Hybrid Ministry - Episodes Tagged with “Social Media For Churches”

Episode 192: Hybrid Ministry Masterclass- Tools, Systems, and Real Results for Youth Pastors

Nick Clason — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 05:00:00 -0500

This episode, quite literally, has it all!
Every strategy, every freebie, every way to implement hybrid into your ministry.

It's horrible for me, because I'm giving away anything and everything I've ever created!

MEGA EPISODE GUIDE - Product & Freebie Links
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SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/192

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YEAR-LONG SOCIAL PACK
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FREE EBOOK
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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 Act 1 - The Problem
02:40 Act 2 - The Analytics - How it REALLY works
07:44 Act 3 - The Hybrid Framework
16:48 Act 4 - The Execution Layer
17:13 Microphones & Cameras
23:35 Software Recommendations
26:39 Social Team Construction
28:11 Act 5 - The Vision Layer
30:36 Act 6 - I Can Help!

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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:13:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
As a person on church ministry, you have a slew of responsibility. You need to be a shepherd. You need to be an administrator. You need to be an evangelist. You need to be a disciple maker. And sometimes you need

00:00:13:14 - 00:00:15:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to be a social media strategist.

00:00:15:25 - 00:00:16:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Listen,

00:00:16:10 - 00:00:17:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you know this.

00:00:17:07 - 00:00:20:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Not everyone can be good at everything.

00:00:20:05 - 00:00:21:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
just recently,

00:00:21:04 - 00:00:22:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
someone in the DYM

00:00:22:16 - 00:00:27:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Facebook group asked like social media gurus, where are you at? I want to start up ticking my engagement

00:00:27:27 - 00:00:30:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I probably see that question

00:00:30:03 - 00:00:31:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
once a month

00:00:31:00 - 00:00:33:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
just like you get curriculum to help you teach, just like you get

00:00:33:29 - 00:00:36:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
calendar apps to help you stay organized, and you have

00:00:36:19 - 00:00:38:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
books to help you learn.

00:00:38:05 - 00:00:43:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With so many different tools on the market, how do you know what you can actually trust? You know,

00:00:43:08 - 00:00:52:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I've been leading a youth ministry leader cohort, specifically down a deep dive topic of hybrid ministry, and at the beginning

00:00:52:29 - 00:01:04:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of the cohort, it's an eight week experience at the beginning. I have people map out the next month of social media content, and every week when we circle back, we evaluate how did the last week go?

00:01:05:00 - 00:01:11:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And without fail, they say I had my plans or the plans laid out, but I didn't do it because

00:01:11:25 - 00:01:27:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a meeting came up. Because this thing happened, because I got busy, because the weather canceled our services and I was focused and forced to do other things responsibility wise. You see, whatever the reason is why social media falls by the wayside,

00:01:27:11 - 00:01:28:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
it's not a priority.

00:01:28:08 - 00:01:39:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Leadership doesn't see the value of it. You're not creative enough. You need something to help. You need a strategy. And that's what this episode is. This is the mega episode. I've done you a favor,

00:01:39:21 - 00:01:43:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
in the next several sections of this video, I'm going to share with you

00:01:43:07 - 00:01:53:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
the analytics behind my hybrid ministry strategy and my seasonal social Media pack, which is now available and active for the spring season over on Patreon.

00:01:53:04 - 00:01:56:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So make sure that you go take a look at that. If there's something that you're interested in.

00:01:56:13 - 00:02:07:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then in act number three, we're going to share with you the hybrid ministry framework. And act number four, I'm going to share with you the execution layer. How do you actually pull this thing together?

00:02:07:18 - 00:02:22:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What gear what software do you need. Act number five is going to be the vision layer. Where can this go if you really choose to double down on it. And then act number six, I'm just going to share with you different ways that I can help along the way. And here's the good news. I've actually shared all of this before.

00:02:22:11 - 00:02:44:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're new here, or if you don't want to go through all the various episodes I have, this is almost going to be like a clip show. I have done the hard work of combing through nearly 200 hybrid Ministry episodes to share with you each of these different sections. So we're going to dive in. Let's look first here at the analytics and what's going on behind the scenes.

00:02:44:13 - 00:03:00:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, when I released my winter season on Social Media pack, I did a vlog style video where I was at a conference that my my church was hosting. I was hosting it. I was like a stage host for the week, and I wanted to prove that I could post my pack in less than 16 minutes of total time.

00:03:00:29 - 00:03:22:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Over the course of the week, though, in my pack, I propose you post three times a week. I posted eight times during that week. Every single piece of content that I include in my seasonal social media pack. Spoiler I didn't meet the challenge, but I did learn something valuable and it's that my pack can actually stand up to some of the stressors of everyday life.

00:03:22:08 - 00:03:38:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
My pack was the schedule, and all I had to do was look at the schedule. It told me exactly what I was most post. I posted it and not less than 16 minutes, but however, I was able to do it in less than 20 minutes. And this right here is the analytic and the deep dive from that week of posting.

00:03:38:28 - 00:03:48:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now I have all different seasons and I just released spring, which means now we're also able to offer a full year of custom and DIY seasonal social media.

00:03:48:29 - 00:03:59:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you want to look at the four season bundle pack for the entire year of social media, go check it out. But what I'm trying to do in my pack is I'm trying to make you and your church the hero.

00:03:59:02 - 00:04:19:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Not just a bunch of standard graphics that every church, any church can post, but graphics that. Yeah, we'll have some of that, but also videos with you and your people, and I'll train you and give you scripts and, and give you video and graphic overlays that you can put on top of videos that you record. Because 90% of the internet's traffic is short form, vertical based video.

00:04:19:22 - 00:04:37:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I took that concept, the one that I sell to you and sell to all you pastors, church communications, people all around the world that I stand behind. And I put it to the test, and here were my results from the week. And and it's nothing crazy. We didn't go viral. We didn't get famous off of it.

00:04:37:01 - 00:04:54:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In some cases. We had some really low views. In other cases we had some really high views. So I want to share with you the highest view from the week. I want to share with you the lowest view from the week. I want to share with you a comment from a post that happened during that week, as well as the one the post that got the most amount of likes.

00:04:54:27 - 00:05:14:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I'm going to do that across three different platforms of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. So if you're watching here on YouTube right now, you'll see this graph up here on screen. But the video with the highest views on TikTok was only 235 on our verse Bible verse video 235 views on TikTok. Our lowest one was our transition style video.

00:05:14:27 - 00:05:34:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It only had 38 views over there on TikTok. A comment we got zero comments during the week on TikTok when I did this. And see, that's the that's the the truth. That's the hard and crass reality. Sometimes that's what happens. We also did get 37 likes on our first video. So that video did did do the best on TikTok.

00:05:34:19 - 00:05:54:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now let's switch over to Instagram. I got 471 devotional views on our Devo video, the one that I, the script, I wrote the script, then I copied the script verbatim and I hadn't looked at it in like three months. So I was basically going in code, which is very similar to what you would also be doing if you were to grab my pack and implement it in your own context.

00:05:54:28 - 00:06:16:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We had, 243 views. I was the lowest on our verse post on Instagram. So interestingly, it was our lowest on Instagram was higher than our highest on TikTok. Comments on the Devo we had two different people that left a comment on our on my devotional thing, and I asked for some sort of, hey, leave a leave this emoji in the comments if you need this.

00:06:16:00 - 00:06:35:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And two people did that and then the highest likes was 17 on that same devotional video. And then over on YouTube, check this one out. We had 1081 views on the transition video. We had a comment, I'm sorry, we had 23, our lowest on the verse post on YouTube and then, on the Bible trivia post on YouTube.

00:06:35:05 - 00:06:47:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Someone said, I didn't know that, that I didn't know the answer to that last one. Not a chance. That was fun though. Good job. And then we had 28 likes on said Bible trivia. And here's just a couple of things I find interesting.

00:06:47:03 - 00:06:59:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The verse post did amazing on TikTok and it struggled on the other two, right? Each platform had a different, higher performer, the verse followed by the diva on Instagram, followed by the transition video on YouTube.

00:07:00:02 - 00:07:20:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. A couple of things. At one point I actually had to reedit and repost some of these because I had made mistakes. But somehow my posted man on the street video, I did it without even sound. The first time around, my Wi-Fi was lagging. It's slowed me down. And right when I was getting ready to hit record at one point, I had to run across the creek to grab my SD card.

00:07:20:06 - 00:07:40:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
See, even I, the creator of the seasonal social media pack, I ran into the same potential obstacles that you might, and my summary and all that is that that week was far from perfect. But what I did do is I showed up regularly, and when I got busy and I didn't have what I needed to do, I could look back at my calendar and my seasonal social media pack told me exactly what I should do.

00:07:40:14 - 00:07:41:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's the purpose

00:07:41:26 - 00:08:06:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of this thing. It is a seasonal social media pack that's more than just static graphics. That helps you develop a team, a volunteer social media, team students, whatever to hand something off to. And it's for the less than the cost of a couple cups of coffee for the month. So now let's move into act three, and this is where we're going to share some best of clips from the Hybrid Ministry show.

00:08:06:09 - 00:08:09:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to share with you the Hybrid Ministry Framework.

00:08:09:21 - 00:08:39:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There are kind of three core statistics. There's Gen Z, Gen Alpha. They use their mobile device more than they use any other device combined. Furthermore, 69% of students own a smartphone. But I get this the age of 12, 90%. According to Pew Research use YouTube. But there's a verse in Jeremiah chapter 29 Nov nine 2911. But right before that verse, Jeremiah is having a conversation with God.

00:08:39:04 - 00:09:08:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here's what God says to Jeremiah. He says you should build homes, planned to stay, plant gardens, eat the foods that they produce, marry and have children, then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply. Do not dwindle away, but you gotta understand the context here, which we don't do for Jeremiah 2011 very often, is that the Israelites are stuck as captives in Babylon, and what God is telling Jeremiah to do is he's saying, stop complaining.

00:09:08:22 - 00:09:35:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Stop trying to find a way out. Stop trying to leave. Instead, invest in where you live and digital ministry is not going anywhere. You may not like it. You may not even think it's the most effective. But the majority of millennials, Gen Z, and we can assume Generation Alpha, say that a digital version of church is valuable to them and one that they would lean into, and it doesn't mean that their in-person attendance is going to go away.

00:09:35:13 - 00:09:54:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a lot of the fears of us in church leadership is that if we offer a digital component, I'm just going to choose that instead of, coming to church in person, but far from it. We're also seeing in this generation, more than even older generations, that community is so much more important to them. So they don't want to forsake the in-person moments.

00:09:54:00 - 00:10:20:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so when we take the in-person moments and the best that it has to offer, when we take the digital things and the best it has to offer, and we find that sweet spot right in the middle, we find what I call hybrid ministry. A great example of it is honestly, Home Depot. And think about it like you throw on your new balances and you throw on your cargo shorts on on a Saturday morning, you got a project, and then you go on Home Depot and you don't really have like a agenda, right?

00:10:20:07 - 00:10:40:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're just walking around and you're just kind of like you're taking in the smell of lumber and you're just you're just kind of exploring what the hallways and the aisles of Home Depot have to offer. Other times. And then, like, you don't have time, right? You go online, you make an order so that it's delivered to your doorstep because you don't have time to just live out your full dad mode experience.

00:10:40:07 - 00:11:11:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But my favorite honestly version to experience Home Depot is while I'm in the store on their app because their app. If you haven't seen it yet, their app shows you where every single thing in their entire store is located. And so that's what I think we should be doing as youth pastors. Finding a way to intersect where teenagers already admitted they're spending their time, not forsaking the good elements of gathering together and community and accountability and all those things, but also leaning into this hybrid sort of moment.

00:11:12:00 - 00:11:35:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so what I want to do is I want to give you one of the easiest ways to kind of to kind of step foot into this hybrid space. And it's by up picking your social media engagement. Now, here's the thing. A lot of youth pastors, and if you've been following me along on this channel for a while, posts announcements on their feed, just assuming that social media is another announcement platform.

00:11:35:19 - 00:11:57:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the reality is that that's not what social media is best made for it. But what it does mean, and what we should be doing, is that we should be intersecting and invading the lives of students on the places that they spend their time, including TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Remember, 90% teenagers say that they use YouTube in the way that they're consuming it.

00:11:57:12 - 00:12:19:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
for you and for me and for all of us. Like, my, like, general strategy is simply, walking down a funnel of posting short form content, silly content, as well as spiritual content, and hopefully gathering an audience with that and then pushing them to, like a long form version of some more serious content, which is what we do in our youth ministry.

00:12:19:24 - 00:12:48:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We pre film our messages and we adapt them and make them specific for YouTube. You know, we do that versus like a live stream type of thing. As Carrie New study said. This said the challenge is the future is to diversify what you offer online and distinguish it from what you offer in person. So not only is that going to create true options, new love continues on to say, but it will deepen engagement as your in-person and online ministries lean towards what each does best.

00:12:48:13 - 00:13:05:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, beyond. Just like your message content, beyond your weekly sermon, so to speak, that are also going to live online, whether that's live stream, which I would argue is not as good as a pre filmed version, but it's still better than than nothing. You can also lean into things like courses and those types of things.

00:13:06:01 - 00:13:19:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Exactly. Should you be posting? I'm glad you guys have three steps for everyone and their social media is is, three steps. Social media checklist. Step number one is make sure that your website is up to date.

00:13:19:18 - 00:13:51:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When you take away social as an avenue for announcements, or when you reduce your amount of stage announcements. There still has to be a full bodied, one stop, robust shop for your church people to fall to. And that also makes what I'm going to recommend here on social, which is the second step here. The second step is you kind of want to become enamored with short reels, TikTok style videos, because when your website is good, you don't have to worry about the information.

00:13:51:27 - 00:14:24:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. And according to video, 90% of the internet's traffic is found on short form vertical based video because every other platform then was trying to catch up and keep up with this brand new one called TikTok shorts, reels, Facebook has them, Instagram has, YouTube has them and even other like places like, Twitter.

00:14:24:11 - 00:14:50:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're even on there, it'll it'll be on a video, you'll be watching it again. It'll auto scroll to the next one. 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's the discovery era. 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.

00:14:50:22 - 00:15:17:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. 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 guide.

00:15:17:21 - 00:15:29:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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.

00:15:29:15 - 00:15:55:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Hey, real fast. Don't click away. Listen, a couple of months ago, I was running a conference at my church, and I decided that I wanted to see if, while I was in the throes of the busiest week on my calendar to date in the year of 2025, if my seasonal social media pack could have what it takes to actually carry me through and not make it more labor intensive for me to actually keep social media running, but to make it easier on me.

00:15:55:14 - 00:16:26:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here, here's what I found out. 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.

00:16:26:20 - 00:16:43:22
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. 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.

00:16:43:22 - 00:16:47:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But mine will at least keep you moving in the right direction.

00:16:47:27 - 00:17:12:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that's the big picture. That's the strategy. That's the philosophy. Now let's move in here to act four. This is how to do it. It's going to be gear guides and microphone guides and links. And this is going to get a little bit a little bit down in the weeds if you already know those things, softwares and gear and phones and what you need, I'll encourage you to skip past that over to act number five, which is where hybrid ministry can actually take you in the vision layer.

00:17:12:19 - 00:17:45:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you take my seasonal summer social media pack, which is less than $20, and you download it, you'll realize that as I'm hoping to help youth pastors create custom content that it's going to require at some points in time, a microphone. And what I want to do in this video is I want to show you all of the different array of options that you can use all the way from like budget microphones to the most expensive Cadillac style microphones to these mid tier podcast, but really cool and vibey looking microphones that your students are going to love.

00:17:45:16 - 00:18:08:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because in this episode, we're going to answer the question which mics you use for the content that you're creating in your youth ministry? Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. You and I haven't had a chance to meet yet. My name is Nick Klassen, and we're gonna explore microphones and they're really important because actually, right now, this exact audio is coming.

00:18:08:27 - 00:18:37:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Me talking directly to my camera on the other side of the room. You can see that so far, of all the audios you heard is the worst style of audio. And we're going to go through budget options as well as all the way up to the most expensive style of options. And you'll notice if you follow my hybrid ministry social media recommendations, that it's going to require you filming some of your own custom content, and that's going to require you to want to have a microphone, because this audio right here is just not doing it.

00:18:37:16 - 00:19:06:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So first we're going to look at budget audio. This is my budget audio recommendation. It's one of these Bluetooth style microphones. They are really cheap. They clip on. They are wireless which is nice. And they plug directly in to your phone. You can get these for less than $10. And at a minimum, what this does is the requirement for decent microphone audio is you just want to isolate the audio source away from the video source.

00:19:06:10 - 00:19:33:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now this one records directly into the actual video files. So you you like your video and your audio will be immediately linked up, which is good news. But I would say this one here, we're going to call this like the student ministry volunteer microphones. So this one right here is actually one of my newest recommendations. It's the Rode Wireless go to not because I've been against it, but because it's just brand new.

00:19:33:24 - 00:19:59:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I just got it and so right now I'm actually talking direct into my cell phone camera. And right now I'm talking direct into my Sony ZV one camera, which that, camera is actually also linked down below in the link included in the description. I will call this one like the church intern of microphones, but it's a church intern that actually reads commentaries.

00:20:00:00 - 00:20:24:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This pro level microphone is the Sennheiser lavalier system. It is the senior pastor of microphones. It's buttoned up, it's expensive, it's intimidating, and it's very, very serious about what the job needs to be. It is wireless. So you see, I have a pack that I have right here in my pocket. And this wire that's just like clipped on.

00:20:24:12 - 00:20:48:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Then here through my shirt. And then I have a receiver over there on my focus. Right. So this one does require an audio interface and it's not recording directly onto any of the video. So you need to record this separately. You can use something like GarageBand or we use like Adobe Audition. But then you have to link this audio up with the audio from the camera.

00:20:48:07 - 00:21:13:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This microphone right here is the Sennheiser M-k 600. I would call this one if the last one was the senior pastor of microphones. This one is the executive pastor of microphones. It you know, it knows where to aim. And it's going to hit every single time. But you also better know what you're doing. So the pros and cons of this are you do not need pro as you don't need a wireless interface.

00:21:13:25 - 00:21:35:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I am plugged directly into my Sony camera. A can of course, is you will probably need some sort of adapter as this goes through an audio like one eighth cable inch headphone jack. And so you're going to need some sort of adapter, probably a microphone to usb-C or to lightning to go directly into your phone. The other con, of course, is it's wired okay.

00:21:35:18 - 00:21:53:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so like you're going to need, to have like an XLR cable. It's like what you would use for your worship, music or worship department. But you can see some of the pros of it. We'll use this a lot. We've used this almost exclusively, on our man on the Street videos. And so we've bought this, like, microphone flag with, like, our church branded logo in it.

00:21:53:22 - 00:22:14:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's also battery powered with just double A batteries. And so that's easier than trying to remember to plug in something that's like, usb-C or like rechargeable in that way. And here we are back where we started. And these right here are the, podcast style microphones. There's once again, a link down below in the show notes. You can check these out.

00:22:14:29 - 00:22:39:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
These microphones are kind of like the youth pastor of microphones. They are professional. They're paid. They're full time. Hopefully you're full time and they're cool looking or like try hard, cool looking. Maybe you're giving it too much. But the fact of the matter is, these much, much to the opposite of the shotgun microphones before I catch almost zero sound bleed.

00:22:39:02 - 00:22:58:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so for most of our like, we do drafts and we do seven questions here in this room for most of these videos, these microphones do a fantastic job of picking up the audio of the students that are talking directly into it. Not to mention it cuts out some of the exterior wall noise that we were talking about in the last section and in the last clip.

00:22:58:17 - 00:23:17:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The cons of these, however, are they once again, they're XLR, so you are going to need like a music microphone. And oftentimes we use two of these. So you're going to need at least a two channel audio interface. We use the focus rate. Scarlett. I et you can check that out once again. Link down below for that in the show notes.

00:23:17:16 - 00:23:34:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The con of that of course, is that is going to be an upgraded and an additional cost. And so you'll just have to figure out between this one or the Bluetooth wireless or the Rode Go Wireless two, or the condenser microphone or the lavalier microphone. What microphone is best for you?

00:23:35:00 - 00:23:54:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. What about software? If everything that we're promoting you to do is short form, vertical based video, then, you know you're going to have to use and utilize some software. So this isn't a best of clip. This is actually brand new. And, as you're looking here on screen, you might be wondering where these came from.

00:23:54:21 - 00:24:28:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is from my youth ministry leader cohort, that I'm leading deep dive. These are my, suggestions. So the top tier of suggestions are the Adobe Creative Suite, which includes Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, and DaVinci resolve. And those are listed in order of probably, power as well as price. I will put all three of these on the same plane, though, like, you can pretty much do everything in Final Cut or Da Vinci that you would also do in the Adobe Creative Cloud.

00:24:28:21 - 00:24:51:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so depending on where you're at budget wise, these are the ones that I would recommend. If you have an appetite to learn something that's a little bit more professional and a little bit more powerful, but moving on to the next tier are three different options. I have cap cut, I have in-app editors, and then I have just, the run of the mill iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.

00:24:51:06 - 00:25:09:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So cap cut, of course, there's a web app and there's also an app for your phone. You can use either of them. And there is a pro version, so you can upgrade a little bit to pay if I'm doing something just quick and short. My favorite editor is either the Instagram Reels, but my real favorite editor is the TikTok editor and then TikTok.

00:25:09:15 - 00:25:28:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When you save it, it auto saves a copy of it to your camera roll unless you turn that off in the settings. And so if you're posting to, say, Instagram or YouTube, you go to TikTok first, you edit whatever you want to edit, put whatever captions on you want to put on, and then you post it. And then if you go to the other apps after that, it'll be sitting there in your camera roll.

00:25:29:01 - 00:25:47:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, iMovie or Windows Movie Maker is probably the bottom of the barrel, but it's also probably free for whatever machine you have, whether you're a mac or windows user. Let me also say another thing. If you have some sort of long form version of your clip, a live stream, or you sit down ahead of time, film, direct camera, opus clip.

00:25:47:20 - 00:26:10:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you look here, you'll see on my feed all of these ones that are circle, this is my student ministries feed. All of these ones that are circled were all edited by opus clip. I post three of them per week. And so in the seasonal social media pack I recommend a devotional clip. But if you have some sort of long form version of your message that you can upload into a service like opus clip, and if you just scan this QR code that you see here on screen, you can go check out Opus Clip.

00:26:10:20 - 00:26:25:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's free for a while, and then you have a certain number of credits, and when it runs out, then it's an upgrade for about 100 and something dollars per year. And, I've never run out of credits in opus clip and we even share it with another ministry in our church, and we still have enough credits for opus clip.

00:26:25:29 - 00:26:38:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, that's something that really can help. If you have a long form version of something. If not, then I just recommend you doing a devotional, on your phone, editing it in something like Cap Cut or TikTok and then posting it everywhere.

00:26:38:16 - 00:26:56:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
man, on the street transition style videos, drafts, seven questions. Any given night you come into our youth ministry, we're doing one of those four things. Let me just tell you, like once we started walking around with the camera, especially for like man on the street or like transition style videos, the kids came out of the woodwork in their interest level for it.

00:26:56:23 - 00:27:21:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We have seven, I want to say different like serving teams for students. We have welcome team. We have cafe, we have tech team. We have social team, we have photography. We have worship. Maybe that's it. Oh, no. And then we have our table leaders. That's probably like our highest, spiritual bar of of role. The team that people want to be on the most is the social team.

00:27:21:10 - 00:27:44:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we have, like, increased our engagement around student serving because the social team exists. But the real, in my opinion, this role right here, this next role, this is really like the role that has changed everything for me. It's the student editor. So I post ten pieces of content per week. And this is a genuine, real, true, authentic statement.

00:27:44:27 - 00:28:09:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I don't edit any of it. I'm going to include a checklist for you of roles, of things to do, of what to film all of that. That's over on my Patreon. Once again, that will come with a nominal fee because Patreon doesn't let me give it away for free. However, if you are a hybrid hero, you get that checklist that cost you $0 included in your $4 per month membership Hybrid Heroes tier.

00:28:09:22 - 00:28:30:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. Now we're going to jump into the vision layer. So you start kind of dialing in social media. Where can this go. Maybe it's pre-recording your messages and creating a library of content on YouTube. Maybe it's creating YouTube playlist courses, maybe it's a weekly podcast and you're using things like Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube. What could this take you?

00:28:30:23 - 00:28:38:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What vision do you have for some of this? Let's dive in and check out some of this vision piece. Content.

00:28:38:07 - 00:29:14:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
From the most conservative parents in your church who would never even imagine letting their kids enter the World Wide Web to all the way to the least restrictive parents who gave their kids a phone and let them have wild access to the internet. YouTube is a great strategy and a great platform for students and school ministry. But if you're anything like me and you work at a church, you look around your youth and you compare it to the auditorium or the main church home that the rest of us or the rest of your, you know, big church is using where your pastor's preaching on Sunday morning and you probably look and think, man, I don't

00:29:14:02 - 00:29:55:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
have the gear to capture my services and post them on YouTube. And the answer to that is probably unequivocally, 100% accurate. You'll plan your curriculum and then you'll write out your teaching, and then you'll sit down and you'll deliver the message direct to camera, all because you told your time what was going to happen to it. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't counsel students and meet with the senior pastor and plan for your Wednesday night, but if pre filming your messages, if getting the message of Jesus and the message of hope out on the internet, on YouTube is important to you, then you need to determine when you're going to place that, that

00:29:55:19 - 00:30:20:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
thing on your calendar to do. Does teaching is it required in mandated to be in person? So anything that you might be tempted to turn into a class or a meeting or a workshop or a meet up or an after church, like pizza with the pastor sort of thing. Any one of those that isn't like, relationally charged, I believe.

00:30:20:13 - 00:30:34:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And even if they are relationally church, we can pivot and reposition the way that we're doing it so that it can be included in a YouTube playlist. However, playlists are basically like free courses on YouTube's platform.

00:30:35:01 - 00:30:55:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Listen, are you overwhelmed yet? Because it can be overwhelming. It's deep. And just like you have to be, organizational person and administrator, an executive pastor, a shepherd. Now, you're also being asked to be a social media manager. And that's the thing. That's why I have four different tiers of ways that I can help you. Number one, just grab my free e-book.

00:30:55:05 - 00:31:21:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can also check out the seasonal social media pack, for the the three months. Or you can do for the whole year or coaching where I help walk you through it and how to implement some of these things. Or you can just reach out to me directly for coaching and communications done for you. But without any further ado, let's check out the last little bit here of the final, what this could look like and where this could take you in your church and in your ministry.

00:31:21:19 - 00:31:40:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Can grab my free e-book, but if you get in there and you're like, I don't know what's best for us, and we'll let you know about some custom coaching that I have to offer. My custom coaching is four sessions long. $50 per session will be $200 out of your overall budget, which is absolutely pennies in the in the drop in the bucket in an overall church size budget.

00:31:41:00 - 00:32:02:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But if you know, even that is too much, reach out. We can make something work. But the reason that custom coaching is important is because every context is different. I can tell you what I'm doing here in DFW, Dallas-Fort worth area, to reach, in my context, Gen Z or young, you know, basically almost done with Gen Z to Gen Alpha.

00:32:02:07 - 00:32:29:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But and that might be helpful because if you're managing church social media for an overall church, like, well, we're doing is very going to be very cutting edge for, you know, like older Gen Z and even like millennials. But every church and every context and every geographical area is a little bit different. I was recently, coaching another guy and, my typical like strategy, I changed it and tweaked it a little bit for him because he was doing things just a little bit differently.

00:32:29:04 - 00:32:46:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
His context was a little bit different, and his role was a little bit unique compared to what I typically would tell people to do. And so even I was, you know, thinking through and adjusting my model. And so it's important because everyone in every place is different. And then the final piece is this is like, as I say, all of this.

00:32:46:12 - 00:33:01:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And there's, you know, maybe a minute ago you gave me that sub because you were like, dude, there's just too much to do. And even with some custom coaching, there's still going to be a lot on your plate. You're 100% right. There is are still a lot of work to do, which is what I want to offer to, to some of you.

00:33:01:22 - 00:33:25:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Might be worth it. Budget wise, communications done for you. It's a service that I offer, and I will run your website. Or I will do graphics and video, or I will run your YouTube and social media. Each of those different buckets and categories is a different price point. Or you can bundle them all together for a different price point link down below to inquire about that.

00:33:25:09 - 00:33:45:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But let me just tell you that it is a 10th of the cost of a full time staff person. If you were to hire me and contract me to do communications for you and for your church and for your ministry, because there's so much on your plate and you just you, you want it, but you don't have the time or bandwidth or desire maybe even to learn it.

00:33:45:19 - 00:34:01:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I understand that. And at some point it's just worth it, you know, to just get it off of your plate. And if that you're in that zone and you don't want the coaching, you don't want to learn via the e-book, then great. Then check out what I have to offer communications for you. I will do things like inspect your website.

00:34:01:10 - 00:34:41:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I will optimize your search engine optimization. I will make your website as visitor friendly as possible. If you want to go in the graphics route, I can do graphic design for you. I can do series and events and pre screen and print graphics and all those types of things. Get those pesky jobs off of your plate. And if you want to optimize your church social media, live stream or YouTube prefilled messages, we can, do thumbnails, we can title the video, we can optimize the tags for search engine optimization, create chapters so that people can jump around in your videos, create playlists and online courses, and also create post shorts for your social media.

00:34:41:27 - 00:35:02:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Whatever works best and whatever you want done for you. All of it is linked down below in the description or in the show notes. I'd love to have you check those things out, but again, I appreciate you being here. And listen. It is the future of the church is online. It's not only online, but are you. A wide portion of it is.

00:35:02:22 - 00:35:26:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the fact is, the more capacity and bandwidth that you have to take it there, the more effective I believe you will be to maximize your reach and your influence to continue to pursue reaching people for Jesus, continue to pursue the call and the assignment in which God has placed you, particularly right now in this season. And don't forget, and as always, stay hybrid.

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
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/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

//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 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

--------------
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

--------------
🕰️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

--------------
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

--------------
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 175: The Calendar that Rules Them All! [Most Skip Step 1!]

Nick Clason — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:00:00 -0600

Struggling with youth ministry planning, church communications, or ministry calendars? In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast, learn the 5 levels to create the ultimate Youth Ministry Calendar that rules them all! Most skip Level 1—but stick around for the one strategy that fixes all your communication issues and grabs parents’ attention with tips, visuals, and free downloadable designs.

FREE CALENDAR TEMPLATE
https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-spring-141564188?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

🍂 FALL SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/fall-seasonal-137477671?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

🦸 HYBRID HEROES GET THE PACK FOR FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/175

Custom Curated Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaK80OxdNPbfrvTH_6cML8VB

Nucleus
https://www.nucleus.church

//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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 At a Glance Calendars
00:44 Level 1 - Most Miss!
02:51 Level 2 - FREE Download
05:27 Level 3
06:58 Level 4 - An All Time Idea!
08:10 Level 5 - THIS RULES THEM ALL

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:07 - 00:00:24:17
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:34:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Have you been doing your planning and creation of your youth ministry calendars all wrong this whole time? Well, in today's episode, I'm going to share with you the five levels to create a solid youth ministry calendar, the one that will rule them all. While most don't make it past level one, you should stick around to the end of the video and see the whole thing because I reveal at the end the one trick that I've started adding to all of my calendars that it solves the communication problem once and for all.

00:00:34:16 - 00:01:06:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Oh, and plus there's a free calendar link down below in the YouTube video or the podcast description. Welcome everyone to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am your host, Nicolas, and excited to be with you. As we're talking through the five levels of a youth ministry calendar creation. And the reason we're doing this because we're actually, and we actually are and have been in a playlist where we've been discussing different questions that I have come across on different youth pastor Facebook groups.

00:01:06:25 - 00:01:30:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And today, this one, I have, a question that says, hey everyone, I'm looking for examples of an at a glance calendar that highlight your major annual events. Pictures, please. You don't need to include spontaneous or smaller events, just the main ones that plan each year. And so we're going to be looking at what I have been passing out historically, and how we've tried to not only solve the communication problem, but it also helps with our, our visitors and all that sort of thing.

00:01:30:17 - 00:01:51:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So actually, there's a carefully curated playlist with all of those elements, calendar discussions and a welcome box that we have and communication issues linked right here. Tap the video. Go ahead and check it out on YouTube. But step number one is you need to have and this is the one that most skipped. But you need to have a reputable website okay.

00:01:51:28 - 00:02:17:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because if you want a quote as this question says an at a glance calendar, then you need to have a website that is actually up to date that when people don't have the information that they need from your calendar, they know where they can go and what they should do. In fact, everyone in our student ministry knows and understands that like the calendar doesn't exist with this this piece of literature that they're bringing home.

00:02:17:08 - 00:02:43:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is, again, as the question as this is high level, this is simply highlights. This isn't every single thing. I've seen calendars designed with every single thing, the entire calendar for the year. But like that, that is not what we pass out. And I'm going to share multiple different reasons why. But one of the reasons is because our website handles a lot of the rest of the stuff that is going to be needed in order to communicate that.

00:02:43:05 - 00:03:04:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you need to make sure that you have a website that's actually like navigate. Well, that's decent. It's a decent guest experience and it's up to date. The second thing is you want something that's designed well. If you look at the one here on screen, this is one that we, are giving away. Link down below. The templated, the blank version.

00:03:05:01 - 00:03:29:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is within our church's approved brand color palette and guides. So like, these are the student ministry colors within our church's color palette. So that's the first step of it. The second thing is like when I'm designing it, I typically choose a font or two that are like our fonts for the year. And then I'm just gonna be honest, like, icons are fun, but like, emojis are great.

00:03:29:13 - 00:03:50:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I try to just like link an emoji to some of the different events that we have. And that does a great job for it. The other thing is, like you see off to the side, here's like I also try to create some sort of icon that goes with like this season. So for fall we've done like coffee cups or we've done football helmets for the summer, we've done suns.

00:03:50:09 - 00:04:11:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we, you know, in the spring we've done flowers. And so it gets tricky, especially if you're trying to do different ones and you're like doing them year over year. But you'll see the one linked right here. And you can go ahead and get the templated version link down below in the description. But you want your design to be something that, like, feels a little bit familiar but doesn't feel identical because you don't want them to think I've already got this.

00:04:11:18 - 00:04:28:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like they need to understand, like, no, this is a new one. Hey, quick break. Let me ask you a question. Are you still waking up every day? Is youth pastor scrambling to figure out what you need to post on your social media? Blurry dodgeball. Pick a video that your leader sent you that's a little bit pixelated, because iPhone still hasn't updated fully to RCS yet.

00:04:28:15 - 00:04:50:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You see, you don't need that kind of stress this fall. That's why I created these the fall seasonal social media pack for youth pastors. It is three months worth of done for you content done for you, paired with some customization so that you and your leaders and your students are the faces and the personalities on your student ministry Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts feed.

00:04:50:29 - 00:05:10:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So here's the thing. You can grab my pack right now over on Patreon. And did you know that monthly hybrid here? A Patreon members who only pay $4 per month and get a bonus podcast? They get this pack completely for free. So if you do the math for three months worth of social media content, it's only $12 where the pack is 1799.

00:05:10:25 - 00:05:37:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Either way, it is a steal for you and it will take away the stress of posting. And you can grab that pack right now and start becoming a master at social media and hybrid ministry. In your youth ministry context, rooting for you as you are crushing it this fall in your student ministry. And another major thing that you're going to want to do here, which is level three, is you only want to include events that you, particularly and specifically choose.

00:05:37:27 - 00:06:00:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And want to highlight. You don't want to put every single thing on your calendar. No, no, you want things that you only want at a high level. And so the way to make it visually appealing, in my opinion, and in my book, and to make it small and concise, is to not overwhelm it with information, but to only make it things that are noteworthy for families to know.

00:06:00:21 - 00:06:23:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For example, we a lot of times say we meet every single Sunday. We meet every single Wednesday. However, these are ones you want to know about, and these are also ones that you want to know that we're not meeting because we meet every single week. But these in particular take note. We are not meeting. Additionally, and especially as it pertains to our spring calendar, we will post things about our, about our like winter weekend.

00:06:23:26 - 00:06:44:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we'll also post, say, the dates for our summer camp communications already gone out for that. By the time this calendar gets in the hands of our students mid-year and like December. But this one is important that it just, you know, it gets on there because it's actually going to happen during this cycle, which I should say, for context, we produce three calendars per year.

00:06:44:09 - 00:07:05:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We produce a fall one, we produce a spring one, and then we also produce a summer one. And so in light of that, we're pumping out calendars three different times per year to get into the hands of students. The fourth level, and this I think, is, one of them, the most impressive, like, decisions that I ever stumbled into.

00:07:05:20 - 00:07:24:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I honestly can't even tell you how I stumbled into it. And I would say that this is the key. However, level five, is a new one that we've recently unlocked, and I think it's even better. But number four is we make this design and then we print this using like sticker mule. We print this on a magnet.

00:07:24:25 - 00:07:43:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Here's the psychology. Here's my thought behind it. Right. Everyone passes out a calendar for the year. There's the sports calendar. There's the academic calendar. And in a lot of cases, there's the youth group calendar. But what I want and maybe this is just my competitiveness, but like I want my calendar to be the thing holding on other calendars.

00:07:43:07 - 00:08:05:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. Like if you got your sports calendar, I want the youth calendar to be the thing that is keeping the sports calendar affixed to the fridge. That puts us on top of it. And they're probably going to choose sports over student ministry. But I just like to think in my own head, like, think about all of these calendars that are on magnets, that are on people's fridges, that are at the top of line, top of sight.

00:08:05:03 - 00:08:33:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And hopefully they're seeing, and remembering and keeping us again, top of mind. The fifth and final level, which I think is like the ultimate is, you'll see here. And you've probably noticed that we actually and this is helpful because of our website, we build our website and our calendar on our website, on the provider of, of nucleus, and on nucleus, what you can do is you can link in a dot ICS, which is an iCal calendar extension.

00:08:33:21 - 00:08:48:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's all you put in like your phone. But it's also like a shareable option out of like even a Google calendar. So we create just like a Google Calendar, we keep the Google Calendar up to date. That auto populates to our website, right? Which is like again, and I said, like, you want to make sure that your, your website is up to date.

00:08:48:27 - 00:09:09:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if people land on your website, that's information is not on your your big calendar, your highlight calendar, your magnet calendar that they do end up on your website, they're able to obtain the information that they need and that they're looking for. But then we've created a QR code where they can simply subscribe to the calendar in their phones.

00:09:09:07 - 00:09:32:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so this is, in my opinion, the penultimate, because this makes these, at a glance calendars great, but not the most crucial thing. I think a lot of youth pastors treat this calendars the most crucial thing. But what happens when students don't have access to it? What happens when they lose it? What happens when you give it to them and they accidentally set it down before they get it into the hands of their parents?

00:09:32:18 - 00:09:56:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If a parent can subscribe to our calendar, then they will never miss an event. They'll never miss an update. It will be populated onto the very device and onto the very app that they use to manage and control their entire life. Their calendar app. And what a better place than for your youth ministry and your church calendar to be on parents phones and on students phones.

00:09:56:22 - 00:10:18:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so put a QR code, put some sort of link where they can go and they can subscribe to the events. And so all of the events are exactly where they're supposed to be and where you ultimately want them to be at the end of the day, remember, the goal of this is communication so that people know what's going on and that they then also hopefully choose to attend your church and your event in your youth group.

00:10:18:04 - 00:10:39:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The the goal and this is not a beautiful calendar. Hopefully we can help you create one. And once again link down below free in the in the podcast or YouTube description. But the goal is communication at its core. And so that fifth and final layer adding adding a QR code so that people and parents can, subscribe to your church and your youth ministry calendar.

00:10:40:01 - 00:10:54:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Such a game changer. Well, hey everyone, the next episode is linked right here on the screen as well as the subscribe button. If you found this episode helpful, a payment for this free calendar would be amazing. A like a subscribe and share it with a friend. But until next time. And as always, don't forget. Stay hybrid.

Episode 164: 🚀 Fall Social Media Pack: Stop Guessing. Start Posting.

Nick Clason — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:00:00 -0500

Struggling to keep up with youth ministry social media this fall? In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, Nick Clason unveils the Fall Social Media Pack—a done-for-you, but also fully customizable content calendar built to align with your fall kickoff event, guest strategy, YouTube channel, and in-person ministry, saving you hours every week. Learn how to post your way to better engagement on Instagram, TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts, while bridging the gap between digital discipleship and real-life impact in your church!

🍂 FALL SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/fall-seasonal-137477671?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

🍩 "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

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/164

*🦸 HYBRID HEROS GET THE PACK FOR FREE! *
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

FALL MASTERCLASS PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fsa_fgbYCE&list=PLngXlSr64YaLfP12NPWmpBzXoCcEsAyBF

COLEADER CURRICULUM
(Use code HybridMinistry10 for 10% off)
https://www.coleader.co

✅ CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU
Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

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

📋 "PICK NICK'S BRAIN" Coaching Call
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching

//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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Fall is here!
00:14 Time to Finish Strong
03:38 Unboxing the Fall Social Pack
08:58 How to Build your Social Media to Actually last!

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:34:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Fall is here. So stop scrambling to post every single Wednesday on your social media because I've already built your social media plan. Just copy paste it. Post it. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. Welcome, everyone, to the Hybrid Ministry show. And today it's finally here. It is launch day this fall. Seasonal social media packs, similar to the summer one that I had running all summer long, is exactly what you need for your youth ministry social media.

00:00:34:03 - 00:01:00:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It is a blend of custom and done for you, content that you can pair together and best of all. If you've been following along in this fall, a masterclass for your kickoff event. If you did The World's Greatest Donut, if you did the bracket, then students are now locked into your social media. That entire playlist is linked right here at the top of the screen or in the show notes down below if you're listening on your podcast.

00:01:00:16 - 00:01:35:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if your students are locked in to your social media now because they've been voting and discovering and determining what the world's greatest donut is in your context and in your student ministry, well, then, now you want to continue to to lean in to what's going on on your social media and like, don't forget that. Like if you also used our welcome box strategy and our magnetic calendar and like they open that box and they scan that QR code in there on your YouTube channel, like students are seeing your content on their algorithm.

00:01:35:01 - 00:01:55:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so therefore you need to keep feeding that algorithm. Unfortunately for social media, you have to continue to keep feeding it in order for it to like be successful. But fortunately for you, I have just created a seasonal three months worth of content so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. All you got to do is download this pack.

00:01:55:22 - 00:02:14:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's less than $20 or better yet, become a Patreon member for $4 a month, which, if you add that up for three months, is $12 and you get the pack for free as a part of your membership and bonus podcast every single Monday morning, you can use that to continue to add to your feed while you're doing that.

00:02:14:13 - 00:02:34:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the social media pack is taking care of it over here. You get to go over here and deal with all the things that you have to do for fall. You have to start locking in your curriculum, which I would recommend co-leader, by the way, and you can use hybrid ministry ten for 10% off that, or you have to like build your calendar, you have to build your budget, you have to recruit new volunteers.

00:02:34:08 - 00:02:58:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, you know, like, you got this thing over here that's gnawing at you. You know, you should do it. You know, it's important. Maybe you don't, but, like, trust me, it's important. And so my pack will help take care of that. It will give you content that you can continue to post and keep that thing active. And the best thing is that when you typically download a pack, it's not very custom to you and your ministry, right?

00:02:58:07 - 00:03:23:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When you download a pack, more often than not it's a bunch of like static and stock graphics, and we have a few of the like done for you that like, isn't tied to your context or your ministry at all. But we also have a whole section where it will be you or your students or your volunteers, your faces that people know, love and will recognize and that will help make your social media feed feel custom and personal, which is the entire goal.

00:03:23:12 - 00:03:54:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So without any further ado, what I want to do is I want to unbox this a little bit. And so in the next section, let's look at what is included. If you choose to, jump into the full seasonal social media pack. So if you are watching here on YouTube, you are seeing my screen. And so if you download the, fall seasonal social media pack from Patreon, you are going to get a folder that looks like this.

00:03:54:23 - 00:04:16:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so it says start here Hybrid Strategy Guide and then custom for you and then done for you. So in the start here PDF, it just explains what's going on with the seasonal social media pack three months of custom fall related youth ministry, social media. Just as a reminder, Patreon members for four hours a month, you get this package included in your membership.

00:04:16:27 - 00:04:41:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So consider signing up that now up to $48 a year, and you'll get four seasonal social media packs along with a bonus podcast every single Monday morning. But like I said, it's completely either done for you. It's either a section of done for You, which is just download, plug and play or custom for you. It's got some recommendations here of like maybe some microphones that you might want to consider investing in.

00:04:41:12 - 00:04:59:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like this one right here, for example, I just want to point out like this one, I mean, like, oh, here we go. Opened up. This one is 789. So like, it really is very, very like affordable and very, very cheap. Obviously it's not going to be incredibly, you know, high quality, but it will still get the job done.

00:04:59:22 - 00:05:19:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then right here, is your recommended posts per week. Okay. And so you look here, it's like September 1st and you got like your spiritual practice posts, your emoji posts, your Bible trivia posts. Okay. Or if you want to build your own calendar, you can do it down here, in this blank section of the schedule.

00:05:19:29 - 00:05:45:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Furthermore, this right here explains kind of like the strategy that I'm attempting to get you to, to participate in. So, like, why social media? Why vertical video, and all these things. This actually is available as one of the member downloads from but a year ago over on Download Youth Ministry. But I'm just including it here so that you can kind of like see and understand like the strategy and like and what I'm saying here.

00:05:45:11 - 00:06:12:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then let's look at the Dunphy section first. There are five Bible verse real videos. So, here's, you know, a bunch of different, like, verses you can post those super quick, super easy. Here's some like emoji, back to school, kind of like guessing themed, ones that you can post super again, super quick, super easy. Here are some spiritual practice videos Bible memorization, study praise.

00:06:12:27 - 00:06:33:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, share. You know, pray for a friend. And then, take the next 60s to sit in silence. And then finally, these are like some curso based videos. So, like, what do you do if you're feeling lonely? What do you do if you're feeling sad? And what do you do if you're feeling insecure? So like, those are all very simple.

00:06:33:19 - 00:06:57:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I said, download done for you. And then over here, these are the custom ones. Right? So every single one of the custom folders gives you some instructions how to do it, what to do. These are some Bible trivia, questions. So it's got five different rounds of five different posts that you can do Bible trivia. You can either hop on screen and do it, or better yet, hand it to a student and let them do it.

00:06:57:15 - 00:07:15:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then I also give you some graphics that you can use, to just overlay it, and you can build that in like a cap cut editor or a TikTok editor. And once again, have your students do it. Here are some, like recap or like devotional type videos. They're like, you're going to be your spiritually charged pieces of content.

00:07:16:01 - 00:07:32:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again, you can hop on camera or you can hit to student and all of these, right? I have five script ideas right here that you can use. And it's got editing notes and all the things like that. If you have like a long form version of your message, you can use link in the description, something like an opus stock pro, to clip that up.

00:07:32:28 - 00:07:50:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can also just post that and then kind of like skip this little, folder section altogether. These are some men on the street. Would you rather fall based questions? So here's again some instructions on how to do it, what those are. And I created overlays. So all you gotta do is just go around, ask a handful of students using one of those microphones that you bought.

00:07:50:11 - 00:08:10:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Would you rather wear an itchy sweater or continually have leaves in your pocket? Would you rather be lost in a corn maze or smashed your perfectly carved pumpkin? Would you rather have, to eat leftovers for a month or risk every lawn in your neighborhood? Right. And so you see how like, those, those are great. And then finally, here are some transition invites, our videos.

00:08:10:07 - 00:08:39:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I give you the beginning of a video and then you overlay that right here and like, boom, you have one of your students pop in and, they say, hey, you should come to youth group, like, Wednesday night. What time? All that type of stuff. And I give you five of those. And so these all are the custom sections of your, of your social media strategy because a, a completely done for you is going to rob your social media feed of you.

00:08:39:22 - 00:08:59:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I don't want to do that. And so this is about as easy as we can make it so that like it still has you in it, but it's still also like not that much work. You can clear this bar. And like I said, we can get your students up to speed on this, which is what we're going to talk about in the next section of the video.

00:08:59:20 - 00:09:39:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So remember, while we're trying to increase social media engagement on your feed, the ultimate goal in all of this is not just social media engagement, but hopefully life change in the in the life of your teenagers and of your students. And so hopefully, the more that they engage with you on social, it's also going to mean the more that they're going to engage with you in person, which is really like the impetus for this entire hybrid strategy online, which is where a lot of students are spending their time and their lives paired with your in-person moment, so that together you can create a solid hybrid environment, one that, like your students, they're they're stepping back

00:09:39:21 - 00:10:09:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and forth in between those two worlds constantly. They live in that sweet spot called hybrid. And this social pact helps bridge that gap between those two different, sometimes seemingly opposing sides of the ministry aisle. And so I want to encourage you to continue to lean into it. And best yet, the best way that I have discovered to keep this ongoing, sustainable strategy, because I want to point out, I'm encouraging you to post three times per week.

00:10:09:11 - 00:10:41:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In my context, we post ten times per week. The only way that I'm getting ten posts done per week is by creating and leaning into a fully student run, an LED social media team, and I am going to detail and outline every single step of that in the very next episode, so that you can build that for yourself so that you can pass that off and you can teach your students very simply how to become influencers in their faith, not just online, but in their faith.

00:10:41:23 - 00:10:55:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That episode is going to be the link to right here on screen. Go ahead and tap that. Head over to that video and we will see you in episode 165 for building your own social team. But until next time, and as always, my friends, do not forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 157: What’s Better for Ministry? Done-for-You or Custom Social Media

Nick Clason — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Nick Clason breaks down the battle between Done-for-You and custom church social media—and why your ministry might need both. Discover how a hybrid ministry strategy saves time and amplifies your church’s voice. This episode unpacks it all and points you to the ☀️SUMMER Social Pack—the perfect combo of polish and personalization.

☀️ SUMMER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry/shop/summer-seasonal-social-media-1540452?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=productshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

*🦸 HYBRID HEROS GET THE PACK FOR FREE! *
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/157

✅ CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU
Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

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

📋 "PICK NICK'S BRAIN" Coaching Call
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching

//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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Done vs Custom Social Media
00:19 The Tension Filled Debate
00:51 Custom - Pros & Cons
03:39 Done for You - Pros & Cons

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;04 - 00;00;29;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's settle the debate that has been splitting up church staff rooms for years. No, I'm not talking about oat milk or regular milk in your lattes. I'm talking about done for you. Social media versus custom social media. Let's check it out. So let's break it down. DIY or custom social media is just simply better. Like, it's like eating organic.

00;00;29;18 - 00;00;55;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, you know, it's better. You know, it's good for you. You know, it's what you should do. However, as you also probably know, it takes so much longer. And that's what leads us to then pivot back into the done for you. Because it's simple. It's easy and it's done for you. So let's break these two things down. So what are the pros of doing a custom social media?

00;00;55;10 - 00;01;29;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
One with your name, your face, your personality? Well, the first thing is obviously it's tailored for your people. It can be tailored for your people because you're their pastor. You know what they like. You know who they are. You know what they need, and so you can create that for them on your social media feed. The other thing, like we talked about in the episode linked right here, is that it showcases your voice through a series of what Hubspot's trends report is calling Micro Connections.

00;01;29;08 - 00;01;50;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Your voice becomes what people kind of gravity hate towards and are used to seeing on your social media. You want your voice and you want your face. And you got to think, if you're a pastor at a church, there's already an element to you, or there's already an element to your church where your people are familiar with your pastor's voice.

00;01;50;12 - 00;02;19;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so why should your social media not continue to be an extension of that online? And then the last piece, of course, is that it has the opportunity to engage authentically. We're like a done for you or like a custom thing for you. Like doesn't quite have that as much as because it's just a bunch of rote, static graphics that were done and can be used on anyone's social feeds, across any church, in any part of the world, or any part of the country.

00;02;19;23 - 00;02;37;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And while the graphics look amazing and maybe even better than what you can pull together, it's not really you. And you don't have the opportunity to then reach through that and engage authentically with your people, which is one of the problems, in my opinion as well, of doing something that is like a done for you, which we'll get to in just a second.

00;02;37;26 - 00;03;02;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, the cons of like a custom social media feeds is it takes hours. And secondly, it also requires skill like you need typically a staff person who knows what they're doing. In my experience, a lot of pastors, a lot of church, ministry people, they don't have that skill or they don't have it yet. And so they don't hop in to learn that skill and therefore they just shy away from it.

00;03;02;17 - 00;03;27;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Which I get, like, we don't like to kind of put ourselves out there into new and sort of like uncharted territory. There is another thing out there that, let's just be honest, like, people feel this pressure to try and compete with every other big church in the country. Like, you can't be elevation and that's okay, right? It's not necessarily a bad thing that your church isn't the biggest, greatest, sleekest, best looking church.

00;03;27;06 - 00;03;50;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like it's okay that you're not. You can't be them. And, no one's expecting that of you. We just want you to be you. So let's move on then, and talk about the pros and the cons of done for you. Done for you is like ordering DoorDash, right? It's convenient, it's simple, it's easy. And best of all, there's no messy dishes to clean up.

00;03;50;11 - 00;04;09;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You get all of the goodness and none of the work that has to go with it. So let's talk about the pros of done for you. First of all, and probably most obvious is that it saves you time. Like, you know, you're busy and this gives you a solution to your busyness to still remain active on social media.

00;04;09;13 - 00;04;42;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Secondly, you you look your feed looks more polished, like you have professional designers and professional graphic artists doing these done for you. Social packs. And so therefore you can lean into their expertise and you can just post their things. And then lastly, it helps you stay consistent because if you take over a fully custom social media strategy, you know that like eventually the week of VBS is going to hit, which is what I'm right in the middle of right now and I'm exhausted.

00;04;42;15 - 00;05;01;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or you got summer camp, or you got a missions trip, and social media falls back to the back burner because you weren't able to stay consistent while you were on social media. So those are some of the pros of having done for you. It saves you time, it looks polished and it helps you stay consistent. But the cons what are some of the cons.

00;05;01;07 - 00;05;22;04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, it's going to feel cookie cutter right. Again, if they can do it for this church and your church, they can do it for a hundred other churches. The other thing is it definitely lacks your church's flavor like it's not your church on social media. It's some graphic designer in a lab who cooked it up hours away. And that's your on now on your church's social feed.

00;05;22;04 - 00;05;41;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like that's not really who you are. You're just borrowing something that someone made somewhere else. And then the last part is like, you gotta be honest. Like you might still have to tweak it a little bit. Like there might still be some things that don't exactly fit your church or your church's culture. And so therefore when you post it, captions whatever.

00;05;41;11 - 00;06;01;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like you have to tweak some of it because it might not fit your exact vibe. What they gave you. And so there's still a little bit of work to do. So let's what's better? Like let's land it once and for all. Let's settle the debate done for you versus custom. What if I told you that you didn't have to choose?

00;06;01;24 - 00;06;27;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah that's right, because I actually made for churches and for youth pastors the summer seasonal social media pact for this exact reason. It helps you stay consistent. It creates a social media posting calendar. Half of the packs are done for you like they're ones that work. They're sleek, they're modern, they look the part and you can just download them and post them and go and not think anything of them.

00;06;27;21 - 00;06;47;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The other half of them are custom for you. So yes, a little bit more work, but I've tried to take the like all of the work that you're going to have to really do out of it. There are scripts. I just read the thing and do it direct into your camera. There are graphics just overlay the graphics. You look like a pro, but it's still you.

00;06;47;23 - 00;07;17;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's still your church. It's still your people on your church, social media feed. All of those things are all in that, like, custom for you. And then I have a posting calendar so you can follow that in an effort to stay consistent. And so that if you do that, you won't fall off the wagon when it becomes a busy week, when it becomes VBS week, when you go off to summer camp, your social media will still have something regularly being posted to it three times per week, which is what what I recommend.

00;07;17;23 - 00;07;39;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you download this pack and post at that rhythm of three times per week, it will get you through the months of June, July and August. And I get it. You're watching this video, this podcast dropped in the middle of July. You can grab it now and cram all in, because coming up in just a couple of weeks is going to be our full social media pack.

00;07;39;01 - 00;08;01;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you didn't know this members to my Patreon who get a bonus weekly podcast already for $4 per month, they get this pack as a part of their membership tier. So join get the bonus podcast where we're talking all things hybrid ministry. We're talking all things creative youth ministry programing. You'll get that delivered to your podcast catcher every single Monday morning without fail.

00;08;01;21 - 00;08;23;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And every single time we drop a seasonal social media pack, it is yours for free and is yours for the taking. I would love to have you check those things out. They are made for you and this is just to hopefully help make your life easier. It really is an entire summer social media hybrid strategy locked and loaded.

00;08;23;06 - 00;08;47;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's what I do in my church every single week, and I just want to help you win in your youth ministry. So skip the burn up. Skip the Canva at 9 p.m. on every single Sunday night, heading on into your week, and grab the best of both worlds with the summer seasonal social media pack. It is linked down below and let your summer get scroll worthy.

00;08;47;25 - 00;08;51;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, don't forget my friends to stay hybrid.

Episode 156: 3 Reels You Can Post This Week Without Filming Anything

Nick Clason — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Need church social media content this week—but don’t want to film a thing? Nick Clason shares 3 ready-to-post reels straight from his ☀️SUMMER Social Pack, built for youth pastors who want freedom and engagement. Discover how hybrid ministry strategy can simplify your posting rhythm and still crush it on Instagram and TikTok—no camera, no editing, no stress.

*🦸 HYBRID HEROS GET THE SOCIAL PACK FOR FREE! *
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/156

✅ CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU
Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

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

📋 "PICK NICK'S BRAIN" Coaching Call
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Let Freedom Ring!
00:46 3 Posts, No Work?
01:29 Reel #1
02:41 Reel #2
03:31 Reel #3
04:30 Why Done For You is Dead

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
No camera,

00:00:01:25 - 00:00:03:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
no editing,

00:00:03:21 - 00:00:05:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
no stress.

00:00:05:01 - 00:00:09:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's be real. Trying to post social media while you're busy

00:00:09:29 - 00:00:17:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
running youth camp, trying to prep a sermon and get that one kid to just eat that one vegetable

00:00:17:28 - 00:00:24:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
can feel like putting out a large campfire with just a small squirt gun. But what if I

00:00:24:14 - 00:00:31:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
told you that this week, even with 4th of July, and even with fireworks and cookouts, and that one student who thinks that

00:00:31:18 - 00:00:34:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
sparklers are lightsabers, that you could post these

00:00:34:28 - 00:00:37:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
three social media posts without

00:00:37:20 - 00:00:40:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
filming a single thing.

00:00:40:05 - 00:00:43:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
No camera, no editing, no stress.

00:00:43:24 - 00:00:59:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's check it out. Since it's the 4th of July week, let's talk freedom. No, not the bald eagle on the motorcycle kind, though. Respect, but freedom from that feeling that you have to perform for the algorithm

00:00:59:00 - 00:01:01:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
just to stay visible.

00:01:01:27 - 00:01:09:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I made this episode for the youth pastor who wants to stay active on social media, but also is interested in sleeping.

00:01:09:22 - 00:01:19:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This week, while fireworks are flying and hot dogs are being cooked on the grill. This is your let freedom ring episode where you get

00:01:19:03 - 00:01:28:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
three reels without any work. Does it sound too good to be true? Well, let's check it out. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00:01:28:09 - 00:01:40:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
First up emoji summer phrases. Emoji phraseology is a game that I've created and that is available for sale over on Download Youth Ministry.

00:01:40:13 - 00:02:00:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the social versions of those are sort of built for like, Instagram Stories. But in my social media pack, I took the stories versions, I put them together, I added an overlay, and I made it more of a guess it before the timer runs out. Style of video. And you'll get five of those in my summer social media pack.

00:02:00:21 - 00:02:04:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The good news is that five of those paired with five of the

00:02:04:05 - 00:02:24:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
others in this video, and five of the third example, is going to help fill out your social media feed. Because here's the thing in the summer social media pack, I've got a stack of these reels, and they're all a part of this section called the done for you section, where you very simply hit download and then hit posts.

00:02:24:22 - 00:02:53:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's like a chill day on July 5th, when everyone's recovering from sugar and sunburns and the deep, existential conversations that took place sparked by the fireworks. It's so easy that you can kick your feet up and you can just watch it perform. Coming in hot at number two are the Spiritual Practice Reel videos. I have these reels that help promote spiritual practice.

00:02:53:11 - 00:03:06:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Once again included in the done for you section of the Summer Social Pack. They're going to encourage your students not only in their faith, but to quite literally engage in spiritual practice

00:03:06:12 - 00:03:20:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
while scrolling through social media. We got things like prayer. We got things like scripture reading. We got things like meditation, and we got things like guided prayer and Bible study, just to name a few.

00:03:20:03 - 00:03:48:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And again, all of them are included in the done for you section. You simply download, you simply post, kick your feet back and watch your students engage on social media. All right, listen, this third idea, it's like so easy. It just might be like feel like cheating because these are really, seriously easy. They're inspirational Bible verses and they always perform.

00:03:48:07 - 00:03:50:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They perform so incredibly well.

00:03:50:06 - 00:04:09:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And again, they're included in the done for you section of the summer social media pack. Now you gotta understand this, right? The Summer pack comes with a fully customizable posting calendar. I've created a grid for you. All you gotta do is insert what you want posted where. So this week

00:04:09:28 - 00:04:11:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
pops up is 4th of July.

00:04:11:20 - 00:04:16:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're off. You're at the beach, you're watching fireworks. You don't want to put the work in. No big deal,

00:04:16:02 - 00:04:37:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I got you. What you do is you decide these are going to be the done for you weeks and plot payment. And you are good to go. But here's a here's the problem right linked up here at the top of the screen I talk about why the done for you social calendars are dead because if everything's done for you, what it does is it erases you.

00:04:37:29 - 00:04:44:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The youth pastor already raises you and your students early, raises your leaders from the equation and your

00:04:44:10 - 00:05:03:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
social media feeds starts to look more stock and less personal and less customizable. You want that customizable element. Why? Because you're the relationship. You're the connection. And that's who students are looking for. And that's who students are finding and building up those micro connections on your social feeds.

00:05:03:20 - 00:05:29:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's why my pack well, I will help you let freedom ring, let you wash your hands and have an easy week. I also have some stuff that's going to require just a little bit of filming on your part, but I've got the scripts, I've got the templates. I tell you exactly how to do and what to do so that you take it and you are the hero on your church's social feed and on your church's social platforms.

00:05:29:10 - 00:05:51:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Listen, I get it. Ministry doesn't stop just because TikTok rolls out a new trend and you're out there, you're celebrating the 4th of July. That's why I made these. The emoji, the spiritual practice. But the verses. But like I said, the honest truth is you can download stock packs from anywhere. So what sets mine apart? Mine is the fact that I also include, well, I have a Dunphy section.

00:05:51:12 - 00:06:25:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I include a custom for you section, and that's my attempt to help you keep your face and your voice and your personality on your church's social media feed, and all of the ones that I've included in this video, plus my custom for you section of the pack, which has Devo videos or, clip up your long form or, some transition invite style videos made on the street, interview questions, all of those just to help you win on social media this summer.

00:06:25:27 - 00:06:41:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And like I said, all of them are included in my summer seasonal social media pack. The link is right here down below. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're on a podcast catcher, go grab that link as well. But here's the fun news if you are a Patreon paid member, not only

00:06:41:26 - 00:06:49:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
do you get the summer social media pack for free, but I also include a free weekly bonus podcast

00:06:49:08 - 00:07:00:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
where I'm evaluating my programing in live time in an effort to continue to remain hybrid and to, turn up the heat on the creativity in our youth ministry programing.

00:07:00:06 - 00:07:23:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's like having your very own programing assistant in your pocket that is all cheaper. You do the three months of of summer, you add those up. That's cheaper than what the social media pack includes. So consider hopping in and being a $4 per month paid member on my Patreon. Listen, if you don't want to post anything this week, link is below.

00:07:23:26 - 00:07:41:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let freedom ring, wash your hands, kick your feet up and have a great room. Have a great week! Oh, and also don't ever give sparklers to middle schoolers ever. Don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 152: This Social Media Post is dead in 2025 - What to do instead

Nick Clason — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:00:00 -0500

The “done-for-you” social media strategy is dead in 2025—and it might be quietly hurting your ministry. HubSpot’s latest report says real impact comes from micro-connections over time, not cookie-cutter content. If you want to win on social this summer without burning out, show up with authenticity, stay consistent, and use tools that amplify your voice—not replace it.

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//HubSpot x Masters in Marketing - 2025 Global Social Media Trends Report
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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Tomatoes & Youth Ministry?
00:46 Social Fluency & Micro-Connections
01:50 Social Fluency Real Time Example
02:14 Do All "Done For You" Products Suck?
03:06 Social Media for Busy Youth Pastors in 2025
05:27 Your Custom Summer Social Media Plan
07:00 Micro Connections - Consistency over Perfection
07:58 Social Media without the Burnout

--------------
TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00:10 - 00:00:24:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Buying a tomato is now an existential crisis. I was reading the recent Global Social Media Trends report put out by HubSpot. Link to that down below in the show notes if you're interested. What does that have to do with you and your youth ministry? It actually has a lot to do with you in your youth ministry, because today we're going to talk about social fluency.

00:00:24:25 - 00:00:50:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What is it? Why does it matter now more than ever, and how churches who are ignoring this are being left behind? Plus, I'm going to show you how you can win at that social media fluency through social media this summer. Even when you're slammed with VBS camps and mission trips. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry. Why is buying a tomato an existential crisis?

00:00:50:01 - 00:01:14:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because there are so many decisions to make. It used to be easy. You wanted a tomato. You walk to the grocery store, you bought the tomato. Now there are so many options. Amy Marino from HubSpot nailed it. She says social fluency is what drives results. This isn't about having the slickest reals or trendiest memes. It's about mastering a thing called micro Connections.

00:01:14:07 - 00:01:35:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to dive into that a little bit later, but HubSpot says that every buyer's journey is made up of small connections over time. And I get it. You're thinking like, well, I'm not selling anything. And in a way, absolutely you are not. But in a way, absolutely you are. That does apply directly to you, your church and your ministry.

00:01:35:11 - 00:02:02:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so students and parents aren't checking your Instagram once and then deciding whether or not they're coming to your church or not. It's made up. This social fluency thing is made up of touch points and consistency and relevance. Okay, like for example, let's break this down. A parent sees your Bible verse post on your Instagram. Then later on that week they see your Wednesday night youth ministry recap and then a post from their kid.

00:02:02:18 - 00:02:32:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You see, that's trust built one scroll, one block at a time. That's what social fluency is. And so whether you're in the market for a tomato or a youth ministry, here's the kicker. These church ministry platforms and products that are, branded as done for you, they suck. Is that harsh? Well, maybe, but here's why. And I'm going to be honest with you, because I believe that it removes you, the youth pastor, from the equation.

00:02:32:26 - 00:02:58:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You are the connection. You are the relationship. And so when every single post looks the same, when every single post looks generic, when every post is downloaded in such a way that any youth ministry in the country in the world can use that product. It doesn't pack the punch that you want it to do. It doesn't build social fluency and you miss the nuances of your community.

00:02:58:22 - 00:03:21:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, I talked about it several episodes ago. I said, stop posting video announcements if you're here on YouTube, it's linked up at the top of the screen. But social is no longer about those slick ads. It's about being present and authentic, and it's about being human. But wait, you're busy. You have VBS this week. You have summer camp the week after that, and then you're taking a mission trip in the middle of the summer.

00:03:21:08 - 00:03:47:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I get it. Trust me, I'm a 15 year youth ministry veteran. Also trying to lean in to social media and hybrid ministry. In addition to that, on the weekly basis, you're leading games, you're preaching, you're planning summer trips. That is why I have built for you and for all youth ministries this summer. Social media kit. It is a 50% done for you like I was talking about, but it also has custom for you.

00:03:47:21 - 00:04:16:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So in the done for you category I have Bible verse reels. I have emoji phrase guesses, I have spiritual practice videos and I have what to do when you're facing blank carousel Bible based posts. I also have a full posting strategy that I recommend, and if you don't want to follow mine, then you can build your own. But then beyond that, then this is where I really believe it is the next level sort of pack because it's 50% custom done for you.

00:04:16:20 - 00:04:35:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I have devotionals where I'm telling you what to do, how to how to recap your most recent sermon. But if you don't have any ideas, I just give you a devotional script, read it, memorize it, go direct to camera and you are off to the races. I have interview style man on the street style questions with included graphics.

00:04:35:25 - 00:04:54:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So all you have to do is capture, put together and then overlay with the graphics that I have provided. I have transition hook style videos and I've included the first half of the videos. I've found them for you. All you have to do is shoot yourself, your leaders, your students, your pastor, whoever at the end of the video and invite someone to youth or to whatever event.

00:04:54:05 - 00:05:19:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then finally I have Bible trivia where I have included the graphics as well as the questions for you. So again, this is all very much the grunt work is handled the templates, the graphics, the prompts, and you can quickly swap yourself in to become the hero on your social media, to build that social fluency so that it'll be your voice, that it will be your photos, and that it'll be your vibe.

00:05:19:23 - 00:05:48:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You and your students and your leaders are still what is present on your social media content. Hey, youth pastors, church communications people, would you like to have your social media dialed in for the next 90 days? Especially with summer on the horizon? Listen, that's exactly what you're going to get with the summer and seasonal social media pack. It's a new product that I'm rolling exclusively on my Patreon.

00:05:48:16 - 00:06:09:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's three months of custom strategic content for less than $20, and this is built specifically for busy youth pastors like you who want to stay active on TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube without spending ten plus hours a month figuring out what to post. So here's what you're going to get. You're going to get 50% of the content completely done.

00:06:09:04 - 00:06:37:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's turnkey plug and play, post it and go. The other 50% is custom content for you to still shoot. However, I'm going to provide scripts and templates and frameworks so that your face, your students and your volunteers are who are seen on your social media feeds. This is not just pretty graphics. This is a full blown social media strategy for the next three months, designed by someone who knows both youth ministry and digital ministry.

00:06:37:20 - 00:07:01:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you're tired of scrambling for the cost of less than a pizza and frankly, more nourishing than a pizza, grab the seasonal social media pack today. Oh, and I almost forgot. Patreon members get it for free. You know this HubSpot, trends article? There's a quote that says A buyer's purchasing experience is made up of small connections over time.

00:07:01:24 - 00:07:23:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And quite frankly, that's the same thing that is true with students. A student's discipleship journey is built on these things called micro connections. And so in person that's youth group. That's high five, that's fist bumps, that's showing up at their football games. But we now have the advantage in a hybrid world to lean into the digital side of those relationships as well.

00:07:24:05 - 00:08:01:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Social posts, DMs, reels, stories. They're all digital handshakes. And so I encourage youth pastors to show up consistently, not perfectly, but just regularly and show up. And the way that you show up is by putting your voice, your face, and your ministry out there. And that is a way to build that social fluency. But with the summer social media pack, you're also not going to be burning out while you're still making those digital and in-person micro connections, because I've done it all for you.

00:08:01:07 - 00:08:25:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The fact of the matter is, social media in 2025, it's not optional. It's spiritual hospitality. And the thing is, the churches who get this social fluency, they will reach more people. They will reach more deeply. So do you want to crush it this summer without cloning somebody else's completely done for you scripted strategies and grab down below link in the description.

00:08:25:29 - 00:08:35:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The Summer kit, and you can take your social media to the next level. Well, don't forget my friends and as always to stay hybrid.

Episode 147: From No Budget to Pro - Summer Camp 2025 Photography & Videography Setup Guide

Nick Clason — Thu, 01 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Want pro-level camp content without a pro-level budget? In this episode, Nick Clason, of Hybrid Ministry, breaks down the exact gear, tips, and hacks you need to capture incredible summer camp photos and videos—even if you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re using a phone, DSLR, or just your creativity, we’ll help you level up your visual game to create that momentum back at your church that camp deserves!

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Why Summer Camps Matter
01:14 Why Camp Videography & Photography Matter
03:16 Step #1 No Matter What
04:37 Easy Camp Media Strategy
06:25 Medium [& FREE!] Camp Media Strategy
11:11 Most Difficult [But Best] Camp Media Strategy

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;22 - 00;00;28;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So when I first started in youth ministry, I was like a mission trip guy. All about mission trips. Took my students on their first mission trip, charge them around $1,000, travel, lodging, all the things that you need to do pretty cheap for a mission trip, honestly. And then I was getting ready doing my budget and calendaring process for the next year, and I started thinking, like in the current context in which I was in all the same students, we're going to go back on the same mission trip.

00;00;28;03 - 00;00;56;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're going to write support letters to all the same people. And I was like, it might be too soon. So decided to do a camp, stumbled into an amazing camp experience that we did and produced all by ourselves, trying to keep it dirt cheap and thus invented my love for summer camp at that point. Now, some of you have been all around summer camp, but what became so necessary was the need for amazing videography and amazing photography at summer camp.

00;00;56;09 - 00;01;21;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this episode, I want to tell you how I stumbled into it, and I want to give you three ideas of how you can have amazing camp content that is going to help, reinforce and help your church get on board with your summer camp experience. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So the continuation of that story is I start going to camp, we start adding more and more students, and I'm at my business meeting.

00;01;21;05 - 00;01;42;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like, if you've ever had to go to a congregational business meeting. And I had a few naysayers who were like, this is an astronomical amount to spend for camp. What I felt like they may not have been taking into consideration is the fact that, like, I had to get approval to spend the entire amount of money, including the money that students were going to be paying into it.

00;01;42;01 - 00;02;02;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, like the total amount of money out of the budget was like five grand. But in totality, I was requesting something like $46,000 to be spent, but that included the $300 student registration, you know, or whatever it was. And so with those naysayers, I then was like, I need I need them to see why this is worth it.

00;02;02;13 - 00;02;23;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I need them to get on board. And I need I want the church to support what the student ministry is doing. And so I went to my friend who was my roommate in college and I knew had a degree in like digital media. And I was like, bro, what do I need to pay you to come to camp and create amazing recap videos that are going to make people cry.

00;02;23;06 - 00;02;47;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, the very next Sunday, we were back at church and we shared like a testimony recap video that was like 12 minutes long. And some kids were like, I accepted Jesus at the altar the last night of camp. And I mean, I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye in the room. Camp media is an amazing tool to help your parents, your church, your pastor, your boss.

00;02;47;29 - 00;03;08;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
See what's going on at camp. And in this video, I want to share with you an easy way to do it for basically free. I want to share with you a medium, difficulty level of doing it. And then I want to share with you a higher level of difficulty and perhaps the most expensive, but probably, as always, as you know, the more you pay, the better the product.

00;03;08;07 - 00;03;35;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's hop in. Welcome to this edition of How Do I Do? Camp media on the Hybrid Ministry show. So first and foremost, you want to have some sort of text message or, channel back to parents. Okay. So you can send them links to your videos, links to albums, links to photos, whatever it is that you take. And so, like I said, we're going to do an easy a medium and a higher level of difficulty in this episode.

00;03;35;19 - 00;03;59;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But first and foremost, philosophy, basically, no matter what level of difficulty you do, you need to have some sort of, channel back to parents. That's going to be your number one advocate, especially for the week while you're at camp. Now, once you return, if you have like a student take over Sunday or whatever, like you can you can implement some of these things that you've you've pulled together at camp and find a way to package them and show them to the rest of your congregation.

00;03;59;09 - 00;04;17;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But while you're at camp, if you want to have a buzz amongst your parents, you need to get it back into them. So, you can do some sort of text message group. You can do some sort of Facebook group. You can even post some of this stuff on your YouTube channel and then send the links to those in your Facebook group or in your text message group, or your parent email chain.

00;04;17;20 - 00;04;32;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Whatever it is, figure out what works best in your context, but have something easy and preferably something that you can use on your phone. So as soon as you get a link, you can copy the link, you can send it out and you do it all on your mobile device. You don't need to sit down at a computer and try and find a way to do it at camp.

00;04;32;12 - 00;05;00;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, how do you do easy videos at camp? Let's hop in. So the first way that you can do it is you can walk around with your camera, vertical based video, and you can, very simply, you can, auto cut those videos in an app like TikTok or in your Instagram Reels editor, and you can send out daily, shorts, daily TikToks, daily real type videos.

00;05;00;22 - 00;05;19;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can send the links to those in text groups or, in some sort of Facebook became post posts in Facebook. That's super easy. You or leader walk around vertical based video and all you need is clips of anywhere from 5 to 8 seconds. You don't need any longer because you're just going to overlay it with music and maybe some captions on screen and off you go.

00;05;19;27 - 00;05;38;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You want to keep those 60s or less. And so the quicker and shorter the videos. So if you have the wherewithal in your mind to walk around, play your camera out five seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds, nine seconds, three seconds and then stitch all those together in like an auto cut feature in TikTok. You're going to be going in and off to the races.

00;05;38;26 - 00;05;58;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now. How do you easily, source photos? You tell your students, hey, send pictures on this hashtag, or if they're not going to post on like, Instagram, like that, send photos in this text group and this DM thread, whatever you choose to use some sort of, function to get those photos back to you, create a shared Google Photos album, whatever.

00;05;58;25 - 00;06;15;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Put all your pictures in here, and then you can crowdsource those, and you can create a slideshow at the end of the night. Or if you're at some sort of camp, like a, like a generate or a feud or a lift or something like that, where you don't have control over what ends up on screen, then you create albums and you send those out in Facebook groups to parents.

00;06;15;02 - 00;06;36;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. Okay, now what about medium? And this is honestly, this is a big step up and it's going to cost you next to nothing. Let's check it out. So genuinely I've done this before okay. And if you want to create daily recap videos again you have control of the screens. So daily recap videos that you can show in your sessions.

00;06;36;21 - 00;06;53;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you don't have control of the screens at a minimum daily recap videos that you can post to YouTube. Let me show you how you can do it on Cap cut. All right, so if you're watching here on screen, this is what I did, a couple years ago, we didn't hire and have money, for a videographer.

00;06;53;17 - 00;07;13;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I would do daily recap videos in the cabin at night, throw my headphones on, and kids are all sleeping. And so I'm here on cap cut out, hit new project. And let's just do these, videos of my dog, okay? And so I would click, all the videos I want to add and I'd click add three.

00;07;13;25 - 00;07;40;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here I am now and I can create some sort of video. So there's my dog and there's another video of my dog and there's another little video of my dog. Now, what you can do is you can add animations, and anything if you are doing like a free account, anything with like the little like pro features or things, there.

00;07;40;16 - 00;08;06;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Those don't use those. But if you find any of the ones like this one right here, that is free, okay, it'll come right in. And there you go. Boom off you go. And if you want to like add a text that says, you know, like day one recap. Put it right there and hope I'm exporting. Don't want to export quit.

00;08;06;21 - 00;08;25;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So there it is. Day one recap. Now I can edit this text click style. And once again you want to make sure you don't add a pro feature. So see those little corners right there. So this one's this one's free. Day one recap. Change the font. Find one that's not a pro font. And off we go.

00;08;26;02 - 00;08;47;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right right there. All of these are not pro fonts. And so the main thing if you want to keep it free is that you don't add anything. Pro font. All right. Right here I can add some sort of transition. So here's a transition that's not that is pro don't remind me again. I might not. Oh here's one pull in.

00;08;47;17 - 00;09;15;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And there we go. And I go all the way through at the end. I can also add things like, stickers. I can add text to audio, and I can add music. And that's what I do when I add some audio. And so if I want to go to some sounds and find something like this one here, that's not, that's not, pro.

00;09;15;24 - 00;09;41;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now I got a video and then I hit export. And we are off to the races. And you'll see here on screen, if you're watching, you can see the finalized video of my dog. It's beautiful. Who doesn't love it? This would take me about an hour after lights out, but I want to let you know that it is completely free, so after you've done your capture video, what if you want photos?

00;09;41;08 - 00;10;01;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, what if you took a leader, not someone who's have an elite? A small group would be a cabin leader, and they're just a dedicated photographer. You're only cost in that. Give them a cell phone. Have them take it on an iPhone. Google pixel, a nice phone. You're only cost in. That is your perhaps payment of their registration fee.

00;10;01;00 - 00;10;25;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Unless, of course, you're charging your leaders to go, in which case you're good and you say, hey, listen, your only job is take photos and send these daily recaps back home to parents, and you give them that job. And so all week, their entire sole focus using just their cell phone is to take good photos. And so then with your daily recaps and your lidar photos, you can, bring those back and you can present those to your church.

00;10;25;24 - 00;10;42;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, the last little bit in this is if you want and studio, link down below. You can grab some Bluetooth microphones. You can also take some video on your cell phone, just like I showed you. Stitch it together and cap cut. But you can take students testimonies and tell them, hey, what, what stood out to you?

00;10;42;23 - 00;11;00;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How to God move in your life this week? Like all that type of stuff? And you can create a recap testimony video and you can show that on screen the quality is great. You saw the export quality was like 1080p. You can export it even up to 4K, and you can shoot it in 4K on your camera if it if it's able to handle it.

00;11;00;20 - 00;11;20;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then you can show that on a screen. You can also post that to something like YouTube and then share it in your Facebook group. But what about the best and probably most expensive? Well, let's dive in. Your final your best is you want those daily recap videos. You want that final big testimony video. Your best bang.

00;11;20;07 - 00;11;38;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, not bang for your buck, right? This is going to cost you money, but you hire a videographer. Maybe you're church or something. Maybe you know someone, but you bring someone in, they bring all their own gear and they, follow students around. They capture footage, and their entire job is to create daily recap videos for you on the big screen at night.

00;11;38;22 - 00;11;59;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you have control of that, or post them to YouTube and then create that testimony video. And if you can hire that same person, or maybe hire a second person to take photos on a good camera that they have, that's going to be your highest barrier to entry. You're probably going to have to a pay for them to go to camp, be pay for their lodging and all that stuff.

00;11;59;05 - 00;12;18;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So let's say that's anywhere from 3 to $400, and then you're going to pay them a fee, 800 bucks, 1500 bucks. It is expensive. But if you have the budget, I'm just telling you like it does end up being worth it and you end up with much higher quality footage. And what you can do on your phone and much higher caliber photos.

00;12;18;11 - 00;12;44;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you're like, bro, I can't even get anywhere near that, then that medium range won't for you. As long as you're willing to put the work in. As long as you're willing to use cap cut, you can do it for very cheap and frankly, very free. And still get a very, very good result. Now, listen, your camp experience is very important, and students lives are often marked and changed at camp.

00;12;44;16 - 00;13;12;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what's also very important is that your people back home support you. Your parents know what's going on, and they can advocate and create a buzz around your student ministry. So don't fumble the bag. This summer on creating amazing camp media and amazing camp content. I'm rooting for you, have an amazing camp and crush it with a digital media this summer so that your church can get on board and support what your student ministry has going on.

00;13;12;29 - 00;13;16;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Thanks for being here. We'll talk next time and don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 102: Is Instagram Dead?

Nick Clason — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 04:00:00 -0500

🔥 [FREE] Hybrid Ministry Strategy Guide🔥

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

💥[CUSTOM] Hybrid Coaching💥

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

======================================
DESCRIPTION
The Usage of Instagram among teenagers is reducing.
According to some recent studies the adoptiong and usage rate of Instagram among teenagers is shrinking.

Additionally, in my recent anecdotal experience, I've noticed that Instagram in both of my last two church stints, Instagram served college and former youth group graduates really well.

And not as well, at least from engagement, of our current youth ministry students.

Which leads me to ask: "Is Instagram Dead?"

======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/102

//Tiktok Vs Instagram Vs YouTube?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r73ceADGZxQ&t=3s

//100th Episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0L-Dxhs7cI

//YouTube for Youth Ministry
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLHMhNNfqmmmAsKRJ1VCBJl

//Research Sources
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-social-media-use/

https://www.sentiment.io/how-many-teens-use-social-media/#:~:text=TikTok%2C%20Snapchat%2C%20and%20Instagram%20remain,about%20seven%2Din%2Dten

👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry
Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

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🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
📅 "The Full Hybrid Ministry Strategy"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

📨 Full Proof Recruiting Email
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😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

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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
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid

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

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AUTO POD
https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv

TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Instagram's Usage in Youth Ministry
00:50 Hybrid Ministry During COVID
03:25 Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve
07:01 The Most Fun Memories of Unscripted
09:27 What this means going forward for churches in 2024 and beyond

--------------
✍️TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:05:05
Nick Clason
Is Instagram on its deathbed

00:00:05:05 - 00:00:13:03
Nick Clason
for youth ministry? Instagram actually started October 6th, 2010.

00:00:13:03 - 00:00:35:07
Nick Clason
I became a youth pastor in January of 2011, and so I became a youth pastor. Since within, 2 or 3 months of Instagram beginning. and so years ago, when I started in youth ministry, Instagram was a platform that I was implementing and bringing into the fold and framework.

00:00:35:07 - 00:01:02:22
Nick Clason
Right? Coming off of kind of the Facebook era into the now Instagram era and that became a platform that I really doubled down and leaned in on Instagram versus TikTok versus YouTube is actually a topic that we've explored. Isn't right here on screen or down in the show notes. If you are listening in a podcast catchup. But slowly, over time, the key social network my students were using was Instagram.

00:01:02:25 - 00:01:21:27
Nick Clason
And so I remember in first couple churches I worked in, I launched and started an Instagram program program, Instagram social media account and gained a following. but then as it does and as it always seems to happen, and grew in more and more popularity, which is a good thing for the app and the creators of the app.

00:01:21:29 - 00:01:57:06
Nick Clason
slowly, that meant more and more adults began to infiltrate and adopt the app, which then made it less and less interesting to teenagers because it wasn't the new thing on the streets that their parents were not a part of. And so, just like the meteoric rise of TikTok during the pandemic, which was once an app for teenagers, in order for them to to lip sync and to dance has now become an all out news source, complete with ads and sports analysis and anything else that you might possibly want to find on TikTok.

00:01:57:06 - 00:02:29:19
Nick Clason
And this Instagram thing. Now it's no longer this undercover app. It's a mainstream app. It was purchased by Facebook and owned now under the meta umbrella. And so it's it doesn't carry the same cachet that it once did. When I first started as a youth pastor, one of the reasons I'm even asking this question is I, as a youth pastor in my last two stints in student ministry, have recently noticed that when I started, one church I started in 2020 and then the other one where I'm currently serving, I started in 2022.

00:02:29:26 - 00:02:31:23
Nick Clason
My anecdotal experience has

00:02:31:23 - 00:02:43:17
Nick Clason
led me to ask this question because in each of these contexts, Instagram has best served the young adult and former youth group students who have graduated out of our

00:02:43:17 - 00:02:59:26
Nick Clason
programs. Again, this is anecdotal and this is just my experience, but I went back several months ago and I did a deep dive analysis, and I realized that about 25% or less of our posts were being engaged with current students in our youth ministry.

00:02:59:29 - 00:03:20:26
Nick Clason
So there are still students in our youth ministry using it. And your percentages may be different and may be varied, but I was noticing that it was a lot of leaders and it was a lot of parents. Which led me to this question is Instagram for youth ministry dead? Well, let's explore it. Well hey everyone, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show.

00:03:20:26 - 00:03:54:23
Nick Clason
If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Nick Clayton. I am a youth pastor currently serving in the DFW Dallas Fort Worth area, and in addition to the typically youth ministry duties that I have such as preaching and writing, small group guides and onboarding leaders, and all the youth ministry things. One of the major things that I was tasked with and also had a passion to get started on once I began at this church here was to create a digital or a hybrid experience, as we talked about kind of the origins of that hybrid experience in episode 102 episodes ago.

00:03:54:29 - 00:04:28:00
Nick Clason
Go back and check that out or head to Hybrid Ministry. Dot xyzzy slash 100. But we are talking about is Instagram dead? So I'd be curious a little bit of like, do data and research here. Give me a like if you use Instagram exclusively in your social media and then if not, give me a subscribe. If you use any other social media platform, including Instagram, but also beyond Instagram and hit, you hit the bell because we have some really cool things in store on this channel.

00:04:28:00 - 00:05:02:00
Nick Clason
And coming up ahead on YouTube and on this podcast. But according to Pew Research, Instagram was in 20 2014, Instagram was up to about 52% of a usage rate among teenagers. Fast forward to 2022, that usage rate went from 52% all the way up to 62% and then down in 2020 4th January of this year, we saw that that usage rate ticked down only slightly from 62% to 59%.

00:05:02:04 - 00:05:18:16
Nick Clason
So, tick tock. Snapchat and Instagram, respectively, ages 13 to 17, are being reported to being used, 63% with TikTok, 60% with Snapchat, and 59% again with Instagram. One of the

00:05:18:16 - 00:05:34:08
Nick Clason
things that According to sentiment I o linked to this and the Pew Research study down below in the show notes shared, was that, the uptick of usage would you would see to, be increased when the ages got older.

00:05:34:08 - 00:05:47:25
Nick Clason
So it studied 13 to 17, but when they shaved off 13, 14 and just made it 15 to 17, they saw these, increase about 7 to 10, in usage. And so what's interesting

00:05:47:25 - 00:06:01:10
Nick Clason
is that in my completely free e-book, which is linked right here on screen or down below in the show notes, if you are listening, is I recommend that we use digital and social media to our advantage.

00:06:01:10 - 00:06:12:03
Nick Clason
And one of the good things about it is that regardless of which platform you're on, all four of the main social media platforms right now by forming Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube

00:06:12:03 - 00:06:21:15
Nick Clason
offer the same type of content. When I started in 2011 and beyond, posts for different Facebook had like a wide screen base post. Instagram had

00:06:21:15 - 00:06:24:01
Nick Clason
a square base post, YouTube was only for videos.

00:06:24:02 - 00:06:43:16
Nick Clason
TikTok didn't even exist. But then in 2021, TikTok burst onto the scene it implemented and ushered in this new type of medium, which is short form vertical video we saw quickly after that that reels was adopted in both Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube also brought along shorts. And so now all of those platforms are

00:06:43:16 - 00:06:53:28
Nick Clason
using those mediums. And so if you have a camera, which by the way, you do, because it is in your pocket on your cell phone, you can create short form vertical based video.

00:06:54:00 - 00:07:15:02
Nick Clason
I recommend that you start with pre filming your messages in a long form widescreen version, and you cut those up for social media. And then I also recommend that you supplement some of your content with some fun and engaging social media content with your students and or leaders. I mean, just look right here on screen. If you're watching on YouTube, some of these most recent performing YouTube shorts are incredible, and they are just with our students.

00:07:15:02 - 00:07:36:21
Nick Clason
We filmed them before or after youth group, and we just do silly, fun challenges with them and they get incredible amounts of views. And so the good news is, is that what is being used and what is best available in your context is that you can do your context and you can do what works. If all of your students are on Instagram, then by all means continue to use Instagram.

00:07:36:21 - 00:08:04:13
Nick Clason
But if you are starting fresh, I may offer an I may recommend something slightly different based on at least the national study and some of the national trends. But here's the good news is that every single church, every single context, is different. What I do know that's not different is that teenagers are speaking a digital language, whether they have unfettered and unfiltered social media access on their cell phones or whether they are just used to seeing things done via video.

00:08:04:16 - 00:08:23:23
Nick Clason
Which is why right now I am offering three slots of free coaching. If you're interested in taking me up on that, hit the link in the e-book or the link down below in the show notes, and I would be happy to begin a discussion with you about what that looks like and how we can get you up, and to begin hybridizing your ministry.

00:08:23:25 - 00:08:46:24
Nick Clason
Okay, so let's look ahead. If you're completely brand new and you don't already have some sort of, established Instagram following, and you're looking to start right now, well, then here's what I recommend, which we outlined and explained all in our most recent playlist, YouTube for Youth Ministry, which is linked, down below in the show notes. But I recommend YouTube.

00:08:46:26 - 00:09:16:27
Nick Clason
All right. Check out what Pew Research said. This is a survey done by adults and for adults. But it said YouTube, by and large, is the most widely used online platform measured in our survey. It. Roughly 8 in 10 U.S. adults report ever using the video based platform. Look at this chart right here on screen. You'll see that YouTube is at 93% a wide margin above the second most, which is TikTok only, which is only at 63%.

00:09:16:27 - 00:09:47:19
Nick Clason
By comparison. And so you might be asking like, what's ahead? Or how do I get started? What do I do? I have all of that detailed and outlined for you in a nine part playlist titled YouTube for Youth Ministry. It's actually it's actually linked to right here on screen. So if you're interested in that and information about YouTube for youth ministry, how to get started, what you're going to need a crash course for YouTube shorts and beyond, tap that video on screen and we will be happy to see you over there.

00:09:47:19 - 00:09:54:23
Nick Clason
But until next time, and as always, don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 099: YouTube for the Long Haul

Nick Clason — Thu, 30 May 2024 04:00:00 -0500

💥 [LIMITED TIME OFFER] Custom Social Coaching for Youth Pastors💥

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======================================
DESCRIPTION
How do you keep the momentum rolling?
I want to share with you my full-proof Time Management Principle and system
Two Hacks for not dropping the ball with YouTube
The Number one Killer, the thing that slows youth pastors down most often
Stick around to hear the best piece of advice I've ever gotten.

FULL PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLHMhNNfqmmmAsKRJ1VCBJl
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/099

//TIME MANAGEMENT FOR YOUTH PASTORS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlS1kWcQBS8&t=183s

//ALL THE GEAR YOU'LL EVER NEED TO GET STARTED!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/studio

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

💥 [LIMITED TIME OFFER] Custom Social Coaching for Youth Pastors💥
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching

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

🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

📨 Full Proof Recruiting Email
EMAIL: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/recruiting-email

🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut

😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
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BEST DYM RESOURCES
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AUTO POD
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TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 You Work too Hard for your Message to Die on your Hard Drive
02:05 Time Management for Youth Pastors
05:37 Hack #1: Bulk Film
07:19 Hack #2: Delegate
09:58 What Is the Hardest Part of keeping this going?
11:37 The Best Advice I've ever gotten

--------------
✍️TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That kid. He has travel ball again, like he can't make it to youth coupe. And you agonized over the message that you've written and you actually particularly had him in mind. And so you're sad and you're frustrated and you're a little bit hurt that he's not going to hear this message that you crafted in a lot of ways for many of your students, but in some ways also very much just for him.

00:00:29:18 - 00:01:00:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you work too hard to let your message just die on your hard drive after delivering it one time at youth group. Which is why if you're here and you've been following us over any of our last 8 or 9 episodes, we've been talking about YouTube for youth ministry, pre filming your messages, how to edit, how to post, how to use them for social media, how to lean into playlists, the community tab shorts, and maybe even build out your very own studio in your church and in your space.

00:01:00:23 - 00:01:24:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But how? How do you start these things to reach these kids who are missing and and to lean in and create messages that will live beyond just your one time delivering it at church? How do you keep the momentum rolling? Because maybe, maybe this idea of hybrid ministry, maybe this idea of YouTube for youth ministry is intriguing to you.

00:01:24:20 - 00:01:46:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you muster up the energy and the courage to kind of like, get going and get started. But then you know how this goes, right? Like you will fizzle out down the road. And so in this episode, I want to talk about some key time management principles. I want to talk through two hacks that I believe can help you continue going and not lose sight of the finish line.

00:01:46:07 - 00:02:08:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I want to give you what I believe is the number one killer for YouTube, for youth ministry, and the thing that trips most youth pastors up. And then finally, I want you to stick around to hear the best piece of advice I've ever been given in my entire life. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey everyone, if you and I have not had a chance to meet yet.

00:02:08:28 - 00:02:35:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
My name is Nick Clason. I am a youth pastor. I've been serving in youth ministry for 13.5 long student ministry years, and I am excited to talk with you today about the last piece of our YouTube for Youth Ministry playlist. And it's very simply, how do you maintain and how do you keep the momentum going? If you've gotten started, how do you keep it up?

00:02:35:20 - 00:03:08:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the first thing that I just want to talk about is it's actually linked right here at the very top of this video, I discussed a foolproof time management system, and like the full proof ness of it, it all comes down to this core understanding. And it's this that you, my friend, are 100% responsible for your time. If you want to lean in and make this YouTube for youth ministry thing happen and stick, then you have to come to the realization and understanding that it is up to you.

00:03:08:11 - 00:03:35:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's not the amount of, meetings that you have with your church staff or your senior pastor. Like if this is a priority to you, then you need to make it a priority. You have to choose to happen to it and not let your calendar happen to you. And so if you want to start pre filming your messages, it is going to take some energy and some effort and some scheduling on your part.

00:03:35:03 - 00:04:02:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. Does this matter. Is it important like can you continue to get away with the lazy like showing up a youth group and delivering your message and giving it to the students? Like, of course you can do that. And for the record, it's not lazy, right? Like but I mean, what I mean by lazy is like, this is going to take another gear to get ahead to pre film, to sit down in front of camera, to edit, to post, to put the planning in.

00:04:03:04 - 00:04:28:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like it's important because you and your message and what God has laid in your heart to share with your students. It is important. And when that kid has travel ball, he just doesn't hear it because he doesn't have any other way to access it. Currently. Right now, most youth ministries are operating under the assumption that they are in a, cable TV type of schedule.

00:04:28:18 - 00:04:50:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you want to hear this message, then you have to come to youth group at a particular time. And if you don't come to youth group at that particular time, well, then you're not going to hear it. And so I believe that we can begin to adapt to culture and create more of an on demand moment, because that kid and his travel ball schedule is just it's probably not going to let up.

00:04:50:22 - 00:05:19:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And while most of us as youth pastors are hoping will happen, is that he will just see and prioritize youth group the way that we want him to see and prioritize youth group and start coming to our things. And that would be great. But but if that doesn't happen, what is the plan and what is the strategy to still get the message of hope of the gospel, the one that you've worked so hard on, for them to be able to still hear it and learn it and hear your heart.

00:05:19:26 - 00:05:45:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you are 100% responsible for the time in your time management. So what are you going to do about it? If you haven't yet, head to that link that I pointed out just a second ago, and check out my foolproof time management system so that you can start blocking your time ahead of time. So here one of the hacks, one of two, hack number one, when it comes down to all of this is book film your messages.

00:05:45:06 - 00:06:09:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So for example, if you are in a series, you're in a four part series on Kings and you're going to talk about King David, King Joash, King or boom. And of course, everyone's favorite king, King Hezekiah. And you've got all those messages built out. Then sit down one day for probably 2 or 3 hours and film all of those messages in one sitting, right?

00:06:09:28 - 00:06:35:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Maybe bring some wardrobe changes so you're not wearing the same clothes, maybe a couple hats, so that you can swap those things out and then capture all four of those messages in sequence in a row. And then if you do that and you're far enough in advance, you will then have probably another month or six weeks before you have to turn around and film your next book crop of series messages.

00:06:35:28 - 00:07:03:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that is that's hack number one. But again, back to the time management piece. You're going to have to put that on a calendar. And you're also going to have to put on a calendar the need to create and craft in and put together your manuscript. So if you haven't checked out in the very last episode of episode 098, hybridministry.xyz/098, we have linked on there teleprompters and tripod so that you can actually just type out your entire message and put it on a teleprompter.

00:07:04:00 - 00:07:34:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Sit down. Even if you do it, still direct to your phone and, capture your message direct to camera and into your students and help them understand this message of hope and Jesus and, have the the cure for travel ball. The other hack that I have is delegate as much as you can. You know, one of the things that we do, beyond just capturing our long form messages, is that we do a weekly social media challenge, and so we get our students to come together.

00:07:34:02 - 00:07:53:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And thankfully, we have our studio space, which I showed you in last week's episode as well. And we, let our students kind of create content for our social media channels. And so we capture them and, and have a fun time watching them, kind of like, you know, do challenges and work together and work with each other.

00:07:53:11 - 00:08:19:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But what I've done is I've actually handed the entire planning of that shooting of that, capturing of that, and then uploading of all of that content into our Google Drive, all those things off to an intern. And it's taken some time and we've had to get him up to speed on it. But now every single Wednesday night, he knows that one of his primary duties and responsibilities is to figure out the social challenge from start to finish.

00:08:19:06 - 00:08:41:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then on Thursday morning, I pull up in Google Drive and I edit whatever he has created for me. Sometimes I edit it using Adobe Premiere Pro, but other times I'm actually able to just edit it completely on my cell phone. And so if you're able to hand off and delegate some of those things that listen, it's an intern, so you can get yourself an intern, you can do a high level volunteer hack.

00:08:41:15 - 00:09:15:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can even use a high level student. And so all of this does not have to fall to you fall on your plate. Right. And so if you have the ability to hand some of these things off, to create some checklist, to, to have some gear that you could use, that you can hand to other people to help create and lean into some of the social ability, which, by the way, if you don't have the chance to sit down direct to camera and and book, film your messages like I get it, but you can capture students on social media every single time you meet, like there's nothing stopping you from doing at least that

00:09:15:18 - 00:09:50:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
level. And that measure of social media, which, by the way, all of this is laid out, detailed and outlined for you in my 100% completely free hybrid strategy guide is right here, linked on screen, also linked down below in the show notes. If you want some help getting going on all of this with some links to some some gear, some basic getting started gear and some ideas for how to lean in and use the social challenge and capture content with you, your staff, your the rest of your church staff, your leaders like all of that is laid out for you completely in this complete hybrid strategy guide.

00:09:50:21 - 00:10:11:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I would love to have you check that out. It would be an honor if you downloaded it and used it and checked it out. But the last piece here is what is the thing that kills you? What is the thing that kills most youth pastors? What is the thing that kills most content creators when it comes to capturing messages or capturing videos and then posting them?

00:10:11:08 - 00:10:31:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's this it's it's editing. Like editing. It's hard. Takes a lot of work. I actually had a guy last night reach out. I had done, like a slideshow for a memorial service and he said, hey, that was beautiful. Like, what did you use? And a lot of times people, they're just looking for shortcuts and and the best things like there are no shortcuts, right?

00:10:31:07 - 00:10:57:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I use Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects and like that's not always the most accessible thing. And so here's the good news. Like editing is tricky and you can do as much editing or as little editing as you want. Just get the message out there. However, if you are looking for some advice, if you are looking for some custom coaching for someone to come in and help you where you are, I would love to do that with you and for you.

00:10:57:12 - 00:11:17:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, you Check out the link down in the description below. You can see some of the pricing on that typically, but right now I'm actually offering a couple more spots completely for free. all I ask is that you use my service and that you give, a good review if you believe that what I have offered is actually worth a good review.

00:11:17:14 - 00:11:39:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I would love to help you. Like, if you're feeling stuck and you're not exactly sure where to turn, reach out. We would love to have conversation with you and figure out what hybrid ministry can look like in your church and in your youth ministry strategy. My friend Matt Johnson, he was on the very first couple of episodes of this podcast.

00:11:39:03 - 00:11:57:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
He was actually a co-host for a while before he moved and kind of was unable to logistically, continue being on the podcast. But I asked him, I said, hey, man, I'm thinking about starting a podcast. What do you think? And I was like, what do I need to know? What do I need to do? And he gave me some, you know, some basic gear advice and some basic other advice.

00:11:57:23 - 00:12:12:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And he said, but you know, my my number one piece of advice. And I was like, yeah, of course. He said, just get started. Like, you can sit and you can plan and you can do all this stuff. He's like, but you will learn so much more if you just get started. And we've gone through it. All right.

00:12:12:09 - 00:12:37:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've talked about YouTube for youth ministry, the philosophy of pre filming versus live streaming, how to edit, how to post, how to create social, how do you use other features on YouTube, maybe even building out a full studio in your space. But at the end of the day, just get started. You know? Speaking of Matt, he was with me at the very beginning of this podcast, and next episode is my 100 episode.

00:12:37:23 - 00:12:59:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's a little bit more of like an interview and documentary style. We're going to lean and actually talk about, the, the show that the church I was at that we created during Covid and talk about many of the hybrid ministry principles that have sort of come out of it. So that video and that episode is next. If you're watching on YouTube, it'll be links right here on this end card on screen.

00:12:59:29 - 00:13:11:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I would love for you to check that out. Don't forget, and as always, as we're making digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible, I want you to stay hybrid.

Episode 065: 💸 Adobe Express, the 3rd option of the 4 Budget-Friendly Design Tools 🚀

Nick Clason — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0500

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

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

💸BUDGET & TIME FRIENDLY DESIGN PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw

🎥LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

DESCRIPTION

Welcome back to our four-part series on budget-friendly design options for youth pastors and church leaders! In this third installment, we're diving deep into Adobe Express and comparing it head-to-head with PowerPoint and Canva. We'll help you make an informed decision on which platform suits your ministry's design needs best.

🎨 Adobe Express Tutorial: Our onscreen tutorial will walk you through the essentials of Adobe Express, showcasing its powerful features and user-friendly interface. Whether you're a design novice or a pro, you'll find valuable tips and tricks to enhance your youth ministry materials.

💲 Pricing Comparison: Budgets matter, and we know that! We'll break down the pricing structures for Adobe Express, PowerPoint, and Canva, helping you understand which option aligns best with your financial resources.

🤔 Verdict Time: After a thorough exploration of these three design platforms, we'll deliver our honest verdict. Discover which tool offers the best value, efficiency, and creative possibilities for your youth ministry projects.

🔗 If you missed the previous episodes in this series be sure to catch up on them here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw

Don't miss out on this informative and practical guide to enhance your youth ministry's visual presence. Hit that subscribe button, like, and share with fellow youth pastors and church leaders looking to level up their design game on a budget.

Stay tuned for the final episode in our series, where we'll unveil our top design recommendations and bonus tips to supercharge your youth ministry materials. Let's make your ministry's message shine with creativity and impact!

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

😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis

🛠️TOOLS
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

AUTO POD
https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv

TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa

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

👉 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/065

//ADOBE EXPRESS
http://www.express.adobe.com

//ADOBE EXPRESS PRICING
https://www.adobe.com/express/pricing

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-00:57 Tool #3 Adobe Express
00:57-03:17 Why Graphic Design Even matters for Student Ministries
03:17-06:41 How to Get Started Using Adobe Express Online
06:41-12:45 How to Create a Graphic on Adobe Express
12:45-15:53 How Much does Adobe Express Cost?
15:53-18:55 The Verdict: PowerPoint vs. Canva vs. Adobe Express

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
In this third part, we are continuing on in our journey of fast and affordable options for youth pastors, ministry leaders, and just overall busy people attempting to create great graphic design for free or for super cheap. And in this video, we are going to be exploring the world of Adobe, not Adobe Photoshop Illustrator or in design, but the free version of it called Adobe Express. Make sure you hang out for this entire video because we are going to be doing an onscreen to tutorial. We'll be sharing the pricing and I will be doling out my final verdict between the three different platforms that we've been looking at in the past video in this playlist, PowerPoint versus Canva versus Adobe Express. Hey everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey everyone, if you and I have not had a chance to meet before, my name is Nick Clason.

Nick Clason (01:01):
I am a 12 and a half year youth ministry veteran now located in the D F W Dallas-Fort Worth area. And I'm on a mission to help make hybrid ministry not just in-person and not just digital, but the melding of the two easy possible and accessible for everyone in youth ministry or church ministry. And I believe that it is the wave of the future, and part of that is creating good and crisp and interesting and fun and relevant graphic design. However, if you're anything like me, you're busy, you have curriculum meeting and budget plannings, and you have meetings with your supervisor, your senior pastor. You have that parent who's kind of cranky and mad, and you have a teaching lesson that you have to prepare tonight. And yet still you need to somehow create graphics, graphics for series, graphics for events, graphics for upcoming missions trips or camps.

Nick Clason (01:52):
And you don't know anything about graphics. You don't have any graphic design skills. Well, good news, this playlist is for you because in the last two videos, we looked at PowerPoint, we looked at Canva, and now we're looking at Adobe Express. And the reason that any of this is valuable, the reason that any of this even really matters is because Generation Z is spending more time on their smartphones than any other generation combined, more than any other device combined. Meanwhile, they're also consuming social media at alarmingly high rates. For example, gen Z and Alpha are spending in 90, 95% of Gen Z Engine Alpha are spending time on YouTube alone. It is the most widely used social media platform that there is. And so digital, social and online ministry matters not as a replacement, but in addition to what we are also doing in the room.

Nick Clason (02:46):
And part of that is designed. So if you're interested in understanding what every youth ministry needs to do, which is create a robust, dynamic online presence, go ahead and check this card out right here where I share that and make sure that you check out the surefire resource link in the description to that video, which is my completely free one month posting tool for social media. But let's dive in and let's look at Adobe Express here on this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. All right, so Adobe Express is adobe.com/express, and if you go there, it will pull up this menu. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening, I'll try and explain it my best just in the podcast feed. But if you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see my screen here and on Adobe Express or adobe.com/express, right across the top, there are different menu options.

Nick Clason (03:44):
So the first menu option there is create. And you'll notice here you'll see social media, and then it has all sorts of different social media options. So Instagram story, Instagram reels, posts, TikTok video, Facebook story, et cetera. You got documents, posters, brochures, invitations, certificates. And then you also have marketing options like business cards, flyer, logo. Additionally, right here you have a content scheduler. We're going to look at that in just a second. I'm going to open that in a different tab so I don't lose it right here. But if you continue across that menu here, you have your quick actions, you have removed, background, resize image, convert to jpeg, P N G S V G, crop convert to gif, trim video, resize video, create P D F, export, P D F combined, P D F, which that's actually really useful stuff. I usually have to do that just in PowerPoint.

Nick Clason (04:37):
More templates, social media templates, marketing templates, documents, and then plans and offers. This is where you would explore pricing, pay for pricing, do all those types of things, and then finally learn and explore. So to tutorials, blogs, developers, partners, all those types of things. And so this is just a high quick overview of Adobe Express, but what I want to do now is I want to actually dive in and I want to create a graphic. Before we do that though, listen, I know we're just getting started, but I would love if you would like rate, subscribe, maybe even share with a friend if you have gotten value so far in this video. And if not, hang out because I'm going to drop some more value because what we're about to do is right now is we're going to create a graphic on screen. I'm going to show you just how easy this is to do.

Nick Clason (05:23):
So to hang out for that, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, and let's look at the Adobe create express tutorial. So before we dive into that, I did want to see this scheduler. Full disclosure, I've never used this to open this before, so I'm going to be exploring this with you for the very first time live here on screen. So here's a little tutorial thing, but it looks like you can connect your social, so you can connect your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter, which is now called X, I don't know why no one's changing that anywhere, Pinterest and then LinkedIn. So what you don't have is YouTube, and what you don't have is TikTok. I recommend YouTube as my number one strategy for youth ministries and reaching teenagers. And so unfortunately that's not on here. I also recommend TikTok is my number two, so my top two aren't on here as far as schedulers, but if you're in the lane where you're not going to do Instagram or I'm sorry, if you're not going to do YouTube or TikTok, then this might be for you. So check this out, and what would be cool is you could actually create right here in Adobe Express and schedule right here in Adobe Express. So there's just something kind of fun, a little bonus tip for you. So here we go. Let's dive in to a live onscreen Adobe Express graphic tutorial.

Nick Clason (06:43):
All right, so let's pretend that you have a dodgeball tournament and let's just go with that as our event. And we're going to go ahead and create onscreen a live dodgeball tutorial. And so what I'm going to be looking for is I am going to be looking for something that's going to work for my screen, so I'm looking for a wide screen idea. So let's see, we got different social media, different marketing, so let's go presentation. That is going to be what we're going to be doing in our event. It's going to be on the screen. And so you have all these different sort of prebuilt tutorials. You can just see, you can explore them, and I'm just pick one here sort of willy-nilly, but I think actually, I think I'm going to start with a blank presentation. Completely blank, nothing going on here. Now, part of my problem is I need to resize it, so I know it's going to be for the screen, so that's 1920 by 10 80 and resize.

Nick Clason (07:47):
There we go. It's resized. I can go over here. I can see different themes, and so yeah, I can choose an entire kind of color scheme. And so let's see, one of these red ones is going to scream dodge ball to me. I don't love the green in that because to me dodgeball is red, but let's go. Let's see if I search red if I can find something. There we go. Yeah, okay. All right, so now I got my theme and I am going to add some media, and so let's search just in here and see what we can get. Dodge ball. There we go. Boom. Let's see if I can remove the background on that somehow.

Nick Clason (08:43):
I'm not sure what I just did there. I'm doing that. There it is right there, right? Remove background, boom, and it's thinking and it's gone. Cool. Now here's some different effects. Those are for different colors. Here's some different adjustments. I'm looking for a drop shadow. I love me a drop shadow. Let's sharpen it. Blur it. I can also animate it, which if I was doing this for a website thing, I could animate it or a social media thing, I could animate it. But for a live onscreen graphic, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how much value there's going to be to animating it because it's just going to be on onscreen.

Nick Clason (09:34):
I'm trying to find, like I said, I'm trying to find, oh, there we go. Shadow. Yeah, I don't know if we're doing anything with this, but it says there's a shadow there. Dunno if that actually is. So anyway, there's that. We're going to switch our background color now because yeah, because kind of losing it there. So I'll make it big, a little off screen, and then now I'm going to add a text and my text is going to say, oh, there it is. I got to add it right here. Dodge ball. We're going to just see what, we're going to see, what fonts we even have available here. I mean, look at all these right here. I also have this section right here called More Fonts. I could check that out, but I'm looking for something big, bold, something that looks kind like, there we go. That'll work.

Nick Clason (10:41):
I'm do that. I'm going to give it a big old white outline, some drop shadow. I always love me a good drop shadow, changing the color of that tube black and all right, so dodge ball, I got that. And then I'm going to do, I'm going to add another text that just says tournament That fill is going to be white, no outline. I'm going to make it italic, but first I want a new kind of font. I like that one a little bit and pull that in on top of it and boom, now we're done. So there you go. I'm not sure how long that was, probably five-ish minutes, but you can see just how simple something like this was. And so when I'm done with it, now I'm ready. All I need to do, I got all my layers over here. I got the ball, I got the texts, I can adjust them, right their order.

Nick Clason (12:12):
So now I pulled that behind the dodge ball so that now it's behind the dodge ball if I need to do something like that, but I'm ready to go, and so I'm just going to hit download, download for P N G or for jpeg. Either one of those would work for your screen and then you click download and you're good to go. Right now it's in my downloads folder. I'll just take that and drop it in my presentation software. Boom, we got slide for our dodge ball tournament. That's how simple Adobe Express is. Let's dive in into the next section two pricing. All right, so you might be asking, okay, that looks like an amazing tool. Isn't it super expensive? And the answer is not really. So for free, for $0 and 0 cents a month, you get the free plane, which includes all the core features listed here.

Nick Clason (13:03):
It's on the screen, you can read it, but you can explore Adobe Firefly powered features like text image, text effects, features like drag and drop, import and enhanced PDFs, thousands of professionally designed static and video templates and design elements, animation presets to add motion to text, photos or design elements, limited collection of royalty, free Adobe stock photos, all these other things. You can see that you get all of that as well if you're willing to pay 9 99 a month. There's also a free trial, so feel free to check that out if that's something you're interested in. But you get a little bit of an upgrade when you go pay for it, obviously. So you get an entire collection of 195 million on-trend royalty-free Adobe stock collection, photos, videos, and music as opposed to just a limited one as they say. You can also stay in sync with Linked Photoshop and Illustrator assets if that is something that you're using.

Nick Clason (14:01):
And here's the thing, if you are already an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber or user as I am, you already have access to the paid version. You have unlimited posts scheduling to Instagram, Facebook linked in Pinterest, and more. You can do a brand kit with logos, colors, and fonts for consistency. Stay in sync, like I said, and libraries to organize, share collections. You in the free version, get access to a thousand Adobe fonts in the paid version, access to over 25,000 licensed Adobe fonts, plus a hundred gigs of storage to keep 15 plus hours of video footage. So as you do as in most cases, you have a little bit of a better option there with the paid version. If you are already an Adobe Creative Cloud user, or you work at a church that already has an Adobe Creative Cloud license, maybe you work in a big church and they have a marketing or communications department that is already paying for Adobe.

Nick Clason (14:59):
Most bigger churches or most places that have a lot of graphic work to do are using Adobe Creative Cloud in some way, shape or form, whether it's for video, whether it's for text, whether it's for logos, whatever the case might be. And so they might even be willing to share with you just a little spot on their membership so that you can get access to Adobe Express and you don't even need all the other things in the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. So that could be an option as well. If you're in a small church and you're like, I do not have the budget, they have the free version, so make sure that you go check that out. But in the next video, in the next, not video, but in the next section, I'm going to be breaking down my verdict between PowerPoint, Canva, and now Adobe expressed which one is the best and which one should you as a church ministry leader be using?

Nick Clason (15:53):
Alright, the verdict is in PowerPoint versus Canva versus Adobe Express. Which one is it? Here's how I would rank them. Personally speaking, I still love PowerPoint. And then in my journey, you heard, if you watch the first video in this playlist, my journey went from PowerPoint to Photoshop, so I love PowerPoint and I also love the Adobe Creative Cloud and everything within there. The one that I haven't used really at all, because I was a PowerPoint user before Canva was big, and then I jumped over to Photoshop when Canva started really taking a rise, and I never really spent my time on Canva, so I am the least versed in Canva. However, I'm also not that well versed in Adobe Express. I'm going to tell you the truth, the tutorial I just did, that's the second maybe third graphic I've ever actually made in Adobe Express, so I was kind of putzing around in there too.

Nick Clason (16:49):
It feels very much like Canva. Both of them feel very similar, but here's how I would rank them. I would probably rank, and it's going to differ based on everyone's context, but I think Canva is probably number one for me, not personally, but just with knowing what I know and the features and the fact that every nonprofit has the option to get Canva Pro for 100% completely free. I think that has to be number one. I think number two for me, ironically, is probably going to be PowerPoint. I still think that has some of the most powerful features. And then third is going to be Adobe Express, because I think you get the least for what you pay for. That being said, if you're in a church that has a subscription to Adobe but not Microsoft, then maybe Adobe would jump in front of Microsoft for you, or vice versa, because we talked in the very first episode that maybe you don't have access to a paid version of PowerPoint, and you can use Google Slides.

Nick Clason (17:46):
Google Slides is fourth on my list. It's probably the least powerful of all of the tools. But my point in sharing all of this is that every single one of these is free, has a free version or is very, very cheap, and they are not requiring you to jump on a massively big learning curve like Adobe, Photoshop or any of the things in the Adobe Creative Cloud to learn them because they're just so different than what you're used to. PowerPoint, Canva, and Express are all relatively easy with relatively easy interfaces, and you can figure it out, and it's not going to make you spend a lot of time or make you spend a lot of your resources to use it. But the last little hack that I have for you in this four-part playlist series is the Instagram Stories editor. So that is going to be our next video. It's linked to your onscreen. Make sure that you check that out before you do hit the subscribe. Hit the bell button if you found this video helpful because we will talk to you next time making digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. Don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 064: 💸 Number 2: Canva. 4 Budget-Friendly Design Tools 🚀

Nick Clason — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0500

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

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

💸BUDGET & TIME FRIENDLY DESIGN PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw

🎥LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

DESCRIPTION

Are you in need of a fast and affordable logo design for your youth ministries? Look no further! In this ultimate guide, we will unveil 4 creative tools that will help you create the perfect logo without breaking the bank. Whether you're leading a youth group, organizing an event, or starting an outreach program, having a captivating logo and graphic design is crucial. It not only represents the identity of your youth ministry but also leaves a lasting impression on your target audience. So let's dive into the world of logo design tools!

In this episode is the world's worst kept secret, it's Canva! Canva also has a FREE for Non Profits section which is great for churches, youth ministries and non-profit organizations that are working on a budget!

The First Tool was: PowerPoint
📹 Watch Here: https://youtu.be/fOIPiPW3Wpk
🎧 Listen Here: http://www.hybridministry.xyz

Explore these 4 creative tools and let your imagination run wild.
FULL PLAYLIST:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw

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

😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis

AUTO POD
https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv

TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa

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

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/064

//CANVA FOR NON PROFITS
https://www.canva.com/canva-for-nonprofits/

//NICK'S 3 FAVORITES:
•QR Code Generator
•Typecraft
•Smart Mockups

//PROS & CONS OF CANVA
https://digitalscholar.in/pros-and-cons-of-canva/#:~:text=A.,available%20features%20and%20design%20elements

//CANVA PRICING PAGE
https://www.canva.com/pricing/

//LINKTREE
http://www.linktr.ee

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:16 Tool #2 Canva: Making Graphics for free and cheap
01:16-03:26 Good Graphics are just a click away, go check out Canva
03:26-05:27 How to navigate Canva after logging in
05:27-09:52 How to Edit Using Canva as a Beginner
09:52-11:54 What else does Canva have to offer?
11:54-15:05 Canva Pro FREE for Churches!
15:05-19:32 The 3 Most Underrated Features of Canva
19:32-22:02 Top 4 Limitations of Canva

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Are you a busy youth ministry pastor or leader, your're calendar full of parent phone calls, curriculum planning, event planning, angriest, senior pastor, or maybe just normal senior pastor meetings. And so your schedule is busy, your budget is tight, but you still want to have dope custom off the chain, amazing graphics for your social media, or maybe even just for the screens in your room when you meet with your students. Well then look no further than this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show where we are going to be talking about everyone's favorite web-based design platform. You know it as Canva, and you've probably heard of Canva and seen Canva before. But in this episode, I'm going to go through the depths and show and share with you everything that Canva has to offer. I'm also going to do an on-screen design tutorial to show you just how easy it is.

Nick Clason (00:54):
And finally, make sure that you stick around to the very, very end of the video because I'm going to share with you my top three Canva features that are not as widely known, but can be incredibly useful for you in your student ministry and on your social media and in your web presence. So welcome to this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey there everyone. My name is Nick Clason. I am a 12 and a half year youth ministry veteran. I have been designing graphics since I was right straight out of college, straight into student ministry, and these were what some of my early on designs looked like. And so I know how bad I used to be, and these now are some of the ones that have replaced them within recent years. And I don't say that to brag. I simply say that to say I have no design skills.

Nick Clason (01:46):
I didn't go to school to be a designer. I went to school to be a youth pastor. But once I got into it, I realized I needed to have designs that looked good, that made sense, that spoke the language of my teenagers, and I didn't know what I was doing. I was just trying my best. And in a lot of cases that might be, you might be sitting there knowing you need them, knowing you want them, you've seen them done online or in other places, and you're like, I want that, but I have no idea how to create that. Canva is your answer. Now, full disclosure, I just about two weeks ago got a Canva Pro account, and I'm going to share with you how you can do that and also show with you or show you some of the features of Canva and what it has to offer.

Nick Clason (02:33):
The nice thing about Canva is the learning curve is really, really low, much lower than a product, say like Adobe Creative Cloud, which has things like Photoshop and InDesign. And so Canva can help you create and thrust into having a strong digital presence. And if you're sitting here thinking as a youth pastor, now why do I even need this? Listen, I believe that every youth ministry in America needs a strong digital presence, and I have linked that right here at the top of the video. I have a video completely about that. So if that's something that you're interested in, hop over there. Make sure that you check out what every youth ministry needs and why they need a strong digital presence. But if you're here for the graphics and if you're here for Canva, let's hop in because Canva is going to be a great step in that direction.

Nick Clason (03:23):
So let's first talk about what does Canva have to offer. All right, so if you log into canva.com, you can head over to the side panel here and it'll look something like this, and you'll see that it has this folder called projects. That's where you would go and look at all of your recent designs. It will hold and have folders for things. If you're on a team, that's where you would find other graphics done by other people that are using them. Maybe you can hand this off to an intern or a high level student or an admin who can also help dabble in it. You can get a team account and they'll have the folder section, the design section. They'll also have images that you have or have been using in the past for different designs and different projects. Now, here's what all Canva has to offer as far as it pertains to the template section.

Nick Clason (04:14):
So these are the different headers. They have business, and then under there they have docs, presentations, flyers, graphics, calendars under social media, which I'm about to do tutorial here in just a quick second. They have Instagram and then they have post stories reels, Facebook post covers ads. They have your stories. They have TikTok videos, they have Pinterest pins, LinkedIn video ads, animated social media, Twitter posts. If this is something that is interesting to you, I want to let you know that you can subscribe to this channel because we are going to be going over all kinds of different tips to tactics and ways to help you lean into the hybrid version of your student ministry for both online and in person. So match that subscribe button so that you don't miss a future video at all that continue to have education, grade subject resources. You can literally break it down by grade, kindergarten, first, second video, video, 16 by nine, Facebook, video, video messages, mobile videos, video catalog, YouTube videos, feed ad videos, and they have marketing with flyers, logos, posters, print products and cards and invites.

Nick Clason (05:20):
So let's hop in and let's do a quick design Canva tutorial. Let's check it out. All right, so if you are watching on YouTube, which by the way, if you're listening only to a podcast, want to encourage you, hop into the link in the show notes, check out our YouTube, our TikTok, our Instagram. We are on all those places. But right now for this YouTube tutorial, I got my computer in my lap. If you're watching, so you're seeing it, you're also seeing my desktop right here is what it looks like, or at least the website I'm on. And this is Canva. This is what it looks like. And so I want to show you just how easy it can be. So if you log in, hit on templates, we're going to click social media and let's do an Instagram reel if that's something that you're interested in.

Nick Clason (06:02):
They have all kinds of different templates here that you can choose from. And so I'm just going to pick one here kind of arbitrarily, and let's do this daily vlog one right here. Let's click customize this template, and then we are off to the races. And so there is a background there that we have the ability to swap out if we want to. And so if I select it here, I can boom, delete it, just like that. And so now I want something different. I want someone typing. And so typing texts. Let's see what we get here. Oh man, here's all kinds of different social media based looking things.

Nick Clason (06:44):
Here's a phone one. So let's add that. I like that one. We're going to pull that sucker in. I can make that wider if I want. I can make this phone. I can make this phone a little more off screen if I want. Put it right here. And I can edit this text right here. So I can say, go check out our most recent hybrid ministry episode about editing in PowerPoint. Boom. That was our last episode, link in the show notes if you are interested in that. But boom, here we go. I can change the duration here. It's currently at five seconds. Looks like I can add some notes. I can do a little transition. I can play it and see how it is. Now there's not a lot of, oh, here's the seconds right here. So if I want to make it longer, I can make it longer.

Nick Clason (07:49):
I can animate things. So if I wanted this text right here to do something, I could have it merge in like that. I could have it come in that I could have it look like it's being typed out. I like that. I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to have this one do something, some sort of animation. Let's have, yeah, let's have it rise up. We'll make it a little bit quicker. You can change the direction that it does that, right? So up, down, top, bottom, I'm just going to do from the bottom, I can exaggerate it like that, kind of like that one. And then I can add effects to it while it's just sitting there, right? It can pulsate, it can flicker, it can wiggle. So do all those. And then there's my little preview. I can click download and I'm good to go. So I think if I were to click share, I can share this with in my group. I can copy it, I can download it, I can print it. So yeah, so let's go ahead and download that sucker so that I have it.

Nick Clason (09:10):
MP four, boom, downloading, so you can see just by that. Oh, look, and they give me a little thing to tell me just how great my design was. Now, as you can see, Canva has a ton of different features to offer. I made that little tutorial in, I don't know what you're watching, 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes. Not too long. And I was distracted because I was trying to talk and communicate with y'all. But here's the reality. There is so much that can be accomplished and completed just through the utilization of Canva. I want to make sure that you can know this and see this, but make sure that you hang around to the next point, because this next one might be one of my favorite points of all time. So beyond templates, right? They offer a branding section. So if you are a nonprofit, you can import your colors, import your logos, import your church youth group design.

Nick Clason (10:03):
They have all kinds of different apps. And if you click on that page, it'll show you trending apps. It'll show you new apps, it'll show you productivity apps. It'll show you design apps, share and publish, and then content planning, which is one of my favorite features. And you can do content planning for Instagram, for Facebook. If you're on Twitter, slack, Tumblr, LinkedIn, you're probably not in any of those bottom three. But if you're on one of the top two, you probably are. But here's the deal. I love planning. Speaking of planning, I have a completely free ebook to help you with your content planning in your student ministry. And here's the fact you can use Canva to help supplement some of the things that I'm going to recommend that you use because most design things like this are stock and static. And so you're going to have a page full of stock and static resources, and nobody wants to have an Instagram page full of just stock and static resources.

Nick Clason (10:53):
This is good, this is helpful, this is useful. But what most of us are looking for on social media and what your students are looking for on social media is an opportunity to contribute in some customization. And so I have 40 free student ministry ideas. You can literally copy and paste each of these ideas because while they're the same, they also offer new ones. And so in the description, a completely free ebook, one month worth of social media posting ideas, and then you can use Canva to filter in some of the gaps and some of the holes that my social media planning calendar is going to leave if it doesn't fulfill and satisfy every single day's worth of content for you in your ministry. But let's move on because I'm sure I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, wait a minute, doesn't this just cost a ton of money, like a resource as powerful as Canva that has to cost a lot of money?

Nick Clason (11:50):
Guess what? You are in for a surprise, my friend. Check it out. So if you look at the Canva pricing, of course, they have Canva for free. And so that's going to allow you, I'm going to pull my computer back up here so I can read it from that far away. But Canva for free will offer you drag and drop editor for easy customization, 250,000 plus free templates, a hundred plus design types, a million plus free photos and graphics, AI powered design tools like Magic, right? Magic design, magic edit and more. Invite others to design and work with you as well as a wide range of principle products and to design and get delivered to your door. And five gigs of cloud storage. That's completely for free. However, if you upgrade to Canva Pro, that's going to be 1499 per month for one person. Everything that I just read that was included in free as well as all these other features here, you can read them for yourself.

Nick Clason (12:48):
If you're on YouTube, it's going to be on the screen. If not, hit the link in the show notes, go check out this section on YouTube. And then finally, Canva for Teams is 29 99. It's a plan for two plus people. You get everything in the free feature plus all these other features that they have listed here. Again, onscreen link in the show notes, but bigger teams love the fact that you have SS, S O I S O certification, compliance cloud storage, up to one terabyte. You can pay as you grow. You'll be able to reconcile costs for anyone who's joined before each billing cycle, so you're not locked into your team size. But here's the good news, and you may know this already, but Canva Pro is free for churches and nonprofits, which is probably the best feature for any one of us in student ministry because you and I know that we don't have budget to pay for any of this type of stuff.

Nick Clason (13:41):
We need a full on communications team at our church. And if you're in a small church, you are the communications team, but your church can get all the Canva Pro features for free because it's a nonprofit 5 0 1 C three. That's incredible news. So you simply jump on a Canva, click on the pro feature in the menu, and you apply for nonprofit status, takes a couple days, and then boom, you are ready to rock and roll. In the meantime, you can utilize all the Canva for free features as you're waiting for them to approve your pro status. So here's what I don't know. As I was designing that we have a Canva Pro account because we are a church and we applied for it. We went through all the work. So the templates I might have used, if you're using it in free, the template I might've used may not be available to you.

Nick Clason (14:29):
However, once you're in pro, you don't have to worry about those things. If you see something cool, if you've see an animation that you like, you don't have to wonder. That's a pro version one. I don't have that. I don't have the budget. That's one of the best things about Canva is it offers it to churches completely for free. So you got to check that out. But hey, in the next section of the video, we are going to be talking about my top three favorite that I found on Canva that are a little bit undercover, a little bit under the radar, a little bit off the beaten path, but they're going to be amazing for you and your student ministry, and I'm going to tell you how you can utilize them in the next section. Okay. My three favorite resources that I found, the first one was this.

Nick Clason (15:08):
If you go over into the app section, they have a free QR code generator. I love using QR codes. I remember when they came out in college, nobody wanted to use QR codes. Then I remember when the pandemic happened, I recommended a QR code to our student ministry because I was living in Chicago, and this is what they said. They said, you have to think about how you can get information in people's hands without handing them anything or touching them. And I was like, that is everything that goes against what I've ever known to be as a youth pastor. And so I proposed, Hey, well, what about a QR code that might work? And the communications team said in that moment, and I quote, we will never use a QR code. Fast forward to two weeks later. And what was on the screen? That's right, a QR code.

Nick Clason (15:53):
I'm not saying I take credit for it, but it was my idea. In the original inception, communications team was anti QR code because for years, QR codes were wasteful and not really a good woven in part of our fabric. But honestly, the pandemic ushered in QR codes and our phones adapted. When I first had to use a QR code as a kid in college, I had to have a special app called QR Code Reader. But now my camera does all the work, so I just pull up my camera, shoot it at the QR code, and then a link pops up on my camera. I'm sure that you can relate to that as well. So QR code's, one of my favorite ways and things to use and push information to students. We use 'em in a couple of different settings. In our ministry, we like to have tables.

Nick Clason (16:37):
It incites some chaos as they're listening because some people's backs are to the stage. But on the tables in the middle, we have a little tabletop sign holders and whatever we might have, announcements wise, camp signups, all sorts of things. I can put a QR code there. A student can shoot that and they can go to whatever that announcement is. Another place that we use it is in our cafe. We have little napkin holders, and it's got a little slot for just some announcements. And so I just have a static standing graphic that says, Hey, we're social. And I drop in my QR code, which takes them to a link tree, which is a free website that you can utilize link for that in the show notes if you're interested. And then I dropped all of our social media handles in there. So it'll pull open like link tr.ee/cross creek students, and then it'll have YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, all of our different things so they can follow whatever they want.

Nick Clason (17:29):
And that just lives there in our cafe on that QR code. At any time, Canva has a free one, which right now, honestly, I'm currently paying for one, and I'm going to have to keep paying for one because I use it in all kinds of different places. And to swap that out is going to mean I have to swap out all the print things and all the other areas that I've sent out information about our code. But Canva has a free one, so check that out. The second resource that I love is their type craft. So you can bend type, you can warp type, you can twist type, and I am not very good at that. On the design side, I know it looks cool. We just designed and dropped these shirts at the beginning of summer right before camp that said, hello Summer, that's got a wave and warp views on the screen if you're watching on YouTube.

Nick Clason (18:14):
And we had to send that out to Fiverr and have someone create it for it. But right here, I just discovered that Canva offers it. And so if that's something that you're interested in, which it's super hot, super in right now, talk to your students, they'll tell you. But if you want to know how to do that, you know how to make it, you can utilize that type craft tool. Again, that's in the apps section of Canva. And then finally, they have this thing called smart mockups where you can use smartphones, desktops, and laptops in your design just like I just did. But they have a whole kind of app or tutorial where you can pull in a phone and then you can drop in your own custom content. So for example, if you have a student ministry website and you want to point people to it, you can bring that phone in, drop a photo of what your student ministry website looks like into that phone, and then create a graphic around that saying, Hey, if you ever want to take a next step, head to this website at such and such website.com.

Nick Clason (19:11):
And then that phone or that mobile or that tablet will be able to display what that website actually looks like when and if someone actually heads there or shoots QR code to take them there. Now let's talk the final piece about what are canva's top limitations, because that's always going to be a thing with a tool like this. Alright, so according to digital scholar.com, they wrote a blog on this. I'll link it down below in the description if you want to go read it for yourself. But essentially what I pulled out were what I thought are the four biggest problems or limitations that you might experience as a pastor, church leader, ministry leader. The four of them are this number one canvas style, right? So stock images are great, but ultimately they're still stock images, which is why I think you should grab my ebook on how you can bring customization in your students and your leaders and yourself to your social media presence as opposed to just a bunch of graphics about it.

Nick Clason (20:09):
40 free ideas in the link in the description. Limitation number two is templates. They just have a limitation on their templates, especially for the free version. There's just really not as much and they're not as good as the pro version, obviously. And so that's not going to be an issue for you. If you're a pastor or church leader, you're able to use that for free because of Canva's ability to give that to you for free. As a nonprofit and the exporting side, you are not going to have as much control on the exporting, again, like R G B versus C M Y K. That may not matter to you as much. You may not even know what those things mean, but there is just a certain level of what you're able to do. If you do a big old poster and you export it, it may come out pixelated because it's not as crisp and clear and you just don't have as much power in creating how big you want to export it and all those types of things.

Nick Clason (21:00):
And then finally, creating unique design elements cannot really happen in Canva because they're already pre-created for you. So honestly, the single greatest, in my mind, the single greatest platform for creating unique design elements falls under the Adobe Creative Cloud umbrella. It's expensive. People often shy away from it because of that. It also has a massively steep learning curve. But what you might not know is episode number one of this series was that we offered PowerPoint as a free or budget design tool canvas number two. Our third video is going to be Adobe Express, which is their free version of it. So that is video three coming up next, which will offer you the ability to have unique design elements. So if you're interested in that, click the video here on the screen or these other videos here, and we will make sure that we talk to you next time. We're making digital discipleship easy and accessible, so stay hybrid.

Episode 063: 💸 Fast & Affordable Design for Youth Ministries: 4 Budget-Friendly Tools 🚀

Nick Clason — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0500

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

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

🎥LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100

https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

DESCRIPTION

Our first recommendation is PowerPoint or Google Slides. Yes, you heard it here first. You can create stunning graphics through a program like PowerPoint, and if your church doesn't pay for PowerPoint, you can pivot over and utilize Google Slides for absolutely free.

The 2nd-4th Tools are available in the next videos in the playlist where we'll uncover the world of...
•Canva
•Adobe Express
•Instagram Stories Editor

Explore these 4 creative tools and let your imagination run wild, as you craft a logo that truly

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

😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis

AUTO POD
https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv

TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/063

//FREE COMMERCIAL USE PHOTO BACKGROUNDS
http://www.unsplash.com
https://shop.churchmotiongraphics.com/landing/free-stills

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-00:51 Doing Graphic Design on a Budget
00:51-06:07 Tool #1: Powerpoint is a mostly free optionf or youth pastors to do Graphic Design
06:07-13:36 Objection Your Honor: Powerpoint is not a design tool!
13:36-16:05 The Shadow Side of Powerpoint: What it cannot do
16:05-17:27 Tool #2: Canva

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Are you a youth pastor or a youth mystery leader looking to make incredible, amazing graphic design, but you don't have the skill the know-how, and you're also not looking to break the bank with your budget? Well, in this video series, we are going to be looking at four incredible resources that will not only save you time, but are also going to save you money. You can make some of those amazing crispy graphics using these completely free resources and make sure that you hang out and that you stick around all the way to the very end of the video. Because not only are we going to help you level up your design in this video, but I have a resource that will help you level up your design and then implement it into your social media. And I have a sure fighter resource in the description to help you with that as well that we're going to be dropping at the very end of the episode.

Nick Clason (00:50):
So make sure that you stick around. Well, hey everybody. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Nick. I'm a youth pastor in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and I've been in youth ministry going on 13 years. And when I started in youth ministry, I made graphics myself. I started completely from scratch with absolutely no idea of what I was doing. These are some of the graphics that I used to make, but more recently, these are some of the graphics that I have come up with. And I've never taken a design class. I have simply just hacked my way through learning one little technique at a time. And so in a lot of ways to go from this over here to this, it took a lot of just work time and time again putting the reps.

Nick Clason (01:37):
In fact, in our most recent video we talked about fonts. And fonts are one of the key things that can level up your design going from the default install fonts of the things on your computer to taking some stuff that have been created by designers and implementing that into your design. So if that's something you're interested in, make sure you check out our most recent video on fonts. But in this video, we're going to be talking about a completely free tool for most of us that is going to allow you to really level up your design. And that tool that I'm talking about is PowerPoint. Now, you might be thinking PowerPoint, what I thought you said it was free. Now, first of all, the caveat is PowerPoint's free if your church will pay for it. And here's the good news is most churches are still loving themselves, some Microsoft office from the 1990s. And so most churches have a subscription to Microsoft Office and PowerPoint. But don't worry if you don't have access to PowerPoint, Google Slides, which is completely free through Google Drive and using the Google Suite offers most of the same functionality that PowerPoint has to offer. So what I was early on in youth ministry, like I said, I was creating some of these graphics, but I started realizing that PowerPoint did have some limitations. And so we'll get to those in just a minute. But the limitations were not

Nick Clason (02:59):
Me to do some of the things that I was wanting to do. And honestly, what I would do is I'd get into PowerPoint and I'd just putz around and I'd fiddle around and I'd learn different things and I'd learn different tools that the resource had. But I would realize, man, there's some things that are just not hacking it for me. And what I did was I started going to my church and I was like, Hey, listen, great, I love PowerPoint, but can I please upgrade to something more? Next level. And honestly, the next level thing in this is Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects. Those are for video and stuff. By the way, I have a complete playlist on leveling up those skills if that's something that you want to do. If you want to go to the next level, I have a complete playlist of how to learn those crash course from beginning to end.

Nick Clason (03:48):
Check that out in the description. However, my church didn't let me upgrade. They were like, no, we're not going to do it. We need to be good stewards. We need to be good managers of the money that God has given us. And they wouldn't let me upgrade my software from PowerPoint. And honestly, PowerPoint wasn't even a software that they gave to me. PowerPoint was a software that I inherited because our church was a member of the Office Suite. That's just what, and every church I've ever been to since then has always had a Microsoft Office membership. They use Outlook, they calendar through Outlook. They use Microsoft Teams. I personally dislike Microsoft in so many ways. I am a Google person if I can do it. I like to use docs and sheets and slides. But the one thing out of all of Microsoft, I prefer Gmail to Outlook.

Nick Clason (04:51):
I prefer Slack to teams. I prefer Google Docs to Microsoft Word. I prefer Google Sheet to Microsoft Excel. But the one thing in the Microsoft Suite that I actually like and that I actually use is PowerPoint. And I think that it does offer some incredible functionality. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about that because when I was denied my ability to move on to Photoshop and the other programs that I wanted to, it forced me to stay in PowerPoint. I worked at that church for five years. It forced me to stay in PowerPoint and keep learning and making it the best that I could make it, even with the limitations that it did have. And so if you're looking to level up your design skills for free, and you already have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer or you don't, you can jump over to Google Slides, you can do a lot of graphic design stuff with PowerPoint, and I'm going to show you how and show you some of the unique and individual features that exist in a PowerPoint file.

Nick Clason (05:52):
So let's check it out and let's dive into ways that you can level up your design skills for mostly completely free if you have PowerPoint already installed or if not, you can jump over to Google Slides and do most of that same stuff there. And let's look at some of the features that it has to offer. So you might be thinking like isn't PowerPoint for presenting slides? And at its most basic level, yes, and I think that's a lot of the reasons why people don't think that PowerPoint can actually be a design resource or design tool. But in its most basic form and its most basic level, everything is built into layers, which similarly is what Adobe Photoshop is built into. So if you have a circle and a square, you can have the square go over the circle and it can be on top of the circle.

Nick Clason (06:38):
So if you put any sort of thing into PowerPoint, you can change the order of the way that it lays out. So one thing can be on bottom, one thing can be on top. You can send something to the back, you can bring something forward. And so in addition to that, once you get things going, you can change the design canvas. And so honestly, listen, here's a little tweak. Here's a little hack. But in most cases, when I am creating a P D F, I bring it into PowerPoint. Here's a little tweak, my completely free resource. I designed every individual page of my one month ebook that I'm giving away. By the way, link in the show notes. I designed all the individual pages in Photoshop, but then I saved those as JPEGs. I brought them into PowerPoint, then I exported it from there. As a P D F, it's one of my favorite little tools, one of my favorite little hacks.

Nick Clason (07:33):
If your church runs off of pro presenter, which is what a lot of churches are running off of, I bring everything into PowerPoint. And then when I export it, I click file save as jpeg and save all the slides in the slideshow as a jpeg. And then doing that caused everything to be in a jpeg. It drops it into a folder perfect for PowerPoint or perfect for Purpose Center, I should say. You give that folder to your tech team or you bring it over to your computer and you just command a control a select every file in there and drop it into prayer presenter. So it's a great tool to do some design stuff, but it also can help take you to the finish line of your presentation moment right before you get up to speak in youth ministry, right before you get up to present.

Nick Clason (08:19):
That's how you do it because most people aren't presenting in churches anymore, at least the ones I've been in the last 10 years aren't using PowerPoint anymore. They're using something like pro Presenter to be able to more seamlessly integrate their songs and their worship and videos and all those types of things. And I think that Pro Presenter is a great tool, but PowerPoint helps you get it to a pro presenter ready state. So you can format things, you can edit the sizes of anything in PowerPoint. You can make text boxes, you can make it big for the whole screen. You can make it smaller. You can adjust the font size. So it gets up, it gets down. And just like in our last video with the fonts, if you have different fonts installed, this is where in PowerPoint you can play around with different fonts format where they are.

Nick Clason (09:02):
You literally just click and drag. Like in Photoshop, you got to go over and find the layer. You can in PowerPoint, you literally just click your cursor on the text box that you want, you move it, you adjust it, you put it exactly where you want first. You get over, you design your slide sides and formatting. You create your background. You can create the background, then apply it to the entire slide, the entire slide show. And then every single slide after that can have that exact same background. Or you can insert an image and have a different background or a different feel or flavor or flare to every single thing. You can adjust the background, you can increase the opacity, you can make it darker. You can drop shadows in the words. There are a lot of powerful tools. And so if you just think I did, I need to upgrade to Photoshop.

Nick Clason (09:49):
Don't get me wrong, there are some amazing things in Photoshop that will help you level up your design. And I'm going to get to what some of those PowerPoint limitations are. But you can do a lot in PowerPoint and frankly, it won't break the bank because you're probably already paying for it. And again, if not, go see what Google Slides has to offer because it can offer a lot of the same things. And then the third thing is it's not going to kill you on time. It is not a massive learning curve. It's pretty straightforward. And the difference, if you've ever edited a graphic in Microsoft Word, that will hate you and you will hate it because you'll move something and it'll reformat all the other words and you just got this jumbled mess. But PowerPoint is a lot more intuitive. It's you move one layer and it does what you think it should do when you move it.

Nick Clason (10:39):
And after I moved away from that church and moved to a different church, I did in fact get the Adobe Creative Cloud, obviously as I've been using it. But since then, that was about eight years ago, seven years ago. I think at this point, PowerPoint has introduced a lot of actually new features that I really liked that it didn't have before. So one of the features, for example, that I didn't really wasn't able to do was a lot of times you'll see graphics with things cut out. So if you have this picture of me right now and I cut around myself, that's a PowerPoint thing. Or I'm sorry, that's a Photoshop thing. You cut out layers, you cut out the background, it's just me. But now you drop a image into PowerPoint and they actually have a remove background type of feature in PowerPoint. It's not that great.

Nick Clason (11:31):
There are some limitations to it. It just doesn't look as crispy sometimes as a Photoshop thing, but it does have it. And so if you have a subject on a completely white background or something that's really obvious, it's really easy to tear that out. Another feature that I love that I use all the time is when I am teaching the Bible and notes, a lot of times I will underline things and they have a draw feature. So you go in, you can create, select your pen style, pen size and then color. And then you just go and you just click draw and you just literally annotate right there on the screen. And what it does is it creates that underline or circle or whatever. It's just an individual layer. So you can make it bigger, you can make it smaller, you can copy and paste it onto the next slide if you like, the formatting and the size of it.

Nick Clason (12:15):
And so those are all new things that have come about in the last few years that I really like about PowerPoint that I actually use a lot. Also, don't forget that if you are going to go find different backgrounds, a couple of different websites that you need to know about the links to them will be in the description or the show notes. But unsplash.com is a completely free royalty free website that you can get graphics and photos that people have taken. You can use that. Also. C M G Create is church motion, graphic website with backgrounds for worship. But they will also give you their stills, like the still graphics of the motion graphics away for free. So if you're looking for a good background, check those websites out. If you're looking for fonts, don't forget the video that I talked about last week because fonts is one of the keys and graphics.

Nick Clason (13:05):
And then to just bring those two together from either cmg create in Unsplash, and then the fonts put 'em together. You can do all of that in PowerPoint. And so that is why I love the resource of PowerPoint so far. Listen though, if you've gotten value out of this video, I would love to encourage you to subscribe, share with the friend and turn on the notification bill so that every single time we drop a new video, let's move on to talk about the limitations, the downside, the shadow side of PowerPoint. So you can create things in PowerPoint, obviously, as we've been talking about. And then when you go to export it, you can export it in just about any file that you want imaginable. Now, however, when you bring a subject into Photoshop, for example, if you were to bring a picture of me right now into Photoshop, cut me out, I could export that with a transparent background, and then when I go to pull that up and open later, it will not have, the background will not exist.

Nick Clason (14:08):
So whatever background, if I were to go to Unsplash and get a mountain background and then bring me into that, I would be in front of the mountain background. You can cut me out in PowerPoint, you can export me in PowerPoint as a P N G, which is the file format that you're going to need to do to not have the background. However, whatever that canvas is in PowerPoint, it will still be there. Okay, so if there's a white background, I can't get rid of that white background because PowerPoint is still a presentation software first and foremost, and that's the way they're thinking. Again, bad Microsoft. And so that's one of the limitations. That's one of the things that caused me to really try and push for getting is that the end of the world in youth ministry graphics? No. And if you're just a youth pastor just trying to get by and you're like, bro, I just don't have time.

Nick Clason (14:58):
I don't want to learn how to do a whole new thing in Photoshop or whatever, dude, I get it. Totally. All right. But that cutout tool is one of the things that really levels up Photoshop or if you want to create circle graphics and just make a circle and then the rest of it be transparent around it, you can create a circle graphic in PowerPoint. You can make a circle. You can format the background of that to be like a picture, like a mountain picture or a gradient picture or whatever you want it to be. But there's still going to be the white around it, whatever the slide size is, that slide size, that white, that doesn't go away. And that's one of the major, major limitations in it. That's one of the key things that doesn't allow it to be a absolutely next level feature.

Nick Clason (15:42):
Also, it does have the remove background feature, but like I said, it's just, it's not as crispy as Adobe. And so like I said, if you are ready to make the investment, make the jumper, you already have link in the description of our Adobe, both Photoshop premiere and editing and Premiere for long form and short form videos. All that three part playlist in our series, make sure you go check it out. So PowerPoint is a really powerful tool. It is one that you can use anytime all the time. And if you're just looking to get by, you're like, Hey, we're going to play dodge ball and I guess slide for dodge ball. You can get in there, you can find a cool font, you can go find some dodge ball, like clip art or a dodge ball style background on Unsplash, and you can create yourself a Dodge ball graphic, drop it in pro presenter, and you are good to go.

Nick Clason (16:31):
And it is going to be quick, fast, seamless, and easy, and I want to recommend that you check it out. But if you're looking for a super duper powerful tool that is going to be Canva, and guess what? Here's the deal. Canva is the next video coming up, so I want to make sure that you guys check that out. They offer the pro version to all nonprofits for completely free. So we're going to show you how you can go ahead and get that. So make sure you click that link right here in that video. Also want to let you know that if you're just like, man, why do we need all this for youth ministry? We want to help you level up not only your design, but also your social media. So check this video out, why every student ministry needs a strong social media presence. And be sure to grab the ebook with a link in the description, and we will catch you next time. We're making digital discipleship easy and possible. Don't forget to stay hybrid, subscribe, share with a friend, and we'll talk to you next time.