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2026 DATA
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How to Ask for a Raise
00:42 What does the Data Say?
02:56 What about inflation?
04:05 What about curriculum usage?
06:42 What about Social Media?
08:41 What about Seminary?

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:03:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Youth ministry theme nights are some of the best ways to get your students

00:00:03:13 - 00:00:09:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
inviting their friends to your group, as well as build momentum for the overall team. But here's

00:00:09:13 - 00:00:20:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
something that someone might not tell you about some of these theme nights is that in every single one, there is an opportunity for a huge mistake. Sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was painful.

00:00:20:21 - 00:00:21:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And one time I

00:00:21:14 - 00:00:23:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
even thought I might be getting fired.

00:00:23:19 - 00:00:37:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so before you try this for yourself, in this episode, I'm going to share with you my five favorite theme nights from my last 15 years in youth ministry. And the one mistake I learned from each of those, so that you don't have

00:00:37:02 - 00:00:39:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to learn it the hard way for yourself.

00:00:39:12 - 00:00:54:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey my friends, welcome back to the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am your host, Nick Claussen, and I have been in this recent playlist asking and answering different questions found in different youth ministry

00:00:54:00 - 00:00:55:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Facebook groups. And this

00:00:55:19 - 00:00:55:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
one

00:00:55:27 - 00:00:59:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
says, hey, what are some theme nights you've done with your group that your kids have really enjoyed?

00:00:59:20 - 00:01:03:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like Jersey night? Crazy hair. Looking forward to some ideas.

00:01:03:16 - 00:01:03:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And

00:01:03:22 - 00:01:03:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so

00:01:03:28 - 00:01:23:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I figured, hey, I want to share some of my best theme nights. And I've discussed this before in some recent episodes. In fact, we did kind of like a fall playlist master class thing where I talked about my strategy for youth ministry. And oftentimes I'll make a theme night, a cultivate night, which is a bring your friends and invite style night.

00:01:23:22 - 00:01:36:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so one of the very first, invite style nights that I did as a youth pastor was one that I grew up as a teenager doing my youth pastor shout out to Pastor Tim Blow. He did an event

00:01:36:16 - 00:01:42:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
called Duct Tape Night. And, then I went several years later to intern for him, and he also did it.

00:01:42:06 - 00:02:02:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so then when it was my turn to be a youth pastor, it was time to do duct tape night. And so we do all kinds of different duct tape. We buy a bunch. We encourage students to, you know, bring like, bring something made out of duct tape that they made, will play, you know, games with duct tape or I even have a game I download youth ministry, called duct tape Trivia.

00:02:02:28 - 00:02:23:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's one of my very, very first vivid early on games. And then we'll even play, like, steal the bacon. But in the middle, we'll we'll play, like, steal the duct tape instead. But one probably like the star of the show. Like the thing that kids and students and even leaders look the most forward to is the duct tape a student to the wall challenge.

00:02:23:00 - 00:02:41:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, like, I was, like I said, within my first couple, months, even weeks of of taking this new job and got a couple kids and decided to duct tape them to the wall. And that's all well and good. No one got hurt. I mean, if you get enough duct tape, they literally can stick to the wall and they're not going to fall down.

00:02:41:20 - 00:02:42:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That wasn't the problem.

00:02:42:27 - 00:03:00:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What was the problem was as soon as, they started to fall off the wall, we started to take them down off the wall. It took the paint with them. Mind you, I'm in week, like, three and a half of this job. And so, you know, it's Wednesday night. The entire church is their kids ministry, youth ministry, adult ministry.

00:03:00:12 - 00:03:01:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so at the end of the night,

00:03:01:18 - 00:03:14:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
all the adults like how duct tape night go because, like, they knew about it, heard about it, but had never, like, seen an event like this before. And we're like, oh, good, good, good. And I was talking to my, my senior pastor, my boss. Right. And I was like, oh, it's awesome.

00:03:14:25 - 00:03:31:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We had this, we had this, we had this many new kids, whatever. Oh, also, I had, kid, pull some of the tape off the, some of the paint off the wall with the duct tape. So just, you know, tell me, like what color paint that was, and, I'll. I'll repaint it. No big deal.

00:03:31:29 - 00:03:53:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And he goes that we had to have that, like, specially painted with it in a very special way with, like, a sponge and like a finish. And the person who did that doesn't even live here anymore. They live in Georgia. And like my eyes, I'm just, like, wide eyed. Like what have I done? So I have to somehow get this wall repainted.

00:03:53:26 - 00:04:14:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But reach out to this person who doesn't go to the church anymore. And so within my first couple weeks of ever having a job, I took paint off the precious youth room walls that had been done in a very special and particular way, and so I've learned when you do that duct tape thing, don't put it on paint.

00:04:14:05 - 00:04:34:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I did put it on a brick wall, but it was a painted brick wall. So then in future years, I, stopped putting it on paint because it definitely was always taking the paint in the finish and the drywall off, but it is still an amazing and great event that you can theme, around duct tape. And it's it's a little bit niche and it's a little bit off the beaten track.

00:04:34:06 - 00:04:51:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's not your typical style of night. This one right here is one that we just did three weeks ago, and we called it our Back to School night. But in front of the, night, we spelled it with a k parentheses with the K. Back to school night, and we went medieval

00:04:51:21 - 00:04:53:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
themed. And, if you're due, I am member.

00:04:53:27 - 00:04:57:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Back in January, they dropped a, game called

00:04:57:02 - 00:05:04:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Loot and Lunacy, and we were going to play Loot and Lunacy at some point in January. But I remember we were in

00:05:04:13 - 00:05:14:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
our run through in our Q to Q and the game. It's just like long, like there are ten sides, ten questions, and they're each like a minute and 30s or so long.

00:05:14:09 - 00:05:32:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you needed to carve out a good 15, maybe even 20 minutes to the whole game. And so that night, right on the moment, right on a dime, I actually decided to switch to another game. So I held loot and lunacy just in my back pocket, knowing I wanted to go back to at some point in the future.

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:50:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so when our back to school came around, I was like, let's, let's build a night around loot and lunacy. And in the meantime, we built up all of these sort of like ren fair ideas around it. And so, you know, we talked about, you know, the importance or not, the importance of we it was an invite.

00:05:50:04 - 00:06:08:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we didn't have like a message or anything, but, we had all sorts of different, like, medieval themed games. We did the impossible shot with the bow and arrow. We did like, a giant scavenger hunt. We got a joust. We even looked into getting turkey legs, but that was either a impossible or B cost prohibitive.

00:06:08:01 - 00:06:29:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can't remember exactly the reason why, but either way we didn't come up with it. But then in and around it, we played Loot and Lunacy and we broke it up into two chunks. We played some at the beginning and we played some at the end. And, you know, here's the fact is, I actually, because this is recent, I detailed an outline this entire episode over on a recent bonus Patreon podcast episode.

00:06:29:16 - 00:06:40:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I get on and I talk every single week. Actually, as soon as this episode hits stop, I'm gonna turn around and a record and recap last night's, last night's Youth Mystery, which was we had an

00:06:40:20 - 00:06:50:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
amazing, like, custom game that came out of like one of our, team members just heads like, it was fantastic. And I can't wait to share it with you.

00:06:50:03 - 00:07:11:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So click the link down below. And guess what? You also get access to the seasonal summer social media pack. 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.

00:07:11:03 - 00:07:30:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You see, you don't need that kind of stress this fall. That's why I created this the fast 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.

00:07:30:17 - 00:07:50:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts feed. So here's the thing. You can grab my pack right now over on Patreon. And did you know that monthly hybrid? Here are 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.

00:07:51:03 - 00:08:11:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Where the pack is 1799. 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. Moving on.

00:08:11:27 - 00:08:31:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Talking about back to school bashes. That was a like back to school night, medieval themed back school bash. The mistake I made in that is that. Do you know how to spell medieval? I spelled it wrong so many times. And emails out to parents. The whole thing. And I

00:08:31:02 - 00:08:33:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
still don't even know if I know how to spell it.

00:08:33:05 - 00:08:40:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Grammarly tells me it's medieval, but I was spelling it MLG. Easy io.

00:08:40:18 - 00:08:45:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then I had to spell it mega. I even I like it, I messed it up

00:08:45:24 - 00:09:06:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so many times. So don't be like me and look up how to spell medieval before you send out emails to parents. But, typically a back to school bash for me, growing up in youth ministry and this is like a big event, a party and a bunch of, like, those giant inflatables and like, you know, obstacle courses, not bounce houses.

00:09:06:16 - 00:09:29:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Exactly, but like, obstacle courses, jousts, Velcro wall, like the hanging wrecking ball, the bucking bronco, like stuff like that. And so one year I had, created a special events team, and there's a guy at our church who's super awesome, super willing to help, but, like, didn't want to be, like, necessarily like a youth leader. But he was like, I'll be on like the events team, which was great.

00:09:29:24 - 00:09:50:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I had our students helpline the night and like what they wanted for food. And they said they wanted Buffalo Wild Wings, which was great and so called ahead place to order. And you know, all the inflatables, all the things are going, kids are showing up, but the food's not there. And I had sent this guy and his name was Tim to go out and grab the Buffalo Wild Wings.

00:09:50:12 - 00:10:09:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Order. And I had placed it ready to be picked up at, you know, let's say 615. Well, he told me that when he got there that they didn't start preparing the order of nearly 250 wings until he arrived at 615, and it was supposed to be ready to pick up at 615. And I said, no, it was supposed to be pick up.

00:10:09:07 - 00:10:33:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
He said, that's what I told them. And they even said, oh yeah, but we want your wings to be fresh. And so he was like 45 minutes late and all the kids are like, where's the wings? So when you're doing catering and when you're doing a big giant pickup order like that, like just make sure the restaurants don't do harebrained stuff like wait until you get there to start preparing it, which is going to then make it like an hour late.

00:10:33:01 - 00:10:52:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Good grief. Event idea number four is last year actually linked right here? I discussed our Christmas movie bracket. And what we did out of that. And again, this is another good plug for my Patreon as I discussed in detail and outlined all of this in my Patreon as well. But we did a bracket which is movies go head to head.

00:10:52:05 - 00:11:09:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, this was the member resource back in, youth ministry back in December of 2024. So if you remember, you might even have access to this for free. Otherwise, I'll put the link down in the show notes. You can go grab it for just a few bucks, but kids vote head to head on different Christmas movies.

00:11:09:18 - 00:11:33:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then what we did was that was just running in the background. In the month of November. But then what we did was the winner was what became our Christmas movie night. And then my boss shout out to Darren, he did a, he added a flavor of bring your own chair to the Christmas movie night. And so kids are coming in and in shopping carts and in camping chairs, and one group even brought a full air mattress to sit on.

00:11:33:18 - 00:11:54:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we took all the chairs out of our auditorium and we played the movie, up on the screen. And the kids brought all their own chairs. Now, the mistake that I made in this event was trusting that ChatGPT would know where all of the homeland Swearwords were, because I actually edited, I was going to edit out any cuss words from the Home Alone movie.

00:11:54:16 - 00:12:22:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so ChatGPT told me. And then what happened was, by the grace of God himself, I was thinking about a certain part of the movie, and I remember, oh, there's a swear word there. And I didn't edit that out, so I had to go back in and reedit it, a reedit another edit that after one I had already made, because the first one I made was I was trusting ChatGPT to give me accurate information, and alas, it gave me some accurate information, but not entirely accurate information.

00:12:22:09 - 00:12:41:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So check your AI chat bots people. And then finally, the fifth idea that I have is a Super Bowl party. If you are a youth group that meets on Sunday nights, you're obligated to do something with the Super Bowl. Now, what I would recommend from a philosophical standpoint is if you're ones in a group, don't add a Super Bowl party to it.

00:12:41:23 - 00:12:55:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But if you're sending a group, you've got to figure out what you're going to do. And so I remember the first year that I was at a church that had converted from Wednesday to Sunday. And so in comes along the Super Bowl and all of a sudden people were like, oh yeah, we got church and don't we? And they're like, where are we going to meet?

00:12:55:29 - 00:13:13:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we had a Super Bowl party at my house and it was averagely attended. It wasn't great. And so, the and everyone was like, well, we got a party with these people every year and we do this this time of year. And so I was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not competing with the Super Bowl anymore.

00:13:13:07 - 00:13:31:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Not to mention, I like sports. I want to watch the Super Bowl. And if I'm running a party, I don't get to watch. I don't get to lock in. I don't get to pay attention to the Super Bowl. And so the mistake, I would say, of, doing the Super Bowl party is actually having one. However, if you're a Sunday night meeting youth ministry, what do you do instead?

00:13:31:28 - 00:14:03:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, I, I moved up our party, in the next couple of years, and we started doing, like, a pre-game or like a tailgating party. And I know those have negative connotations, but just like a before the Super Bowl party of the Super Bowl party. But we're done by the time Super Bowl parties are so big obstacle course in the middle of our, our space and, some football trivia and, I think we did, like, Nerf wars in a room, actually, and I ended up hiring a DJ, which, another mistake was that deejay was awesome.

00:14:03:17 - 00:14:35:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, he wasn't like some, like, low level DJ. He was so good. And the music was so loud, and the kids, complained. They're like, I couldn't hear myself think. And so I had to go ask him to turn the music down a little bit. That was another mistake. But all in all, super fun. I encourage kids wear jerseys and whatever, but we did it on Super Bowl Sunday, just a few hours before the game started, and then if you are like me and you like sports and you like football, you wrap your event up and you're home in your recliner by 6 p.m. and you're watching the game, you don't have to

00:14:35:19 - 00:14:52:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
worry about commercials. You don't have to worry about halftime shows except for your own stuff. You just get to enjoy the game for itself. So those are five of my favorite theme nights. Comment down below what your favorite youth ministry theme night is, and tab this video here on screen so that you can check out the next one and be sure to give us a subscribe.

00:14:52:29 - 00:14:56:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But until next time, and as always, my friends, don't forget, say habit.

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👎 Do your youth group sermons stink?

🤷The ultimate goal we have for our students is to grow in their love for God and their love for others. However, does what you teach actually matter?

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//ATTENDANCE CONUNDRUM
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:26 Why Youth Group Sermons Don't Do We Want them to do!v
01:26-06:10 The Best Youth Sermon Curriculum Scope in Existence
06:10-10:04 2 Things Your Youth Group Needs for Better Sermons
10:04-10:53 The #1 Thing Our Students Needc

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00:00:00:03 - 00:00:27:08
Nick Clason
Teaching in discipleship. Honestly, the core components of what we do in youth ministry. But what if you're teaching sucks? I mean, listen, like you probably think I'm here to sell you some sort of curriculum or something. That's not it, right? But what if what you're doing is not actually contributing to your students attending the way that you and, frankly, your boss want them to be attending?

00:00:27:09 - 00:00:47:11
Nick Clason
I mean, let's be honest. The entire reason that that youth ministry exists is because we want to help teach students about Jesus. Jesus taught us the aim. What we should be teaching our students is to love God and to love others. And so the goal of all youth ministry is be to help students grow in that love of God and love of others.

00:00:47:14 - 00:01:14:28
Nick Clason
So today I want to talk to you about, number one, a great scope and sequence for your teaching calendar for your students. However, the problem which we talked about in the video length right here is that 57% of regular church goers didn't go to church during the course of one month. And so we're going to talk in this video about the two key things that you actually need to address in your youth ministry and in your youth ministry space before you can even solve the attendance issues as it relates to teaching.

00:01:14:29 - 00:01:36:00
Nick Clason
And finally, I have the number one thing that you and I need to disciple our students. I think it's an ultimate game changer. Welcome to the hybrid ministry show. Welcome, everyone to the Hybrid Ministries show. My name is Nicholas and coming at you during the flex week in between Christmas and New Year. At least that's when I'm recording.

00:01:36:03 - 00:01:57:20
Nick Clason
I almost forgot my glasses. I don't have my watch on. I got my new Christmas mug that my five year old made for me at preschool. It's an amazing week, but we are still going strong in the 2024 Youth Ministry OnDemand Masterclass. You're going to want to make sure that you subscribe because we're going to lay out all of everything that I've ever learned in my 13 years of youth ministry experience.

00:01:57:20 - 00:02:14:15
Nick Clason
My name is Nick Clason, youth pastor now living and working in the DFW Dallas, Texas area. But when we talk about scope and sequence, one of my favorite resources of all time, I mean, it's so dated. I mean, just look at the graphic here. If you're not watching on YouTube, you can see it. If not, you'll just have to go check out the show notes.

00:02:14:15 - 00:02:33:09
Nick Clason
But it's called seven Check points for Students. It's written by Andy Stanley. And I think this is a really, like thorough and a really good swath of things that students need and should be learning as it pertains to what we teach them when they're in youth ministry. So some of those check point, some of those things are, number one, an authentic faith.

00:02:33:12 - 00:03:04:04
Nick Clason
Number two, spiritual disciplines. Number three, more boundaries. Number four, meaningful friendships. Number five, why is choices Number six, ultimate authority? And then finally, number seven, putting others first. I mean, if you want to try to poke holes in that like you may, there may be some things that you're like that's missing here, that's missing there. But like, if were to say love God, love others, you can almost go back through that, similar to what Jesus did with the 635 different commandments and put all of them into a classification of love, God love others, right?

00:03:04:04 - 00:03:23:04
Nick Clason
So like an authentic faith that we love God and spiritual disciplines, it's like love God and moral boundaries, a combination of the two. But I would probably put it in love. Others and meaningful friendships is also love others. But there's also a benefit to us in that as well, making wise choices about loving others and ultimate authority is probably about loving God and finally putting others first.

00:03:23:04 - 00:03:39:26
Nick Clason
Let's love others, right? And so if you break it down to those different categories, like if you just have those seven things sort of on your mind of like, okay, these are the main kind of core things that we want our students to learn. What I would do is I would kind of sprinkle those throughout the year, kind of kind of space them out.

00:03:39:26 - 00:04:06:25
Nick Clason
Right? And so I'll just give you a quick snapshot into what we're doing in our student ministry. You know, I'm not trying to say any sort of curriculum. I have a curriculum to sell you, but there are a ton of different resources out there. Why? I'm through 60 so series do you I am has series even have a new thing called co-leader if you haven't checked that out Collider does everything for you, not just your message content but also like your slides and your smog questions and your games and your content in your worship, like it does everything for you.

00:04:06:25 - 00:04:28:02
Nick Clason
It is, and it's much cheaper than some of the other content companies out there, like, say, like an XP three or like an orange. But if you have the budget, you might want to try them out too, because they have a lot of really good resources. So back in September, what we talked about is we actually led the year off starting a few weeks early in August, kind of more like the back to school around August 20th is when our students go back to school in Texas.

00:04:28:05 - 00:04:48:15
Nick Clason
And we did a three ways How to not ruin your school year. That was kind of like our focus and is basically like, if you don't connect with God, if you don't connect with us, if you're not in a small group, right, like those are some of the ways in which you can like ruin your school year. Then we moved on in October and we talked about Elephants In the Room is one of my favorite series that we did.

00:04:48:15 - 00:05:08:02
Nick Clason
We talked about racism and cheating and bullying and some of the bigger kind of like hot topic things. Like everyone know the label. If we don't really address them very often, Then we did a series called Gratitude or Gratitude is your typical Thanksgiving series doing did a Christmas series. And that's one of the tricky things about that's what the tricky things about the scope and sequence is.

00:05:08:02 - 00:05:30:00
Nick Clason
You only really get a few months and then you kind of into your like Thanksgiving and your Christmas kind of vibes. In January, we're doing a series called Kings, and it is exploring four different kings of Israel. We got David, we got Joe Joash, we got real boom and then we got Hezekiah. So everyone knows David, but the other three are a little bit less known and it's about how to make the most of the hand that you're dealt.

00:05:30:02 - 00:05:47:25
Nick Clason
In February, we're going to look at like a biblical literacy type of thing and basically teaching students how to navigate the Bible, how to read it, why it's important, why the Bible should have, you know, ultimate authority in your life. In March, we're going to do a Easter type series, and then we're going to end the year with Faith's biggest questions.

00:05:47:25 - 00:06:07:04
Nick Clason
And we're going to, again, kind of zero in and some more hotter topic type of things. And so that's how we laid out our scope in our sequence. If you look back at any Stanleys, like some of them tie in there, some of them don't, you know, But at the end of the day, like we're trying to give our students a good understanding of how to love God and how to love others.

00:06:07:04 - 00:06:28:21
Nick Clason
But the problem is that we've all been trying to navigate what do we do when our students don't show up to hear what we have to teach them? So what do we do about this attendance conundrum? People are attending church less and less, especially post pandemic. And so I think there really like two things that we need to try and create in our student ministry.

00:06:28:21 - 00:06:48:15
Nick Clason
And these things actually have nothing to do with teaching. But if we create these things, they will enhance our teaching. And the first one is this Students need a place to belong. It's no longer if you build it, they will come. I worked at a large church in Cincinnati. Eric Geiger, who is now the lead pastor at a manchester.

00:06:48:19 - 00:07:08:24
Nick Clason
He was a youth pastor there, and they built the space that I inherited for Eric Geiger. I don't think he ever made it into that building during his tenure there, but there were people that that grew up in Eric's youth ministry, and they said that like that youth ministry was the talk of the town and everyone like to come in and play billiards.

00:07:08:24 - 00:07:30:21
Nick Clason
And so I inherited so many billiards tables and you know, that that's like ultimately a curse because you can't actually move those things. And so that was sort of under the mindset that like if we build it, if we have this thing, they will come. But I think now it's shifting in a more and more digital sort of way, a more digital sort of mindset.

00:07:30:21 - 00:07:51:04
Nick Clason
I think students and teenagers are more thinking like, if my friends are here, then I'll show up, has and listen, you should still do a good job, you should still focus, you should still plan, you should still prep. But I think far less of that has to do anything with what you produce, what you put out there, what your programing and more.

00:07:51:06 - 00:08:12:20
Nick Clason
Are we creating a place for students to belong? I it doesn't really sound very spiritual and no amount of prep on your message is really going to help create some of that. Right? But that really is, I think, the crux of where we find ourselves. That's the first one. The second thing is that students need to have ownership and they will stick and they will stay attached to youth ministry, especially the older they get.

00:08:12:20 - 00:08:36:03
Nick Clason
And once they start getting keys and driver's license and cars, if they feel a sense of ownership of what's going on in our youth ministry. And so for teaching right to be good, you need students to find a place to belong. And you also want to help them find an opportunity to attach and be accessibly owning some of what your student ministry has to offer.

00:08:36:03 - 00:08:57:15
Nick Clason
So as far as your content goes, like you should, you should care about your scope and sequence, you should pray about it, you should think about it, you should pore over it. However, oftentimes that isn't what is keeping sticking and attracting students, right? As far as the content goes, you can preach more than just the one time a week that you live in the room with all of your students.

00:08:57:18 - 00:09:28:27
Nick Clason
Right? And that's why I would say I'd actually make the argument that I think the Internet is better for content delivery. Obviously, community ownership, serving prayer, some of those those are not better on the Internet, but content delivery and teaching can be done on the Internet. And so if students and if people are attending 57% not coming to church during the course of the month, then I want to I want to ask you to consider would you think about the idea of going hybrid?

00:09:28:27 - 00:09:49:09
Nick Clason
And when I say hybrid, I'm not just talking about only your online presence. I'm not just talking about only your in-person presence. I'm talking about a melding of the two. What can you produce? What can you put out there digitally? What kind of teaching content can you create? Can you do more podcasts? Can you do smaller bite sized social media, short type things?

00:09:49:11 - 00:10:14:04
Nick Clason
I have a fully laid out strategy right here linked down below in my completely free e-book, and that will help you be able to focus on the belonging and the ownership pieces and still deliver content. Because we need students to have content, We need students to learn things. We need students to be disabled. But the only way in which are disabled does not have to be live and in the room.

00:10:14:07 - 00:10:34:04
Nick Clason
So as I said at the beginning, what is the ultimate number one thing that we need from our students is this is we need to help create for them a meaningful attach statement to Jesus. And when you choose to go hybrid, you can offer all of this content, all the content that you want in the world, paired with a warm community.

00:10:34:04 - 00:10:59:01
Nick Clason
And that really is the best of both worlds. Your environment matters, which is why I think the way in which we approach programing and games is such a crucial component of youth ministry, especially in the face of this mental health crisis that we're all facing with teenagers helping students be able to laugh. And that video is linked right here on the screen because we're making digital discipleship not only easy, but also accessible.

00:10:59:01 - 00:11:02:28
Nick Clason
So as always, don't forget stay hybrid.