double down on, that you pour gas on, that you make work is an email strategy.

00:03:07:10 - 00:03:35:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. Here's a couple of reasons why over 4.3 billion people globally use email. Furthermore, 99% of consumers check their email on a daily basis. This is according to HubSpot, and 73% of millennials and Gen Z, which if you're in youth ministry, those are your parents. And if you're not in youth ministry, those are the future adults of your church.

00:03:35:10 - 00:04:06:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The largest based millennials are the largest in the workforce and the largest opportunity for your your givers. Okay. They prefer email communication from brands at a rate of 73%. This is according to Adobe, so email isn't going anywhere. Now. I also, if you have been watching in the last couple of videos in this playlist, like we link just a second ago, I have been and I've always been my strategy, my hybrid strategy, whether it's for students, parents, whatever.

00:04:06:16 - 00:04:27:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
First and foremost, make sure your website is good and remains up to date. So you want your email to be how you communicate and how you maybe market certain, like classes or events or whatever. But then you want to be able to take them to your website and or you want to send an email because think about user habits.

00:04:27:23 - 00:04:48:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're you're checking your email at lunch or on your work break, okay, on your lunch break at work and you see something from your church. You don't have time right then and there to stop and go sign up, but it jog your memory and you're there. So then you want when someone later just goes to your website because they're thinking, oh yeah, I need to go sign up for that thing after dinner.

00:04:48:06 - 00:05:19:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When they get home from work, they need to be able to discover that relatively quickly on your church website, even if the email had a link to it, even if they don't follow that link directly. You want your website to be clear and easy to navigate, which is why I continue to recommend nucleus. And also I just want to let you know, like if your website is not exactly up to it, I can create a couple of automated things for you, like updating your church Google calendar which will also naturally update on your website.

00:05:19:24 - 00:05:36:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you're interested in something like that, I offer a service called Church Communications done for you. I would love to explore what that looks like to either a build a one time website or be step into some sort of partnership sort of thing. But email is the way to get Ahold of the adults in your church.

00:05:36:07 - 00:06:13:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If if billions of users are using it and 99% of people are checking their email on a daily basis, then you as a church, you have the opportunity to get in front of all of your people, which diminishes the need for those church stage based announcements and diminishes the needs for those church bulletins. Okay, and I'm not necessarily saying that you should toss those things out and not even worry about them anymore, but what I am saying is that your primary strategy should be email and then those other pieces, stage announcements, bulletins, whatever you want to say, even social media.

00:06:14:01 - 00:06:36:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They should all supplement what's going on on email. The second category of people that we're going to talk about here are teenagers, students. Okay. So this is particularly aimed for youth pastors. Once again, if you're not in that then hop down to the chapters below and jump ahead to the next one you need. As a youth pastor, you want to try to get to teenagers phones.

00:06:36:25 - 00:06:55:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now you got to think about this. All teenagers are in a little bit of a different season of life, of adopting usage on their phones. So some of them aren't yet using, like text messaging yet. Right? So that's why I say a little bit more generically. You want to get to their phones because some parents let them have Instagram and some don't.

00:06:55:05 - 00:07:16:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Some parents let them have YouTube and some don't. Some parents let them text certain people and some don't. And so in some ways, somehow we need to get on their cell phones, which is what I'm promoting trying to do by using and utilizing, our hybrid strategy in our in the current student ministry that I serve in, this is our attempt and this is our, our play to get on to students cell phones.

00:07:16:11 - 00:07:31:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so my hybrid strategy is actually linked right down below in the description or on your podcast catcher. I would love to have you check that out. It's completely free, but it helps. It helps give you my strategy and also helps you implement some pieces and parts of that so that you can start trying to get onto their phones.

00:07:32:00 - 00:07:54:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's some reasons why it's valuable and important for us to get to their phones. Because 69% of students of teenagers own a smartphone by the age of 12, according to Common Sense Media, and also 90% according to Pew Research. 90% of teenagers use YouTube, so there's a couple of different ways to get to their phones. Number one, social, okay.

00:07:54:13 - 00:08:26:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And short form vertical based video is still king. Going to vertical in 2024, 90% of the internet's traffic was short form, vertical based video. And so you can employ that short form, vertical based video strategy on Facebook. So I wouldn't recommend that platform necessarily for students or these other through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. And if TikTok goes ahead and gets banned, you can still employ that that video based strategy by leaning into reels and TikToks and YouTube shorts by cross posting to places like YouTube and Instagram.

00:08:26:15 - 00:08:51:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And there are, you know, there are some TikTok like alternative apps being produced, like a lemonade app. And I don't know if that's going to take or pop, but but maybe go secure your church's handle on it. And then if it does, boom, you're there. And you can continue to employ that strategy. If it takes TikTok's spot, you know, once, like certain things get shook out here with the Congress ban or, you know, whatever is going on with that.

00:08:51:20 - 00:09:10:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the point is that short form, vertical based video while TikTok may not last forever, that strategy right now, that strategy is so, so clutch. And I actually I noticed it last night because here's the thing about that strategy. I was on Instagram and I was scrolling through stories, which are things posted by people that I follow my friends.

00:09:11:05 - 00:09:31:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a nod back to the social Graph era of friendship based social media. And I was scrolling through and I know friends, whoever I was, I was looking at your stories. I got bored, close it out, hopped into reels which then started showing me popular and like, entertainment based and reels that are actually getting a lot of views.

00:09:31:17 - 00:09:55:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And now all of a sudden I was, I was hooked. I was there for a while and that's going from that social graph era over into that discovery based era. And that's where we want to find ourselves in student ministry like we want we can. Here's the thing, though. You can post like a discovery based thing, and you can share that link to your audience so you can post that real on to your story so that all the students who follow you, they still see it.

00:09:55:19 - 00:10:11:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or you can even like yesterday I posted, a YouTube short, also an Instagram reel and a TikTok, and I sent the YouTube short link in our text group and I said, have you answered this crazy? Would you rather question yet? And I sent it to all the kids are sign up in our text group, which is the second.

00:10:11:10 - 00:10:32:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So socials one one way to get to their phones. The second is to get to text messages. All right. And so if you want like blasts I would recommend a service like remind. It's completely free for schools. Or if you want a group chat feature I would recommend a group me both of them listen to me. Both of them have their shortcomings I get it, okay?

00:10:32:11 - 00:10:59:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But it's a great, like, neutralizer. Okay. If you if you have Apple phones and Android phones, GroupMe can put everyone in a group, chat app without, like, the fuss of the blue bubbles and all the things, the compressed pictures that Apple won't allow to come through. Because RCS messaging, even though it's been around since 2007, like it'll do these things where it it will it will create like a level playing field.

00:10:59:01 - 00:11:18:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And you know, if you if your church communications database has some sort of texting service, that you already pay for, then by all means use that. Don't I don't necessarily recommend remind over something like that. Or if you've already dug deep to pay for some sort of texting service and continue to use that, probably better. But that that also goes for when kids are serving.

00:11:18:01 - 00:11:34:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like if you can send them text notifications instead of just email notifications. The goal again is to get to their phones, especially if almost 70% of 12 year olds in on up have smartphones. All right. And so I know you're going to run into because I run into this too. You're going to run into kids who don't have it.

00:11:35:02 - 00:11:59:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you always do have to have a small alternative for a more analog approach. But that's that's widely okay. Right. As we're trying to communicate with teenagers. And then the last area, the last area of ministry is what about your volunteers? What about your leaders? Okay. Now, this may not be, the highest or, like, email is still going to probably be what you're going to use.

00:11:59:02 - 00:12:20:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Just like going back to the, you know, parent adult section of this video, all the stats, all the reasons that's why email still is worthwhile for you volunteers. However, I will say in the last, six months or so, me and my team, me and my boss has started recording a weekly leader podcast. Yes, you heard that right.

00:12:20:10 - 00:12:44:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Weekly. Now we batch record, so we record four at a time. It's about an hour worth of our time. And then it takes me just a minute. Like, really not very long to just edit those suckers into, a YouTube video as well as an audio only podcast. And then we post those every single Monday morning. And so we encourage our leaders to, subscribe to that and listen to it.

00:12:44:27 - 00:13:25:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We try to make it like 15, no more maximum than 15 minutes. Usually they're closer to ten minutes each. And just, we've asked them to adopt that as their normal rhythm on their way to work, on their way on Monday morning to work, habit. And so what what this does is this reduces the pressure around a once a year or a biannual or even a monthly leader meeting to communicate all the big things that we need to communicate, because you know, that you need to, hook them with inspiration, but you also need to tell them, like, boring details like, hey, when you guys are like, checking in, you need to click this

00:13:25:07 - 00:13:43:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
little button here, and you make sure you check in to both of these groups so that our metrics above all, they don't care about that stuff. But the Leader podcast gives you an avenue to share those little snippets of things. It also gives you an avenue to drip culture slowly. And so that's one of the things we've been doing.

00:13:43:02 - 00:14:04:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've been attempting to make our culture a little more conversational and a little less teaching, and we've just been dripping that slowly on the podcast. And what's so fun is last week I sat down with some of my leaders, we do a yearly leader debrief, and I heard them starting to use some of the language that we've been putting on our leader podcast.

00:14:04:04 - 00:14:26:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In addition to gripping the information and sharing more announcements, we'll do like giveaways, we'll do leader shout outs, we'll share funny stories. And so then every week that that, posts on Monday, there's always the off chance that our leader group chat gets a little flurry of activity around whatever topic happened on the on the podcast or people are, you know, laughing about some of the things that are going on there.

00:14:26:23 - 00:14:49:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So according to Nielsen, the average podcast listener consumed up to seven a week. And so if you have people on your leader teams that are already podcast listeners, that's a super easy one. If not, you can help them adopt it. Or also, again, you can post those, video form to YouTube. YouTube also has a podcast RSS kind of section built into it that you can also use and utilize.

00:14:49:24 - 00:15:21:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so even if they're not podcast adopters, they can still access it via the video. And so with your email strategy for adults, with your get to their phones strategy for students and with your podcast strategy for leaders, then use your stage and your bulletin announcements to really hit hard and to just simply reinforce and point people back not only into those channels, but then also off to your website where they're ultimately going to take their next step, call to action sort of things.

00:15:21:07 - 00:15:42:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this next video, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help break down why you on social media should be focusing now more because our, our, our, information and our announcements have been taken care of how you should start focusing on engagement as opposed to simply broadcasting information. That video is going to be linked right here on screen.

00:15:42:05 - 00:15:49:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and tap that. We'd love to see you over there. But until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 138: Steal this Clearer (& Less Boring) Church Announcement Strategy

Nick Clason — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 05:00:00 -0600

📊 HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

======================================
DESCRIPTION
Tired of your church announcements being ignored? In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast, we’ll show you how to create clearer and less boring announcements using three practical hacks: reduce your CTAs, centralize next steps, and inspire over inform. Stop overwhelming your audience with noise—learn how to simplify your messaging, engage your community, and make your announcements impossible to miss.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/138

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

//CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

//NUCELUS
https://www.nucleus.church

//TRANSITION STYLE VIDEOS
https://share.hsforms.com/1UrHggOX1Q3mH_A3F3f8dWwnumis

//HUBSPOT (For List Segmentation)
https://www.hubspot.com

//KIT (Formerly ConvertKit)
https://partners.kit.com/x9dbnh372pji

BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
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//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
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⌚TIMECODES
00:00 Steal this Church Announcement Strategy
01:48 Myth
05:44 Hack #1
08:39 Hack #2
11:17 Hack #3
13:31 The Ultimate Church Announcement Decision Making Grid
18:09 Bonus Tip

TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:19 - 00:00:01:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I want you to

00:00:01:08 - 00:00:06:55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
steal this clearer and less boring church announcement strategy.

00:00:06:55 - 00:00:21:33
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because why? Because you've been announcing your event for several weeks, maybe even months now at this point. And give me a like, if this has ever happened to you, you get that text from that student or that church member that said, when is the event again?

00:00:21:38 - 00:00:27:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or is it too late to sign up? Or when are we supposed to be there again? And you just want to pull

00:00:28:33 - 00:00:29:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your hair out? But like we talked

00:00:29:51 - 00:00:30:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
about in the

00:00:30:13 - 00:00:30:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
last

00:00:30:40 - 00:00:41:39
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video partying on, he has this concept called inadvertent blindness. And what he's really saying with that is he says, we really only see what we're looking for.

00:00:41:44 - 00:00:42:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in

00:00:42:09 - 00:00:42:34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this

00:00:42:34 - 00:00:42:58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video,

00:00:42:58 - 00:01:08:50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
how do we have clearer and less boring church announcements, ones that are actually going to, incite inspiration and not just one where you're only simply disseminating information? So in this video, what I want to do is I want to share with you the myth about church communications and church announcements. I want to share with you three hacks that will help you have clearer and better and less boring church announcements.

00:01:08:54 - 00:01:33:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm also going to share with you the ultimate church decision making grid. How do you announce what you announce so that the best and most relevant announcements are the ones that are being said from the stage and from the platform, and from the areas and the channels that you want to be saying them from. And finally, stick around to the very end of the video, because I have for you a bonus hack that may in fact change everything.

00:01:33:18 - 00:01:38:50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, if you're watching here on YouTube or wherever you're listening in the podcast catcher, there are chapters

00:01:38:50 - 00:01:56:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
listed down below so that you can jump ahead to the areas of the video that make the most sense to you. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So what's the myth? Okay, the myth is this. The myth is that people don't come to your church function, your church thing.

00:01:56:44 - 00:02:24:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We assume that they're not coming to the thing because they don't know about the thing. And so therefore, what do we do? We share more information about the thing. Oh, well, it's actually at seven and we're going to have this and we're going to put it in the fellowship hall, like, and we just give them more and more boring details about it, assuming that those boring details about it are going to be what's going to help them overcome their in in the action and misinformation and get them to that event.

00:02:24:17 - 00:02:41:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's not why they're not coming. They're not coming because they don't care about it. They're not coming because they're busy and they have a schedule conflict. They're not coming because your thing is not the most important thing in their life. Sorry. Like, I hate like I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not trying to say that to you in a way that's demeaning.

00:02:41:17 - 00:03:16:35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like, your thing is not as important as you think your thing is. And so the reason why people don't come to church events is not because they're missing information. But as we talked about in the last episode, credit to Brady Shear for this analogy is we got to start thinking more like movie trailers, right? So a movie trailer moves people towards inspiration, and they try to incite curiosity in such a way that when they see that movie trailer, they're like, I have to go and they'll move heaven and earth and they'll find the tickets and they'll find the theater, and they'll get to that event of their own accord.

00:03:16:39 - 00:03:36:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our church events. First of all, we're not able to compete in a lot of times with movie trailers. Like I get it right, but we we result and we, you know, get our church announcements to a spot where we think we just need to share more information. What time, what date. And like those are really boring church announcements.

00:03:36:23 - 00:03:57:55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the more information that you share in that church announcement, again, we're assuming the myth is we're assuming they don't have enough information, so we'll just give them more information, when in fact, what you actually need to do is you need to inspire them. You need to move them to action through inspiration, through storytelling, through captivation of their senses and their imagination.

00:03:57:55 - 00:04:18:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you're like, dude, I'm a youth pastor. I'm a church secretary, I'm a senior pastor. I can't do any of that. And like, I get it, these are not skills that we often refine or hone in on our own. They're not disciplines that that we have maybe necessarily been been, you know, given or taught in like a seminary degree or whatever the case may be.

00:04:18:22 - 00:04:42:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this world with over information and with this noisy world, like, that's what we're competing. See, so like this, these, this myth. Right? This myth is the reason why, posting your announcements to social media is a bad idea because, again, this myth helps us think, oh, we need to put this information out there on the internet.

00:04:42:25 - 00:04:58:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We need to let them know when and where and how much dice to bring to the bunker. And I and which fellowship hall we're going to be in, like people again, they're not getting on social media for more information for information download. And if they are, I'm going to tell you where you should put that information because you should include it.

00:04:58:40 - 00:05:18:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. But and we'll get to that in a second. But they're not getting on social for that. They're getting a social once again for in from Earth, not for information for inspiration and and maybe even for some humor and maybe for some entertainment. And so that's actually what I sort of push towards in my free strategy guide, which is going to be link down below.

00:05:18:26 - 00:05:39:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you haven't grabbed it, go ahead and grab it. It is, like I said, it's completely free, but it'll help lay out in detail what I do to kind of live this hybrid version of ministry and what I do on social media. But if that's not what they're looking for, and if our announcements are chock full of too much information and not enough inspiration, then what should we do instead?

00:05:39:29 - 00:06:03:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm glad you asked. That's where these three hacks are going to come in. Okay, so hack number one is reduce your CTAs, CTAs is an acronym. And it sure. It's a marketing word for reduce your calls to action. So a call to action is what you're actually asking someone to do as a result of the information. You have a bunco night.

00:06:03:36 - 00:06:27:42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you want them to sign up for the bunco night, right. But oftentimes we're stacking multiple call to actions. Okay. So in an announcement moment in your church, we often get up there and everyone gets an opportunity that the kids in the youth and the women and the men's and then the whole church picnic, and there's just there's too many different things.

00:06:27:42 - 00:07:02:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, too much thing, too many things that can cause somebody brain to get overwhelmed, psychologically speaking. And therefore, instead of promoting action, it does the exact opposite. It causes paralysis and it promotes inaction. In fact, Simon Sinek, he shared this story of the salesman who was a shoe salesman, and the shoe salesman said he learned the key to selling shoes, and the key to selling shoes was anytime he would have, a person trying on shoes and he had three shoe options, they would always say no.

00:07:03:01 - 00:07:17:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But when he reduced it to simply just two options, right? Reducing the call to actions when he would reduce it down to just two options. And so if they had three, he would and they're like, they had two. And they're like, let me see this pair. He would say, which one of these do you want me to take away?

00:07:18:01 - 00:07:36:32
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They would remove one. He would take one away. And then that he'd bring the new pair in, and then there would be two new sets of shoes. And then he would say, which of these do you want, A or B, as opposed to which of these you want A, B or C? And he said when he had two options, he always sold.

00:07:36:32 - 00:08:02:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When he had three they would walk away. And so the same is true in our church announcements. You your assumption and it's a faulty one. But your assumption now hates it is that the more you offer on the stage, the the better it's going to be for your church and for your people. And let's be honest, if you work on a church staff, there's the pressure of getting everyone's announcement equal airtime.

00:08:02:16 - 00:08:20:35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so again, we're going to talk about the decision making grid of how you come to those decisions. But you need to reduce your call to actions on your stage. What do you really want the people in your auditorium in your service? What do you really want them to do? And everything else? We're going to find another way.

00:08:20:39 - 00:08:39:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to find another avenue to promote it. And you might be thinking, yeah, but you just told me, I can't put that on social. And you're right. I did say that again. We'll get to it. But reduce your calls to action. And then within that okay. So reduce the number of announcements that you're sharing. But within that simplify see where they go.

00:08:39:17 - 00:09:06:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Which leads me to my second hack. Centralize everything on your website. And now you might be thinking and even assuming that you're doing that. But again credit to Brady Scheer of that pro church tools, his announcement strategy, his church website strategy, and his church website builder, which if you don't have a good church website and you want one that's good and actually easy to put together, I recommend nucleus Dot church.

00:09:06:06 - 00:09:29:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
His whole goal with it is to get everyone to the same centralized location. And so when you give an announcement, then people are and an announcement that's inspiring. And that one that's chock full of information. So a good announcement about a, you know, story of life change at the last women's bunco night and then someone sitting there like, I need to get to the bunco night.

00:09:29:56 - 00:09:51:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But when is it? Where is it? Like they go to the website, and the website has all of the information that they're looking for. Your announcements will be better if your website can supply them with the information that they're looking for. Because again, like I said in the last video, which is linked right up here at the top of the screen, if you're watching here on YouTube, I so we operate in a cable TV mentality.

00:09:51:29 - 00:10:22:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In order to come to the bunker, you need all this information. You need the when, the where, the why, the what, but in what. People aren't living mindset wise that way they're living in a Netflix culture. And so they're like, oh, my church has a bunco night. When is that again? And they're thinking about that, on a Thursday at 4 p.m. and so on a Thursday at 4 p.m., they need to be able to go to your church website and get all the information that they're looking for, as opposed to relying on you in the moment on Sunday to get to church.

00:10:22:27 - 00:10:45:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Bunco night information, which they're not interested in at that moment, but they may be interested later. And so you if you catch them and hook them with inspiration, they'll want to go and then later in this Netflix culture, they'll go on demand and they'll go get it on your church website, which if you're hearing this and you're like, wow, okay, so we need to overhaul our church website.

00:10:45:27 - 00:11:05:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That may be the case. And you may be right. And you know what? I can offer that for you. I have a service called Church Communications done for you. You don't have enough time to kind of overhaul your social media strategy on your church website. I would encourage you to take a look at the link below. I'd love to offer that to you, and we can explore what that might look like for us to walk into a partnership together.

00:11:05:56 - 00:11:39:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because I want you to win, and I want more people to come to your church bunco night. But again, the third hack then, is, as we've been talking about, kind of in this whole video, right? Aim to inspire over inform, aim to inspire over and form a sort of been the basis of this whole video. But once again, and here I want to point out like here's what the dictionary.com definition of inspires, really, it's to fill someone with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

00:11:39:21 - 00:12:07:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And so a video, if you're watching here on YouTube, like this is one of my transition style videos that we do for social media. Might not seem inspiring to you, right? However, imagine a person stumbling upon it on social media because they can stumble upon your videos like this on social media. Which of these do you think performs better, this video or this standard static announcement graphic that you cooked up in Canva?

00:12:07:17 - 00:12:33:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. Which is why down below I have my social transition video pack, the ones that I recommend. I have six of those plus six cap cut meme style videos. Go ahead, download those and then start using and posting those on your social media, because this video is using the medium for what it's made for. And it may not be like inspiring, but it's entertaining and it gets it still gets the message across.

00:12:34:00 - 00:13:08:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
While your other one, yeah, it gives all the information, but this other one, it inspires, it promotes action. It may, you know, cause people to share it. It may be entertaining, it may cause them to laugh. And then as a result of that, like when there's a bunco night, let me go find that out. And then they head over to your church website, which is built, you know, comes done for you or you build it on your own and it has all of the relevant and pertinent information you're using now, the the broadcast channels and the platforms for what they're made for, as opposed to just simply, crushing it and pounding information down

00:13:08:56 - 00:13:33:45
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
through people's channels. Because remember, the myth that we all believe is that they just need more information. But the fact is, it's not exactly it. We need to optimize our our communications in the channels that we find ourselves so that they lean into what those channels are built for and made for. So now this leads me to the ultimate church announcement decision making grid.

00:13:33:57 - 00:13:56:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And so the question that I want you to ask yourself when you're considering putting an announcement up on the church platform, up on the church stage, is does this announcement apply to greater than 50% of the people in the room? If not, find another way. Now you might be thinking like, but I got to keep the men's ministry happy in the women's ministry happy.

00:13:56:01 - 00:14:23:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And and I will say, when you institute this church decision making, the search announcement, decision making grid. Yes. At first you are going to have some unhappy people, especially if you've been announcing everything. Okay. However, once you institute this as a policy, when someone asks you to announce such and such thing, you can say, I'm sorry, we actually only do this and you got to still be people over process in this, okay?

00:14:23:42 - 00:14:49:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But let the policy point to the policy and let the policy be the bad guy. But the reason that your announcements aren't captivating enough people is because you're getting up and you're announcing something that only pertains to 10 to 15% of the people in your population or in your congregation. And so you might be thinking like, okay, yeah, but the, the platform, the, the stage, that's the only time that we have to announce anything.

00:14:49:23 - 00:15:12:54
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So what I recommend is 50% or more okay. And then if not find another way. And so you might be thinking well what are some other ways. So here's not an exhaustive list but just a list kind of get your brain going. So you could do social media right. And if it's like an outsider event, you might even consider, doing some advertising and putting some some dollars behind like a Facebook or an Instagram ad.

00:15:12:58 - 00:15:33:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Your website is a fantastic spot to advertise things. Text messaging, emails. And let me, let me just say for a minute, like if you can do list segmentation and there are tools out there like, like a HubSpot or like a ConvertKit, and they're going to have a they're going to have a little bit of cost associated with it.

00:15:33:29 - 00:15:57:44
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you may need to put that above and beyond a thing like, you know, church community builder, planning center or whatever your church management software is. But you can create list segmentation. And so you can actually send custom emails for people based on where they actually are in your church, as opposed to just sending big church blasts. Because I think that's another reason why some of our information falls on deaf ears.

00:15:57:44 - 00:16:16:58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're sending irrelevant announcements to people, but we don't know how to, make our lists smaller and more custom. Right? Like, again, in the industrial age versus the digital age and the industrial age is all about numbers. So we just need to get the most amount of people on our email list and then just blast them with this information over and over again.

00:16:17:03 - 00:16:37:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in the digital age, people want to be known for who they are as an individual. And so if we can send them customized, tailored emails that are broken down into what, marketers called lists and, segmentation of lists, that's going to, I think, perform better for you on open rates and click through rates and called actions and actually then taking those call to actions.

00:16:37:51 - 00:17:03:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But so you can use like banners on your website, you can even use printed banners, pop up banners and things like that. And nucleus actually does all of those things again for you. Okay. Now so so if it doesn't apply to greater than 50%, don't announce it. And okay. And I would say no more than two call to action zone one and two announcements.

00:17:03:05 - 00:17:25:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now again you might be like what? Like how you're trying to riot okay. Some of you you have church bulletins. You have bulletin boards like use those other means and methods. I mean, let me just say like, you know, right now we have a, high school, like, kind of retreat disciple now weekend thing coming up. We don't announce anything in store for student ministry in our main church announcement platform.

00:17:25:09 - 00:17:44:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. But right now we're we're pushing and announcing our high school weekend in there. And, you might think, like, oh, Grace, you probably have, like, a lot more traction, like, we have less traction on this event signups than anything else. And it's not because people don't know about it. It's just because it's and it's ended up kind of being a bad weekend for a lot of our students.

00:17:44:04 - 00:18:12:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, again, the publicity thing is not necessarily the issue. We don't have more people coming to our events because of it. Like, we people know about what we have going on because we use and utilize these other kind of platforms and channels to, you know, to our best vantage. Okay. Now, so all those things being said, the myth plus through hacks now the decision making grid, the last little bonus tip that I have for you is when you're sharing announcements.

00:18:12:32 - 00:18:34:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, here's how you can here's how you can lean into inspiration and away from away from information is share stories, use footage, and use photos, especially if you have it from previous and past events. Share a story about life changing as you're doing it. I have some some videos in the back or some photos on the back scrolling.

00:18:34:16 - 00:18:55:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is a picture from last year's bunco event. And this is. This is Sally. And Sally had an amazing time and she came for the community. But she stuck around for for the life change. And now she's a part of a group and now she's serving. And as she leading bunco night. And that's why you should come to bunco night and go to our church website to sign up for this year's bunco night.

00:18:55:25 - 00:19:15:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like something like that. So much more inspiring. Then this Thursday, 6:00 bring a dip to share and all the boring information your website can handle that it does a good job of that. And people, people know to look for it and people are looking for it in that way. And so you have all these different avenues beyond just your stage.

00:19:15:16 - 00:19:36:35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So how do you maximize each individual avenue in 2025 so that it gets the message across in a way that is captivating and inspiring. And then the people in your church know about what's going on and actually move towards action of signing up for and attending your church's events. Well, I'm glad you asked because that's the next video here in this playlist.

00:19:36:40 - 00:19:50:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's going to be linked here on screen. So go ahead and tap that and we'll see you over in that video. But don't forget my friends. And as always to stay hybrid.

Episode 137: 3 Reasons Your Announcements Aren’t Working

Nick Clason — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 05:00:00 -0600

📊 HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

======================================
DESCRIPTION
Ever feel like no one’s listening to your church announcements? In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, Nick Clason dives into the common pitfalls of church announcements, revealing three reasons why they’re not working—and offering actionable solutions to fix them. From battling “inattentional blindness” to cutting through the noise of a digital world, this episode will help you craft announcements that inspire life transformation, not just attendance.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/137

SOLUTIONS
1) HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

2) CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

3) STEAL THIS ANNOUNCEMENT STRATEGY
[VIDEO LINK]

//I CREATED THIS VIDEO SO YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO HIRE ME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OHWZFZHvaA&t=19s

//NUCLEUS
https://www.nucleus.church

//VIDEO OF TIME SPENT ONLINE
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DD5zLeTMitb/?igsh=MTlpMHR5c2I5Yzl5bw==

BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup

⌚TIMECODES
00:00 Nobody Knows What's Going on!
01:40 The Problem
03:58 The Goal
07:43 Reason #1
11:56 Reason #2
17:09 Reason #3

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Do you ever feel

00:00:01:23 - 00:00:02:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
like

00:00:02:19 - 00:00:07:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
knows what's going on at your church? Like

00:00:07:00 - 00:00:14:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you feel like nobody is ever really listened to you when you're giving the announcements?

00:00:14:04 - 00:00:16:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, in this episode I want to talk about is the

00:00:16:20 - 00:00:28:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
problem with most church and youth ministry announcements. So if you're a youth pastor person in church communication to pastor, this will help increase

00:00:28:03 - 00:00:31:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and uptake your engagement around announcements.

00:00:31:02 - 00:00:42:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I want to talk about the ultimate goal with all church announcements. And finally, stick around because I'm going to share with you three reasons that your church announcements may not be

00:00:42:11 - 00:00:47:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
going as well as you think. Plus, one solution for each of those

00:00:47:11 - 00:00:47:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
reasons,

00:00:47:22 - 00:00:50:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
including a concept called

00:00:50:04 - 00:00:55:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
inadvertent blindness. We're going to dive into that. And I have a free

00:00:55:04 - 00:01:00:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
resource that I think can absolutely change the game for you.

00:01:00:14 - 00:01:00:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I

00:01:00:19 - 00:01:01:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
think part

00:01:01:06 - 00:01:13:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of our problem here in 2025, in churches in North America, or let's just be honest around the world, is that we need to stop acting as churches. Look, we're in the 1990s

00:01:13:08 - 00:01:17:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and stop making boring announcements.

00:01:17:21 - 00:01:35:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like, if you've heard the stat that we as humans have a shorter attention span now than goldfish, if that's the case, then we definitely have to figure something out, because you have some great things going on at your church, and if people don't know about it, they can't get to them.

00:01:35:04 - 00:02:03:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's talk about it. Welcome, my friends, to the hybrid minstrel show. So what is our problem? Our ultimate problem with bad church announcements is that nobody is showing up or that, like, nobody even knows about what we have going on. I actually, I did a video, a while back called Youth Pastor or Event Coordinator. It's going to be linked right up here at the top of the screen if you're watching here on YouTube.

00:02:03:00 - 00:02:05:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But one of the things I've learned in my 14

00:02:05:07 - 00:02:25:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
years of youth ministry experience is that attendance and, just people simply showing up. That's a really important factor to planning a good event. You can have an awesome event, but if you don't have people there, it's going to be a problem. And part of people getting there is knowing that the event is happening and understanding, knowing, hearing.

00:02:25:12 - 00:02:57:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you know, like realizing that you're giving a church announcement that requires action out of them. And the video I explore this kind of tension, right? That many of us in ministry, church ministry, like, regardless of if you're in youth ministry or not, we feel about our jobs and it's this it's right. Is are we meant to be doing what we're doing to ultimately make disciples, or are we doing what we're doing to plan killer events?

00:02:57:21 - 00:03:23:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And sometimes, if you're anything like me, let's just be honest. It feels like we are our job. Like it has morphed much more into an event planner and I don't know about you, but that's not exactly why I got into youth ministry. Right? But the problem, right, that's the problem with our church announcements, is because we have an event and we want people to get to it.

00:03:23:16 - 00:03:50:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Poor attendance is the problem with bad church announcements. Okay. And so if attendance is our issue, if that's the baked in assumptions, that's the baked in desire. And when we say, nobody knows what's going on, it's because nobody is attending our events. That is the no. But that's who that is coming from. So let's take a step back then.

00:03:50:05 - 00:03:59:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Even more right than just the event, then just the good or not so good church announcement and ask ourselves, like, what is our

00:03:59:05 - 00:04:12:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
goal around this event? What is our goal by giving this announcement? All right, so our goal just like the problem or the opposite, the problem, our goal is to get more people

00:04:12:22 - 00:04:14:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
aware of and more people

00:04:14:05 - 00:04:20:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to know about the thing, the event, the Bible study, the workshop, like whatever it is.

00:04:20:22 - 00:04:21:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right.

00:04:21:15 - 00:04:28:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Is that the goal? No, it's not our goal. At least not ultimately,

00:04:28:17 - 00:04:29:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
at

00:04:29:01 - 00:04:29:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
least not

00:04:29:09 - 00:04:53:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
the meta goal. Right? Attendance is not necessary is really the goal in and of itself. But like I said, when we feel like event coordinators, it can feel like the goal, the goal in church ministry, the goal with all of your events, ultimately, the reason you're even having such and such event

00:04:53:19 - 00:04:54:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
is

00:04:54:05 - 00:04:56:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
life transformation.

00:04:56:21 - 00:05:28:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a subscribe if you agree with that statement. Life transformation is the ultimate goal, not attendance. It certainly helps having people there at your event because if they're not there, how can their lives be transformed? So I'll give you that. But we have to stop making a Tennessee Ultimate goal. I have to start realizing that we're really trying to be in the business about life transformation, which is done and led down the path through disciple making.

00:05:28:17 - 00:06:08:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you have to remember that prior to the digital era, attendance was the means to accomplish that life transformation. But we live now in the digital era, and so we can reach people and we can, disseminate a message through much more efficient and effective means. Now, with cell phones and technology and podcasts and YouTube videos and social media and fill in whatever blank you want to write, you got to realize that it's getting people in the room was originally that goal towards life transformation, but that's not exactly the era that we're living in.

00:06:08:08 - 00:06:19:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So what is the goal? If the goal is life transformation, how can we accomplish that? And also, how can we accomplish that in the new digital

00:06:19:05 - 00:06:19:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
era? Right.

00:06:19:16 - 00:06:20:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Churches

00:06:20:01 - 00:06:34:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
like I referenced it in the intro, churches are operating like it's the 1990s. And here's what I mean by that. In the 1990s, if you want to do watch Seinfeld, you had to catch it live on NBC the night that it aired and debuted.

00:06:34:20 - 00:06:49:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you didn't, then you better hope that you have a good DVR, which I don't even know if those are existed in the 90s. And then if you didn't have that, then tough luck. Mean you're going to have to catch that sucker on syndication when it comes out in the summer.

00:06:50:05 - 00:06:59:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Compare that to the drop of Stranger Things season two, where my wife and I, pretty children watched the entire season on

00:06:59:14 - 00:07:00:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a Saturday, right?

00:07:01:04 - 00:07:06:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like it's just a completely different mindset and framework. We live in a

00:07:06:07 - 00:07:26:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Netflix culture, not a cable TV culture, and so people when you have information, they're operating under the guise of it being Netflix, but we're treating it like cable TV, like we said, this thing I'm going to share with you the key to life. Feel like cool, tell me where to find it.

00:07:26:00 - 00:07:34:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you're like, Sunday at 10:00, so only time to find it. That that's a huge cultural disconnect.

00:07:34:06 - 00:07:43:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I have a few ideas of three different problems and a solution for each of the problem. Let's dive in.

00:07:43:10 - 00:07:57:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So one of the reasons that I think our church announcements can tend to be failing is this. This first concept here, I think, is just that we live in a culture with an oversaturation of noise.

00:07:57:01 - 00:08:20:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, there's so much noise around us. There's so much and so many things that are just simply vying for our attention. And so we as a church, we two are vying for people's attention, piling on, on, Karen, you have a podcast called Inadvertent Blindness. And what he said, he said, really? We really only see what we're looking for.

00:08:21:03 - 00:08:21:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And

00:08:21:13 - 00:08:41:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so the fact is, if people aren't looking for your church thing, again, that Netflix versus cable TV, if they're not looking for it, like, oh, I heard there was a retreat. So I'm going on the website to find the answer to it. Right? As opposed to us who we're like, we're dishing it out. We're like, well, we announced it on Sunday.

00:08:41:05 - 00:09:01:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They weren't looking for it on Sunday. Right? It's that oversaturation of noise, inadvertent blindness. Right. So if you think about some of the noises in the world, I shared this a couple videos back. I'll share it again here. It's going to be linked on screen. If you're watching on YouTube to have you take a look. If you're in a podcast catcher, you can scroll down and click the link to our YouTube video.

00:09:01:04 - 00:09:26:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Love to have you over there. Give us a like you show it. But, show up over there. But this video here talks about how we spend our time, especially spending our time online and the online amount of time like that. We as as people, sociology, have spent time on phones and on devices has skyrocketed compared to some of the time prior to the invention of tech.

00:09:26:14 - 00:09:47:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Which, let's just be honest, it's not necessarily a surprise, but it is like it is a like factor that we have to deal with, right? In today's day and age. In 2025, people that don't know what's going on, it's probably because there's so much to pay attention to. So

00:09:47:15 - 00:09:56:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
my proposal, right, my solution is get my free hybrid strategy guide.

00:09:56:21 - 00:10:26:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's linked down below in the show notes. And the reason why that's important is because that will help you shift in some areas from a cable TV culture, where the only time that people can hear you hear the message of Jesus, hear your announcements, whatever the case may be to more of a Netflix culture and it just it encourages you to show up where people are spending their time, which is on social media.

00:10:26:14 - 00:10:46:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. Give me a segue. Right. If you've ever heard or thought this before, like, hey, we need to get the word out, let's blitz our social channels. And if all you're ever doing is blitzing your social channels with getting the word out, then you're just turning your social channels into an announcement bulletin board. And that's not what those were made for.

00:10:46:04 - 00:11:07:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you're going to have a less effective reach on those social channels because you're not using them what they were made for. Instead, send an announcement out via like a push notification, a text message, or even like update it on the calendar, right? And like and like what we do is like we encourage our parents, our students to just like, subscribe to our Google Calendar.

00:11:07:05 - 00:11:15:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so something changes. It changes on our end. It'll change on their end if they're subscribed to it in their where in their calendar,

00:11:15:02 - 00:11:27:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
which is what, like an event. That's where an event is meant to be inside a calendar, but not just on your church calendar, on your church website that you want people to go to so that they know about your event.

00:11:27:18 - 00:11:29:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You want it to somehow get to their

00:11:29:10 - 00:11:56:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
personal calendar. That's how people live their lives through their calendars. So use the things that are meant to be used for the purposes that they're made for. And you use social media for the purposes that it's made. For my hybrid strategy, God will help you knock social media out of the park and become more hybrid with some of your messages and other, channels and usages on social media.

00:11:56:12 - 00:12:20:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So the second reason that I believe that some of our church announcements are falling flat is because we as churches are living in a cable TV mentality versus a Netflix or an on demand mentality. Or like, you understand, we've been talking about that in this video. The person who, I think has helped navigate that best for churches is, Brady Scheer up at Pro Church Tools.

00:12:20:14 - 00:12:42:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, he has a website builder called nucleus. And now, whether you use his website builder or not, and if you don't really have experience building websites, then I 100% recommend nucleus because it's a church, website builder for churches and by church like people. And so you don't have to have a ton of like, website skills to make it happen.

00:12:42:18 - 00:13:02:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like a noob like me can build a website using nucleus. But more than that, like what I want you to understand is that his concept behind it being nucleus is that every church announcement is done on the website. And so as opposed to like you getting up on the stage and

00:13:02:11 - 00:13:02:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
saying,

00:13:02:23 - 00:13:03:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
if you

00:13:03:07 - 00:13:07:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
want like information about bunco night talk to do your aunt Sally.

00:13:07:08 - 00:13:25:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you want information about the youth retreat, talk to youth pastor Ryan. And if you want to give, you can give via, our website. You can do text to give. You can scan this QR code for Venmo. We have Apple Pay, we have Google Pay. And, if you want to know about the prayer meeting, email Chuck.

00:13:26:02 - 00:13:35:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Chuck at our church.com and the kids ministry has a big camp out thing coming up. Swing by and grab a flier in the lobby

00:13:35:18 - 00:13:36:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
like

00:13:36:04 - 00:13:36:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
there

00:13:36:14 - 00:13:50:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
were five different call to actions in that, right? There's Sally, there's the youth pastor. There's any different amalgamation of giving opportunities. There's emailing, and then there's a flier. And he said,

00:13:50:00 - 00:13:55:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
make your nucleus, make your church website, your one stop shop.

00:13:55:19 - 00:14:12:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I created a video. I'll link it down below. A couple weeks back. And the video is literally titled, I created this video so that you don't have to hire me. And in it, I talk about my three step strategy guide, which you'll get some of that in my hybrid ministry, strategy guide if you download that from earlier.

00:14:12:17 - 00:14:41:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in the video, the three step strategy is step number one update and keep your website up to date. Your website should be a reliable one stop shop for everybody, and one of the ways to make your announcements better is to have the support of your website behind it. And so like for example, Brady uses this example all the time, like a trailer for a movie.

00:14:41:11 - 00:15:08:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When you go to the theater, you're not like sitting there watching a trailer to a movie that you can't wait to see. And it ends with them being like, now on November 27th, it's going to be showing at 11, 1131, 115, 230. And that's going to be in theaters six theaters, seven is going to have at 315. Like, no, that's boring, but that's what we do as churches, right?

00:15:08:16 - 00:15:31:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Bunco night. Here's all the details in the fellowship hall. Bring a dip to share. It's going to be on November 27th. It's going to be at 730. If you don't have any dice, make sure you contact your aunt Sally and she'll bring you an extra pair of dice. That's boring. And so we're trying to take information and make that be the thing that captures people, people's attention.

00:15:31:18 - 00:15:52:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you know as well as I, especially for Chinese social media for that that's not what social is used for. Best, you're not going to get them hooked them with the information. And so what do we do to capture their attention? So a movie trailer is just like, you know, it like makes you like fall in love with the idea of this movie wicked.

00:15:52:09 - 00:16:12:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then when it comes out, what do you do? You go discover when it's playing. You go to the website, you figure out how to get the tickets, you wanted to do it first, and then that promoted you to action in church. We give all the information and hope that that's going to promote people to action, and it has the opposite effect.

00:16:12:12 - 00:16:38:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you back up your church announcements with a good website, that's always up to date, you can get on stage and make your announcements good closer to like a movie trailer. Esq knowing that your website is going to answer the questions that people are looking for. So my solution to this cable TV versus on demand world is I have a resource.

00:16:38:16 - 00:17:01:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I have a service called communications for you. It's where I will run your church communications. I will make your website. I'll keep it up to date. I can even help promote and manage some of your socials, and so you can explore more of what that looks like in the link down below. But I'm sure as I'm explaining, like you, you have a good website and all these things, you're like, that sounds great, I don't have time.

00:17:02:01 - 00:17:04:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can make your announcements better by keeping

00:17:04:20 - 00:17:30:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your website behind you. Good, clean and up to date. And then reason number three is very simply, your announcements are just boring. Like they're just boring. And what I have for you is an announcement strategy that I want to encourage you to start steeling for better, more crisp and clearer church announcements.

00:17:30:16 - 00:17:31:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And

00:17:31:02 - 00:17:34:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that is going to be linked on the video in the very

00:17:34:12 - 00:17:47:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
next, video, in this, playlist and in this series. And so that's going to be right here on screen. If you see that, go ahead and tap on in so that you can get better and less boring church announcements. We'll see you over there in that video.

00:17:47:20 - 00:17:52:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And don't forget my friends as always to stay hybrid.

Episode 126: Youth Ministry Christmas Party Idea!

Nick Clason — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 05:00:00 -0600

🦸‍ BECOME A HYBRID HERO
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

🎬 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

//10% OFF CO-LEADER
CODE: HYBRIDMINISTRY10
https://www.sidekick.tv/pricing

//CUSTOM COACHING
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching

//CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

🕰️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.

Episode 069: 🍩 Ultimate Youth Group Guide: Crush Games, Outreach & Social all in one! 🔥

Nick Clason — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 04:00:00 -0500

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

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🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut
DYM: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/world%27s-greatest-donut/games/food-8745.html

☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS
OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
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DESCRIPTION
👋 Welcome to the Ultimate Youth Group Guide! In this exciting video, we'll dive into the power of Crush Games, Outreach initiatives, and Social Events to empower and inspire the youth.🔥

🍩 Crush Games:
Engage your youth group with thrilling Games that will ignite their enthusiasm and foster healthy competition. From exhilarating challenges to team-building activities, our guide provides all the essential tips and game ideas to keep the energy high and the fun rolling.

🌍 Outreach Initiatives:
Make a lasting impact on your community through meaningful outreach initiatives. Discover effective strategies to help your youth group connect with and support those in need. By stepping outside their comfort zones, the youth will learn valuable lessons about compassion, empathy, and making a difference in the lives of others.

👥 Social Media Events:
Creating a sense of belonging and friendship within your youth group via social media! This will help Hybridize your Ministry from your in person gathering to your student ministry social media

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

🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
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📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
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🛠️TOOLS
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

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TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
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OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS

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👉 STAY CONNECTED
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/069

//Full YouTube Video
https://youtu.be/5ryhkIRyDb4

//STUDENT MINISTRY BRACKET OF EPIC THINGS
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-student-ministry-bracket-of-epic-things/games-3974.html

//GAMEDAY FOOD BRACKET
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-big-game-food-bracket/winter/the-big-game-8544.html

//DONUT SHOWDOWN GAME
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-donut-showdown/games-4142.html

//FULL YOUTUBE STRATEGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxepdu4iiM

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:45 The Best Hybrid Youth Ministry Event Out There!
01:45-09:30 The History of This Hybrid Ministry Event
09:30-17:42 Pre-Event Planning and Setup

17:42-28:21 The Debrief of the Event from Start to Finish

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Youth ministry games, social media outreach events, ah, there's just so much to do and if you're anything like me, you have layer upon layer upon layer of responsibility. You need to come up with an amazing and exciting game. You need to knock social media out of the park and you need an outreach event that is going to cater to your students friends and outsiders who are far from God and from the church. How do you prioritize? And then if you do do all those things, how do you not just give your family and your people that you love the scraps and the left over pieces of your energy? What if I told you that I had the ultimate event guide, one that's going to crush it with games, an amazing outreach experience, and it's going to lean into social media for your student ministry, all of that encapsulated in one event.

Nick Clason (00:55):
See, we actually just had an event that accomplished all those things, one with an incredible amount of games and an amazing in-room experience, one that gave students an amazing opportunity to invite their friends and it crushed on social media. Better yet, we had 23% of our attenders be first time or new students who joined us. And finally, not only do we increase engagement, but we also added new followers to our social media. It is honestly one of the best versions in my opinion, of a hybrid style event. And when I say hybrid event, it's more dynamic and it's more robust than just another Zoom Bible study. I know it sounds too good to be true, right? Well, let me show you. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show in the ultimate Event guide. I came up with this idea probably in my second or third year of doing youth ministry, and now I am a 13 year youth ministry veteran.

Nick Clason (01:58):
So this idea dawned on me years and years and years and years ago, and one of the things that has honestly just been super clear to me all the way back to the beginning times of my time in student ministry is the fact that hybrid matters. And when I mean hybrid, I don't mean only focusing on your in-person. I don't mean only focusing on your digital. I mean taking those two things and creating a space for there to be opportunity to reach and connect with your people beyond the hour of programming that you have for your in-person service, which is actually the reason why I just dropped this video going to be up here on the screen. You can feel free to click that where we explore and talk about the future of church ministry, especially through the eyes and through the lens of digital and hybrid.

Nick Clason (02:41):
If you're interested, hop over into that. But about 10 years ago is when I had this idea for what I call a bracket, and I'm a huge March Madness fan, college basketball. I love the selection committees. And if you're not a sports fan, essentially what they do is they create rankings or seedings, so to speak. And so there are four regions and each region has a one seed. Each region has a two seed, each region has a three seed and so on down all the way down to 16, and then the one seed plays the 16 seed. Usually a pretty easy matchup only in the history of the NCAA tournament has one 16 seed upset, a one seed. The 15 plays the two, the 14 plays the three and so on and so forth. And they're in various spots. So the one 16 are up here and the two and the 15 are down here in the bracket so that eventually they wait until the very last chance for the one and the two to eventually play.

Nick Clason (03:34):
Then once all the teams get out of those brackets, that creates your final four one winner from each region they play in Final four matchup and then the winners of each side of that end up meeting in the middle in the championship. And so I was like, this would be fun to lean in to March Madness. And so I just created a bracket out of my head. I was like, let's do little Debbie hostess cakes, and then I put one of my student ministry leaders, shout out to Aaron Koontz back in Beaver Creek, Ohio, and I did one of our favorite events, dare to Share. I put Dare to Share in there, and so students would vote on a thing versus another thing, and it was so totally random, but I offered it just as an online thing. This is before I had an Instagram.

Nick Clason (04:17):
This is before Instagram even had the poll feature, but I kept doing this. The one time I submitted an option called a Bracket of Awesome Things to Download Youth Ministry. This was probably like eight, 10 years ago at this point. My number one seed was Chip and Johanna Gaines and just leaning into the hype that they had with the Fixer Upper and H G T V movement back then. But I just kept honing in and creating this. And I remember one time I made a Christmas movie bracket. I had become in charge at my last church of social media and I just threw it together. I was running out of ideas of things to post. I was in charge of something like two or three posts per day, multiple days per week. And I was like, let's do a bracket. And I launched it and I was on a team at that time of six or seven other youth pastors, staff members, and the team went nuts.

Nick Clason (05:12):
I made Elf the number one seed and then I made white Christmas the 16th seed, and I had some diehard white Christmas fans dropping the comment below what your favorite Christmas movie is, and if it's white Christmas, I'm sorry, you're wrong. It's terrible. But that being said, they were livid and they were mad at how I sourced it and how I came up with the seeding, which by the way, side note just was in my head and they wanted a redo. And so we launched this event called something about a serial bracket. I can't remember what we can't remember the exact name of what we called it, but we had back at that last church, we had a full YouTube show. So we set up SportsCenter style desks and anchors. We all wore jerseys and we did analysis and we kicked it over to sideline reporters and we announced the seatings.

Nick Clason (06:03):
We announced the matchups, and then while when that show launched live on YouTube, people could hop over to our Instagram and they could vote. And what happened was the senior leadership must not have had anything to announce that week, and so they announced our show that week. And so we were like, man, we need to turn this into something. At that time, it was Christmas break, we weren't meeting, so it was just going to live as a thing online on our YouTube channel, but because it got announced, we're like, we need to capitalize on this just a little bit more. And so we offered, and this is

Nick Clason (06:36):
In the height of Covid, so we're not doing a lot of in-person connection with other people. If we were, it had to be masked. I mean it was awful, but it was January just after Christmas 2021 and we're like, let's do a drive-in. Kids can come watch it on their phones. Or you know what? Actually maybe we bought big old screens that they could watch, and then we did a FM tuner thing. They could listen to it in their car radio. So I don't know, we probably had 10 to 20 cars show up, not a ton. And we bought so much serial, we went to Sam's and we looted that place and then it was like negative 10 degrees. And so me and my other leaders, we have giant coats on, we're walking car to car, passing out cereal, passing out milk. But that was the inception.

Nick Clason (07:28):
That was one of the inception points of this idea of a bracket. And what it does in my mind is it creates some sort of event around an in-person topic cereal. The one that I'm going to explain to you today is donuts and I like to kind of hone in. Yeah, that's what I've done over the years. I've honed in on a specific topic. We've also done this with drinks like World's greatest drink, world's greatest donut cereal madness. This coming march, we're planning on doing a potato one called Starch Madness. And so it creates that event, but the reason I like it is that it marries your social media because all the voting happens online

Nick Clason (08:04):
With an in-person event. It is the ultimate style hybrid event in my opinion. And I know that I've had people who are like, when you mean hybrid, what are you talking about? And they just think we're just talking about Zoom groups and it's more than that. And so we hosted this event at our church. Like I said in the intro, we had 23% newcomers, we had multiple new people added to following us on social media, and it's creating some sort of hype and some sort of buzz around our student ministry. There are so many benefits and values to it. And so what I want to do is honestly just walk you through the pre-planning, the actual event. I'm going to share with you the planning center document of it, and then give you just kind of a recap about why it's valuable, why we're going to keep doing it, and how you can take something like that and adapt it into your student and social ministry.

Nick Clason (08:52):
If so far you've found this episode helpful, though alike would cost you nothing and would really mean the world to us even more. A subscribe is really a next level opportunity to just engage back with us. Either one of those two things like subscribe would mean the world to us and we would love to connect with you further and deeper because more than just donuts, more than just brackets, we are talking about this world of not just physical, not just digital, but hybrid ministry. So let's move on and let's hop in to the setup and the event planning, the pre-event side of this event that I'm talking about, the world's greatest donut. So we know, we knew that we wanted to do this voting style event around donuts that would last around a month. The way I set it up is I will do round one.

Nick Clason (09:42):
We have a Wednesday night and then a Sunday morning in our environment, and so the voting is going to be live on a Wednesday. They'll vote on the topics and the rounds, and so round one we do all the voting. So that's where Instagram and the stories, that's where the most decisions need to be made. So because of that in round one, then we will announce the winners on Sunday, and then we will resume voting the following Wednesday for the Elite eight. We'll announce the following Sunday of the winners of that, and then we'll move to the final floor when there's the most activity, when there's all the contestants are still alive, no one's been eliminated yet. That's round one. And that to me is the most exciting time for the actual bracket. So because the actual bracket is exciting at that time, that's when we decided to lean into an event.

Nick Clason (10:31):
So we knew we had this bracket. In fact, I created this resource. It's a link in the description on Download youth ministry on the world's greatest donut bracket. It's on there right now. Feel free to go grab it. It's got all of the digital elements and it's got a few games in there, but not all of what I'm about to share with you. So make sure that you hang around to the rest of this video. However, we knew we wanted to do an event centered or a month centered around voting, and then we wanted the first night, the kickoff night to be a big deal. And so the question kind of always is do you focus on the kickoff of the bracket or do you focus more on the championship round of the bracket? I've found the beginning to be more exciting. Like I said, we did a cereal bracket most recently here at this church, and we have in our space, we have eight different garage door bays that lined the side left and right of our meeting space.

Nick Clason (11:26):
That's actually where our small groups meet on Sunday morning. Those doors are up, they go in there and then they close down, creates little rooms for all of them. It's really cool design. Sometimes it also makes 'em feel like caged animals, but nonetheless, we did an event back in March where we voted on serial and we had the one in 16 matchup in one bay. We had the three and 14 matchup in another bay. We had the eight and nine matchup in another bay. And so all the bay doors came up. There were tables in there with basketball themed tablecloths on and then cereal boxes with a number pasted on it, one versus 16, and then all the bowls of cereal there. And so as we're wrapping up our programming, we had adult leaders sitting in there pouring milk into each of the bowls so that students could grab that and then they could go eat and just literally had one kid eat 16 or 25 bowls of cereal that night, tried every single one of the things in the matchup.

Nick Clason (12:19):
So that was a super fun way to just kind of lean into the kickoff portion. And so we had that same question. Now we have donuts and what are we going to do? And so in our space where we have tables, and so we ended up deciding to buy a little half fishbowl things. All the supplies by the way, are going to be linked in the comments below, in the description below. Make sure you check that out. But we had little fishbowl things, half fishbowl things sort of decorative. It's not like a fishbowl where the tops right there, but it's like off to the side a little bit. And we filled each table with donut holes. We ordered several dozen donut holes, and that's what we did. We went donut holes instead of actual donuts. It's cheaper. It's also quicker. You can pop 'em into your mouth as opposed to committing to an entire donut.

Nick Clason (13:04):
And so we have 16 round tables, and so every table had a tablecloth and every table had a vase full of donuts. That was our decision to supply the donuts without breaking the bank on the budget. Don't get me wrong, it was still expensive, but it's less expensive than a dozen donuts per table or something like that. So we had donuts on every table, and then one of my favorite elements or pieces of the event is we bought a giant vase and then we filled it with donuts. We counted 233 donuts that we filled into this vase. The funny part was that we put the donuts in and then the weight of the donuts actually started to smash 'em down, and so it was full, and then the weight of the donuts started smashing 'em down. So there was a gap. So we actually had to go back and add more donuts at the end.

Nick Clason (13:48):
So I don't even want to know what the bottom donuts looked like. They probably were a little mini pancakes, but we let students vote simply, how many donuts do you think are in here? We had a Google form for that. They shot it with a QR code on their phone. We also had an iPad set up where they could just type in a Google form. All we got was their name and their number, but if you have a marketing brain or a marketing department, you can use that to capture an email and start to create a little list and start to market to those people as well. That's another kind of next level tip if you want to lean into something like that. But then it also made it easy to just have it all dumped into a Google sheet and I could command F find the closest number.

Nick Clason (14:32):
And so one person, we had 2 33 in the thing and one girl guessed 2 32, so she won it, and this little sixth grade girl carried out this giant vase of donuts and it was hers. She got to take it with her, she got to keep it. She got to bring it in her car with her. Then the actual bracket side of things, we printed, because we are doing this so much, we printed a generic bracket on a giant vinyl banner. When you walk into our space, we have a big window with an indoor half kind of sports court right there on the other side of it. And so for the cereal bracket, I took gaff tape and I taped out a bracket and then I pasted or taped the cereal to the window. But this time around we're like, what if we just print a vinyl banner and then we can swap out whatever we're voting on at that time?

Nick Clason (15:24):
So we made the investment on the front side knowing that we're going to do this. We love these style of hybrid events in our ministry, so we bought the big banner. It fit perfectly in our space. I can drop the artwork for that in the description, but it's going to vary a little bit for my ministry. Your ministry. It's also got our logo on it, but you can find any bracket online, any generic non-branded bracket online, add it, print it, make it into a banner if that's something that you want to do. What it does for us is when you walk in, it immediately draws your attention. It's not there most of the year. And so when it's there, you're like, oh, it's different. And then people know and notice that there's a bracket going on, there's a voting happening. And the other crazy thing is that people get really into it on their opinions.

Nick Clason (16:17):
What things are seeded? How such and such donut beat that donut. For example, the beignet took down, what did it take down? The chocolate cream filled donut lost to a beignet. I think beignets are good, but are they the best? I don't think so. And I think they're super kind of niche and they're really just, honestly, they're like funnel cake. And so anyway, that giant bracket in our actual space, we also allow, because we have a lot of students, a lot of kids, young kids that don't have social media yet, we allow them to vote on a paper bracket as an additional means to let their voice be heard. We got donut shirts for all of the staff and we all wore them. And so that was kind of like the event setup space. In addition to that, we had some donut balloons blown up and kind of scattered throughout the lobby.

Nick Clason (17:13):
So they walked in. On the left was the big V to vote, regular check-in, back behind check-in was the banner with the voting and the brackets printed out and people could let their voice be heard that way. So now let's dive into the rest of the event. I'm going to put the planning center event sheet right here. We're going to walk through it and I'm just going to explain to you what we did, why we did it, and just my thoughts on it, and feel free to take and adapt any of it to your ministry. So all the setups done, students are walking in. We had a countdown, which if you buy my product on Download Youth ministry, it will come with a specific donut themed and then a specific donut themed five minute countdown that I created with just random facts and stuff like that.

Nick Clason (18:00):
So that was what was playing on our TV and our screens all throughout our space. And when the time hit zero, myself and my boss, Darren, we were both on stage and we were hyping up the crowd, welcoming people, letting them know that voting had been live all day on Instagram. We were letting them know who was winning what matchup students could with the screen behind us. We then had a screen that said, voting is live now with a QR code. They could shoot that and take it to Instagram. I think we gained three to six or something like that. New followers on our Instagram, not a ton, but still some students who were. So we had 23% new students. So we're introducing our students to our Instagram, and if any of them are into this idea now they're following us. So now we have them on our Instagram opportunity to reach out to them, but we just did some like, Hey, here's what's going on.

Nick Clason (18:52):
Here's the bracket, explaining what a bracket is. It's going to be lasting for a month, but it's all about you and your voice and letting your voice be heard and voting is live on Instagram every single Wednesday. We also kind of teased our next series, which we're talking about big issues, elephants in the room that we often don't want to address. So we use that moment to sort of tease the topic. We didn't spend a lot of time on that. And also we had a message drop, if you've heard me before, link in the description of my full YouTube strategy, but we've our messages. And so we had a message live on YouTube, but we didn't do live teaching that night. You can do that. It's your call. It's philosophical decision for an event like this. We like to kind of pull the teaching and let this be a truly invite night, a truly bring your friends style event style night.

Nick Clason (19:41):
And then we did a bunch of door prizes and giveaways. Now, here's how I do this. I use Sidekick through Download Youth Ministry. I created a little slide, I'll drop the slide into the link down below that I've referenced before and it says World's Greatest Donut, and that says You're about to win something, dude with Little Arrow pointed up and then all their names filter through. Here's how we got the names. Every single student who checked in, we created a People search, a save search in C C B Church Community Builder. That's any student who's not a leader that has checked in within the last day. And so whenever I go into that, especially if an event has started it's live, I click refresh and it populates every single student who has checked in to our student ministry within the last 24 hours. And so since we didn't have an event on Tuesday, I know that anyone who's checked in is now here on Wednesday night.

Nick Clason (20:32):
So that list is not just going to be a random full mailing list of all of our students going to be the actual live dynamic list of the students in our event space. Figure that out in your church database system, but find some way to capture all the info of the students that are actually in your space. Now, downloaded that into a C S V, copied it, pasted it into Sidekick, and then boom, we had all the names they're filtering through and we're giving away some door prizes. So what we gave away was a donut blanket that's like the shape of a circle. We gave away a little mini donut maker. We gave away donut key chain. We gave away little rubber donuts. I almost think they were like dog toys. I think we bought them for something else and we forgot. And so we just ended up giving them away.

Nick Clason (21:14):
And what else we give away? I can't remember. But we gave away six different things, just kind of like, Hey, you won and now you won. Now you won. Kids were going nuts for it. They were excited for it. And then I had this big old pillow, this big of a donut pillow, and I was like, who wants this? And the room's going crazy. I'm like, you have a chance to win it later. And so I kind of teased that, but then we're like, Hey, we got worship. So we had two hype songs. Again, philosophically not my favorite, but our students love worship and have been clamoring for it, and we haven't had it regularly for the last year. And just our worship department, which is how our church navigates it, the worship department handles all worship for all of our different ministries. So they do it for kids and students and adults.

Nick Clason (21:58):
And so we hadn't had worship. Worship was just now able to accommodate our desire to have it more regularly. And so since we started the week before, we decided not to pull the plug on it, just let it go. So we asked them for two hype songs. They sung here in your house. They sang glorious day, and then we played a donut game. And this one, full disclosure, I didn't even make. I got it off of D Y M, the Donut Showdown, a couple different people. We have myself, my boss, we have a resident, and then two interns. So there's five of us that we can kind of cycle through on the stage. And so my boss, Darren and one of our interns, Eli, they got up and they ran the donut showdown and then the winning table, because remember I said we have 16 tables.

Nick Clason (22:38):
They got a box of donuts that are more expensive, like bougie box of donuts from one of those bougie donut shops. We bought three of those, one for the winner this game, one for the winner, the next game, and then one box for our leaders in our leader lounge. So they kept track of their answers on whiteboards, and then off they went. The winning team got that. Then we created a 15 second donut on a string bumper. My resident created it. Shout out to Caleb, ADA. And then Caleb and Kaylee came out and they ran the classic Eat a donut on a string without your hands being tied. So that's another box of donuts or maybe two that we bought. Just glazed donuts just for the donut on a string game. They had to get one holder and one eater from each table. So we had 32 people come up front to the stage.

Nick Clason (23:28):
We have 16 tables, so 16 eaters, 16 holders that went on the stage, held the donuts, and then the first person to eat the full donut without using their hands. They also win a box of boujee donuts for their table. And then at that point, I hopped back up and I gave instructions for a guided rec time. And so what we did was they could go to our cafe and decorate cake donuts. So that's another set of donuts that we bought, probably three to four, I dunno, maybe even five dozen, just like unglazed cake donuts. But then we bought frosting and sprinkles and things like that. So we allowed students to have a space to decorate donuts on their own. We also offered a game called Find the Donut. That's where I gave away my big donut thing. And what I did for that was I had seven clues of things that they could do, and so they could get any of the seven clues in whatever order they wanted, but it was a speed thing, so they'd grab a clue.

Nick Clason (24:21):
I typed it out, put it on a little piece of paper. I made it into a Word doc where it was like four on 1, 2, 3, 4 on a word doc. So I could cut the word doc up and down side to side and then have four off of one full sheet of paper. And so then I printed 10 of the first clue and then cut it. And that got me 40 clues or whatever. So it was like, Hey, some of the clues were ways to get them to go interact with our staff. So go ask Darren what his favorite donut is. Go ask Kaylee what her favorite donut is. One of the stations that we created during this guided rec time was a temporary tattoo station, so go get a tattoo from the temporary tattoo station. Another one of 'em was to encourage them to go towards our YouTube channel or answer questions from last week's message.

Nick Clason (25:06):
And if they didn't know, it was like the answer's on YouTube so it would get them onto our YouTube channel, all that type of stuff, trying to again, hybridize it, right? So they'd grab a clue, they'd read it, and then they'd go do the thing. One of the clues was prove that you voted. So if they hadn't voted yet, they had to go fill out a paper bracket or show me they casted their vote via their phone via Instagram. And then the last and final station of guided rec was the tattoo station, as I had mentioned and alluded to, by the way, the first students come back with all seven of their clues completed. They won that giant donut. And then the last thing that they could do is they could continue to make their guests for the VAs of donuts. And then just the general rec stuff that we have.

Nick Clason (25:50):
We have a game room with nine square foosball pool and just kind of like a hangout space. And some students kind of opted into that, but there were five to six options and we gave them about 30 minutes to just do whatever they wanted. They could go do one thing the whole time, they could try and do all the things. I had one student who was like, I'm going to try and do all the things. And from that event, actually, I kind of thought and decided, what if we created a passport or a frequent flyer kind of option to let students try different things when we have a guided rec type of moment? I dunno, just an idea. Then at six 50, we called everybody back into our space. We announced the winner, sixth grade girl who won the vass of Donuts. We let them know about what Sunday morning was going to be, and then that was our final word, and we were like, Hey, thanks so much for hanging out.

Nick Clason (26:39):
Thanks for playing. We will see you next time. Love you guys. Peace, love and crabs. I think that's like a Joe's Crab Shack thing. I'm not sure. Right? All in all, I think this was a great event. Frankly, it's one of my favorite hybrid style events. And again, I remember one time I was talking about hybrid on my social, all links to my socials down the description below. But my sister was like, what do you mean by hybrid? Do you just mean zoom groups? And I can mean zoom groups, right? But this is what I mean when I talk about hybrid. I mean, create an event for one thing, and that's the thing. World's greatest donut. Linking the description to my D Y N product was already created for a voting a month worth of voting on Instagram and on your socials. Then we just said, what if we take that concept and then just craft a month around it and then craft an invite outreach event around it, and then boom, we just had donuts, we leaned in, and that's all the things that we did for it.

Nick Clason (27:35):
The point of this is not just to create vanity metrics, both in our physical space and also in our digital space with followers and whatnot, but the point of it is to step in to the space where students find themselves in 2023, right? It's like a digital mall. In fact, I have a completely free resource to help you navigate that digital mall. It's my done for you Surefire Resource 40 done for You events. On this video right here, it's going to show up on the screen what every youth ministry needs to be focusing on. I also have a video talking about a digital mall and incarnation ministry. So I'd love for you to check those things out. But until next time, we're making digital discipleship easy and accessible, and as always, stay hybrid.