Hybrid Ministry - Episodes Tagged with “Youth Ministry”

Episode 197: Custom vs Done-For-You Social Media for Churches

Nick Clason — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Social Media is like the beast that never sleeps.
In this episode, I have two experts to argue both social media philosophies.
Should you use a pack that's done for you, so you can set it and forget it?
Or should you focus on more custom content for your church instagram feeds?

Find out, listen to the debate, and you decide!

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Social Media for Youth Ministry
00:39 The Guest Today?
01:53 Custom Social Intro
02:52 Done For You Intro
03:52 Why Done For You Social Media?
05:54 Why Custom Social Media is most effective
07:55 How Long Do You Spend on Social Media?
10:26 Have You Raised up Volunteers?
12:07 Done For You Closing Remarks
13:07 Custom Social Media Closing Argument

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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:000 - 00:00:02:065
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Youth ministry debates. Welcome to the

00:00:02:065 - 00:00:02:112
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
fourth

00:00:03:002 - 00:00:03:076
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and

00:00:03:086 - 00:00:04:075
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
debate

00:00:04:085 - 00:00:05:008
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
episode.

00:00:05:033 - 00:00:05:050
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And

00:00:05:050 - 00:00:07:110
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
in this one we are talking all things

00:00:08:013 - 00:00:10:077
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
social media, and I'm debating none

00:00:10:096 - 00:00:11:103
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
other than

00:00:11:113 - 00:00:27:037
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
myself. And I'm going to be taking two different stances. Stance number one is going to be on social media. That is done for you. You download it out of a pack and you just set it and forget it versus social media.

00:00:27:037 - 00:00:39:053
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That is custom social media that has your own voice and your own face. And we're going to be going head to head. Myself versus myself. Welcome, everybody to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00:00:39:063 - 00:00:49:065
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, hey everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Minister's show. If you've not been following along, we are currently at the tail end of a playlist where we've been exploring big youth ministry

00:00:49:075 - 00:01:05:022
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
debates. And in this one, the debate is specifically centered around social media. And rather than trying to find another opposition or another person on the other side, I figured I would genuinely argue this position from each side of the social media aisle.

00:01:05:032 - 00:01:09:020
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Done for you versus custom for you. And so when I'm wearing a

00:01:09:033 - 00:01:10:111
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
black shirt, I'm going to be arguing

00:01:10:119 - 00:01:14:051
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
packs that are done for you, that are set it and forget it. Think

00:01:14:061 - 00:01:15:080
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Sunday social, think

00:01:15:080 - 00:01:19:015
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
nuclear social, think doing membership post.

00:01:19:025 - 00:01:22:111
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then when I'm wearing a white shirt.

00:01:23:000 - 00:01:38:028
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to be arguing social media. That's custom, social media that has your own flair, social media that has your own voice in your own face. And so, just like we've programed every single one of these other debate style episodes, that's how we are going to

00:01:38:028 - 00:01:40:080
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
do this with a minute introduction and

00:01:40:080 - 00:01:46:013
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
then two minutes of an argument, then a back and forth Q&A, followed by one minute of closing.

00:01:46:042 - 00:01:53:030
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And welcome to the podcast to argue social media myself. Nicholas.

00:01:53:040 - 00:02:09:105
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. So minute on the clock. So I've been in youth ministry for 15.5 years. Started out small churches in Ohio. Always seen the value and need for social media, digital ministry. In fact, I read a book, or listen to a podcast about exiles in Babylon.

00:02:09:115 - 00:02:18:045
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It was a Barna book and talked about the value of YouTube and how the next generation is going to be asking some of the heaviest and most theologically based questions on YouTube.

00:02:18:055 - 00:02:40:084
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So to kind of get my gears turning around YouTube, I started a little like YouTube through my church podcast, moved to a church in Chicago the first day Covid hit. And while we were there, obviously we had to come up with a digital and an innovative and innovative digital solution. And while we were doing that, it really like sparked my love, my continued love for social media, YouTube, and just digital ministry.

00:02:40:084 - 00:02:54:060
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so kind of ever since then, I've seen the value of it. I've seen the power behind doing a good job on social media. And then then I moved to Texas. Which next guy can take it away?

00:02:54:069 - 00:03:13:053
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. That's great. So I moved here to Texas in 2022. I came to be, one of my really good friends. His name is Darren. I came to be kind of like his right hand man and, learned a lot of stuff about digital and kind of poured into it and really, like, brought it to life here.

00:03:13:062 - 00:03:28:021
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In where the in the current setting that I'm serving in, last summer. So about eight months ago, at this point, he stepped away to another role, at another church, and I took over and assumed his role, which is a lot more management, and it's a lot more meetings

00:03:28:021 - 00:03:34:114
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and a lot more oversight of people. And so my schedule looks like this on screen here.

00:03:34:117 - 00:03:51:098
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is a screenshot of my schedule. I actually sent it to him last week complaining. And I'm actually getting ready to hand social media over to a resident because I'm running out of time, no matter how well I'm mapping out and blocking my time. Social media is great, but there are other things that are also taking my attention.

00:03:51:098 - 00:03:56:060
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, excited to be with you today.

00:03:56:070 - 00:04:22:029
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. Okay, so two minutes on the clock. So, I would say our goal as youth pastors is not to be content creators, not to be social media managers. But our goal as youth pastors and pastors in general, working in the church, our goal is to be disciple makers, and we should be implementing and facilitating, a system and a program that helps move students more meaningfully and significantly towards Jesus.

00:04:22:029 - 00:04:26:038
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I know and I believe that social media

00:04:26:053 - 00:05:00:036
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
obviously is still important, and I believe that it has a role within the life of the local church. But I also believe that we should be primarily focusing on making disciples. And my argument for why you should consider done for you. Pax is it just while it's important, while social media can be a mechanism for life change and for disseminating the hope and the message of the gospel, I also know that as my calendar gets more and more full, as my plate gets more and more stacked up, and as I have more and more of those proverbial plates spinning, so to speak, that social media

00:05:00:058 - 00:05:14:000
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
is one of the first things to kind of like fall off my radar and so, yeah, so I believe in social media, but I also believe in delegation. And so if you can delegate that either through a team or through a,

00:05:14:011 - 00:05:20:101
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
just downloading a pack of especially like if you're a member, you're already paying for it like it's included.

00:05:20:110 - 00:05:45:009
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You should go ahead and check something like that out because, while the while like, I believe that we're busy, I believe that social media is important. I also believe that our ultimate goal is to raise up leaders and to help point people towards Jesus. And so if social media is taking that away from me, I don't want to, become less effective as a disciple maker because of social media.

00:05:45:009 - 00:05:57:084
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so because of that, I would recommend that you grab something that's done for you, that's taken care of, and you don't even have to worry about it. And it frees up your time to be the best version. And pastor of you that you can be.

00:05:57:094 - 00:06:23:016
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. So I would say two minutes on the clock. I would say my argument is that in social media, the goal is not to just get your announcements or your information pushed through. It's it's a very, very small part of it. In fact, the goal on social media is engagement, which my argument would be as youth pastors, as ministry leaders in churches, our goal should be engagement across the board.

00:06:23:038 - 00:06:47:118
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We would want people to engage not just with our church for the sake of engaging with our church. We would hope that they would engage with our church, and that's going to be helping to move and promote them towards and for life change. And so the same thing is true on social media. And just like every single time you're hanging out with a student at Starbucks, you're not only ever posting announcements in the same way that you're, or like you're hanging out at Starbucks.

00:06:47:118 - 00:07:03:107
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're not only ever talking about spiritual, so if you're talking about life, you're talking about fun stuff, you're talking about interesting things. And you see, you know, the latest neighbor gets a stand up routine, like whatever that might be. And I think the same thing should be true on social media. And I think you should have a custom fingerprint of our own church.

00:07:03:107 - 00:07:26:012
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And so because of that, I think that helps drive engagement and so people respond to people, people like some of our best performing posts on social media, our faces, not graphics that we cooked up in Canva. And so the more we can get faces, my face, my leaders faces, my senior pastor's face and other students faces, that's the goal on social media.

00:07:26:012 - 00:07:52:046
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in the same way, like announcements are good, graphics are good, done for you. Stuff is good. But Dunphy can only take you so far because if it's done for you, it means it's also done for many. And if you're just posting something that someone else has already made, that can be done at any given church in any given context across America, only you have been called to be the youth pastor and the shepherd of your church and the students that God has entrusted to you.

00:07:52:057 - 00:07:59:032
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So lean into the customization of that and use it to spread the message of good news and hope of Jesus.

00:07:59:041 - 00:08:09:022
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. Okay. So I have a question for you. Nick. White shirt. Nick, how much time do you spend on social media per week?

00:08:09:032 - 00:08:26:099
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, so let's see. Good question. I used to spend a lot of time on social media when I was editing our teaching videos. Probably took me ten hours a week between that, and then our other social media content, like our short form content, we finally built up our budget in such a way to be able to pay an editor, which I get.

00:08:26:099 - 00:08:46:069
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a luxury. Not everybody has that. I would also say, like, if you have the potential to just, like, film yourself in the back of the room with a camera. Cameras have come a long way even since I started at this church in Texas. And so you could probably get a decent camera, a decent lens, and a decent like, just, what am I looking for?

00:08:46:069 - 00:09:01:017
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
An adapter into your soundboard? You can probably get that for a thousand $2,000. And again, you might have to work your way up for it. You might find a donor for it. If there is some money for it. But you can put a camera in the back of the room and you can film your messages, and you can use those for clips and stuff like that.

00:09:01:017 - 00:09:14:094
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then I also come a long way. So to answer your question and spend a lot of time when I've done a lot of the work myself, but do things like opus clip link down below if you want to check that out. If you have some sort of long form version of your message without lower thirds is going to crop it out.

00:09:14:094 - 00:09:39:097
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Opus clip is an amazing solution that will give you clips and chunks of your teaching, and of your messages that you can sprinkle on all throughout social and listen. Maybe video is not even an option for you. Maybe just like record your sermons through soundboard and post to audio. Have an audio sermon like that's still a version of hybrid Ministry of Digital Ministry might not be the most effective just on social media, but there's even ways to do that where you have like the sound wave bar, right?

00:09:39:097 - 00:09:59:056
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And like you can do overlays and B-roll and, and you can do your slides and stuff like that as you clip up some of the things. So like, you don't have to be hamstrung by the equipment side of your, of your life. And then that being said, I built out a whole strategy. I owned it, but then as I've owned it, I've handed it off.

00:09:59:056 - 00:10:17:018
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So on the capturing and creation side, I have a whole team of students who are building that out every single Wednesday night. And then on the editing side, I have a whole team of students, and even some leaders and other staff members who are helping, do some of that. But I don't manage much of it anymore.

00:10:17:018 - 00:10:29:052
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I would say in an honest assessment, I spend less than an hour per week and have a fully customizable social media, YouTube channel, Instagram, all those things.

00:10:29:062 - 00:10:33:003
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. I mean, my question to you, black shirted Nick would be like,

00:10:33:003 - 00:10:45:034
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I get that you were all about done for you, but have you considered raising up volunteers to give you a hand on some of these things as you've, you know, gotten busier and lost some of your time that you used to have?

00:10:45:044 - 00:11:21:066
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, actually, yes. I have raised up volunteers in in my space. And that's one of the reasons why, the done for youth stuff. I mean, I'm not so far down the done for you path. It's because of my own prep of raising up volunteers. So I have a couple of students, who I've raised up in who have taught how to run and do social media for themselves, and how they, can, come in at edit off of our computers, our machines, our software that we spend the money for that we've invested in.

00:11:21:075 - 00:11:43:079
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And they have my help, my troubleshooting ability. But if I didn't have them at this current juncture, I'm not sure that I would have as much time to devote towards, you know, five, five, days a week, two posts per day, ten, ten different pieces of content. Like, I don't know that I would have that amount of time to get something like that off the ground.

00:11:43:079 - 00:12:10:093
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So something that's a little more done for you, something that's just a little bit more turnkey. In my current role, with the amount of direct reports I have, with the amount of people that and meetings that I've found myself in. Had I not raised up those volunteers to continue to keep doing what I'm doing as I've stepped into this new leadership role and I'm not I'm not 100% sure how well I would be at launching a brand new hybrid in social media, like kind of ministry and campaign, like right now.

00:12:10:102 - 00:12:21:095
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. So final minute on the clock. My final closing argument is honestly my own social media pack. I don't mean for this to be like self-promotion and like a plug, but the fact of the matter is this is that I

00:12:21:111 - 00:12:32:100
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
have a pack that has a whole done for youth section. In fact, I was just on social media not ten minutes ago, and one of the members from my cohort, I follow their youth ministry.

00:12:32:109 - 00:12:55:086
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I ran across a takes 60s to pray post. I ran across one that I had made and I had created myself. And so I saw another youth ministry. I saw another youth pastor use my content for their own students. And that's why I would recommend this, because sometimes you have the bandwidth, sometimes you have the margin, and sometimes you have the creative energy, but other times you simply don't.

00:12:55:086 - 00:13:09:101
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you need something that's still good, that's still effective, and that's still going to push the mission of Jesus forward in your space, in your context, in your church. And you can do all that through social media and on your social channels.

00:13:09:111 - 00:13:30:062
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, right. So my argument is that social media is best when it's custom. People respond best to faces. And you, if you're the youth pastor, you've been called to shepherd your people, which also includes putting your face on your Instagram, on your YouTube, on your TikTok, and, shameless plug my done for you and custom for you social media pack.

00:13:30:062 - 00:13:54:048
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I have four different seasons summer, fall, winter, spring, $17.99. Or you can become a Patreon member, which gives you access to our weekly bonus podcast. And then as a part of that $4 per month membership cost, the $17.99 social media pack will coach you through how to have a custom and hybrid social media ministry. It will give you scripts.

00:13:54:048 - 00:14:10:089
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It will tell you, it'll give you filming prompts. It will give you man on the street questions with the graphics and the overlays so that your social media can be custom, but it doesn't have to break the bank financially or from a time standpoint. Check it out. Link down below in the description.

00:14:10:099 - 00:14:33:044
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, hey, thanks everybody for hanging out on this episode. And I think, and I hope that you're able to tell that my genuine answer is that, yes, it should be custom social media and that yes, it should be done for you. Social media. And I have the perfect tech to blend those two things together. There is information and a link down below in the show notes.

00:14:33:044 - 00:14:53:059
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you just have questions, bro, reach out to me. Shoot me a DM. If you found this episode helpful, interesting, or at least just something comical to laugh at because I was literally debating myself just with a different outfit, then hey, go ahead and give us a like or subscribe. That would be the greatest form of payment, especially if you choose not to go check out the social media pack.

00:14:53:068 - 00:14:57:009
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But until next time my friends. And as always, don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 195: Young Leaders vs Older Leaders: Who Connects Better?

Nick Clason — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Volunteer Leaders are so crucial to a healthy youth ministry.
But as you recruit, should you focus more on older leaders?
Or younger leaders?

In this debate style episode we have two leaders make their case on both sides of the aisle!
Let's dive in, together!

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Do older or younger leaders connect better with students?
01:32 Meet the Older Leaders vs Younger Leader Debate Contestants
04:38 Older People are Better Youth Ministry Volunteers
07:09 Younger People are Better Youth Ministry Volunteers
09:43 Can you clarify the emotional stability for older volunteers?
10:52 How should a busy youth pastor respond to social media?
12:54 Do younger people ever prove to be less reliable?
17:08 Closing Arguments

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TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.062)
What's up everybody? Here we are. I am with Jacob and Tyler. Gentlemen, how we doing this morning?

Jacob (00:07.712)
Doing good. It's good.

Tyler Johnson (00:08.579)
Doing so good.

Nick Clason (00:09.93)
Have we both already had coffee or is that after this is over?

Jacob (00:15.057)
I just finished my cup, so I'm all set.

Nick Clason (00:17.18)
Okay.

Tyler Johnson (00:17.454)
I had tea because I'm a tea guy.

Nick Clason (00:19.708)
Hey, there you go. Who knew? The more you know. Comment down below your favorite brand of tea for Tyler. But we're going to let each of you have a moment. I don't want to get too far into this without you guys letting us know who you are. So by random draw that happened off camera and you're just going to have to trust me because I'm a pastor and I get paid to tell the truth. Jacob, you get to go first and introduce yourself one minute on the clock. Are you ready, sir?

Jacob (00:19.826)
Yeah.

Jacob (00:48.273)
Yeah, yeah, I can do a lot in a minute, let's do it. All right, yeah, my name is Jacob Hayes. I'm a student pastor for the chapel in Wisconsin. So I work with our three campuses in Wisconsin and our main campuses in Whitewater, which is UW College Town. So I get a lot of college students and it's fun to work with them. And yeah, it's just been great. See, I did it in under a minute.

Nick Clason (00:50.218)
All right, let's go.

Tyler Johnson (01:08.02)
you

Nick Clason (01:11.85)
19 seconds what a right I don't think any youth pastor has ever come in that short on their time, but my friend Impressive stuff right there Tyler the bars been set bro

Jacob (01:19.858)
There you go.

Nick Clason (01:27.56)
Alright, are you ready Tyler? Let's go!

Tyler Johnson (01:28.974)
I'm so ready. I will take more than 19 seconds because I read that in debate it matters to take your full time. So my name is Tyler 2 Wall Johnson. The rest of that context doesn't need to be known because I don't think I can tell it in the remaining 40 seconds that I have. I am currently in Fort Wayne at Christ Hope Ministries and Church.

I have only been here for about a year. was at my previous church for about eight years and I have had a fair balance of both young and old volunteers in the ministries. And so as I come today, ready to bear the fight and the voice of the older people, as there was another person in our retreat that the three of us had had recently who strives to be an older person.

Jacob (01:54.899)
Okay. Okay.

Tyler Johnson (02:20.556)
I cannot wait and so I am ready to defend the old today. Done.

Nick Clason (02:27.41)
Nice, great work. wait, I got distracted. There we go. I almost didn't give you credit for that because I laid the remote down.

Tyler Johnson (02:37.101)
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let it be known that it was about 56 seconds.

Nick Clason (02:40.714)
Strong work, man, both of you strong work. All right, well, now that we thoroughly know everything and we know the bare minimum of Jacob's life, let's get this show on the road. So once again, by random draw, Jacob, since you went first on the last one, that means Tyler, your position that you're getting two minutes to argue is that older people are better youth ministry volunteers.

Jacob (02:51.398)
Okay. Okay.

Nick Clason (03:10.282)
and you're about to have two minutes on the clock. Are you ready?

Jacob (03:11.346)
Okay. Okay.

Tyler Johnson (03:14.54)
I will take one minute and 59 seconds.

Nick Clason (03:16.99)
Alright, well then my friend, take it away.

Tyler Johnson (03:20.522)
Yes, I am here to debate that for older volunteers, here's number one. They bring long-term faithfulness and not just energy. They model a future version of faith. They're often more emotionally stable. I do say that as a once young person, kind of middle-aged. What is 30? Am I young middle-aged or am I old young? I don't know. That's for later. I'm in my debate time.

Jacob (03:42.345)
. Thank

Tyler Johnson (03:50.955)
Here's one of the probably the biggest that I have seen more personally outside of just reading from my notes and it's this. There is more ownership with the maturity, not just ownership of the ministry, but there's ownership of the tasks that they have. Not only do they see the ministry as their own or maybe their small group as their own and the ability to without asking permission or even sometimes without asking how.

Nick Clason (04:01.514)
Hmm.

Jacob (04:13.129)
.

Tyler Johnson (04:18.508)
They're going to go in and say, like, you know, they're going to grab the lunches. They're going to grab the coffees. I don't have to hold their hand for some of that. At the same time in ministry, if they are teaching a lesson, if they are preparing small group questions, it is theirs. They want to own it. And they might want feedback over some of that, but they're going to have ownership of it. In the same way, finally, there's a lot of ownership of their faith. As a young adult, even a young

Jacob (04:36.369)
Okay.

Tyler Johnson (04:47.052)
volunteer. I do believe someone is supposed to have a Paul and a Timothy at all times, even into their older years. But there's a lot of times that that those 20 somethings, they are still looking very heavily towards their Paul. And so with the the 40s, I would say arguably older ministry volunteers is probably 50 up. They they have experienced that mentorship role and are more willing to be the Paul than needing to be the Timothy. Done.

Nick Clason (05:18.782)
Fantastic, strong work. Jacob, the bar has been set, my friend. He brought in the Bible and everything, so it's now time for you.

Jacob (05:19.344)
There you go. That was good.

Jacob (05:25.413)
Here we go.

Tyler Johnson (05:28.446)
shoot, I should have used the Bible.

Nick Clason (05:33.5)
It's that time for you to argue your side of the aisle, though you guys are friends. You once were friends. Will you still be friends after this, Jacob? Two minutes on the clock. Take it away.

Jacob (05:35.44)
Here we go.

Jacob (05:45.85)
Go for it. Yeah, so I want to clarify before I offend anybody that's 35 or older, that I'm 29, so 30 and above is still in the older mark for me. But I think there's something that younger volunteers provide that can't be replicated anywhere else. And that first thing mainly is just proximity. Proximity to culture, life stage, proximity to what students are actually experiencing right now.

You know, they remember what it was like to sit in the cafeteria awkward wondering about what they're going to do with their lives. Not 25 years ago with a completely different generation, but just a couple years ago. I think the other thing that it provides is you get you get volunteers. Students look to those younger volunteers and they see a hope, not just a hope that's like, man, 45, 50 years from now, this is where I can be. But there's a hope of OK, faith can actually survive past high school like.

faith can actually thrive in a college setting because I'm seeing college-age young adult students or young adult leaders actually engaging and figuring it out. And they don't have all of the answers completely. But I also think that that provides a comfortability of freedom to the students that go like, hey, it's okay if I'm not hitting college-age and I have all of the answers because they're still trying to figure out what they're gonna do. And that's okay, it's a process. And they can kind of have hope in that. And then the younger leaders can speak into that a little bit for them and give them a sense of,

going be okay, you've got time to process some of these things and they can do that together. I think the other thing is that it builds a leadership pipeline. know, for all the pros that Tyler's talking about, for the older volunteers, you don't get there without some of the without starting at some point. And so you got to start as a young leader, use the skills that you have at the time and then work your way up to a place where you can be a a Paul instead of just a Timothy. But also remember that

Tyler Johnson (07:31.562)
you

Jacob (07:34.745)
Paul called Timothy when he was super young into a step of ministry. It wasn't that, let's get you to a certain age, but it was right there in that moment. Done.

Nick Clason (07:45.086)
Great. So each person, each member of the defense, I don't know, this isn't court, has presented their side. Does anyone have a clarifying question for the other person to try and understand their side of the argument maybe a little bit better?

Tyler Johnson (07:56.747)
you

Jacob (08:10.063)
Yeah, I'll go. Clarify a little bit on the emotional stability of older volunteers. I'm not saying I disagree. I just want to hear the specific strength that comes from as an older volunteer, because I think it's possible the younger volunteers can be in a place where they're emotionally stable. But maybe I'm missing the angle that you're coming from.

Tyler Johnson (08:21.194)
Yeah, I think that older volunteers can react less dramatically to maybe sometimes it's student behavior or something like that, as well as even when there are storms in their personal life, I think you'll see someone who's

Jacob (08:40.374)
Here you go.

Jacob (08:46.447)
Yeah, that's

Tyler Johnson (08:50.249)
keep a more calm sense in them more than when the storms of life are hitting a young person.

Nick Clason (09:00.648)
Tyler, you got one for Jacob?

Tyler Johnson (09:02.845)
I'm gonna come up with one, but I really liked Jacob's take. No, no, no, no, no, I didn't admit guilty, I'm just saying, it was a good point. Talk to me some about, obviously with the older crowd, took the stance of there's some high reliability.

Nick Clason (09:05.608)
Yeah.

Jacob (09:10.84)
Did he just admit on here that I won or we live over?

Nick Clason (09:16.126)
Ahem.

Tyler Johnson (09:29.917)
Talk to me about the lows of reliability in young people and if that has been an experience that you've experienced.

Jacob (09:36.093)
I mean 100 % although I would also argue that I've that I've worked with older volunteers who are sometimes just as as unreliable as as younger volunteers and so it's a little bit of a balance I think One of the things that all that I'll say and I'll push a little bit on the younger volunteers compared to older volunteers if I'm doing a and I'm hoping that all of us are in agreement that this is a horrible idea if I'm doing an overnight event right, I'm getting the young guys who can

pound two red bulls and eat Taco Bell and go run with the kids then get the older volunteers to go, hey, I need you to go run around for a whole night and interact. And so there's a little bit of an energy there that they can provide. And I totally agree. think there's the emotional stability thing is super important. I do agree. think older volunteers are a lot more calm, especially in situations where like we need calmness and direction in terms of crisis, both in our lives and then also just in the craziness of Wednesday nights, we need a little bit of calm.

Nick Clason (10:05.866)
Yeah.

Tyler Johnson (10:29.225)
you

Jacob (10:30.03)
But I think at some point you're not going to be able to, they're not going to be able to learn that, the young leaders, unless they're in it first and see the older people do it. And so they have to experience that so that way they can also learn how to get there.

Tyler Johnson (10:41.503)
I do, so what's really fun is talking about the overnight, right? Because we've all been there. Sometimes it's not about just the evening, it's about the recovery. I've known some young people who pounded those two Red Bulls and then afterwards, like the next day, they are a frail Victorian child on their couch.

Jacob (10:45.549)
Yeah.

Jacob (10:53.095)
Yeah, that's right.

Jacob (11:03.021)
True.

Tyler Johnson (11:03.857)
And some older people who are like, I got my coffee and I'm going to work today. And I'm like, you're insane.

Jacob (11:11.511)
Fair enough.

Nick Clason (11:12.522)
Well, and younger people have like sometimes their life lends itself better for recovery. They're like, I will be sleeping all day Saturday and it doesn't matter. And older people are like, I have a family and we have an upward basketball game that we have to be at at 9 a.m. You know what I'm saying? And so there's definitely like there's some of the availability piece of maybe like a younger person, but there's maybe some of the wisdom piece of the older person.

Tyler Johnson (11:30.407)
Absolutely.

Nick Clason (11:41.726)
Which is probably why this is a terrible argument to have a either or stance on, right? Like that's probably why it's helpful and beneficial to have a good blend of both, right? And so that doesn't make for a strong YouTube title, but it does make probably for good youth ministry to have a good blend of older volunteers and younger volunteers because you can certainly see the pros of both sides. And let's be honest, you can also see the cons.

Jacob (11:48.783)
Yeah.

Jacob (12:05.888)
For sure.

Nick Clason (12:11.89)
of both stances of the argument.

Tyler Johnson (12:14.44)
Yeah, and to be honest, I figured that was the point anyway, right, is to have the balance. even for the older people, the idea is not they are not just mentoring the students, they're mentoring the younger leaders. There's so much wrapped up. Jacob said it, there's a pipeline. You don't get to be the older volunteer without at one point probably being also the younger volunteer. And realistically, as the younger volunteer, as I was a younger volunteer,

Jacob (12:16.813)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (12:18.023)
You

Nick Clason (12:27.114)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (12:39.241)
Yeah.

Tyler Johnson (12:44.155)
There were volunteers that I looked up to that said, man, I want to do discipleship that way. want to do, man, I want to have their presence when my life looks like their life.

Jacob (12:44.301)
Sounds like I'm I'm winning now this thing

Nick Clason (12:54.652)
I was gonna say objection to the pipeline because like what's the point of a pipeline? You don't actually want them past 30. So like just burn them out bro and then.

Tyler Johnson (13:03.848)
Are you? I'm sorry, Mr. Host, are you taking a stance? I don't feel good about this.

Nick Clason (13:07.816)
No, I was just, I was just.

I was just playing a counterpoint. All right.

Jacob (13:15.353)
You

Nick Clason (13:18.014)
Final arguments, are we ready? So I believe since Jacob went first on the last one, Tyler, is that right?

Jacob (13:24.204)
That's right.

Tyler Johnson (13:30.001)
I went first on the last one.

Nick Clason (13:31.484)
since Tyler went first on the last one by random draw that you'll have to trust. Yeah, I'm pastor. Jacob, one minute on the clock to defend your younglings. Are you ready? All right, take it away.

Tyler Johnson (13:37.148)
You're a pastor.

Jacob (13:45.366)
Yeah, I'm ready.

Yeah, think, yeah, close that out. I think it's also like you see the students that get to see the younger leaders engage, that gives them a hopeful passion and you can plug those guys in when they graduate into your middle school programming, right? And then that's where they can learn even more. And so it's not just you have these students from...

It would be great. It would be a great world to live in if they if every single one of them came in in sixth grade and stayed until senior year, right? But we know that that some of them come in in their in their senior year or junior year or anywhere in that spectrum and you think well only have a certain amount of time right? Well these younger leaders can pour into these people and help them figure out their gifts. So maybe it's being called into ministry. Maybe it's being called into something else or jumping into serving in student ministry to see where they feel like where their spiritual gifts are right? And those can happen at a young age rather than going well I'll just figure it out when I'm 30 and go from there.

Tyler Johnson (14:44.966)
Thank you.

Nick Clason (14:45.256)
All right, well done. Let's round it out, Mr. Tyler. Older people are better than younger people as youth ministry volunteers because...

Tyler Johnson (14:51.174)
I'm ready.

Tyler Johnson (14:57.201)
The last point I want to make for older volunteers is the vision casting as well as the decisions they make are generational. There are times that think with younger people they planned sometimes as little as like they're ready for next summer, they're ready for the next summer conference, they're ready for the next big event. When a lot of the decisions in ministry that is done from some of the older volunteers is they are thinking the long term, they are thinking about the students when they're getting to their

late 30s, 40s, 50s, and how they can pour into them. They have that vision of the five-year plan and not the one-year plan. And I have found that incredibly valuable, especially when establishing a ministry for even me to go to them and have those long-term vision casting conversations about the ministry. Done.

Nick Clason (15:53.61)
Well done, there you have it folks. Old volunteers versus young volunteers. Let us know down below who won and whose side you're on. We should probably put like an old person emoji for one person and a child emoji. Yeah, yeah, then you, yeah.

Jacob (16:08.121)
And then put me

Tyler Johnson (16:09.657)
I just assumed that there was a filter you're gonna do in post that like I'm 90 right now.

Nick Clason (16:17.13)
Oh, I'm good, but I might not be that good, I mean. Yeah.

Tyler Johnson (16:21.336)
Okay, I'm just like, well, one, I kind of wanted to see it. I wanted to see like the really greys, like my grandfather had a very good head of hair even in his 90s. So like, I'm hoping that sticks. Yeah.

Jacob (16:24.142)
You

Jacob (16:32.978)
That sounds nice, that sounds really nice,

Nick Clason (16:34.154)
Way to rub salt in the wounds there,

Jacob (16:39.946)
That's right.

Episode 194: Same Small Group Leader for 7 Years vs Changing Every Year

Nick Clason — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Small Group Leaders are the life-blood of any good student ministry.

But what is our most effective strategy to deploy them? Is it to saddle a great leader with students for their entire careeer? Or is it rather to introduce students to great leaders along their journey?

In this first debate style episode we have two amazing youth pastors, on two different sides of the argument, and they're going head to head, and you get to be the voter!

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SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/194

//LINKS
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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 The Same or Different Small Group Leaders
02:33 Meet Stephen
04:25 Meet Isaac
05:25 Students should keep the same leaders
08:02 Students should change to different leaders
10:08 What if a student doesn’t like their leader?
11:56 What about Social Media?
13:05 How do you discern when to move a student?
16:21 How many leaders in each group?
20:08 The Ultimate Small Group Win
22:28 New Leader Every So Often Closing Statement
23:22 Same Leader Every So Often Closing Statement

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00.103)
All right, well here we are. I mean, this is about to get really, really like real now because we have two amazing youth pastors with two completely different points of view on what's best for small group student leadership. And so again, by random draw that you'll have to trust because I'm a youth pastor, so I get paid to tell the truth. Isaac was randomly drawn to give his first two minute argument. So.

Isaac (00:04.782)
Hmm.

Stephen Rose (00:12.276)
You

Nick Clason (00:29.009)
We're about to put two minutes on the clock. are you ready?

Isaac (00:33.026)
Yeah, and just just clarifying because I want to make sure we are talking about leaders walking with students like. Are is it better? Is it better for them to go each year with them or every year? Let's recycle. That's the main question.

Nick Clason (00:41.915)
during

Nick Clason (00:50.235)
That's the question at hand. Yeah, I mean, we won't get into like the pizza lock-in, like social media debate. Those are, you know, those are meaningful ones in youth ministry as well, but this one in particular, yes, that's what I'd like you to argue. I hope that you came prepared for that and not like your pro lock-in debate, cause it might not fit. Real quick here at chat GPT, real quick, give me new notes. All right, are we ready?

Isaac (00:52.526)
Let's go.

Isaac (00:58.254)
Hmm.

Stephen Rose (01:10.656)
Thank

Isaac (01:11.534)
I have to change all my notes right now.

Stephen Rose (01:17.876)
Thank

Isaac (01:18.178)
Yeah, yeah, give me new notes. All right, yep, let's go.

Nick Clason (01:21.776)
Two minutes on the clock, take it away.

Isaac (01:24.654)
All right, two minutes, here we go. The key word that I'm looking at is discipleship and what does discipleship really look like? And so, and this is something that I've been kind of studying and learning about in my 17 years of youth ministry. And so I've changed and I've morphed, but I keep leaning more towards, man, let's really walk alongside these students. Here's some examples from the Bible. Jesus, he's come down, he's like, let me really pray over who I'm really going to invest in.

because he had other people that were interested in following him, but he said, no, I'm really going to invest in these 12. And he did that for three years. And then you have Paul and his relationship with Timothy, and he's being able to say things like, hey, Timothy, your grandmother, and he's naming family members and stuff, which I just don't think that you can do that in a year's time of knowing someone that you really want to get into that. So discipleship really means relationship and knowing.

How does someone come in and they're fully known and fully loved? So when you're with them longer, you know the students, you know their parents, you know the deaths that happened in their family, you know what sports they're involved in, you know the injury that set them back a few years prior. And so when they confess this thing, you go, I know the meaning behind that because I've had this relationship with you for a while.

I guess my main question that I would ask is why don't we go in and hire a new youth pastor every one year? You want a youth pastor to be there and and longevity breeds just this this trust that's that parents now have and I feel like as a youth pastor I'm trying to equip other leaders to come in and essentially be youth pastors And so I don't want to hire new youth pastors every year because I want that trust

and that relationship and that discipleship to happen. And that can only happen over a stretch of time and not hitting the reset button every single year.

Nick Clason (03:27.12)
Wow, did you rehearse that?

Isaac (03:31.49)
No.

Nick Clason (03:32.39)
Strong work, my man. Strong work. Alright, Steven. It's been laid down. Like, the challenge has been issued. Are you ready?

Stephen Rose (03:32.788)
Thank

Stephen Rose (03:42.404)
Yes, yes, I'm ready.

Nick Clason (03:43.354)
All right, and the microphone's working and the internet is streaming and yeah, yeah. All right, sweet. All right, bro, two minutes on the clock for you, Steven. Your side is you think that it's useful for students to have a variety of leaders year in, year out, or every so often. So, my friend, take it away.

Stephen Rose (03:46.548)
Internet's not crashing out right now.

Stephen Rose (04:07.504)
Awesome. Yeah, I love what you said about discipleship. Couldn't agree more. And for me, one of the things I think is so important and what we really focus on in my context is helping students own their faith by the time they graduate. And there's been like some studies done where the more, not like infinitely, but the more adults, specifically the number was around five. If you have five good relationships.

with adults who are like spiritual mentors or people that you know on at least a relatively deeper level, then you're much more likely to stick with a faith post-graduation. And I would argue that the reason for that is because their faith is hopefully being more grounded in Jesus than a specific leader. And they're rooted in Jesus. He is their firm foundation, not like an awesome leader or the youth pastor or something like that.

And so when you move, not necessarily every year, but every so often, you're just more likely to build relationships with more adults. And I view that as a huge win. And so what I like to see is them build relationships, be really intentional in the year or the two years span that they're with that leader, and then really focus on the transition so they can then build a new relationship.

with new leaders and the students stay together. So they're able to keep building those long-term relationships where they can grow alongside of each other. But the leaders can shift as far as small group goes. But the long-term relationships still stay the same. Just like a small group leader that I had when I was in eighth grade, I still got to talk to them later in later years and they still knew me and they still could pour into me and disciple me. And so the process

can keep happening even though we're still looking towards helping them meet more people and grow closer relationships with more people.

Nick Clason (06:13.38)
Right on time, my man, both of you. This might be the first time two youth pastors hit their time mark right when they're supposed to. That's crazy. All right, so what we'll do now, guess, I like this. I think we're gonna go to a more open forum, all right? So let's do two minutes, but here's the thing, just so you guys know.

Stephen Rose (06:20.041)
Hehehehehe

Nick Clason (06:40.804)
I don't need to include the clock. like if it's good and free flowing, like I'm just not going to interrupt it. Like don't, don't worry about it. I'm just trying to keep things moving and make it not be like a, you know, long and boring episode. so I'll put this on, but why don't you, why don't you guys ask some clarifying questions just like back and forth and just like answer, ask, answer, ask, answer. and then, when, when we feel satisfied with that, we'll, we'll move on to the like closing testimony or whatever, whatever they call it in the courtroom.

Stephen Rose (06:51.316)
Thank

Nick Clason (07:10.758)
I don't watch enough court TV. So, does anyone have like a question to start? Like to ask the other person? All right, great. You go first then.

Stephen Rose (07:11.092)
Sounds good.

Isaac (07:12.627)
Okay.

Stephen Rose (07:19.216)
Yeah, yeah I do.

Perfect. So Isaac, wonder in your context, if a student doesn't get, like we'll just say student doesn't get along great with a certain leader. What does that look like? Like do you go about that?

Isaac (07:40.396)
Yeah, man, that's great. Context, I think, matters a lot. So I've worked in a small church, a medium church, and a large church. So let's just talk about the numbers that I have here. It's weird to talk about that in church culture, but that helps context so much. So I have about 160 leaders. And in that, have, for sixth grade boys, we have five sixth grade boy groups.

Stephen Rose (07:45.246)
I agree.

Stephen Rose (07:55.732)
for sure.

Isaac (08:07.854)
And then each one of those groups has four leaders. And so I think that that helps so much for the person watching right now. They're like, well, this might make sense because of this. And the dynamics can shift because for you saying, hey, does a sixth grade boy, if he's if he's not enjoying this, then what? Well, he he can move to another group. He can go to one of the other four options. And that's easy. Now, when I was at a church for six and a half years and it was like

Stephen Rose (08:08.049)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Rose (08:27.252)
Uh-huh.

Stephen Rose (08:30.675)
Right.

Isaac (08:37.59)
You have middle school boys, high school boys, middle school girls, high school girls. That's your option. Then it's like, well, what do we do when they don't like that person? And so for us in our context, it makes sense of if there's not someone getting along, there is another option in another group that they can go to.

Stephen Rose (08:44.444)
Right. I'm

Stephen Rose (08:58.772)
Sure. and

Nick Clason (09:00.39)
How do you guys, either of you, discern this is not a good fit and we need to quote unquote rescue the student from the fit? Or this is an opportunity to lean in and disciple the student to push through something more difficult and maybe getting along with their leader is like what God has for them in this season of their spiritual growth. Like how do you discern between those two? Because I feel like

Like a parent can come to you like they hate their leader and you want to like solve that so so that the kid doesn't get mad or the family doesn't leave the church or whatever. But I think sometimes it's like, dude, you need to stop being so entitled. You know what I mean? How do you how do know?

Stephen Rose (09:43.219)
Yeah, that's really good. For me, I tend toward having them stay either way because I don't want for students just to pick a leader based off of, I love this leader. I can't stand that leader, which by the way, my team is awesome. I have awesome leaders, all that. And so it's really a side point. But of course, if there was

if it was like coming to an unhealthy place, then I would say I'd be more willing to like figure it out. Especially if it was like a newer student, you know, who maybe isn't even a follower of Jesus yet. And okay, I'm trying to help them get comfortable first, help them feel accepted and have a good experience. And so that'd be a little different if it's someone I've been walking with for a while. And then, hey, it's time for you to grow up and, you know, and be...

be mature about this and grow in your maturity. I part of that is definitely not being in your favorite spot at all times.

Isaac (10:46.552)
Yeah, that's good. I think that, you know, scripture says if at all possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with with everyone. And if there's some kind of disunity there, obviously that's what the enemy is trying to seek out and bring to light is some kind of disunity. So it's our jobs as the shepherds of that to say, well, what's causing this? And so it should start with a conversation with both student and leader and saying,

Nick Clason (10:46.587)
Good.

Stephen Rose (10:56.372)
Mm.

Isaac (11:14.926)
Why? Why is there a disunity and how can we go towards unity? What's the conversation? Maybe you just need to say some things. Let's get it out on the table. Truth is gonna be great. Let's get it out on the table. But if it becomes a thing where it's like, we're not coming here. My kid doesn't wanna show up. I'm even pro, well, there's also another church in town because...

Stephen Rose (11:29.78)
Yeah.

Isaac (11:42.742)
The gospel doesn't just happen at this address. It happens in lot of places in discipleship. And so hopefully I am then connecting with other youth pastors in the area where I can then give a trusted, hey, why don't you go over here to this church? Because this youth pastor is also going to teach the Bible. Discipleship is also happening. But I'm not nervous to, I don't want to say threatened. It's not threatened, but to give, go ahead. If you can't grow here.

Ultimately, what we are concerned about for you as a student is your growth. Go grow anywhere.

Stephen Rose (12:14.045)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (12:17.776)
Good.

Stephen Rose (12:18.238)
That's good.

Isaac (12:19.83)
Steven, got a question for you if I'm allowed to ask. Yeah, because I love what you said about having five good relationships with adults. Yes, man, let's try to, as youth pastors, bring in as many adults and as many leaders as possible in their time of being there. What does it look like in your context for how many leaders do you have in each group? Yeah, what does that look like for you?

Stephen Rose (12:21.982)
Sure.

Nick Clason (12:22.638)
Yes, yes, go.

Stephen Rose (12:39.718)
.

Stephen Rose (12:47.234)
Yeah, we have two leaders in each group. so, over time, would naturally develop relationships with multiple, I mean, hopefully, in prayerfully, you would develop relationships with your small group leaders in that time. And for us, we're, I guess, the medium church size. And so,

Like for high school, for example, we have two high school guys groups, underclassmen and upperclassmen currently. And so you would meet four of the people right then and there. And then hopefully, like even like myself and some other people, because certainly our youth ministry is not the only context which you can have a relationship with an adult. But as far as what we're trying to do, it fits that mold pretty well.

Isaac (13:30.51)
Sure, yeah.

Isaac (13:38.978)
Yeah, so when you say upperclassmen leader and, what is it called? Underclassmen? That just sounded weird. Underclassmen? That just sounds underwear. Anyhow, when you have both of the, so the upperclassmen, are you saying then that those two leaders are with them for two years?

Stephen Rose (13:46.608)
under underclassmen.

Stephen Rose (13:58.579)
Yes.

Isaac (13:59.648)
Okay, so it's kind of like a hybrid then of it's not, I'm not thinking every year it's I'm still kind of building this. I'm in this context. So it's still once because for me, I don't even know if I'm pro you should be with them for seven years. I do like the for me, three years of middle school, you get a new high school leader, because there's just a difference between high school and middle school.

Stephen Rose (14:16.923)
Mm-hmm, right.

Nick Clason (14:16.966)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Rose (14:22.587)
Thank

Stephen Rose (14:27.586)
Right.

Isaac (14:27.84)
If there is someone that's committed for seven years, my hope is that they are bringing in dads, moms, and other people to it. Because I think that what you said is key. They need to have five adults in their life or more that where they can say, it's not just one person that believes this. It's not just their characteristics, but that in discipleship, they are inviting others to be a part of it as well. If you're going to do that seven year plan. Yeah.

Stephen Rose (14:32.35)
Thank you.

Stephen Rose (14:37.765)
So.

Right.

Stephen Rose (14:46.388)
you

Yes. Right.

Nick Clason (14:57.05)
Yeah, yeah. And I'll just say from a youth pastor logistical standpoint, you get someone to commit for seven years, that's amazing. Are they still committed to loop back down and start a sixth grade group? Going from being a 12th grade leader to a sixth grade leader is tough. And so I've been in situations where they're committed all the way through, but then I'm always having to recruit.

Stephen Rose (15:17.416)
Hey.

Nick Clason (15:24.462)
at the entry point because no one wants to loop back down. They feel like they've quote unquote done their time and they want to be involved in student ministry, but then they want to be involved in more of like a consulting role or a coaching role. And it's like, I love that for you, but I really could use a sixth grade leader, my friend. And so that's been, that's been my experience when they loop all the way through as we, we pool all the way down at the end of the quote unquote conveyor belt, if you will. And I got some really great leaders who aren't doing ministry anymore, but if you're doing

Stephen Rose (15:30.42)
That's how you do it. Okay.

Stephen Rose (15:53.716)
What am I? You just answered about the full seven years or if it's more of a middle school to high school, because I'm I agree. I'm a little less.

Nick Clason (15:54.694)
Like if you're like, yo, you're the underclassmen leader and you're just going to be an expert in ninth and 10th grade. Like, and then you'll see every kid's face, hopefully as they, as they loop through. Um, it's just, it's just the way I think about it.

Isaac (16:08.684)
Yeah, I love that. Steven, did you have any other questions?

Stephen Rose (16:23.832)
cause I can see there's definitely real positives in doing both ways. And, but the seven years is the one where I really, I don't want to say worry, but for lack of a better word, worry about like a students attaching to a certain leader and, that, is a good thing. but especially if they're, if they're not a part of the church at large, like the whole church body, and they're just attached to youth group and just attached to the leader. I just saw so many examples before I even got in youth ministry.

And then those kids, the leader's gone, they're done with youth ministry and they're they're toast. know, they just kind of walk away. And so I guess it was really just on my heart to like, I don't want to see like that happen. And I know there's other intentional ways of working against that too. But that was just really like on my heart.

Isaac (17:12.408)
Yeah, yeah, I would. Here's I mean, Nick, you kind of set us up. You're like, haha, caught you. You're in a trap coming debate this. And so I'm going to I'm going to, you know, share. The perspective of everyone wins, I guess, because here's what I would rather see if this is a would you rather question of would you rather have one leader who intentionally disciples a student for one year or have a leader that walks alongside?

Stephen Rose (17:20.83)
But.

Isaac (17:41.448)
and invest in a student for seven years, I would say give me the one year intentionally disciple. Because so often we recruit leaders that they won't say, I'm just a babysitter. They're not going to say that. We're not going to say that. But if you're like, we're just hanging out, I'm going to their games and they're doing some good things, but they're not intentionally discipling, we're still missing out. And so I would say that the key thing for me is find the leader that's going to disciple.

Stephen Rose (17:46.484)
Yeah.

Isaac (18:09.998)
Which means that they are really getting in and saying do you know Jesus? What is he teaching you? Are you opening up the Word of God? Are you praying? Are you building a community around you? Where are you serving? How's your evangelism life? And they're really working out all of these disciplines And it's more than just let me show up to your play Let me high-five and we'll go get coffee together because you can just hang out But you're not just being friends. You're intentionally discipling so

Nick Clason (18:25.51)
.

Stephen Rose (18:30.04)
Right.

Nick Clason (18:33.03)
you

Isaac (18:37.986)
Give me the one year intentional disciple.

Nick Clason (18:38.34)
Yeah.

Stephen Rose (18:39.572)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Nick Clason (18:42.166)
That's good. That's good for youth pastors. That's good for Like that's good for this whole conversation. Just like having like a well-rounded perspective of it. It's bad for Trying to elicit emotion and you guys like hating each other. So Way to be a Christian way to ruin YouTube, but no, I agree and

Isaac (19:03.661)
Yeah, yeah. And he's a Cavs fan. Yeah, this is great. We love each other. We're best friends now. Thank you, Nick.

Stephen Rose (19:07.704)
Hey, I know

Nick Clason (19:09.51)
Yeah, you're so welcome. Congratulations. Yeah. Well, let's do like your final statement, right? We'll just do a minute on the clock or less. Just give like your final word, kind of like put a bow on it. And then, yeah, then I guess we'll take it from there. So who went first last time? I think it was Isaac, right? So Steven, we'll have you minute on the clock, finalize your argument. You ready? All right, let's go.

Stephen Rose (19:36.663)
Yep.

All right, so I believe that transitioning through different small groups is best for students because they get to build multiple relationships with adults, which helps them own their faith, not just the youth's faith or my faith or their leader's faith, but their faith in Jesus. And so I think it's best to move them through. And then I also, as a side note, I think it can create a spot for leaders to star in their roles where, hey, if I'm always with freshmen girls,

then I'm gonna be able to really get good at welcoming them. Or if I'm always with the senior and junior guys, I'm gonna get really good at helping them through this transition as they get older, as their problems change. But they kinda are the same perpetually for new juniors, new seniors. And so they get to start starring in their roles as they get year after year of experience with them.

Nick Clason (20:36.282)
Nice, good job. All right, Isaac, one minute on the clock. Take it away.

Isaac (20:43.66)
Awesome. Quantity will produce quality. The more that you're hanging out with someone, the better the conversations. And so getting someone there for a length of time, it's just going to produce the quality that we're looking for. It avoids the six months, like, do I actually know this person? Can I make that inside joke? I accidentally said something about their parents or

Stephen Rose (21:07.284)
You you

Isaac (21:12.498)
Whatever all their life story the more opportunity that you have with their story the more that they can feel Fully known fully seen and fully loved which really I think just shows grace more discipleship more and and what Jesus was Really trying to aim for when he said this is what a disciple maker

Nick Clason (21:38.15)
Nice, strong work, both of you.

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
https://www.patreon.com/posts/hybrid-ministry-151264417?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/192

🌸 SPRING SEASONAL SOCIAL PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/spring-seasonal-151263940?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

YEAR-LONG SOCIAL PACK
https://www.patreon.com/collection/1470781?view=expanded

HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

FREE EBOOK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/complete-guide-142500019?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 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!

--------------
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 191: Can a Youth Night Work Without a Game?

Nick Clason — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:00:00 -0600

In this 4th and Final Episode of my Creative Programming Playlist we’re continuing on with the 3 challenges, from home this week because of this insane (?) winter storm!

CHALLENGE #1 No Repeat Order
And while last week we had no speaker, what if this week we have NO GAME?!

CHALLENGE #2 I’m creating a DYM Game from Scratch, and this one idea be the best one I’ve made so far
CHALLENGE #3 And as always, we’ll be telling you how it went and giving it all away!

ACCESS TO BRACKET & RECAP EPISODE
https://www.patreon.com/posts/no-game-recap-152046269?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/191

🌸 SPRING SEASONAL SOCIAL PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/spring-seasonal-151263940?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

FREE EBOOK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/complete-guide-142500019?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

//EPIC THINGS
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-student-ministry-bracket-of-epic-things/games-3974.html
//WORLD’S GREATEST DONUT
DYM: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/world%27s-greatest-donut/kids-ministry/games-8745.html
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/5ryhkIRyDb4?si=liWxUitEuO2JZBm8
//ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS MOVIE
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-ultimate-christmas-movie-showdown/christmas/christmas-games-9784.html

//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 Final Programming Episode
01:10 Programming with No Game!
05:20 Waiting on my Team
05:57 Bracket Launch Program
11:41 Why Hybrid?
13:44 From Scratch Game? (Or Resource)
16:10 Time to Evaluate

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;01;25 - 00;00;02;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, in this fourth

00;00;03;00 - 00;00;03;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and

00;00;03;06 - 00;00;03;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
final

00;00;03;18 - 00;00;11;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
episode of my Creative Programing playlist, we're continuing on with the three challenges that we've been working on

00;00;11;29 - 00;00;28;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this week, from my home office or guest bedroom, or normal side of the recording of the hybrid ministry show. Because of this insane question mark winter storm that Texas has experienced. I haven't been in the office all week and Sunday services were canceled.

00;00;28;06 - 00;00;34;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's crazy, but we're doing these three challenges with no repeat order. And while last week we had no speaker,

00;00;34;29 - 00;00;39;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this week I want to show you what it might be like if we have no traditional game.

00;00;39;29 - 00;00;53;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again, question mark. And I'm going to somehow create a game from scratch and submit it to dym, I have an idea of what I think I might want to do, but you can be the judge if this actually counts.

00;00;53;08 - 00;01;01;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if I actually succeed in the challenge. And as always, we're going to recap and then let you know how it went. What went bad, what you need to do differently. All of

00;01;01;24 - 00;01;11;04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that coming up on this week's episode of the fourth and final installment of the Programing Playlist Challenge. Welcome, everyone, to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00;01;11;06 - 00;01;16;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we are here on the Hybrid Ministry show, attempting to round out the challenges.

00;01;16;09 - 00;01;23;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The first three videos, I was able to successfully complete each week's challenge, and today we're going to try and do the same thing.

00;01;23;27 - 00;01;41;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, challenge number one, of course, is avoiding doing the same order. And so far we've done in week one, we did our kind of standard order of two songs. The first part of the message, a table talk, the announcements, then the game bumper video message, part two response song and a small message wrap.

00;01;41;19 - 00;01;56;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Week two. We completely did the order wrong. And so we started with the message. A table talk did two songs in the middle, followed by announcements and games, followed by a bumper, followed by, the second part of the message kind of sandwiched in the night. And then week

00;01;56;07 - 00;02;13;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
three, no speaker because we pre filmed our message. So we did announcements followed by song, followed by the first part of the message, followed by a table talk followed by game, followed by the second part of the message in table talk, followed by two more songs, third part of the message table talk, a response song and a message wrap, and dismiss.

00;02;13;10 - 00;02;13;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so

00;02;13;26 - 00;02;30;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this week I'm going to give you a little bit of context, but I'm going to try and do a fourth order and a completely different element than what we've done so far. It's going to it's going to like I ended the last video, so we're going to throw this one into a tizz, And that's exactly what we're going to do.

00;02;30;03 - 00;02;48;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So for a bit of context, every single year around spring break we do a thing called spring break hangs. And what that is, is it's all of our office days. So we don't work on Fridays, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we do some sort of hangout for students. So it could be something simple like meet up at a coffee shop, meet up at an ice cream shop.

00;02;48;13 - 00;02;50;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Sometimes we pay, sometimes they

00;02;50;12 - 00;03;15;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
pay. And so yesterday, our Wednesday night programing for the week during this Texas snowstorm got canceled. So we threw together an emergency meeting with, myself and our students team. And as we were hopping off the call, one of my guys goes, hey, do we have plans yet for spring break? hangs well, I have a group of students who helped plan an outreach event and they want to do a tournament deal in the middle of the week.

00;03;15;17 - 00;03;32;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's sort of like the anchor and then a round I said around it, let's go ahead and let's make a plan. And one of the plans that they came up with was they wanted to do a movie night. And so what we're going to do is in addition to doing spring break hangs every year,

00;03;32;06 - 00;03;38;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we also do a march bracket every year to kind of come alongside March Madness and all that type of stuff.

00;03;38;26 - 00;03;48;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I've talked about it before and, you know, I'm going to give this resource that I'm about to create away. Over on the DYM site, I have the epic

00;03;48;13 - 00;03;58;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
student ministry bracket of epic things, which is very dated. It's it's 7 or 8 years old now, the number one seed, Chip and Joanna Gaines. So I will tell you how dated that feels.

00;03;58;08 - 00;04;13;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Then I've also, over on the site, have The World's Greatest Donut, which actually have an episode link right here at top screen. You can go see, that event that we did, how we launched that event, and then how you can, have that event kind of going on in the background. And we've also done a Christmas movie bracket.

00;04;13;15 - 00;04;32;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so for this one, we're going to do a movie bracket. And then that's going to determine the movie that we watch on the night of spring break hangs. And so one of the things that, I'm going to do is I'm going to actually, I think I want to create four different regions. So almost like four different categories.

00;04;32;25 - 00;04;36;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We'll do a 16 team bracket, even though in regular March Madness, I do a

00;04;36;27 - 00;04;49;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
64 team bracket with four regions, 16 teams in each region. We'll do a 16 team bracket 4 regions. Four movies in each bracket. And so I'll kind of categorize it. And what I actually did was I told my team, I said,

00;04;49;29 - 00;04;53;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
hey, 10:00, this was the last night.

00;04;53;05 - 00;05;14;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I said, by 10:00 tomorrow I want to start working on this send me 16 movies doesn't have to matter. The order sent to me by 10:00. So I'll let you know who responded by ten. And then I'm going to take their movies. We're going to compile it into ChatGPT, and we're going to ask them to spit out like the ones that you know, which are commonly commonly included and stuff like that, and maybe even help us categorize it a little bit.

00;05;14;03 - 00;05;21;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I'll let you know how my team does here if they meet the deadline by 10:00 or not.

00;05;21;18 - 00;05;29;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Four out of six, which I'm one of the four. So I guess three out of five of my team members, follow the instructions. If Ben and Kaleigh

00;05;29;17 - 00;05;39;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
ever see this, they might be mortified. Or they might just giggle and think it's funny. But we compiled their lists and came up with seeds and came up with some regions.

00;05;39;29 - 00;05;56;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so for the night, what I want to do is I want to treat our night a little bit like a selection show. So I'm going to hop in & I'm going to start creating some of that programing on Planning Center. And I'll catch you on the other side.

00;05;57;00 - 00;05;57;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There's

00;05;57;10 - 00;06;06;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
no traditional game in the sense, but we are going to play kind of a quasi sort of like hybrid game in the middle of it. So we're

00;06;06;13 - 00;06;19;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
going to start with a hype song. And then as soon as that's done, we're going to fire the selection show, bumper video. So again, I'm trying to kind of emulate like the selection Sunday night selection show of March Madness.

00;06;19;10 - 00;06;38;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so as you can see, this Movie Madness logo here looks very much like, March Madness logo. And then myself and one of my coworkers, Allie, we're going to get up on stage and we're going to kind of have on like, jackets or like blazers, like people who are, you know, who are revealing stuff like on ESPN or whatever.

00;06;38;28 - 00;07;05;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we are going to welcome the room. And we're not like, we're not going to break character. We're going to be, you know, in character, doing the thing the whole time. Welcome the room live on stage. And then we're also going to, reveal that we are launching a brand new, spring bracket. We're not revealing that the choice of movie is what's going to be played on movie night, but we're going to reveal that we are, in fact, having a bracket, and then we're going to cut to a field reporter.

00;07;05;16 - 00;07;34;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this we're going to video ahead of time. I haven't done this yet, but just right now, I came up with the idea, we're going to video ahead of time. Another one of our staff people, Kaleigh and she's going to, announce the Pixar region. And so for us, we're going with, inside out as the number one seed versus Wall-E, and then Toy Story versus monsters, Inc. she's going to give a little bit of breakdown analysis on it, and then she's going to predict winners of each of those matchups, and then she's going to predict a winner of the winners.

00;07;34;21 - 00;07;52;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So she says, like inside out, it's going to be Wall-E. And Toy Story is going to beat Monsters Inc and then Inside Out versus Toy Story. She believes Inside Out is going to win, hypothetically, right? She'll say something like, that's just my opinion, but you guys get an opportunity to vote right now on Instagram or YouTube. Login right now, a scan QR code on the screen.

00;07;52;12 - 00;08;08;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we'll edit all of that and put that all together. And then that will cut back to me and Allie and we'll kind of like talk about that a little bit, announce the next region, which is going to be the hero region. And we're going to be announcing this one over with a little bit of a game.

00;08;08;10 - 00;08;29;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we're going to cut to Eli and Cody, and then they're going to, play like an emoji. Guess game, which I'm actually going to include inside the pack of this. I'm going to include an emoji guess game as a part of like the launch. So Spider-Man across Spider-Verse versus Big Hero six and Avengers Endgame versus The Lego Movie.

00;08;29;07 - 00;08;49;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, the winner of that, they'll what we'll do then is we'll have them, go like head to head, and we'll have them, like, thinking, so, like, who's going to who's going to win, who's going to get it right, Eli or Cody or neither. And then we'll like pause the video and let them vote on sidekick.

00;08;50;01 - 00;09;10;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we'll come back and play the results. So that'll kind of be they'll kind of satisfy as like our game. Right. But it's all a part of this greater like selection show. And then that will that end into our brand new series. Are you turn bumper and then Ben, one of our associates who did not send in a list, by the way, is going to preach first half of his message

00;09;10;23 - 00;09;12;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
in with a table talk.

00;09;12;03 - 00;09;32;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we're going to come back out of that into a commercial. And Ben is going to do the commercial, and he's going to do the comedy region. And this one I'm kind of doing like dad jokes or like, I don't know, like really cliche thing. So he and this is also going to sort of satisfy as like the announcement section of our night.

00;09;32;02 - 00;09;51;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So like, we're doing, they won't of spring break anxiety. We're doing ice cream. Day two, we're doing a thing called activate. It's like live, immersive, like games. Day three is our tournament thing. And then day four is the movie night. And so he's going to say like day one, we're doing ice cream, which is soft and squishy.

00;09;51;05 - 00;10;16;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Speaking of soft and squishy, the first in our comedy region, Shrek day two had to activate where you're going to have to activate your Megamind, which is the second movie in our comedy night. Day three, we're hosting an invite style tournament where you're going to have to unlock your athletic inner prowess and kung fu skills, just like, seed number three, which is Kung Fu Panda in the comedy region.

00;10;16;06 - 00;10;36;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And finally, day four is our movie night. Will we be watching this fourth movie here? Despicable me voting is now live on YouTube and Instagram. Head on over. So we'll kind of like build that up, play that up. And so it's going to be three different prerecorded video segments Kaylie's Field Report Eli and Cody's game. And then Ben's kind of like announcement thing.

00;10;36;15 - 00;10;55;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's going to put every single one of our staff people on screen or on stage for the night. And then back to me and Ali. Remember like, man, spring break hanging sound like fun. And that leads us to our final region, the legend region, which is How to Train Your Dragon versus The Princess Bride and Rogue One versus The Sandlot.

00;10;55;10 - 00;11;14;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Cast your vote online now you know, blah blah blah, yada yada yada. And then we will, and then we will go into Ben's message and actually right here as I'm explaining this, I'm going to move the bumper because Ben's going to earlier. He's going to come in after an emoji, video. So he can come in with that.

00;11;14;19 - 00;11;31;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That'll already be a video. And then this will allow that to allow them to fire the bumper. He'll come in, he'll do the rest of his message table talk, and then we'll have two response songs at the end. And then me and Ali back on. The selection show will essentially serve as the messenger app. And the dismissal, for the night.

00;11;31;13 - 00;11;47;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that's kind of how we're going to launch this thing and let it go. Know that, like part of our reasoning strategy behind this is a it's going this is why I like the idea of hybrid, right? This is taking an in-person moment or movie night and pairing it with online online voting on YouTube and so and and Instagram.

00;11;47;16 - 00;12;08;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this pushes people to our social channels and to our social pages. And so we get followers, we push our people to our online presence. If they're interacting with it, then the algorithm is going to feed them more of what we have, and it's going to, create like the in-person moment. So every week we get an opportunity then to be like, here's how you guys voted and all that stuff.

00;12;08;29 - 00;12;26;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, we have printed paper versions that students without phones can print. And by the way, I'm giving you this entire resource for free. The movie emoji Guesses, as well as the entire bracket like assets that you'll need for, launching and doing this in

00;12;26;25 - 00;12;35;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your own ministry. You can grab it now. You can do it for an in-person movie night, or you can just do it because it's fun to have something else going on in the background.

00;12;36;00 - 00;12;52;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, you can make this a part of your youth ministry. And so I have tons of these. I'm going to submit this to you. I by the end of the day, it'll be hopefully on there. But you can save money if you just hop on over and become a $4 per tier, $4 per month hybrid hero member to you.

00;12;52;03 - 00;13;12;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's like if this resource ends up on you, I am for like seven bucks, let's say, like your hybrid hero is going to get you this this resource, along with the previous four resources, all for free. You're going to save money going over there. And I'm going to give you the different ideas and times when we lean into something creative like this.

00;13;12;28 - 00;13;35;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right? No game. Right? No traditional game. We're doing a whole selection style show, but we're still like doing an entire youth ministry 80 minutes long. We got worship, teaching and like fun elements all woven throughout, launching this brand new thing and announcing an event coming up like this is an example of the creative programing that we're trying to lean into in our context and want to help encourage you to.

00;13;35;02 - 00;13;47;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that is the whole purpose of my, thing. So I'm going to hop in the lab.

00;13;47;22 - 00;14;10;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. Welcome to Movie Madness. This is kind of meant to mirror March Madness, but whether you do this in March or not, this is just a great thing to run in the background of your youth ministry and also promote your social media, so you don't need to do anything with it aside from just launch it on your social media and let students vote, or you can let it drive towards something bigger.

00;14;10;10 - 00;14;33;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like for us, we're going to let this drive toward a spring break hangout movie night in our context. And so the way that is kind of set up is that we have curated, at our on our team, amongst our staff, 16 different movies. And then they're in four different regions. So we have the, the Pixar region, the hero region, we have the comedy region, and then we have the legend region.

00;14;33;27 - 00;14;53;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then each of those, they will face off against each other in a head to head voting style event. Students will vote. We typically, staff at where it's like one night we launch a big thing and we make a whole ordeal out of it. And then the voting happens on social media. So we typically let them vote on like, Instagram stories.

00;14;53;02 - 00;15;14;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we also, push towards like a thing like YouTube. And so, you can take some of these graphics that I have created and then you can post them onto your stories. And then each week you as you meet back together with your students, you reveal who won voting wise from last week and who's moving on to the next week until you crown an ultimate champion.

00;15;14;09 - 00;15;33;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I said, you can allow this to be a part of your programing each and every single week and make a big deal out of it. Or you can just have fun on your social media. There are widescreen videos and graphics and fonts and templates, so that you can advance it custom in your context. You can print out some some papers.

00;15;34;05 - 00;15;52;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Students can vote on paper, you can have them vote on social media or you can use something like the voting feature inside Kick and vote just in the room and have students go one by one. We will do a combination kind of of all three in our context. And then at the end, we'll crown one champion from each of these four regions.

00;15;52;05 - 00;16;12;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that will be how we decide which movie we're going to be watching in our spring break hangout movie night. So, thank you for checking this resource out. I hope it's helpful to you, and I hope you have fun as you crown a movie champions through this movie madness resource. Well, that is the video, the one you just saw.

00;16;12;10 - 00;16;24;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the video that I'm going to include in the how to play, resource on download youth miss you. You let me know. Comment down below. Did I complete the challenge? Is this bracket resource? Is this

00;16;24;22 - 00;16;32;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
enough? Is this considered a game or not? From scratch? I think it is, but you can decide. And so I'm going

00;16;32;26 - 00;16;35;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to go ahead and give myself a check mark for this.

00;16;35;00 - 00;16;53;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yes. And then we've also went ahead and we have, we have recap the night and I let you know how it went over on my Patreon link down below if you want to subscribe to that for hours per month, you'll get this resource completely for free. Or you can head over to the museum and see if it's available on the site yet.

00;16;53;05 - 00;17;09;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If not, I got the free early release version of it. And that's linked in the podcast episode that dropped on Monday over on my Patreon. Guys, thanks so much for being here for this. For part, how I program my youth ministry has been a super fun ride. I've had a blast doing it. But until next time.

00;17;09;10 - 00;17;11;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, my friends, don't forget stay happy.

Episode 190: Programming Youth Group With NO SPEAKER?!

Nick Clason — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:00:00 -0600

Today we’re programming with NO SPEAKER?!
While still complete these 3 challenges
No Order Repeating
Creating a from Scratch DYM game
And finally, not only will I recap that game - But I’ll recap the entire night.
And give you that game, for free!

ACCESS TO EXTREME GO FOR GOLD GAME & RECAP EPISODE
https://www.patreon.com/posts/no-speaker-recap-151394635?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/190

❄️ 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

HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

FREE EBOOK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/complete-guide-142500019?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

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

//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 Programming with no Speaker
01:34 Hybrid Ministry - Stretch Goals
02:47 Why Post to YouTube?
04:29 No Repeat Order
08:09 Custom Game - LIVE Demonstration
13:09 So, how did it go?

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;01;03 - 00;00;01;55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well. Hello.

00;00;01;59 - 00;00;02;48
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And good morning.

00;00;02;48 - 00;00;05;52
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Today we are programing our Wednesday night with

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
no

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
speaker.

00;00;07;06 - 00;00;08;30
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, you heard that right.

00;00;08;30 - 00;00;13;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're also still in this playlist completing these three challenges,

00;00;13;06 - 00;00;23;42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
which are no repeated order. We're going to create a game from scratch on win. And finally I'm going to recap the entire night, let you know how it went. And not only am I going to

00;00;23;42 - 00;00;24;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
recap

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
the night

00;00;24;43 - 00;00;28;57
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and the game that I created, but I'm also going to give you the game for free.

00;00;28;58 - 00;00;31;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So stick around to the end of the video so that you can see

00;00;31;08 - 00;00;36;52
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
how you can get access that. Welcome everybody to the Hybrid Ministry Show.

00;00;36;57 - 00;00;48;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody, to the hybrid ministry show. And, first order of business is we have to map out service order and we can't let the order repeat. So if

00;00;48;19 - 00;00;58;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you look in here on screen, you'll see that on the left here, this is, week one service order. And if you look here on the right, this is week two's service order.

00;00;58;17 - 00;01;03;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we're going to go ahead and we're going to make a completely different service order. But

00;01;03;11 - 00;01;36;49
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
yes you heard it right because for the entire teaching topic we discussed in last week's video links right here that I will not actually be present. I won a or I don't even know, like I guess I won or was given, a free trip with my wife to get away kid free, for like, pastor and wives retreat and so the week that I'm programing is the week that I will be absent and we're going to be during and in the middle of our sex and dating and relationships

00;01;36;56 - 00;01;37;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
series.

00;01;37;19 - 00;01;51;41
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, we talked about a little bit last week, but this was the original order. But because of my trip, this is how we reshuffled things a little bit. And so we're going to be playing the already prerecorded video

00;01;51;46 - 00;01;58;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
from this week in the room. And here's the thing. Like some of you, you may not know this, but

00;01;58;01 - 00;01;58;38
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
already have recorded

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
these teaching topics.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
sat down, went into our studio,

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and this is a big part of our

00;02;05;51 - 00;02;06;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
hybrid

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
ministry strategy. And and what I recommend, like if you download my seasonal social media

00;02;11;43 - 00;02;18;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
pack, which is free for Patreon members, by the way, and Patreon is only $4 a month, $48 for the year.

00;02;18;08 - 00;02;23;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you download my pack, I recommend that you get active on social media and that you post like three

00;02;23;19 - 00;02;24;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
times per week.

00;02;24;29 - 00;02;36;33
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then, in the towards the end of the book, I challenge you, to consider a stretch goal. And a great stretch goal is to record and post all of

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your messages to YouTube or to, some sort of long form platform.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I guess I say some other long form platform is if YouTube isn't the option like it is, the option is the number one social media for for students.

00;02;50;43 - 00;02;57;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But that what that does, is it gives you a multiplicity of options.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Number one.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It creates a long, long form library of content like a long tail library of content. So,

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
messages from

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
multiple years back are still relevant, because hopefully we're teaching the truth of God's word.

00;03;09;49 - 00;03;18;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
someone can go back in and and get an answer to something or to to study a topic on something that we've already done in the past. We've done the work we put the work in.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Secondarily,

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
our leaders, like many of our leaders, lead the discussion based off of the message. But they don't come on Wednesday night when we preach it live.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so therefore, having the video allows them to still hear the content, even if they're not able to make it in the room.

00;03;32;07 - 00;03;44;36
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's also a tool for parents. We're going to be using it during this series. I'm going to be sending it out ahead of time to parents being like, hey, listen, here we go. Like, this is all we're talking about in case you want to know, in case you want to get in front of it, in case you want to have conversations with the students.

00;03;44;40 - 00;03;51;57
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so it gives us tons of great options. But the other option that you're seeing today is that it's going to give us the option

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
like, I don't have to get a guest speaker. I don't to get a pinch hitter. Like, I can still speak and I can still,

00;03;57;26 - 00;03;59;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
messaging for youth group, and,

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we can be off to the races without needing to do anything like crazy on that.

00;04;03;05 - 00;04;03;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so

00;04;03;47 - 00;04;06;38
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
it's really helpful to us. It's really beneficial. And so

00;04;06;38 - 00;04;18;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that might be something that you would consider down the road. That might be something that you might even consider. Now I got some coaching options down below my link tree. Go ahead and take a look at that. See if there's something you want. I can I can walk you through how we do that.

00;04;18;27 - 00;04;19;58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
today specifically,

00;04;20;02 - 00;04;27;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you know, week one we went two songs opening announcements, games receive message response song

00;04;27;30 - 00;04;36;35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we two we went message songs, games rest of message and then songs. So we need a now third

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
order.

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Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this is the just preset order.

00;04;39;33 - 00;04;40;40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we're going to

00;04;40;45 - 00;04;46;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we're going to mess with it and we're going to put in a new order. And as a reminder, I'm going to open here with

00;04;46;22 - 00;04;59;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
welcome announcements game. The game is going to be the custom game that I'm going to create. And today, we'll see in a minute because I got to hop in the lab and I'll let you know how that spits out

00;04;59;13 - 00;05;00;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
on the other side of things.

00;05;00;24 - 00;05;00;45
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But

00;05;00;53 - 00;05;01;43
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
today

00;05;01;47 - 00;05;04;41
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm thinking about doing some sort of

00;05;04;51 - 00;05;11;48
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Winter Olympic themed game. We will be in the middle or towards the very end of the Winter Olympics by February 18th.

00;05;11;54 - 00;05;20;45
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I think that that would be, a fun kind of like way to to celebrate that and, to lean into that just a little bit. So,

00;05;20;50 - 00;05;26;56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so anyway, that's one thing about, and then here I'm programing, I'm gonna do a song, and then I'm going to do,

00;05;27;10 - 00;05;31;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
first part of the message, and I think I'm going to try and break my message up into three parts.

00;05;31;22 - 00;05;32;47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So part one

00;05;32;57 - 00;05;37;51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
but typically I'm at like 12 minutes. So we're going to do like four minute, four minute chunks.

00;05;37;56 - 00;05;42;58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we'll do a four minute chunk and then a four minute table talk.

00;05;43;03 - 00;05;43;35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Another.

00;05;43;43 - 00;05;47;53
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Some actually actually okay. So I'm changing my order already. So I'm going to do the opening song.

00;05;48;01 - 00;05;51;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
no I like I like opening with a game for this on

00;05;51;08 - 00;06;01;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
it gets like a live element of the room. So we'll do part one, table two. I'm just trying to keep like I want to honestly kind of do the band a bunch.

00;06;01;07 - 00;06;02;39
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But so I kind of wanted to

00;06;02;46 - 00;06;03;50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
not get,

00;06;03;55 - 00;06;06;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
stuck into this rut of it, be like

00;06;06;25 - 00;06;07;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
song

00;06;07;08 - 00;06;08;44
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
message, song message.

00;06;08;48 - 00;06;11;58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, I'm going to move the game down here. That's what I'll do.

00;06;12;07 - 00;06;16;55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
yeah, then we'll be able to. It won't be so choppy. I don't think anymore.

00;06;17;00 - 00;06;36;59
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right, so here we go. Here's what I ended up coming up with. So instead of doing just games at the beginning, we do welcome announcements. And then that's going to lead into a worship song. And then after the song they're going to move into part one of the message, which will then, go for a minute and then end with, table talk there for a couple minutes.

00;06;36;59 - 00;06;59;32
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
After the table talk, Ali and Kayla, you're going to get up. They're going to play the game that I made from scratch. Then after that, they're going to lead it into part two of the message with another table talk. And then out of that the band is going to come up and do two songs. And then after that last part, I'm going to do the final part of the message, and then there's going to be a message wrap and dismissal from, my, my number two associate.

00;06;59;32 - 00;07;22;32
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So the only other thing here that is worth considering is, you know, there's only 52 minutes of total service time. That in part is because a video message goes a lot quicker than a live spoken message. So I am considering and I think I'm going to do it. I am actually just considering here, adding one last response song.

00;07;22;37 - 00;07;37;35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our band typically does three songs in this particular week. I'm going to, see if they can go ahead and do two, four songs. And so it'll go part three of The Message, which also there will be a table talk in there. I didn't add. So let's go and see what that does. A table.

00;07;37;40 - 00;07;39;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So now we're at like 61 minutes.

00;07;39;20 - 00;07;42;59
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that's not bad. And even if we did happen to kill this response song,

00;07;43;03 - 00;07;53;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we're at 56 again. Not bad, but I think I'm going to leave it there. And so we're going to go with we're going to go with four songs this night instead of five or instead of three.

00;07;53;10 - 00;08;00;47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And yeah. And now look boom. Challenge number one completed completely different order. Now,

00;08;00;47 - 00;08;07;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
about to hop in the lab and I'm going to go and create a custom game. We'll see you on the other side.

00;08;07;29 - 00;08;13;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Another.

00;08;13;28 - 00;08;21;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody to the extreme. Go for gold trivia. I invited one of my buddies, Ben,

00;08;21;32 - 00;08;38;44
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
in here. Wearing a Timberwolves shirt. Not Timberwolves fan. Mavs. We're going to see how this game works. So in the like how to play instructions there. There are two ways to play. Traditional question. Answer. Nice question answer. Question answer. It's just simple.

00;08;38;46 - 00;08;59;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You guys got this. I'm not going to tell you how to play that, but I want to show you how we might play the Extreme Edition. I like it. I like going for gold extreme. So the instructions go like this. Read the question. I think they'll be the first to buzz in. Choose either answer or challenge. All right.

00;08;59;21 - 00;09;20;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So whoever buzzes in first, it's like truth or dare. Yeah. Answer a challenge. And then step four you can win for your side of the room. So let's say you're playing for the right side of the room. And I'm playing for the left side of the room. And then you guys figure out whatever prize you want pizza for the that side or Nintendo Switch two points or AirPods for everyone, right?

00;09;20;25 - 00;09;46;51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That'd be crazy. So one of my favorite ways to do this is to take a water bottle, right? If you don't have like, an amazing formalized buzzer. Have a water bottle in the middle. And, what will happen is whoever grabs what about first, then that's then. It's like the Cup game. Yeah. Yeah. And then they choose, you know, either, they choose either answer or challenge.

00;09;46;51 - 00;09;50;55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. Okay, so first question.

00;09;51;00 - 00;10;14;30
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we're up here, contestants. Which sport made debut at the 2026 Winter Olympics? I buzzed in. Yeah. And on this one, I know. Because I'm just a massive Olympics fan. So I'm going to say the answer is B ski mo. Am I right? What do you think? No. Well I made the game so I guess I'm right.

00;10;14;35 - 00;10;35;41
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. Now that's I would get a point. All right however. Wait how do you. What is mountaineering. Sorry. I don't know. That was that. That's unreal. That's. Yeah. I'll let you watch the Olympics on NBC starting in February and February 12th. Yeah. Eskimo mountaineering is. But now then. All right, so I got a point. So one point for the left side of the room.

00;10;35;41 - 00;10;42;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, now let's go back to this year. Okay, here we go. Next question.

00;10;42;18 - 00;11;05;44
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Which country has participated in every Winter games since they began in 1924? Canada, France, United States then grabs the buzzer. But this time around, Ben is going to choose. Choose Canada. No, you're going to say, oh, you got shoes? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's right, that's right. You're going to choose. Oh, I'm gonna choose challenge. All right. So what you haven't seen yet is I've created two spoons.

00;11;05;45 - 00;11;29;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, I saw one was sugar. You can use anything. You can do worse. You sour sauce and Worcestershire, however you say. Sure, sure, sure. And Coca-Cola, you can do vinegar and water. Yeah. You could do caramel onion, caramel apple. Like, whatever you boil oil. There you go. Yeah. Canola oil. Yeah. Get all the oils, kill someone or help them live.

00;11;29;15 - 00;11;53;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So how this would work then is so since he buzzed in as you can smell it, I didn't know if since he buzzed in as the challenger or he his go is to, stomp the room. Okay. So if if he like if he successfully stomps the room based off his reaction, he gets two points to my one just for answering straight up.

00;11;53;26 - 00;12;07;55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, if he's unsuccessful in that, then, you know. So here we go. The game host would then say, all right, ready? Three. Two. One.

00;12;08;00 - 00;12;35;44
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, so based off of our reaction, one of us have so one of us has sugar. And so how we're going to play in our room then, we're big sidekicks fans. Oh, yeah. So who got so the double vote? Whoever you think. Got it. And then if Ben was able to, like. So if he was able to successfully stumped the room, why don't you tell the people what you had at sugar?

00;12;35;49 - 00;12;53;53
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, I had, so, yeah, that was like you. Really? Yeah. Did I see it in your app? Yeah. Just try not to cry. That was horrific. So let's say he did something, and let's say everyone voted that that he had the salt, even though I had the salt. So as blind for the your contestants to. Yeah. As mine for your contestants too.

00;12;53;53 - 00;13;10;47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's really just all about your reaction. Yeah. And then you'd move on to question three. Easy. Go on. So forth. So that's how you play the Extreme Edition. That's how we're going to play this on February 18th. Hope you guys enjoyed. Bless up. See you next time. See ya.

00;13;10;52 - 00;13;34;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So there you have it. That's actually the game that I'm going to include in the submission. It's usually like on the do I am game page, the actual like resource page taken of how to play. So that's how we're going to play it. Go either way. So New order unlocked. New game from scratch. And as a reminder, the Hybrid Heroes Patreon tier $4 per month,

00;13;34;21 - 00;13;43;40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
$48 per year is where I will be debriefing this and every other week in this, playlists series and giving away the game.

00;13;43;41 - 00;14;00;48
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, if you listen to the podcast, the Dropbox link to this game is included for free. Or if it's over on D, I am of course, you can go grab it over there for a couple of bucks. So all three challenges completed. Next week is the final week and we are going to throw it absolutely into a tiers.

00;14;00;48 - 00;14;07;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That video is going to be linked right here on screen. But until next time. And as always my friends don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 189: I Intentionally Programmed Youth Group “Wrong”

Nick Clason — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 05:00:00 -0600

I’m designing my real youth ministry program, with these 3 rules.

1 Order Doesn’t Repeat

And today I'm intentionally going to do it WRONG!!

2 I'm also making a different, from scratch, DYM Game for EACH week

And I’m going to tell you how to get a FREE early copy of it

3 Finally, I'll evaluate how it all went!

Join us!

ACCESS TO FREE GAME & RECAP EPISODE
https://www.patreon.com/posts/we-went-there-150912245?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/189

❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
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HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

//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 Programming Wrong
00:37 New Order
03:08 Consistency with Social Media = Solved!
04:14 A Student Asked me for this Game!
06:21 Creating the Game & the GRAND REVEAL!

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;52 - 00;00;27;34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm designing my real youth ministry program in this playlist around these three different rules for the next month. Rule number one is that the order does not repeat, and today I'm intentionally giving a wrong order. We're also going to be making a different DIY and game from scratch every single week. And I'm going to tell you how you can get this game for free and get it early before it releases on the site.

00;00;27;36 - 00;01;05;37
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And step three, I'm going to evaluate and reflect how it went. Welcome, everybody to part two of the Hybrid Minstrel Show Programing challenge. Well hello everybody, and welcome back to, this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. You know, in this episode, we are going to be programing a service. Wrong. And here's why. It's wrong, so to speak, is that there's kind of like a standard assumed order for, for instance, if I pull open, the February 11th service plan, which I'm filming this on January 15th, so still a full month out.

00;01;05;42 - 00;01;25;34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There's already like a basic service order kind of mapped out. And like this is very similar to what we did in that last week's video is going to be linked up right here at the top screen. If you've not seen that one, there's a free game and that one as well. That's kind of like our standard order. And and actually after that video, we had to shift our order a little bit because I'm going to be out of town.

00;01;25;39 - 00;01;41;52
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I don't want to be out of town on, the week of this message, the text message. And so, I'm going to teach this one in the room, and then, we'll do something different for when I'm out of town. Stay tuned for next week's video, but I'm going to do something, we're going to do it completely wrong.

00;01;41;52 - 00;02;02;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, I'm going to go ahead and instead of opening with worship, which is kind of like the assumed beginning of everything, we're going to actually open with the introduction of the message, I'm going to come up here and I'm going to do the first couple minutes of the message, let's say.

00;02;02;05 - 00;02;27;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm over here with my Google doc and a split screen we're going to open and we're going straight for it. We're going straight for the message right off the top rope. And like I said, we're talking about sex. So it's going to be a little bit of a heavy topic, which also makes my table talk a little bit tricky because, I got to trust tables and students to handle that discussion with proper amount of care.

00;02;27;33 - 00;02;49;45
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then we are going to, after the table talk. We're going to do worship, right? Jammed right there in the middle. And so we'll do the opener followed by a couple of songs. Then we're going to put the game in the announcements after worship last night. Date of recording in January. We have a January Wednesday workshop.

00;02;49;53 - 00;03;03;51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that means worship has to be at the very top. And then we just miss everybody and they can go to different places in the building. So everyone worships and then they're split up as part this month. We're not going to be doing that. And so I have a little bit more flexibility with where and when we put worship.

00;03;03;51 - 00;03;26;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we'll go ahead and do the welcome and announcements here. And this is going to be the game. We're going to do a Four Corners trivia game. You know last night yesterday was actually I was in my car, on my way driving to work, and I was thinking about this video and, you know, last week I created the the game that if you go back to last week's video, you can grab a free copy of it.

00;03;26;14 - 00;03;44;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There are Patreon, $24 a month for eight hours for the year. Not only is it going to give you all these games and these, you know, bonus podcasts, but it's also going to give you, unlocking the free seasonal social media package. Whenever I leave cohorts, the number one culprit of people not being able to do social media, consistently is just timing and scheduling.

00;03;44;17 - 00;04;00;48
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so therefore, my pack will be the timing, the consistency in scheduling for you. And then you can infuse your own creative juices. Like, I have a resident right now who's, doing a disc golf shot over the roof of our building one every day until he makes it like there's incredible creativity. Sometimes you don't have time for that.

00;04;00;48 - 00;04;19;57
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So have my pack. Let it run kind of on autopilot in the background. And then when you have an idea like that or volunteer resident, then hop on in and use it and scrap the stuff that I have. But my mind helps keep you regular. It's kind of like fiber. Anyway, so I had a student come on to me yesterday because I've been thinking all day, was my game going to be what's my game going to be?

00;04;19;57 - 00;04;35;36
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And she said, can we play one of those four corners games where you go to a different corner and if you're wrong, you're out. And I'm thinking like loot and lunacy. I'm thinking like dead cat style. We've I even have some on the site already. They're just like basic trivia games. And so that's actually the game that I'm going to do.

00;04;35;36 - 00;04;55;46
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to, create a custom, for February. So maybe, maybe football and super Bowl themed, maybe like love or like pink or heart themed. But something kind of like themed for February. Around this four corner trivia style game. Like I said, I have a few on the store already. I'll link those down below, but this one for free for my Patreon members.

00;04;55;46 - 00;05;18;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you want to hear that, hop on over and you can get a free trial. And then you can get this week's, game complete for free. Dropbox link will just be in the podcast episode that did go ahead and drop on Monday. So for Chronos, trivia is going to be Ali and Cody. And then coming out of that, we're going to go ahead and do the bumper video, pull the students back together just a little bit, and then we'll do the rest of the message here.

00;05;18;08 - 00;05;37;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm not going to include a table talk. I will probably have some sort of interactive pieces and elements. Table talks in all in throughout my message, just like we talked about last week. And my message here, and pray. And then the band is going to end with a response song. So we essentially sandwiched the teaching.

00;05;37;12 - 00;05;56;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And part of as it is, is a heavy topic. I want to hit it right off the rev the top rev top rope, and then kind of like kind of like let them come up for air for a minute, worship and game and fun and then bring it back home to kind of round out the night. And so this is going to be our service order for this week.

00;05;56;17 - 00;06;15;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's wrong. You don't normally just open with the message. But but we're going to and we'll let you know how it goes. And so, I need to hop into the lab. I need to cook up this game. But different order than last week. So that challenge is done. But to do the game and evaluation is complete.

00;06;15;24 - 00;06;27;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It happened on Monday over on my Patreon. So let me do this game and then I'll I'll give you a little preview of it. Here in just a minute.

00;06;27;18 - 00;06;48;48
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, sometimes just like that, it is, 441 I would like to go home. It's Thursday. I was at a retreat all week, but I want to show you what we came up with here. Came up with a game called Dynamic Duos. So it's all things, like, paired well together, like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, Batman and Robin, or different like duos are found throughout the Bible.

00;06;48;48 - 00;07;17;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's trivia based game, all kind of like a red and pink themed for Valentine's Day and love. And then, the students will go to the corner that they believe the correct answer is they're incorrect. They're out. If they're correct, they remain in and then they get to play the next round. Super simple trivia game, but get students up and moving four corners, and then we're going to probably go ahead and award the winner and their table some sort of prize or food package or best seats in the house like we had talked a little bit about last week.

00;07;17;07 - 00;07;35;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that's the video. And challenge two is now complete. Don't forget, level three challenge link down below in my Patreon if you want to hear how it went. This is Thursday. It happened yesterday. This is how we programed it. And the link down below will take you to the recap episode. So all three challenges met for this week.

00;07;35;24 - 00;07;39;47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So thanks for being here my friends. But until next time. And as always, don't forget to stay high.

Episode 188: How I Planned Youth Group - 3 Weekly Challenges

Nick Clason — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 05:00:00 -0600

Can I design a compelling youth night from scratch each week with a different order - while also creating a brand-new DYM game from scratch?

Oh - And stick around to the end of the video, because I’m going to tell you how you can get this game that’s not even public yet in the pipeline, FOR FREE!

Let’s find out!

ACCESS TO FREE GAME & RECAP EPISODE
https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-game-winter-150284516?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/188

❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
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HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

YOUTH MINISTRY LEADER COHORT (It's FREE!)
https://www.ymlcohort.com/

//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 The Programming Challenges
01:49 Why we break our messages into 2 parts
03:11 Determining Service Order for Feb 4th
03:36 How we account for phones
03:48 Adapting a YouTube transcript for an in-room talk
04:30 Using Sidekick to create interaction
05:34 Did we just stumble into a game?
05:58 Programming the Rest of the Night
06:35 Pro-Tip #1: Bumper Videos
07:12 Pro-Tip #2: Message Wraps
07:28 I know what you’re thinking…
08:14 Evaluations & Recap
09:51 Creating a Game from Scratch
11:22 Become a Hybrid Hero - Get the Game for FREE!

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;01;06 - 00;00;29;52
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, good morning and welcome to my office. Today I'm going to show you how I create a creative youth ministry program for our mid-week services. You know, I was helping lead a youth ministry leader cohort, which was started by my friend Dairy Prince. They're free, by the way. Check them out if you want. Link down below. But ten out of ten youth pastors believe that creative programing is essential for a good youth ministry.

00;00;29;54 - 00;00;47;49
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I try and challenge myself to create something like that. And so I want to take you into the lab this morning. I'm going to turn this camera around and show you my screen, and just give you an opportunity to kind of get inside my brain. Not that my brain is anything special, but it wouldn't really be that interesting.

00;00;47;49 - 00;01;13;30
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we're going to spice this up a little bit. This is my real youth ministry programing that I'm going to be experimenting and messing with over the next four weeks, and I have created for myself three. I almost had four, but three different challenges over these next four weeks. Challenge number one is the order must not repeat. I'm going to do a different service flow and different service order every single week.

00;01;13;34 - 00;01;32;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The challenge number two in that is I'm going to create a custom from scratch submitted to download Youth Ministry. Game number three is that then I am going to hop on and I'm going to tell you exactly how it went. So this is the front side creation. And then challenge and run through is I have to evaluate it.

00;01;32;18 - 00;01;54;51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we're going to do that in my bonus podcast. And if you listen to my bonus podcast I will include the custom game for free before it's ever even on the store at diam. You can go get that over on my Patreon. It's time to dive in! Welcome everybody to the Hybrid Ministry show! The February 4th is going to be the first week of Our God guys and girls.

00;01;54;51 - 00;02;15;35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Basically like the sex series in Planning Center. You'll see over here is, just like our basic template. We got song bumper welcome announcements game. Now, you know, one of the things I said, challenge number one was I want to do different order. Like I try to keep our students, like, on their toes. A little bit. One of the things that I challenge myself to do is to not preach my entire message.

00;02;15;35 - 00;02;35;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, and this trickles down to the rest of our entire team to not preach their entire message in one shot. Like, if I preach 30 minutes to students, I don't think that that's effective. They're losing it at the end of 30 minutes. You know what I mean? However, a it is incumbent upon me to make it actually interactive and interesting, but maybe I can buy more time.

00;02;35;22 - 00;02;54;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can buy more speaking time if I don't keep it all together. And so because of that, we kind of you are talking to like two parts, an opening and a closing. And sometimes I can just be like an opening illustration, but other times it could be like two thirds of the talk and then we just close with like the final third or final, you know, a little snippet there at the end.

00;02;54;15 - 00;03;12;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we keep on hold our service order very loosely, like we don't want to ever really get stuck in a rut. And so I'm going to show you like kind of a basic service order today. But in the coming weeks, like we're going to be really like messing things up. So, we'll start with a couple songs.

00;03;12;11 - 00;03;29;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our kids love worship. And so, the countdown video will end and the band of band stage, and they're going to, they're going to get it and we're going to, we're going to even put in here like hype song. Then we have a bumper video. I've created it from God, guys and girls. It's very short, but we're going to make it happen.

00;03;29;12 - 00;03;48;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we're going to do the intro. And again, I'm going to say ten minutes or so, I'll do an opening, and then we sit around tables and there's like a little placard in the middle that we actually link, like a YouVersion live events to that they can follow along with on their phones. That's one of the ways that we try to redeem phones in our room rather than villainize them.

00;03;48;14 - 00;04;11;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we film all of our messages ahead of time on a teleprompter. I'm actually doing that a little bit later this afternoon. But this right here is my this was from this was the original that Jerry wrote. This is my adaptation to it for YouTube. And then this is going to be my in room version. So I made a copy of it and my say in room message oh one relationships.

00;04;11;01 - 00;04;37;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And now this like some of this stuff is like very YouTube like focus, right? I'm going to talk about roller coasters and maybe that will actually give me a little bit of an idea for a game later. I'll see. And we're going to use our handy dandy sidekick. So this was last night's presentation on June 17th.

00;04;37;09 - 00;04;55;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now this is going to we're going to build, I don't know, I'm making this top five roller coaster ranking thing. I don't actually know what it is. We're going to make it up. So that's going to be kind of like how I program it to be interactive. Right? So this is going to be a voting thing.

00;04;55;08 - 00;05;18;49
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then I'm going to do my top five roller coaster ranking. Think like my number one is Guardians. Tron might be my number to my threes are I called vortex which no longer exists Kings Island, Diamondback, Top Thrill Dragster, Cedar Point, and then that transitions me into this statement. I think we can all agree our least favorite roller coaster is a teenage dating scene.

00;05;18;49 - 00;05;34;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I need to find in here a good spot for a table talk. Good. So we're going to turn this section into a table talk. Table talk.

00;05;34;33 - 00;05;51;47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm thinking maybe a roller coaster game. I don't know, like, I mean, we could do like, a real or fake roller coaster. That's pretty basic. Like a basketball game where someone does like this with, like, the roller coaster thing, and you all kind of, like, follow, like, I'm trying to think if there's a way to, like, maybe make something like that, I don't know, I got I got to start kind of like noodling on it.

00;05;51;47 - 00;06;12;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I don't, I don't have anything yet. We're going to come back and that's just a placeholder though. So we're going to do, intro to the message table talk announcements. It's the Wednesday before our winter weekend. So Wednesday, two days later, our winter weekend starts. So this is the final push for signups for that. And then roller coaster game maybe.

00;06;12;25 - 00;06;29;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But we're going to link the announcements and the game after the table talk. So instead of the message table talk and then, Cody and Kelly, they're going to come up and they're going to interrupt the table talk and they're going to give our announcements, move on into the roller coaster game. And then and then that's going to be that.

00;06;29;08 - 00;06;50;34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you'll notice so far. Well, actually I have the bumper video up here. I'm going to move it. So I like coming in after worship. I think it's pretty easy to come in after worship. I think it's hard to come in after a game when they're like, riled up a little bit more. So I like a bumper video to give us that, like that moment.

00;06;50;34 - 00;07;12;35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right, to buy us some of that space. And so I'm actually going to, come in after the song into the opening message table talk announcements, roller coaster game, and then do the bumper video here. And then this is where I'm going to do the rest of my message. We're going to delete this table talk, and we're just going to do a woven all through in here table talks.

00;07;12;39 - 00;07;33;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then one final piece that I sometimes like to add is after a song is like a bit of a message rap. So I got a girl. My name Ali. She'll do a good job with that. She can give a little bit of, like, a final bow and dismissal. Now you're like, this isn't creative programing, Nick.

00;07;33;08 - 00;07;54;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, like, I get it, right. Like, the elements that you might not know, is, are digital notes, the QR code where they can scan, as well as our interaction here with sidekick, and then really the game that you're going to see me create here in, you know, maybe a couple of hours. And so, I'll bring you back when I'm ready to create this game.

00;07;54;26 - 00;08;15;43
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The other piece is like, I will go through here and, try to find moments of interactive ness, make sure that I have good illustrations. Make sure that I'm using sidekick if I'm able to, bring students up on stage, if I can, and find different, like, things with that. And so, the final kind of product of that.

00;08;15;43 - 00;08;41;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. We're going to review that, in our our recap pod, which is member of my paid tier, Hybrid heroes, Patreon membership. It's only $4 a month, and that $4 per month, what it gets you is a weekly bonus recap podcast, right? Like in just a minute, I'm going to sit down and then we'll talk about January 7th and it's going to release on the this following Monday.

00;08;41;15 - 00;08;59;57
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Talking about what we did in our program, we played a game called, New Year's New Year in Review Rumble. It was part of the download Youth Ministry membership. And it was like an okay game, but I would give it I'll give it like a B. And I'm going to tell you what worked in our context and what we failed at that.

00;08;59;57 - 00;09;17;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That made it a B, and how we maybe could have punched it up a little bit better. And we do that every single week over on Patreon. Only $4 a month. And you can use, like, your, you can use your, like, professional development budget money for that because it only nets out to like $48 a year.

00;09;17;19 - 00;09;35;41
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you don't have that as a youth ministry, again, it's only $4 a month. So maybe even out of your own personal pocket, a cup of coffee in your office instead of getting it from Starbucks one time per month. And there is that cost savings. And in addition to that, like for this playlist alone, you're going to get all the games I make.

00;09;35;41 - 00;09;56;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're going to get them completely for free. I'm going to give you a Dropbox link in the podcast description and my monthly social media pack, which usually costs $17.99. It's free for Hybrid Hero members, so let's figure out where I go in this direction with this game thing. Well, all right, welcome back. As you can see, it's now daytime.

00;09;56;09 - 00;10;13;57
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think I got a game concept idea. Challenge number one was accomplished by creating a new order. It's the first order. So because it's first order, it's a new order. And I have been racking my brain all day on games. And I think I finally came up with a game. Got it from Big Brother. Shout out to Big Brother.

00;10;13;57 - 00;10;31;49
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's going to be like kind of like trivia based, but musical chairs where like one less or like spoons where like one less option is still like available every single time. So you have to run, get the correct answer and then bring it back to the front of the room. I'm going to go in the lab. I'm going to create this.

00;10;31;49 - 00;10;40;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to time lapse this thing and and we'll let you know how goes.

00;10;40;06 - 00;11;00;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we ended up going with a game called No Way or No Seat. So it's like musical chairs. Meet octave from Big Brother plus Bible trivia. So well you're going to end up having is like at least ten contestants. We have 16 tables in our room, so we'll spin the wheel and we'll do table numbers, and then they'll send a contestant from their table.

00;11;00;34 - 00;11;15;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then the winning person will win something like snacks or something like that for their table. It's always an easy, huge win. Or we sometimes take out a couple of tables and put in some couches and call it the best seats in the house and give them pizza or drinks or snacks or whatever. And so that's what we're going to end up doing.

00;11;15;12 - 00;11;38;53
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I just made this game and, I'll let you know exactly how it goes. In fact, I've already let you know how it goes. It's going to be linked on my Patreon right here. That dropped last Monday. And so if you want $4 per month, not only will you get my seasonal social media pack my weekly recaps of how my creative programing is going, but you'll also get access to this game that I just created.

00;11;38;58 - 00;11;55;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It is going into the Divine Pipeline as we speak, but it is probably not there yet unless something crazy happens. So, if you want this game for free, or not for weeks, you can do this $4 a month. But you know what I mean. Like, you get a lot of other stuff, and this is included as a perk to it, so go check that out.

00;11;55;05 - 00;12;16;40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So challenge two is now complete. Challenge three is actually already complete on my Patreon. In the next episode, we are going to talk about what happens if I break programing whole new deal. I am game challenge, whole new flow in order as well as a whole new recap. Be sure to check that out my friends. But until next time, and as always, don't forget to stay hydrated.

Episode 186: He Built an AI Sniper Game… Then Gave Away the Prompt

Nick Clason — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600

In this episode I sit down with the evil genius, who built an entire custom app using AI.
And we're giving you the prompt FOR FREE!
You take our prompt, implement it in your context, and you have a fun, custom sniper game for your next summer camp, winter retrat or d-now!

[FREE] AI SNIPER APP BUILDER
https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-ai-sniper-147099707?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/186

❄️ 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

HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

//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 We're giving you this game’s code!
00:40 The Sniper Humble Beginnings
03:27 How We Used Sniper
06:20 Can we build a custom app using AI?!
08:25 What Does Custom AI App Builder this Cost?
12:55 Some Features or Potential glitches to be aware of
14:55 Our Sniper Rules
17:15 Sniper vs. Assassin
18:15 Final Words of Wisdom?

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00.929)
Well, what's up everyone? Here I am with the world's biggest Mavericks fan, Ben Hurlburt, willing to lose bets no matter how bad they are.

Ben Hurlburt (00:05.998)
That's right, you know it. Google it, it, and you'll than your favorite player.

Ben Hurlburt (00:14.03)
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah.

Nick Clason (00:15.775)
That's also true. But me and Ben actually worked together at Cross Creek Church, which is great. And I didn't know that Ben was a genius at artificial intelligence. So before we dive into all that, why don't you just tell me where you first started playing the original inception of these sniper games and...

Ben Hurlburt (00:23.746)
Have a

Nick Clason (00:41.601)
how like what the rules are and like all that type of stuff in case, know, someone wants to use or utilize this in their like own ministry context.

Ben Hurlburt (00:51.468)
Yeah, so I started this. I didn't start this, but I started playing the game of sniper at Texas A when I was in college. honestly, it wasn't even a game. was it was just a bunch of friends in a group chat.

who thought it was really funny whenever we would see each other in person as a, like not in our normal context. So like we all went to church together, but A has a huge campus. So we thought it was really funny whenever we see each other on campus. So we just like take a picture of each other from like really far away and then not say anything like to them in person. We just sent the picture of them and it was kind of like, yo, they were there and where'd they go? And it started off just kind of, you know, like, ha ha, I saw you in person. And then it got a lot.

more competitive as it went on. People didn't want to be sniped, if you will. We had certain buildings where it was like, no, don't snipe me in there. I could be doing something with, I could be on something job related, because you've got all these job fairs and stuff like that all the time. So people didn't want to be distracted. So it kind of morphed from this just kind of funny, ha ha, I saw you in person to getting

really really competitive and while it never became like a fully fledged game it always the sport management major in me always saw like the untapped potential for like some crazy stupid like game that people could play on their phones and actually like you know you're still kind of behind the screen but it's all about what's actually happening in front of you so yeah

Nick Clason (02:28.375)
Yeah. All right. So the basic premise though, is you have a group of people, a pool of players, so to speak, and your goal is to capture them via a picture of using your cell phone. Like basic, simple, right? Yeah, so easy. And then like enter fall 2025, where we work. Because we're the youth ministry and we're the only fun ones, it's our job to run

Ben Hurlburt (02:33.326)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (02:40.0)
Right. Yeah. So easy.

Ben Hurlburt (02:50.093)
Thank you.

Nick Clason (02:57.227)
fantasy football for the whole staff. we have like, for context, we have, it's not just like a Yahoo league of like eight people. There's like 30 people in three different leagues. And it's like a big thing, which reminds me that I still need to send a recap email about the end of the season. But I've really fallen off here at the end of the year. But we're playing, what'd say?

Ben Hurlburt (02:59.424)
Right, of course.

Ben Hurlburt (03:07.662)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (03:18.798)
It wasn't close. Yeah, sorry. I was like, it just wasn't close. Like, you just ran away with it.

Nick Clason (03:23.753)
Yeah.

And we got to figure out, and we tried this year even, right? We threw a wrinkle in it to try to make, because what we're describing is there's three different leagues and the leagues compete against each other. And every year one league jumps out into like first place of like the points and that's it. They stay. And we don't know how to like make it closer, make the race like actually interesting, which this sniper game was our attempt to make it interesting. So like,

Ben Hurlburt (03:41.218)
And they stay. Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (03:48.471)
Okay.

Nick Clason (03:54.823)
Essentially, we created, what did we call, do we call them assassins in the league? There were two dormant players in every league that, yeah, they drafted players and then they held them hostage, because it's all points-based, so it's not like wins and loss-based. If I drafted someone in Ben's league, for example, that player's points didn't count toward the league total overall. However,

Ben Hurlburt (04:19.566)
Thank

Nick Clason (04:21.951)
we have this big conference that happens in the middle of the fall, like the first week of November. We invite a bunch of other pastors and church planters to our campus and the entire staff is sort of pulling it off together. And so we were like, what if we created a sniper game to release these held hostage players into the overall player pool? Because like, for example, and again,

the Colts fell off too, just like I fell off in fantasy football. Like Jonathan Taylor at this point was the MVP of the league. And then, yeah, but since then has done nothing, just like the actual team. so anyway, we're like, well, what if we give Jonathan Taylor's points, Saquon Barkley's points, whoever was on these, these hostage, you know, players back into the pool and the way that you release them is by playing this sniper game. And we were like,

talking it out, right? And I was like, it'd be really cool if I didn't have to like manually score this because I do have to manually score the fantasy football. Like I have to go in, have to write everyone's score into a spreadsheet and let Excel do its thing. And you were like, what if we built our own custom app using AI? And I like laughed at you. I was like, we're not gonna be able to do that. Like, what do you think this is? Like the year 3000? Like, no.

Ben Hurlburt (05:45.186)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:47.959)
And I think one night you abandoned all of your husband duties and you just went, yeah, you're like, I'm gonna prove that this can happen. So tell us that story.

Ben Hurlburt (06:02.424)
So I think we were just sitting there watching, my wife, Makayla and I were sitting there watching some movie and I just, don't know, I just, the entire day I was sitting there thinking like, I swear I can pull this off. Like, this isn't going to be that hard. And the movie didn't really, and the movie didn't really have me locked in. So I was like, yo, you cool if I just like look at this for like five minutes or something, Makayla? She was like, yeah, as long as it's only five minutes. And then it-

Nick Clason (06:14.074)
It's gotta be a way, yeah.

Nick Clason (06:26.611)
And five minutes turned into what?

Ben Hurlburt (06:28.93)
Five hours. yeah, so I just basically started doing some research online, trying to like find a way because like, I'll be so honest, like I can't like generate code. Like I wouldn't know the first thing about any of that. Like I'm a sport management major for God sakes. But yeah.

Nick Clason (06:48.221)
and a worship leader and a youth pastor. Like, we don't know what we're doing, yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (06:52.398)
Expertise is not in that field. you know, so I was like, you know, I know what I need though. Like I can see the app in my head, like digital native. Like I know what this thing needs. So I was like, let's just see if one of these like AI app like things work. AI app generator things works. And it did. Base 44, dude. It was insane. I just started cooking like just.

Nick Clason (07:11.884)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (07:20.832)
like create like four different tabs like make sure that like each one has this specific function. I even you even get a like color designer I was like yo this is great for the graphic design I'm part of my part of my brain I scratched that itch so yeah I mean

Nick Clason (07:37.143)
Now, bass, bass 44, is it free or is there a free version of it or how like, yeah, so talk about that a little bit.

Ben Hurlburt (07:42.016)
No.

Ben Hurlburt (07:45.902)
I think there is a free version of it. The only problem is, and there were a couple of important things, is once you create the app, it's not like something you can download on the App Store. It's weird what the definition of app is, at least in my head, considering I'm thinking of the App Store. But it's everything is like, it's more so of a website than it is actually like an app as we would think it. So part of the reason that like,

Nick Clason (07:57.569)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:10.987)
Yeah, yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (08:15.948)
I felt the need to have to pay for it is that the URL might not remain in your possession.

And it could be in the middle of the game, right? Like somebody else that is on base 44 with the subscription could come up with the URL or just anybody who creates a URL in general. could be taken. So I was like, nah, we have to pay for that. That alone is worth it. And the other one is you could give it more prompts. It opens to more statistics things.

Nick Clason (08:54.347)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Hurlburt (08:57.644)
like being able to analyze like actually how the app is performing as opposed to just like typing in what I would like for it to do.

Nick Clason (09:04.617)
Yeah, and I think too, if I remember right, you were able to build it and you were able to see it, but then in order to allow others in it or something like that, like we needed to unlock it behind some sort of paywall, which I think, mean, like for example, I think the cost was in the realm of like 20 something dollars, right? So like.

Ben Hurlburt (09:27.921)
right yeah

Nick Clason (09:30.389)
And we use this for three days, like the same length of like a winter retreat or like a D-NOW or like a summer camp. So if this was something that A, you you allowed your students to have phones and most of them did have phones, but then B, you had that same amount of time, like you could unlock it for just a couple of dollars, right? 20 bucks, whatever. And then use Ben's prompt, which I've included link in the description. Go check it out if you want to go grab it, to build something.

you with your, you and you tweak it for yourself with your own context and whatever in mind, but like, build something for $20 that's custom that can be used exclusively by your people. Like Ben said, it wasn't like an app store app, but it was like a web app. Right. And so you just, yeah. you sit in it, like there was some, glitched a little, but bro, I mean, people used it. Like some people were absolutely like spamming this game, like the entire conference. Like every time I checked it, there was activity. It was.

Ben Hurlburt (10:11.404)
It works really well.

Nick Clason (10:26.775)
And it was a really fun way to infuse a little bit of life, right? Because not everyone at the conference used it. I think that's the other thing was like, if you wanted to do something like this, could maybe let students sign up for it and only the ones signed up are playing it. And it just happens in the background. You do the rest of your programming for your Dean hour, your winter retreat, and whoever has the phone or whoever is able to or.

Ben Hurlburt (10:33.346)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:52.053)
your student leadership team or your staff or like there's all kinds of different adaptations because that's we had church planters and other pastors and we didn't invite them or even let them know that it was happening unless they saw us like take our phone out and like sneak behind a wall to try and take a picture. So it's a great way to build camaraderie with a smaller subset of people you know if that's something you want to do and that's that's exactly what happened like in our context.

Ben Hurlburt (11:17.388)
Yeah, no, it was honestly a lot of fun. I think some of the glitches came from stuff that you could probably take care of in person, like Nick was talking about. one of the worst things was that in my head I was like, yo, I don't know if somebody fully gets that.

participating in this app means that somebody could take a picture of you at any point in time. And I was like, I don't want to get any invasion of privacy. Like that wouldn't be great. so I had this, like, you had to opt in button and whenever like,

Nick Clason (11:45.909)
Right.

Ben Hurlburt (11:52.782)
Sometimes it wouldn't, like it couldn't click. One of our friends, Miranda's phone, it just wouldn't scroll down to be able to click opt-in because of the version of her iPhone was a little bit older. something like that though, that I did on the app could have totally been something that in person, if your students are playing it, you can just have them be like, yo, I'm like.

by agreeing to play this game like I'm just gonna happen. Another thing too is, and this was probably the best thing about this app, and I know I was thinking of just for adults, but for students could also be a thing. You can program the app to shut down.

at certain times of day. And I didn't really test it out a lot, I mean, just given what it was capable of, might even be, you might even be able to like geo locate where the app is functioning. At a minimum, you have control over when the app is up, when the app is down, you can just shut it off. And you know, you have like, just like a kill switch at all points in time, which is like housed through like your base 44, like,

like home site. So like if you don't want your kids playing that once they've left the church, like they won't if you make that call. So yeah.

Nick Clason (13:08.288)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (13:18.359)
Yeah. And like, and then just for, for everyone else's sake, like here's how we put the rules in, right? Like here are the rules that we tried to operate by. So it was a three day conference, then put like a start, a start and stop time on those three days. Uh, so that people weren't like getting tagged at home, which I don't know that anyone in our staff would have done that, but you never know. People get crazy. Um, we said,

Ben Hurlburt (13:26.382)
you

Ben Hurlburt (13:43.266)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:46.071)
We said you were not allowed to play the game during main sessions or breakouts, so main content times. And the other thing that was cool was you could report a photo. if I took a picture of you while you're leading worship, for example, someone can report that and negate the points that it would have given to that team because...

Ben Hurlburt (13:54.051)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (14:01.512)
Okay, I can do that,

Nick Clason (14:12.683)
they were doing it outside of the boundaries. And so that was another thing was there was like a self regular, or not like a self, but like a team regulation, right? Kind of woven into the app. And again, Ben wrote all that into the code or into the prompt there. And so, and then we also said like bathrooms and offices were off limits. So you had like your safe zone, which remember like our team, like our students team, like all, how many are there? Six of us? We were all playing and we were all just like,

Ben Hurlburt (14:38.893)
Thanks a lot.

Nick Clason (14:41.895)
hold up in our own offices because we were all killing each other. And so we all just like went to our office to like gain safety. And then like I'd like be walking to the bathroom, like holding my phone like at people so that like they wouldn't like take pictures of me. And like one time I came out of the bathroom and like our resident and intern, they like used it against me. Like the resident was like, Hey, can you come here and look at this for a second? And so like I walked towards him and then the intern was like behind me and like

Ben Hurlburt (14:46.167)
I'm

Nick Clason (15:11.905)
got me taking a picture or got a picture of me. Like those two turds, totally got me. And then I think was the last one was you couldn't be looking at the camera.

Ben Hurlburt (15:17.57)
Yes. Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (15:23.498)
you can't be like, you can't be looking at either the person taking the photo or I mean, they're right there or the camera.

Nick Clason (15:29.289)
Yeah, so you can basically have a shield if you look at if someone's trying to take a picture of you you catch them with your eyeballs like that doesn't count.

Ben Hurlburt (15:38.018)
Yeah, it wouldn't be any fun if like you and I were just like sitting here like talking and just like taking a picture of the whole time. Yeah, but I will say like one thing that like I know that assassin is like really really popular. One thing I do like about sniper apparent like opposed to assassin is that once you're out an assassin like

Nick Clason (15:42.436)
Spamming each other with pictures. Yeah, exactly

Ben Hurlburt (15:59.968)
unless like someone like brings you back to life or some weird like immunity thing happens like you're out. And like I remember playing Assassin in college twice and one time I made it pretty far but the first time like I had like a friend that get let into my house like on the first day and I was just like well I was so excited to play this and now like like

Nick Clason (16:06.251)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:21.537)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (16:22.892)
dead like there's nothing I can do so like I would say that sniper gives you the opportunity like kids keep playing like and I get it I'm telling you it got competitive at work like the younger people on staff were going crazy over this thing so yeah

Nick Clason (16:31.446)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:41.471)
Yeah. Yeah. It was super fun. agree. Anything else that you learned that you would maybe do differently or any words of wisdom if anyone were to try to take your prompt and put in base 44, either on the creating of the app side of things or just the gameplay side of things that maybe we discovered throughout the game. We'll make an adjustment on this next year if we did it or something like that.

Ben Hurlburt (17:09.098)
well, the first thing is that prompt that like you're going to get is like the initial starting prompt. likely if you're going to want to go a certain direction with it, you, you might need to add some tweaks. I can't remember everything that's in it right now. but like,

There's a lot that that is in it, but you will inevitably need to make some changes make some tweaks In order to like get this thing up and running so in some way it's definitely like it's it's yours like you created it but one thing I would say is like put yourself and Like the best Jesse Eisenberg social network

Nick Clason (17:37.078)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (17:53.71)
programming mindset that you can for two hours and then just never flip back into it and whatever you come up with will be a really great game, really great product. So, yeah.

Nick Clason (18:04.043)
Yeah, I will say one thing that was helpful for us, I felt like on all sides, gameplay sides and administratively keeping score was we forced people, remember we forced people to use their actual name as their handle rather than like Dragonslayer17 because if you're Dragonslayer17, but I have no clue that that's your name, I can't know to tag you. And so you don't have to do that, but that was something that I...

Ben Hurlburt (18:14.465)
You

Ben Hurlburt (18:20.278)
That's right.

Thank

Nick Clason (18:33.463)
I required them, I was like, if you don't use your actual name as your handle, I won't give you points because I'm not gonna be able to chase down everyone's hair, brain, screen name that they come up with, you know, from their AOL instant messenger days.

Ben Hurlburt (18:46.917)
Yeah, I just remembered like a whole side of this whenever like we had it so that

When you took the picture of somebody, can't just like take a picture and upload it. You have to be able to tag them. Like there's a drop down. You can type into it and pull up somebody's like, like account name. But the fun thing to it that I felt like we could have dived into more. And I don't know if other people did was I had a whole social media function to it. as opposed to like the picture just going in and just registering as a point.

Nick Clason (18:59.797)
Right.

Nick Clason (19:20.726)
Right.

Ben Hurlburt (19:21.644)
kind of went into this Instagram-esque feed where other people, that was where you could report the post, where we like talked about that. But you could also like comment on them if they were funny, you could like them, react to them. And I thought that was a cool way to like keep people ingrained, especially given how much people on social media anyway, so.

Nick Clason (19:28.289)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (19:42.815)
Yeah, no doubt. And that, yeah, you're right. I would, that's where I'd log in and I'd be like, Holy smokes. Like Eli and Miranda have been like doing nothing but playing this game. So.

Ben Hurlburt (19:50.392)
Right.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Nick Clason (19:55.553)
But shout out to them. So all right, anything else? Anything else that we're missing before we cut people loose to go make this game for themselves?

Ben Hurlburt (19:57.688)
Yeah.

Ben Hurlburt (20:04.312)
I'm sure there are, if it feels intimidating, don't.

Just, mean, honestly, Base 44, it was so easy. Like I, and if it didn't do what I wanted it to do, I'd be like, you didn't do what I wanted you to do. Try it again. like it, 95 % of the time that fixed the problem. So it was, it was so user friendly. It's chat GPT, but it makes an app for you. So it, mean, we're not paid, this isn't a sponsor, but I would totally use base 44. It was so simple.

Nick Clason (20:35.637)
Yeah, and Bass44, if you're listening, sponsor us.

Ben Hurlburt (20:39.214)
That would be great.

Nick Clason (20:40.439)
All right, everyone. Well, until next time, and as always, Ben, thanks for being here. See you guys soon.

Ben Hurlburt (20:46.702)
See you guys!

Episode 185: This Disney Trip Accidentally Gave Me My Best Camp Game Ever

Nick Clason — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600

I stumbled into this camp idea, and I'm going to give it to you today!
How I discovered it, what I've done that's worked, and how you can adapt it for your context.
This is a great Winter Retreat, Summer Camp or D-Now game concept that runs in the background of your student ministry event!

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 The Accidental Disney Game
00:28 How we stumbled into this…
01:29 How to Play
05:27 Cheat Sheet
06:13 Winter Social Media
07:04 My Recommendations

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;10 - 00;00;25;42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I was at Disney with my family, and every single day my wife and kids, we were obsessed with finding this one hidden thing somewhere littered all throughout our resort. And halfway through the shift, I realized that this would be a perfect camp, winter retreat or D now game option and make sure that you stick around to the end of this video, because I'm going to share with you a cheat sheet so that you can win at this in your context.

00;00;25;50 - 00;00;46;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody, to the Hybrid Ministership. So like I said there, I was at Disney and they had this like niche like almost like hard to figure out. Like the orange bird. Like, you know, I'm talking about you'll see here on screen if you're watching here on YouTube, they had this thing hidden just like a printed out like cutout of this of this bird.

00;00;46;07 - 00;01;04;34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you had to find it every day, and then you'd return to, like, the activity center. And all you would do is you tell them where you found them. And the first day they gave you, like a little prize for finding it. But they redid it every single day. And about halfway through the trip, I was sitting there thinking to myself, you know what?

00;01;04;39 - 00;01;31;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This would make an amazing camp game. And I actually put that application to the test. But here's what made this idea work in student ministry, right? The anticipation, obviously, like, where am I going to find it the next day? Plus, it's an easy, low hanging opportunity to engage kids who might be bored during free time. So let me explain this game to all right.

00;01;31;01 - 00;01;50;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we'll do a side by side comparison. So at Disney you needed to find some sort of object. Obviously as I said it was the orange bird for them. But in our ministry context we actually have like a a designed platypus. His name is Pugsley the platypus. And this was designed just by an illustrator that we found on Fiverr.

00;01;50;21 - 00;02;09;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'll link his details down below if you want to check out his work. But he designed this for us. And so we get these little custom pins with the different like design adaptation printed for all of our different like events throughout the year. So he'd make us like a custom one for for camping. But you know, you're able to lean in pretty hard with different platypus stuff.

00;02;09;09 - 00;02;29;56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like here's some some cards that we have made in the artwork, and you can just get random like platypus designs of stuffed animals. Of course, there's there's Perry the Platypus and they got all sorts of like Perry the Platypus merch and mugs. And so we've leaned in really hard with the platypus being our mascot, which linked right here at the top of the video, I explained these bracket style ideas talk about in that video.

00;02;29;57 - 00;02;51;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Donuts have done Christmas brackets. We did a bracket on voting on the best mascot, and so it landed on on a platypus. And we've leaned in and over all the years. And so for us, we hid just a card like a cutout of our platypus Pugsley. All throughout camp, we've even done it in different moments, like, all throughout, like our midweek as well.

00;02;51;24 - 00;03;11;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The rule, though, for this game is that it's very simple. One new spot once per day. So in Disney, they'd hide it somewhere along the property near the resort like clubhouse area, and we'd have to go find it like the day we found it. I think the picture you see here on screen, it was in the laundry room like we had we we were looking for hours for this thing at camp.

00;03;11;15 - 00;03;25;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Same concept. We just hide it. New spot every single day. And you can lean into this as much as you want. You can make it a big deal and send all the kids out to find it. First one to find it wins, or you can just have it kind of playing in the background, which is what I like to do.

00;03;25;17 - 00;03;47;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Just have it rotating through your announcement slides, reminding them that it's an option. As well as giving them like reminders, maybe in like their little notebooks or something, and then just giving them a few extra, incentives or bonus points or prizes to find it. So what happens if you do find it if you win, right. So at Disney they gave us like a button, you know, imagine like a politician running for office.

00;03;47;15 - 00;04;03;48
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then every day you could put a new sticker on your button indicating that you found it the next day until you got all the stickers filled up on your button. Assuming that you stayed at Disney for those amount of days at camp, we gave like a little stamp in the camp book, so it was like the Monday.

00;04;03;53 - 00;04;25;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Did you find this, this thing on Monday? Did you find this thing on Tuesday? Did you find this thing on on, you know, Wednesday. And here's the hack. Okay. The hack is if you have some sort of like, merch table, first aid station or Lost and Found that's manned by a volunteer. So like, we have an entire, like, team of rec people, that run all of our rec and then also help us, like sell t shirts and merch at our merch table.

00;04;25;31 - 00;04;46;50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we just say, bring, a picture or explain where you found the the platypus at the merch table, and we'll give you some sort of reward for it. Here's why this scales and works well, not just at Disney like it did for us, right? It it's an easy thing to do if you're not at a park that day for whatever reason, and you're just having an extra resort day.

00;04;46;50 - 00;05;05;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's why this works at camps, dinos retreats, summer camps. Because you know that if you give your your kids a big bucket of free time, you might have different things like Gaga ball nine square in there, basketball tournaments and all those types of things. But you might also have kids who just aren't really interested in participating in those things.

00;05;05;27 - 00;05;27;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this will give you an opportunity to help, give them something else to do. It's not athletic, it's not active. But it still is. At least like it brings about the anticipation. And it gives them a task to do with their friends to work together, and still stay engaged in some of the stuff that you're offering at your youth retreat, summer camp denial or winter retreat.

00;05;27;20 - 00;05;43;43
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this works whether you're at your church, whether you're at a camp, or even like a rented retreat space. And I'm actually going to give you a cheat sheet, it's going to be linked down below. As I said at the beginning, and I'm going to give you a variety of gameplay options, as well as a list and a slew of prize options as well.

00;05;43;43 - 00;06;01;37
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But first, here's the thing. You know, you come together. You found this YouTube video. You're on track to create an amazing winter retreat, an amazing camp, an amazing dinner. But you're still busy because you show up Monday morning. And once you've already posted your recap, slideshow, or video of the event, you're still scrambling to try to figure out what you're going to do on social media.

00;06;01;37 - 00;06;27;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, here the Hybrid ministry show we have a solution for the busy youth pastor. In fact, a couple months ago I was as busy as I've ever been, and I put my seasonal social media pack to the test. 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 man.

00;06;27;31 - 00;06;48;06
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;48;06 - 00;07;09;31
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. But mine will at least keep you moving in the right direction. So as I said, you can get a lot of these in the description down below, with the cheat sheet.

00;07;09;31 - 00;07;27;38
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like if you were to play this at a summer camp, my recommendation would be create a new daily hiding spot for your thing every single day. But if you are like a winter retreat, say it's only like three days long. Then maybe especially on your middle day. Like, say it's a Saturday, maybe at noon. Have a break and create a new hiding spot for it.

00;07;27;38 - 00;07;46;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So there's four opportunities to find your hidden object. And, you know, here's the thing. Like maybe consider adding that as a note in your schedule. Like object will be hidden in a new location starting after lunch on this day. And you can put a little note or little sticker on the on the lanyard schedule or on your notebook schedule.

00;07;46;10 - 00;08;06;37
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're in a dinner type situation, I would, make it similar to that as well. Like ask them or let them know, like when you're going to be hiding it and maybe putting it in in different locations at different times so that you can have them find it in more, more moments than just 1 or 2 spots per day, like a camp, you can do one per day, but maybe the deny you need to live in it up a bit.

00;08;06;37 - 00;08;21;41
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, you know, here's the fact you can actually even include an idea like this, like your weekly youth group gathering. So every single Sunday or every single Wednesday when students show up, your, object is hidden in a new place and you need to create a little bit of infrastructure, like, what do you do if you find it, what do you get if you find it?

00;08;21;41 - 00;08;38;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what can you create that's sustainable in the long run? That would actually keep people interested in something like that. I have all sorts of different price ideas, as well as links in art linked down below in the description in the show notes. Check that out and hopefully it's helpful to you. Maybe something. I'm not just here to sell things.

00;08;38;24 - 00;08;55;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I actually want to help. If you want your ministry to feel alive. Between the big events, between the dinners in the winter, retreats, in the summer camps like this, hybrid stuff matters, which quick personal plug. I'm not over here trying to get rich off of any of this. In fact, if that were my goal, I would be failing miserably.

00;08;55;15 - 00;09;19;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I'm a real life boots on the ground youth pastor who who runs a youth ministry on a day to day basis. In my own context. And like I said, I have created resources that would be helpful and beneficial to me that I've used, and I just want to give them back to you. And so if you're interested in figuring out how to continue to to stay alive and post on a regular basis in your youth ministry, then check out, this channel, subscribe, like, share it with a friend.

00;09;19;34 - 00;09;24;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But until next time, my friends. And as always, I just want to remind you to not forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 183: Multi-Day Youth Group Game for Winter Retreats & DNows (Rules, Setup, & Free Files)

Nick Clason — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600

In this special, interview style episode, Nick Clason sits down with Jay Reynolds to discuss a game concept that Jay used for every session during a recent Winter Retreat. This video is just in time for DNow season where you can program games that build over multiple days and can last the duration of your entire winter retreat, summer camp or disciple now event!
Jay shares next level expert tips to make sure you win!

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SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/183

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Retreat Games that Extend the whole Weekend
02:21 Exploring the Game Show 'The Floor'
05:17 Adapting 'The Floor' for Retreats
08:07 Randomization and Contestant Selection
10:40 Categories and Audience Participation
12:13 Prizes and Momentum Building
14:17 Logistics and Setup Tips
17:01 Category Hacks
19:43 Did Jay really just do that?!
21:50 Next-Level Set-up Hacks
25:15 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.075)
Alright, what's up everyone? I'm here with my friend Jay. Jay, how we doing this morning, bro?

Jay Reynolds (00:07.379)
Man, I'm good, I'm good. It's almost, it's looking like it might want to snow outside. So I might figure out some, hanging in some snow later.

Nick Clason (00:15.672)
Doesn't snow a lot in Raleigh? Like is that a thing that you deal with very often?

Jay Reynolds (00:20.085)
No, really never. it basically I'm from the north and I've lived down here if you spill a cup of ice They shut the schools down. It's so it's yeah. It's a big deal around here

Nick Clason (00:22.424)
Ha

Nick Clason (00:28.62)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, mean, certainly that's how it goes in Texas as well. But I'm with you. I'm also from the North. So I know what it was like, but the more years I'm here, like the more I'm forgetting, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, man, it's cold, you know? And I was back home Thanksgiving, during, you know, in Minnesota in November. It was cold. It was a cold experience. And they're like, you're from here. And I'm like, not anymore. So.

Jay Reynolds (00:56.969)
Yeah, yeah. My in-laws live in Buffalo, and so I just recently spent Thanksgiving in Buffalo. yeah, 20, know, 24 degrees and a wind blowing feels like, you know, seven, you know? And yeah, so.

Nick Clason (00:58.149)
Ha ha!

Nick Clason (01:02.652)
yeah.

Nick Clason (01:07.808)
Yeah, dude. Well, I appreciate you hopping on. I posted a thing in the DIY and Facebook group asking for like retreat games and things that kind of like you could go back to. And you responded with a comment about like you tried to emulate a game show called The Floor. that what it's called? All right. So for people like me who who don't know what you're talking about, like explain this game show to me like I'm a five year old.

Jay Reynolds (01:29.119)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (01:36.501)
Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. So, um, it's a game show. I watch it on Hulu. I don't know which network technically has it. Um, but on Hulu it's, uh, Rob Lowe is the host and it's called the floor. And it's basically, I mean, it's, it's a nice floor setup. It's like all led, whatever. And basically the floors is made up of a hundred boxes. And for the game show, every box, so a hundred people have like their specialty category. Maybe it's like,

Star Wars characters, you know, or maybe it's like cereal brands or maybe it's like college football teams in the SEC. I don't know. Like it's just everybody comes with their specialty and what you need to do is you basically challenge somebody, you know, it's like it's randomized, you know, it's one to a hundred and it's like, say it lands on, you know, 49 and say their category is cats, you know, and they get to choose who do they want to challenge.

and their box 49 is connected to a bunch of other boxes. And so they basically challenge somebody and let's say they challenge somebody it's bridges. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up here, right? But it's just all random categories and then they go up to the front and they challenge. And what the challenge looks like is there's basically a picture on the screen and they just have to guess what it is. So it's pretty simple kind of trivia.

Nick Clason (02:46.264)
K-E-A-A.

Nick Clason (02:58.071)
Hmm.

Jay Reynolds (03:00.885)
And now in the game show they have like each contestant, know when they're battling they have 45 seconds And so if they're like thinking a lot of time like, you know, what is that? Like their own 45 seconds is kind of like going down on the clock think of like when you play chess There's like that like your own time clock So that's how it's played in the game You know on the game show And when I saw that I was like, man, I think I could play that

Nick Clason (03:19.51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (03:24.791)
Okay.

Jay Reynolds (03:28.985)
in like a retreat weekend, you know? And so now I have asked multiple times, Nick, with my leadership, can I get an LED floor so that I could really play this game? And of course, what do you think my answer I got is?

Nick Clason (03:31.105)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:41.623)
Yeah.

They probably were like if we had the budget yes, but right now You know the Lord hasn't blessed our our church with the funds to do an LED floor. That'd be my guess

Jay Reynolds (03:52.234)
Yeah.

That's you are 100 % correct. You're 100 % correct. So, so thinking so since I was not, you know, recipient of a blessing of an LED floor, but I still had this, this gumption to want to play this game. So I figured it out. I was like, okay, I can't do a hundred. Like, you know, in programming, you know, there's programming, you're like, man, that game would be a banger, but it might be like three hours long. And it's just like, do I have that amount of time? No, but

Nick Clason (04:04.811)
Right.

Nick Clason (04:20.247)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (04:24.181)
What I decided to do is how can I make it manageable and reproducible in my context? And so when we go off to retreat with middle schoolers, we take over a whole campground and we basically use a gym. We convert the gym to like our main auditorium. And so what I did is just use some painter's tape and I created boxes on the ground, basically built a frame and then did 16 boxes.

Nick Clason (04:29.645)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (04:37.006)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (04:46.445)
Okay.

Jay Reynolds (04:51.393)
And so basically I narrowed down 16 categories. And in that, what I did was I just chose simple categories, just like I mentioned before, simple ones that middle schoolers would want to get into, know, thinking through food, snacks, know, common pop culture type stuff, things that the whole crowd will get into. And so basically what I did was like, okay, 16 boxes, I can do about four, five questions per round and kind of see how it goes.

Nick Clason (04:54.604)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:04.758)
Right, right, right.

Nick Clason (05:19.085)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (05:20.987)
Originally when I played it, I was like, okay, I'm just going to pick 16 kids. It's going to be the same 16 kids. You know, when I start the game, what I mentioned is once you win against somebody else, then you take over their box. Right. So in 16 boxes, if you're number 16 and you play against someone who's 15, now you take over their category, right? And, and there's one less person they get kicked out. and then your goal is to take over the whole floor.

Nick Clason (05:34.673)
gotcha, okay.

Nick Clason (05:44.877)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:50.922)
Right, gotcha, okay, interesting, that's fun. Totally, yeah. So, you take over the cat, I've been looking it up here while you've been talking, like the setup on the game show looks amazing. So, I can imagine how you can set up 16, how do you, in a retreat type setting, how do you determine your 16 contestants?

Jay Reynolds (05:53.097)
Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (06:13.577)
Yeah, so completely random, you know? And what I really did was I just randomized and just picked 16 kids. I mean, some ways that you could do that. And so I would suggest 16 because it's an easy multiple, right? You can do four questions each time and you can carry it through, say, a typical retreat. Maybe there's four main sessions. You know, you could play around with that. If you only have three sessions that maybe you do nine or do some type of multiple of that.

Nick Clason (06:16.824)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (06:26.732)
Right.

Nick Clason (06:41.346)
Right, right, right.

Jay Reynolds (06:42.005)
But I would say in a typical four sessions, four questions is pretty good and you get the crowd all into it. But how to pick kids. Here's what I originally thought. I would just pick 16 kids and the same kids that were in their box on Friday night would be the same kids playing throughout. But as I thought about it, in my retreat, we had a couple hundred kids and I was like, how should I do this? So.

Nick Clason (06:58.862)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (07:04.503)
Right, right, right.

Jay Reynolds (07:07.475)
I just completely randomized it. It was kind of like a game day decision. And the only people that stayed was if they won out. So Friday night, whoever won, you know, now they had like the large and basically what does it mean to win on like the first session for question? There's 16 boxes. They didn't take over the whole floor, but whoever has the largest section, right? So it's four questions. So it's just like, if they have three, you know, they own like three other boxes, you know,

Nick Clason (07:10.935)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (07:15.63)
Mmm.

Jay Reynolds (07:37.481)
then they have the largest section, they win. And so I would give some type of prize for the night. And the way that the show works is they would do like eight or nine boxes, you know, and you win. And whoever has the most boxes like connected, you know, the largest area on the floor, they would win like a high dollar prize. Right. So I just mimic that. And I was like, here's like tons of candy to like go back in your cabin, that type of thing. And so there was intrigued to win for that night.

Nick Clason (07:41.558)
Ahem.

Nick Clason (07:55.98)
Right, right.

Jay Reynolds (08:06.557)
or that session, even if you don't win the overall. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Nick Clason (08:06.657)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:10.412)
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so and then you're randomizing, you're calling up a couple contestants to go head to head and then are you just asking like trivia questions to them back and forth or like where are you sourcing your questions from?

Jay Reynolds (08:26.709)
Yeah, great question. So what I did is out of 16, I built like basically in Pro Presenter, I built 16 categories and it's all picture related. And so behind them, there's a big old screen, you know, and let's just say it was a serials, you know, like cereal, like, and so they just have to guess, oh, that's Reese Puffs, that's Honey Nut Cheerios. And what I did instead of like, playing like chess, how the game show is like each has your own 45 seconds. It's a whole lot to manage.

Nick Clason (08:38.829)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (08:43.095)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:56.385)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (08:56.629)
I just put one timer up and so I flipped a little bit of the game show and I made it whoever has the most correct in 45 seconds. And I encourage high crowd participation, right? And so like the kids up there and you know sometimes a kid would get a little bit of stage fright and they're like, oh, I know what that is. That is definitely, you know, Lucky Charms, but I can't, I just can't think of what the name is, but the whole crowd's yelling Lucky Charms, you know?

Nick Clason (09:01.912)
Gotcha.

Nick Clason (09:06.229)
Okay.

Nick Clason (09:10.37)
There you go.

Nick Clason (09:14.733)
Right?

Nick Clason (09:25.599)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (09:26.365)
And so it keeps the whole crowd engaged while at the same time, know, so, you know, a good game, I believe it's just like, it's not just for the contestants on stage, but it gets the whole crowd also into it.

Nick Clason (09:29.41)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:37.87)
Yeah, and I love that, that you encourage crowd participation rather than try to stifle it because then that makes, that means everyone in the room is able to join in and participate. And yeah, it's not just for the people up there. It's beautiful.

Jay Reynolds (09:42.441)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (09:48.944)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And that's where a lot of the prizes, I tried to make them like, maybe there was like, actually, I think that's the year I gave away like some panda hats and like, so I may have like made like a panda shirt or something. That was kind of our little subtle branding. And so that just kind of went with it. It was like, oh, this was for you, but it's also paired with like five bags of candy to share with your cabin. You know what I mean? And so.

Nick Clason (09:59.468)
Okay.

Nick Clason (10:05.015)
Right.

Nick Clason (10:12.192)
Nice, yeah. So there's more incentive for the people in the crowd. Like if their buddy's up there, they might get to, yeah, that's awesome.

Jay Reynolds (10:16.915)
Yep. Exactly. Yeah. You know, and so that just cries a call a lot of crowd participation. Here's what I didn't expect, but something awesome that happened. So in 45 seconds, you know, you sometimes go into it thinking like, this game is going to be great. This kid's going to get like eight. This kid may get seven, like clear winner. That didn't always happen. Like this kid got eight. This other kid got eight. Time ended. Now I'm like in the moment, like, well, what do I do? Right.

Nick Clason (10:26.519)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:36.173)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:41.165)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (10:44.801)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (10:45.649)
And so, so here's what I did. Like I'll just give a little secret sauce so you don't have to think through it if you play this. And so I just like, okay, you guys tie. How do we end this? And so I basically just put my hand out and you know, and then for the contestants hand behind the back, you know, go to the next one, the first one, you know, high five and answer correctly. Then they got to choose and that was created in the whole, like the whole room, like this anticipation who's going to get it, you know?

Nick Clason (10:51.308)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:07.362)
Yeah they win.

Nick Clason (11:13.527)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (11:14.173)
And then it's like the one kid that happened to and they guessed they were so confident and they got it wrong, you know? But then the other kid got it, right? And it just creates like kind of like this little bit of storybook kind of ending whenever they tie. And so it just works, you know, pretty well.

Nick Clason (11:20.758)
Yeah, dude

Nick Clason (11:27.297)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:30.7)
Yeah dude, that's awesome. Okay so, a kid wins the majority of the board Friday night. So Saturday morning let's say, you come back to play it again. You're getting random contestants. Now if someone was on the board but they weren't selected or they weren't eliminated, did you swap them out with new contestants? So you just had the people who like, so like one carryover from Friday night and then everyone else was new?

Jay Reynolds (11:37.78)
Yes.

Jay Reynolds (11:52.467)
Yep.

Nick Clason (12:00.672)
on the board on Saturday? Is that how you handled it? Okay, great.

Jay Reynolds (12:03.285)
That's how I handled it, right? And so some of that, you know, sometimes when you play a game, it's like, oh yeah, that kid, you know, gets participated, but somebody wins before they get there, right? And it's just like, it's kind of that concept. And you know, what, what I had a little bit of the workflow is that every kid who had a box, I gave them basically like piece of paper. I'm number one, two, you know, whatever their number was that went with the box. And so that also helped for, you know, like in the moment there's all these kids around. It's like, oh, it,

Nick Clason (12:23.18)
Right, right, right, yeah. Right.

Jay Reynolds (12:32.445)
chose number 12, you know, to be able to cue the folks in the back and be able to set up Prober Center, everything correctly. It was like, we got number 12, you know, coming on up, you know? And, and so it's like while they're traveling, it's able to kind of like cue some of the tech team. So they're able to get the next things all set up. But with that, it was all new kids. Like if you want now when it come to Saturday night and Sunday morning,

Nick Clason (12:44.834)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (12:49.656)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (12:58.471)
If you won Friday night, you were still on the board, you know, unless you lost, you know? And so, so it is basically kind of like you win, you get to stay in the game and earn the right to keep going.

Nick Clason (13:01.186)
Right. Right, right, right.

Nick Clason (13:08.04)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that part's really cool. So did you have a kid make it all the way through or did like a winner from Friday end up getting eliminated on Saturday and you kind of kept daisy chaining it all the way to the end?

Jay Reynolds (13:20.529)
I think it was... We may have had, at least a Saturday night, we have Friday winter and Saturday morning winter into it. I can't remember Sunday morning. May have had a couple. Because we didn't play it this year, we played it last year. And so I'm a little bit of a year plus removed from like into it. But it just created a cool environment. But also like some of the dynamics, let's say like it was number 15, they beat 16, they beat, you know...

Nick Clason (13:29.966)
Okay, that's cool. That's cool.

Nick Clason (13:35.134)
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Jay Reynolds (13:49.253)
14, you know, and they had like their pocket, like all the way on the end. Well, the next day we showed up, it was, um, Hey, do you want to like play or do you want to kind of go back and just like sit in your leg little area? And so that's kind of where like, we'll just sit in our area. Okay. Let's throw up a randomizer. What do we get next? Number two, right? They're almost the other side of the floor. And so, you know, it may have been like, Oh, you didn't win, you know, or you didn't play that day or that, that session.

Nick Clason (13:52.631)
Right.

Nick Clason (14:01.506)
Right.

Nick Clason (14:11.555)
Right?

Nick Clason (14:18.454)
Yeah, to win, but you survived because you weren't on that part of the floor. I get it.

Jay Reynolds (14:20.989)
Exactly. So some of that, and if you watch the game show, that's how like people will play. Like, I won like three rounds. I have a small little section, but I'm like in an aisle. I'm like all the way in the corner. Maybe it's better. go back and then, know, but it's also like, I'm playing for the category, right? Now let me talk a little bit about categories, you know, cause I, I chose all that myself, the game show, like you, you go in saying, this is my category. And it's like, you're almost like,

Nick Clason (14:33.986)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (14:41.399)
Okay, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (14:49.393)
You're bringing category to the game show.

Nick Clason (14:52.01)
Yeah, like that's you're an expert in that category is how it works on the game show you're saying

Jay Reynolds (14:54.835)
Yeah. Yes. But in my context, I don't know. And I'm like, to keep things to be able to be randomized, I was basically like, here's your category. You are now an expert. You know, like you are now an expert on dogs, you know, or you are now an expert on fruit, you know, you are now in and it was all common stuff that's in their world. And so so instead of it being as eclectic as what you might experience, like watching the game show, as I just made it more actually slide on the side of common.

Nick Clason (15:01.859)
Mm-hmm.

Gotcha, okay, cool, cool, cool.

Right.

Nick Clason (15:14.296)
Right.

Nick Clason (15:20.429)
Sure.

Jay Reynolds (15:23.477)
and that most people are going to know what it is, right? Because when you think through audience engagement, actually, the more eclectic it gets, the more you minimize participation, right? And so in this context, it's like playing other games, like if you play um or pie in the face type games, it's like you actually want some of those topics that people are going to know.

Nick Clason (15:28.417)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (15:36.302)
100%, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (15:49.353)
you know, car brands, type of thing, know, shoe brands, you know, like some of those things. And it just creates a higher engagement, which ends up being a better experience for the entire audience.

Nick Clason (15:51.586)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:59.982)
Yeah, okay, so one like just last little point of clarification I have is when you get two contestants, do you have them bounce back and forth like you say a carb brand, I say a carb brand until the one person can't remember or do you give them each 45 seconds and they have to list as many as they can and then the other person goes.

Jay Reynolds (16:18.355)
Yeah, no, great question. in using the slides, you know, and for us, we had a screen right behind us. So it's easy for them to see, easy for the whole crowd to see that type of thing. And it was basically like a, you know, person A is person B. So A, know, it's just like, that's let's say it's animals like, that's a panda, you know, next person, person B. that's a, that's an eagle person A. that's a dolphin. You know, that's a shark, you know.

Nick Clason (16:30.843)
yeah, that's right.

Nick Clason (16:41.366)
Okay. Gotcha. So it's not like a speed thing against him. It's like, person A, this slide is yours and you either get it or you don't. Got it. Okay. Cool, cool,

Jay Reynolds (16:50.517)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, if it takes you a second, know, like animals is pretty easy, you know, but, know, when you get into like, and I think like for, was it like cereals? I may have had a picture of the cereal. I may have had the box and kind of canvad out the name of it or something like that, but make it so it's recognizable. But you're like, it takes you a minute or not a minute, but it takes you a few moments to think about it. You know, the overall timer was 45 seconds.

Nick Clason (17:06.71)
Right, right.

Jay Reynolds (17:17.053)
and was just whoever got the most correct, but it was just back and forth, back and forth, that type of thing. Yeah.

Nick Clason (17:19.286)
Yeah.

That's awesome. I love it. Okay. Now you told me when we were texting back and forth, like, do you still have the purpose under file? Like, is that something that, that, you could get and we could give to people who are listening? Yeah, that'd be amazing.

Jay Reynolds (17:34.581)
Dude, I'd love to, you know? And so, yeah, and I use ProPresenter and so, you know, it's all built in ProPresenter, but I, man, I think it's all built in folders. So if you don't use, you know, if somebody's listening and they wanna try it out, I think I have folders that are all like the images. And I built, I built the floor off 16, but I built like two other categories. So if like something happened, like they, or something glitches, you know, things like that. So I think I technically built like.

Nick Clason (17:51.714)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:01.27)
Right, you gotta fall back, yeah. Okay.

Jay Reynolds (18:03.317)
18 categories. But man, I would gladly share it, you know.

Nick Clason (18:07.818)
Yeah, that'd be super cool. Yeah, so we'll get that from you and we'll link it down below. I think the thing I like the most about this is that you can make this the game for your D now, your winter retreat, your fall retreat, whatever, and you can just go back to it. And as opposed to every session, let's say you got four sessions over the course of a weekend, you don't have to come up with four things. This thing carries you all weekend long.

the more they know it or get to understand the rules of it, by the end of it, the hype level is probably gonna be raising every single time they do it. So maybe Friday night, it's basic understanding and basic learning, but by the end of it, people get the rules, they're locked into it, and they're trying to carry home the ultimate floor champion moniker, if they get to take home that final prize or whatever.

I think those are some of my favorite styles of games, things that can just, that well that you can kind of keep going back to. And so that's what I love about it. And I did not understand it at all when we were texting. So as you've described it more, I'm more more into it. And even my wheels now are turning. I'm like, all right, we got a winter retreat coming up. Do we incorporate this? Or do we bring this with us to summer camp or something like that? Because this sounds super fun, super amazing. And just a great way to like,

build the competition and build the camaraderie.

Jay Reynolds (19:37.181)
Yeah. And I think, you know, that's exactly it, man. You know, and if you think through like and how we set it up, like I think we just set up like two or three, you know, or maybe it's like two blocks and just like right as a center aisle. But let's just talk a little bit about that. Like I use painter's tape so that way it's not messing with the floor at all. Super cheap. But then what I did to make it easier is like think through if you were playing like that, that kids like dock game, you have to build boxes.

Nick Clason (19:49.485)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (19:55.319)
Right, and cheap.

Nick Clason (20:05.709)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (20:06.451)
Yeah. So think of it in that a whole frame on the outside was just solid lines to be able to build it. But on the inside, it was all like, you know, just think through each box by itself, because then when you have some volunteers like, box eight takes over seven, you know, and now you pull that one strip between the two. Now, you know, it's all box eight, right? You know? And so that just makes it easier logistically, because if you run long strips,

Nick Clason (20:11.607)
Right.

Nick Clason (20:16.91)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (20:26.163)
Mmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (20:32.558)
Totally.

Jay Reynolds (20:34.451)
like across multiple boxes on the interior, then like, now I have to like weirdly pick up like. Yeah, and that will be logistically, you know, that's like something like, I didn't think of it until I was in the in the in the situation. Now it's an issue is that think through like small like so the boxes say, you know, two or three feet wide, you know, just the interior pieces are all single pieces.

Nick Clason (20:40.788)
Yeah, cut it and yeah.

Nick Clason (20:50.124)
Right, yeah.

Nick Clason (20:59.852)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (21:00.393)
So it's a little bit longer to set up, not much, but a little bit longer to set up, but much easier for flow by game flow.

Nick Clason (21:08.046)
Yeah, I got you. Okay, so then, you know, seven overtakes eight. On Saturday morning, do you redraw, like, the seven box, or has seven still overtaken eight on Saturday morning for that morning's board? Does that make sense?

Jay Reynolds (21:24.713)
Yeah. Say seven takes over eight. And so now, yeah. And so basically your goal is to win the whole floor, you know? And so, ultimately, you know, and so now you get down to it is like, let's just say you winner keeps winning and they keep staying, they keep playing all this kind of stuff. And now you get down to it. They have 15 boxes, you know? And so let's just say it's one against number now, like let's say nine that won everything. One didn't.

Nick Clason (21:31.458)
The whole thing, yeah.

Nick Clason (21:40.097)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (21:51.063)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (21:52.319)
play at all. And it's just the kid who just got in that day and they just sat and watched nine keep winning, keep winning. And they get up there and then one who's had no action the entire time. They beat this person who's won everything. It's like a David and glide style matchup. And then they win that round. They win it all, you know? And so that's the other thing. What's intriguing about it. It's like, you know, some games it's like, if you're, could have the sheer advantage.

Nick Clason (21:56.278)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (22:09.918)
moment yeah yeah that's cool that's cool

Jay Reynolds (22:21.885)
or you keep winning and then now it like builds all this momentum. It's nice because it's almost, it's like there's neutralizers built into this game all the way throughout, you know? And it could just be like, just luck of the draw. Like, I don't know, I don't eat cereal. I only eat toast. Like I don't even know. And then that kid who's like, man, just sat, I randomly got chosen. You know, the kid who's like, man, I don't know it. I just eat cereal every day. I don't even know why I'm here, but I know this. And then I ended up winning everything, you know?

Nick Clason (22:29.238)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (22:37.857)
you

Nick Clason (22:47.351)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool.

Jay Reynolds (22:50.813)
And so that's the cool thing that makes it so easy and fun and all that kind of stuff.

Nick Clason (22:57.43)
Yeah, that's amazing. Nice. All right, bro. That really does sound super fun, super cool. So any last final parting words about retreats or games or this game in particular before we hit stop and close out the recording?

Jay Reynolds (23:15.219)
Yeah, dude, I think the last thing I'd say as far as for playing this game, because it builds on itself, you know, think through, I think how I played it was Friday night. I think I only did three questions, you know, because of Friday night, you have the rules, you have all this kind of stuff and not just the rules for this game, but, know, just think through your retreat overall. What is all of it, you know, entail? And so, you know, we did maybe three questions and then that allowed us to choose which other session do we want to do five, you know?

Nick Clason (23:25.954)
Okay.

Nick Clason (23:33.197)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (23:43.517)
And so just think through some of that from a momentum standpoint on how you want to play it. The other thing from a momentum is let your, you know, your session prizes build. So Friday night, maybe it is like a, you know, hat in like two bags of candy, you know, but then Saturday morning, you know, I think we did prizes that like relate. We were going to do like some, some, I don't know, pool games and things like that. So we gave away like beach towels, you know,

Nick Clason (23:43.725)
Mm.

Nick Clason (23:47.447)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (23:54.669)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (24:12.436)
Okay. Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (24:12.871)
and candy, right? And so it just kind of built and it just seemed that, you know, as the game builds, because it's over multiple sessions, that if you have budget and that's how you kind of ministry works, I would encourage you to think through, let your prizes build also, you know, and because that is just going to intuitively kind of go in with the whole game, you know, that type of thing. And so for me, my style is I always get other leaders involved, you know, small group leaders, things like that. I'm like, Hey, pick two kids to play, pick two kids to play.

Nick Clason (24:26.935)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (24:32.673)
yeah that makes sense

Nick Clason (24:40.8)
huh.

Jay Reynolds (24:42.687)
You know, and so, you know, that's how I help in the randomization, you know, but I'm getting other leaders involved in that process. That also helps like in a ministry. it's not like, Jay just picked his favorite kids to play to try to win, you know, well, no, I picked this leader and that lead, you know, and so it's like, I try to, so depending on how the structure is set up, getting other voices involved, help to take away like what could be speculation. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:04.513)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (25:09.408)
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I love it, man. Well, I, again, I appreciate your time. I thought this was a great conversation, great game. Like, and that one of the things I think is so, like interesting in the world of youth pastors, cause I did this too once where I was like watching a game show, you know, just at home with my wife and I was like,

I can make that into a game. You know what mean? And that's just the way our brain, we never turn off, we never stop thinking, we never stop ideating. And so I've never heard of this concept before, I've never even heard of this game show, but you're so right. It's a perfect youth ministry game and I love the fact that it can span the whole thing. And that's exactly what I was looking for, for all these different conversations, all these different ideas. And so again, really appreciate you hopping on and we'll throw the link to your.

Jay Reynolds (25:33.036)
yeah.

Never. Never.

Jay Reynolds (25:48.627)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:57.634)
your files and stuff like that down below. really appreciate you giving that away and that'll be super helpful for anyone who wants to take it and run with it.

Jay Reynolds (26:05.683)
Yeah, feel free. And hey, if one of your listeners wants to try it out and they get a little confused or want to kind of process through a little bit more, dude, feel free. You know, they can reach out and connect me with them. I'd love to kind of just help walk alongside someone who's trying to, you know, trying something new in their context, trying something to see what it would work. And I hope for folks who try it.

Nick Clason (26:14.851)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (26:25.683)
Man, hope you end of the day, if you're gonna play game like this, it's just as much as you having fun with your kids, with your students having fun, because that's kind of the momentum that really builds and getting them all into it.

Nick Clason (26:36.364)
Yeah, perfect. All right, Jay. Well, I appreciate it, And everyone else, thanks for listening. And we'll talk again soon. See you.

Jay Reynolds (26:43.455)
Cool, great chat man, take care.

Episode 182: I tried every youth ministry social media pack that exists.

Nick Clason — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600

I tried and evaluated every "Youth Ministry Social Media" Pack I could find on the internet.
I evaluated on 4 criteria, and the verdict is in!
I discovered the pack you should be using at your church in 2026 and beyond!

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/182

Social Team Checklist
https://www.patreon.com/posts/social-media-138081327?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Mic’d Kid Reel
https://www.instagram.com/p/DGtLVQOxLw8/

LIFE CHURCH
https://open.life.church/resources/5220-youth-social-media-graphics

DYM MONTHLY SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
January Pack: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/dym-january-2026-social-media-pack/social-media/instagram-10658.html

Membership: https://www.dymmembership.com/

YOUTH MINISTRY DROP
https://youthministrydrop.com/

SUNDAY SOCIAL
https://sundaysocial.tv/social/

NUCLEUS
Video: https://youtu.be/onqh7dHLwKs?si=XFtY-4Lcv32XMoH8
Nucleus Social: https://www.nucleus.church/media

SERMON MULTIPLIER
https://sermonmultiplier.com/

DYM Membership: https://www.dymmembership.com/

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

Hybrid Heroes get this pack for $4/mo
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

//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 The 4 Part Grading Scale
00:41 Pack 1 - Life.Church
02:14 Pack 2 - Pack 2 - DYM Monthly Member Pack
05:23 Pack 3 - Youth Ministry Drop
07:03 Pack 4 - Sunday Social
08:59 Pack 5 - Brady Shearer & Nucleus
12:22 Pack 6 - Sermon Multiplier
14:44 Pack 7 - Seasonal Social Media

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:26:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I tried every youth ministry social media pack that exists or or at least that I could find through a quick Google search. And this is what I found out. Now, here's the thing. I'm going to be evaluating based on these personalization reels and shorts and cost. And we're going to see who goes and takes the cake. So I have seven different social media packs.

00:00:26:28 - 00:00:49:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I want you to stick around to the end because I do believe I have uncovered and I've found the best social media pack for youth ministries in the world. Let's go. Okay, so this first one here that I found again, just remember a quick, simple Google search. I found a life church, which is, their open platform.

00:00:49:07 - 00:01:12:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It is free, which is amazing. But one of the things I noticed when I actually clicked in on it was that it just very simply was a, a standard quick graphic pack. So this isn't even really a social media pack as much as it is some social media images to post to your social media. So is it's a ten like it's free and you can grab it.

00:01:12:20 - 00:01:34:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But if you want to edit it, like if you want to put your actual student ministry like students and pictures on there, like it's maybe like a one because it's just JPEGs. Like there's not even a Photoshop file or a Canva graphic that you can swap out their pictures with your own pictures. So, let's if you want to just post what they have, we'll give it a ten.

00:01:34:13 - 00:01:52:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like, let's just put it out of five and then, the personalization touch because you can't edit it. It's, it's a one like you can't it's not your youth ministry at all. Unless maybe you put your like youth ministry logo just in the corner somewhere. So we're just going to stick that one. Reels and shorts. It's a zero.

00:01:52:08 - 00:02:16:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's there's no reels and shorts. Here is, it's, graphic. It's, picture. And then finally cost, we're going to give it a ten on cost, which means it's cheap. So, high on the cost meter, which means that it was free. So the total score for Life Church is 15 out of 40. The next one is the dim monthly pack.

00:02:16:15 - 00:02:37:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so kind of the story of how I found this is I've been a dim member now for probably going on ten years. And dim, like, I actually just yesterday was on a video called Four Different People, who all essentially said something along the lines of the DIY membership is the best thing that you the best youth ministry, value that exists on the internet.

00:02:37:15 - 00:03:02:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you know what? There. Right? Gold. Gold plus and platinum. They are all incredible deals. I myself am a platinum member and a part of the do I am monthly pack is, a social media pack that they give out every single month. And so from an EAS standpoint, I'm going to give it like an eight. It gives you, a post for every single day of, of the month and it gives you a monthly posting calendar.

00:03:02:16 - 00:03:21:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you just follow their posting calendar, it's easy to go. Now you do have to schedule it yourself or post it yourself. So that's why it's not a ten on ease, because you do have to have at least a little bit of infrastructure and tools to be able to post it. Personalization. I'm going to give it a three and here's why.

00:03:21:21 - 00:03:42:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Any of the just like kind of like standard graphics, like they there's not really personalized. However, they do include some story graphics where you can post like stickers with, polls or questions or comments or multiple choice. And so therefore you are at least able to do a little bit of interaction and engagement. So there is a personalization.

00:03:43:02 - 00:04:09:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It did go to zero though on reels and shorts because it's it's not a reels and shorts base package. It is a graphics based package. And this this is really important. And out of the four this might be one of the most important ones from a social media standpoint, not from a youth pastor standpoint. Maybe ease or maybe cost is the most important, but reels and shorts videos, that is really, really important on social media in 2026 and then also cost.

00:04:09:05 - 00:04:32:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to give it like a six. And and it's a complicated one because you can't actually get this pack standalone. You have to be a member. So the membership is expensive and I wouldn't get the membership. If you're only goal is to get this social media like, but I would get the membership because there's a million other amazing opportunities and a million other amazing resources found in there.

00:04:32:06 - 00:04:56:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's behind the gold, gold plus or platinum paywall. So to be completely fair, that is, like I said, the best deal in the history of youth ministry. It's 24, 70 for a month. If you pay on the annualized version of gold or it's 2999 if you pay monthly, platinum is 8325 a month, or $1,000 a year, and again thousand dollars a year for this social media pack.

00:04:56:08 - 00:05:17:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Not the best deal in youth ministry, but when you throw in national day events, youth ministry training, free ticket to doing 100 roundtables, a whole year of co-leader and their annual curriculum like bro. Yes, games, store credit, mystery items, parent resources. Now we're talking. It really is the best year in the history of youth ministry. So total score for the youth ministry doing, monthly social pack.

00:05:17:26 - 00:05:37:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to give it like a 17 out of 40, the youth ministry job. This is a new one. And shout out to the youth ministry drop. You're CEO is cooking. Your email like I'm getting emails from you. Like, that is amazing. Here's what I noticed, though. This is, this this is behind a paywall.

00:05:37:00 - 00:05:54:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. So, I'm going to give it the cost. I'm going to give it an eight. It's $15 a month. You get more than just a social media pack. The ease I'm going to give it an eight as well. It's got ready to go graphics and videos. The personalization, is like a two.

00:05:54:15 - 00:06:11:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can probably add some, like, stickers and stuff like that, just like the DUI impact to, like, stories. But I am this is the first one now that I am going to give a five. So more than zero on reels and shorts, because if you look in the description here, it offers not just graphics but also videos.

00:06:11:07 - 00:06:30:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this is the first pack that does include some videos so far that we've looked at. And so $15 a month is a great deal. Also you get more, like I said in this than just the social media pack. And so I didn't pay for it because I don't have any money for these videos. And so you can subscribe to this video for me.

00:06:30:25 - 00:06:51:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that will actually help a lot or give it a like, or, show some love down in the comments. Or better yet, head on over to my Patreon where I give a, weekly bonus podcast episode recapping my night in youth ministry. So I can't be like Ryan Trahan and pay for all the bits in my video, but hopefully soon I can.

00:06:51:16 - 00:07:10:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, go ahead, do those things. Subscribe, head over to Patreon. That'd be amazing. Total score for this. I'm going to give it a 23 out of 40. Moving on to the fourth one, we have the Sunday Social. Now here's how I found it. Because when I Google Search Sunday Social didn't come up. This is a church wide platform.

00:07:10:00 - 00:07:27:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's not just built for student ministry. The last ones were all just kind of built for student ministry. But this one, this one is a little bit different. This is made kind of for the rest of the church. And so therefore, I knew about it and I went and I found it, it didn't find me on my search.

00:07:27:05 - 00:07:43:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's what I notice. Like ease. I'm going to give it a nine. It looks like it has more powerful tools than the other ones that we've used so far. The other ones, like here is a graphic. And then this has like a scheduler and like an editable, template and like it's all kind of like web based.

00:07:43:25 - 00:08:01:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so this looks like it's got like some real, some real meat, some real, effort behind some of these tools. The personalization I'm going to give it like a three. If you look here like there are three different kind of tiers. So there's just the standard pack. Then there's the editable, add on. And so that's going to be a little bit more expensive.

00:08:01:25 - 00:08:18:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it exists but it's not in at the base package. And then same thing with the reels and shorts. I'm going to go ahead and give it a five. It does have an option there to add in the reels and shorts add on. But again now with the personalization plus the reels and shorts. Now, we've added on quite a bit.

00:08:18:24 - 00:08:42:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That ends up getting it to be I'm going to give it a six on cost because it's about $50 a month. And so if you are a church, church wide, social media manager, $50 a month might be within your wheelhouse in a youth ministry context where it's just social media and it's just these graphics and still the personalization doesn't necessarily mean your face, your voice, your people and your pictures.

00:08:42:11 - 00:09:00:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It only if you're able to do that in an editable software like Canva or Photoshop. But it's not your actual like, pastor, you know, coming on and doing devotionals and stuff like that. So we're going to go ahead and give this a 23 out of 40. The next one I noticed were some videos here, which, oh, hey, look at that one.

00:09:00:29 - 00:09:25:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I know that guy. But Brady Shear and, Alexander Mills on their Pro Church Tools podcast and also nucleus, which is their, their brand for like websites and media. They have, social media and, options. And then we're going to get into that in just a minute. But I found Brady back in 2016, back when the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the, Warriors in the NBA finals.

00:09:25:08 - 00:09:47:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I just remember that year because my son was born, and apparently when I found Brady. But what I notice is that Brady is he's goaded on this stuff like he is the man, and I trust everything he says. And to be completely fair, I really started this podcast because I believe so much in what Brady said, and I wanted to make that clear and available for youth ministries, who he talks about youth ministries.

00:09:47:10 - 00:10:06:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, this video right here that I discovered, is a video that he talks about how to do social media for youth ministry, but he does it like once a year, and I talk about it every single week. And so the I've listened to this podcast before and there's a bunch of different chapters, and he had a few, a couple philosophies behind what to do.

00:10:06:02 - 00:10:27:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So the first thing is he wants it to be student driven, which, by the way, I actually have an entire checklist and episode link down below about how you can have a student driven and student run social media where you don't actually have to lift much of a finger. And the second is, show, don't tell. Right. So, like, get on there and actually show them what it's like to be in your youth ministry.

00:10:27:18 - 00:11:00:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Don't just tell them what it's like to be a part of your youth ministry. And then these were all ideas that he had. So, make up a kid, which, by the way, he gave this idea and I went ahead and stole it. And so you can see the video of we when we mocked up a kid in our youth ministry, talked about, using disposable cameras and kind of that vintage look, creating broadcast channels for communication and just community and conversation, doing like a live performance, using like, the live feature, natively woven into some of these social media platforms and then finally Bible trivia, which sneak peek my winter season social

00:11:00:00 - 00:11:24:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
media pack has a Bible Trivia one, but then you got to know that he has. Like I said, he has a a platform, called Nucleus Social. So this is what I'm going to be though. That was just his video. Like here's some ideas how to run it. But his actual social media pack, once again similar to Sunday Social made for big church, like social media is not just youth ministry, social medias ease.

00:11:24:15 - 00:11:41:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to give it a nine. It has some more powerful tools and some of the other ones that we've looked at. Personalization. I'm going to go ahead and give it a five. There's some edited, edited ability. And some of these is especially if you know how to use things like, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Reels and Shorts.

00:11:41:11 - 00:12:01:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to give this a seven. This is the highest, this is a higher score than the Sunday social one because it's baked into the cost, not just an add on. However, you'll notice that it's about the same cost as Sunday socials. So this is Brady's like, base package. It's just it is 49. Where Sunday social. It's like it jumps up on you as you add it on.

00:12:01:08 - 00:12:20:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we're gonna go ahead and give the cost factor about a six which brings his out to 2740 which is this is probably and this one is Sunday social are probably the most beautiful like of all the packs. Like they just have professional designers on their team and they just do an amazing, amazing job with their stuff.

00:12:20:29 - 00:12:49:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This one's a new one that I just came across. I got an email from Download Youth Ministry as a part of my platinum membership that a service called The Seer. The sermon multiplier, is giving platinum members a free trial for three months, some different credits to use their platform. And so this is got a lot of some social media, components woven into it, but it's also got some other, things like AI devotionals that it can, it can create and develop for us.

00:12:49:08 - 00:13:10:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so this is the most personalized option so far. What you do is you upload a video of yourself teaching, and then it creates and spits out for you devotionals, graphics and real. So is I'm going to give it a six on these like the actual platforms. Easy. You click upload, it uploads. But here's why I didn't make it a ten.

00:13:10:22 - 00:13:30:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
On ease is because you must have a video of yourself, and not every youth pastor has a video of themselves teaching. And so I happen to that's part of our strategy. We we post all of our long form videos, to YouTube. So I had one that I could use as a test that was clean and didn't have any lower thirds that were going to get chopped off on the sides if I uploaded it.

00:13:30:22 - 00:13:45:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I also it needed to be under five megabytes, which one of my videos is like 5.8. And so that was kind of a bummer because I was like, well, I have to compress this in order to get it. And like, that's a whole nother like step. And there was no option to to do that. Woven into the dashboard, there.

00:13:45:25 - 00:14:11:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The personalization factor, I'm giving this one a ten. Like my face, my voice, my sermon clipped into social media, my quotes, that it spits out for you. Like you can't get more personalized in that reusing shorts. They do it. They give you four custom ones based off and clipped up from that video and then finally cost, I'm going to give it a seven because, if you're a platinum member, it's like a one.

00:14:11:00 - 00:14:38:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if it's just a little random added perk to it, like you weren't getting the platinum membership for this. Fantastic. But if not, it's it is a little bit expensive because it's sitting there behind the platinum membership. Now, you realize this is another feature from Download Youth Ministry. So you can pair this with the graphics pack. And now now we might be talking melding kind of these two scores together because it's a couple of different angles of social media.

00:14:38:01 - 00:15:00:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So just something to consider there. That ends up being 33 out of 40. And then the final one is the winter seasonal social media pack. Here's how I found it I actually made this one. But I do need a better SEO engineer. It. Listen, it's me. I'm the SEO engineer, which means it's not that good, but I actually got this text yesterday from a friend who said that I showed up in a ChatGPT search, so maybe something I'm doing is working.

00:15:01:04 - 00:15:20:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's what I noticed. Mine did pretty well versus some of these professionals. Reminder I'm not a professional. I'm a professional and paid youth pastor. But that's it. Like this whole social media thing, this is a side gig. This is my guest bedroom, before a dentist appointment that I have on a Friday on my day off. So, like, that's, you know, this is the back of my phone I'm talking into.

00:15:20:25 - 00:15:40:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's the thing. Here's my score. I'm going to give it a nine for ease. And I'm not just saying that because it's mine. Like I give you everything. I give you the videos and you take them and you post them, okay? However, I'm going to give it a nine because you still have to get your camera out and film yourself at some points, because I care about the personalization side of it.

00:15:40:09 - 00:15:58:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can't just give you the graphics. If I were doing just a graphics pack, I would make it as easy as all the other ones, but I I'm asking you and your your voice as a youth pastor or your students or your volunteers to become some of the faces and some of the personalities on your social media. But that's what makes it a ten, personalization.

00:15:58:19 - 00:16:19:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like you look at my pack across my grid and my feed here, like it's not just a bunch of, like, unfazed and unnamed graphics like it is my self, my people, our student ministry. The reels and shorts. It's a ten. It is based on reels and shorts. There are more reels and static graphics. There's only one post type that is a graphic or a carousel post type.

00:16:19:17 - 00:16:50:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The rest are all based on short form vertical video, TikTok reels, YouTube shorts, and then finally the cost. I'm going to say a nine, bro. It's only $4 per month. Like we had $15. We had completely free. But all it was is like one like set of graphics, but with $4 per month, for three months of social media or you get this pack, if you don't want to become a hybrid hero member at $4 per month, this pack standalone is 1799 and $18 for three months once again.

00:16:50:17 - 00:17:11:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So my total score is 38 out of 40. And so this is how I rank the social media packs for student ministries. These are the four things that matter to me. And the ease and personalization reels and shorts and cost. And these are the four things that I tried to lean in on my pack and so if you found this video helpful, a like a subscribe, a comment, a share would be amazing.

00:17:11:24 - 00:17:25:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you think that the Winter season social media pack would help be a game changer for you and your social media and your church's student ministry, encourage you to go check it out and grab it right now. But until next time my friends. And as always, don't forget 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
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❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK
https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

//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 176: Youth Leader Resource Room | 5 Components to a Great one!

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

Ever wondered what’s inside a great youth ministry volunteer room? In this episode, Nick walks through his own space—showing you everything from the snack and coffee setup to the leader resource area, check-in station, and supply closet. You’ll leave with practical ideas (and links!) to create a welcoming, well-equipped hub that keeps your leaders fueled, prepped, and connected every week.

FREE SMALL GROUP CONNECTION DOWNLOAD
https://www.patreon.com/posts/30-small-group-141961735?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/176

ITEMS FOUND IN LEADER ROOM

//Leader Resource Area
Decks of Cards
https://walmrt.us/4hs9d0u

Foam Dice
https://walmrt.us/4ot5h1M

Playdough
https://walmrt.us/3Jc5LdJ

Ice Breaker Cards
https://walmrt.us/47DJz5n

Find & Seek Scavenger Hunt
https://walmrt.us/47GrZ0I

//Other Items
Mini Fridge
https://walmrt.us/3JmGai3

Keurig
https://walmrt.us/4hKuByh

Microwave
https://walmrt.us/3JmG223

Personal Sized Whiteboards
https://walmrt.us/475rDk6

Markers
https://walmrt.us/47Gs84g

First Aid Kit
https://walmrt.us/4oDM25D

Ultimate Guest Box Template
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry/shop/ultimate-first-time-guest-box-579557?source=storefront

Volunteer Onboarding Process Explained
https://youtu.be/s8HNzfZoiX0?si=A322a3wihRACq8ZM

//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 Show me your volunteer rooms question!
00:23 Snacks & Coffee Area
01:01 Office Supply Area
01:34 Fall Social Pack
02:48 Supply Closet
04:14 Leader Check-in Area
05:42 Leader Group Resource Tools

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In this episode, we are going to show you my church's youth ministry volunteer room as we're answering this question. Show me your volunteer rooms. We are looking to make a new volunteer headquarters and are looking for inspiration. We're talking snacks, decorations, and things leaders love. So let's go on a little field trip and I'm going to show you my church's leader workroom.

00:00:22:14 - 00:00:50:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's go. So this right here, just some basic, you know, and, like, common snacks, a leader fridge, which is also a spot where a lot of our people, store leftovers and food and then, of course, gotta have coffee. So this whole section here is filled with different, like, K-Cups, which I personally hate. Which is why I have pour over in my office in the next room over.

00:00:50:03 - 00:01:09:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But, this is something for our leaders, you know, Wednesday nights, Sunday morning, they come on in here, they grab a cup of coffee, they make it happen. This are here was actually paid for about one of our students, so that's pretty cool. Here's a printer. And this is where most of our, basic easy printer, printing needs can be done here.

00:01:09:23 - 00:01:34:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There is a bigger one, in another part of the office, but we just use this one as much as we can, a microwave in case we need it. And then just some very basic, paper supplies and cards and, cutters and stapler. Hole punch, in fact, that the cutters are here. This right here is where we keep, radio for, our security and safety team when they need it, when they're looking for it.

00:01:34:12 - 00:01:51:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. You see, you don't need that kind of stress this fall.

00:01:51:16 - 00:02:14:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's why I created this, 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. So here's the thing. You can grab my pack right now over on Patreon.

00:02:14:28 - 00:02:35:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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 where the pack is 1799. Either way, it is a steal for you and it will take away the stress of posting.

00:02:35:09 - 00:03:00:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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, right here is meant to sort of be our like, supply closet, right? So like, a leader can theoretically come in here anytime they need it and then get anything that they might be looking for.

00:03:00:14 - 00:03:22:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So of course, we got markers and then we got some branded pens. And these are here are actually one of our favorite things. Like we use these like little personalized whiteboards all the time. They're really like good for games and stuff like that. These are here are like just labels, for, for check in and for printing and then down here and we just got to order.

00:03:22:14 - 00:03:40:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So don't be like, holy crap, those people are all about snacks. But this is, we just got a big Sam's order. These are our snacks. So these are what we include. Back over here. And this is, like, just the back up stock of it. This right here. I've gone over this before. This is our leader.

00:03:40:17 - 00:03:59:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're not a leader. This is our our newcomer welcome box. And so, this is where we store a bunch of them, and then our check in team, they know to come and stock this for actually link right up here. Top left of the screen. I'll link to video where I detail an outline, our entire welcome box process.

00:03:59:12 - 00:04:16:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So this is like a leaders like go to spot everything that they could use, everything that they can need. Plus some just like backup stuff, you know, along with like first aid and, you know, necessary things. Like a kid gets an injury, we can go straight here, we can get all we need out of there. Turning the corner here.

00:04:16:02 - 00:04:35:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is our, leader check in station. So leaders are not allowed to check in until they've gone through our entire volunteer process, which I'll also link down below our volunteer process. And this vets them. Make sure that they went through all of our training and that they went through, all of the, the legal ministry safe things that they need to do.

00:04:35:22 - 00:04:51:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then they can go ahead and they can check in here. Well, we say is if it comes out of this printer here, you'll notice, manually, I'm going to print this here. We say that that green means screened. And so that means if someone in our ministry has on, like, a green lanyard, they're good to go.

00:04:51:20 - 00:05:16:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This board right here, you can see, different, this is like our weekly lessons, bottom lines. We'll also have the, like, connect group sheet right here, for our leaders as they come in on, like, a, Sunday to grab it. And then we have a monthly leader, a weekly I'm sorry leader podcast. And so, our leaders that win stuff, this is, our beginning of our cycle.

00:05:16:02 - 00:05:40:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So all these leaders are new to our team, and then this is where they can grab, their leader gift, their leader mug, all that type of stuff. This right here is our, Wednesday evening safety, safety laminated sheet, assignments. So we'll post this right here on the board. And then we'll also throw it into our leader group chat so that everyone knows where they should be and where they need to be.

00:05:40:27 - 00:06:06:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then right around here, just a couple more shelves and zoom out a little bit. A couple more shelves right here. This is just some more leader, resources. So this is like some, throw Intel, some yay or nay. We got Play-Doh in case we need it. We got some dice, we got some, break the ice games are all look down, and, I'll link a bunch of this stuff.

00:06:06:09 - 00:06:26:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Financing scavenger hunt, card game. I'll link some of these things so that you can, find them. You can buy them. You can, supply them for, for your own area if there's some that you want. And then the last thing we have here is just, a stack of cards so that if any of our leaders need to write cards to any of their students, they can go about doing that right here.

00:06:26:19 - 00:06:43:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then finally, this is new. Someone added this, in a little bit, unbeknownst to us. We kind of like it. So it says prayers and then, you can we can put some, like, individual, prayer requests right there, there on the screen. And so that's been something that we just added, which is pretty cool.

00:06:43:28 - 00:07:08:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, just one more time as a, take a big someone's prayer and something right now zoom out. This is our leader workroom, and, no students are that. Well, everyone, thank you so much for hanging here for this entire episode. As a reminder, link down below in the description, there are different, links for different things and resources and stuff that we have, linking to different episodes describing our volunteer process.

00:07:08:04 - 00:07:25:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
A free episode like this, hopefully is incredibly helpful to you, but a payment in the form of a like or a subscribe would really make all the difference in the world. And thank you for being here for this questions playlist. The next episode is linked right here on screen. But until next time. And as always my friends, don't forget stay habits.

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 174: 5 LEVELS OF TAMING A WILD YOUTH ROOM

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

There's nothing worse than speaking to an out of control room full of students.
In this episode, I explain my 5 levels, escalating to most effective, way to control a wild room with your teaching content and approach. Be sure to stick around to hear how Marvel has cracked the attention span conundrum.

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

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/174

USE SIDEKICK & PROPRESENTER AT THE SAME TIME
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup

COLEADER CURRICULUM
https://www.coleader.co

NEW TEACHING TECHNIQUE DESCRIBED
https://www.patreon.com/posts/interesting-new-137528798?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

//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 How to Teach a Wild Room
00:48 I’m a glutton for chaos
01:56 Level 1: Tell Them
03:50 Level 2: Know Them
07:40 Level 3: Include Them
08:59 Level 4: Engage Them
10:44 Level 5: Teach Them

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:07 - 00:00:24:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, that moment that you're trying to teach, and two kids start whispering to each other, someone's throwing a sock, and somehow some how slime is involved. You know, early on in my youth ministry days, I knew that the students were the problem. But over my last 15 years, I began to wonder what if part of the chaos is actually my fault?

00:00:24:19 - 00:00:45:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Today, I'm going to be breaking down the five levels of taming a wild youth through and at the end of the show, make sure that you stick around, because I am going to share with you the shift that Marvel understands that I saw, that I began to start to see students truly lean in without needing to raise my voice.

00:00:45:16 - 00:01:11:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody, to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. Today we're addressing this question. How do you handle disruptions during teaching time? I'm tired of stopping my lessons to redirect a few, and in this episode, I want to detail and outline my five levels of taming a wild room. And here's what you got to understand is that I actually invite and embrace chaos.

00:01:11:09 - 00:01:32:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like in our space. We could very easily, and let's be honest, probably even more, I probably even make a little bit more sense for us to do it in rows, but instead we're a middle school heavy on Wednesday night, midweek, type of context. And we put them around round tables. And last year we increased our chair intake around the tables from 8 to 10.

00:01:32:08 - 00:01:52:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we're inviting even more chaos to sit around each of those tables. That being said, it's a calculated risk that I try to facilitate and operate with the idea of community, worth and willing to take that risk so that we can get the better. And on the other side, however, that does mean that sometimes we do face a wild room.

00:01:52:21 - 00:02:12:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So with that being said, let's dive into my five different levels. Level number one is this tell them. All right. Tell them to stop talking and I get it. And that and that question you're saying like I'm tired of doing that. Now, if you are doing that on a regular basis, then maybe some of these other levels are going to be worth your while.

00:02:12:13 - 00:02:31:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But to start it off, if you have a wild room, you just need to very simply like be firm. And actually it's interesting because I asked a group of, table leaders that I have in my youth ministry, that try to actually help keep some of my students on track and keep some of our, our, lessons, like on the rails, so to speak.

00:02:31:10 - 00:02:48:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And they were asking me the other day, like, how do you do that? How do you lean in to kind of that with, with students? And I ask you guys, do you guys think that I mean, like, do you consider me personally mean? And they're like, no, not at all. And I was like, but am I able and willing to be firm when I need to know?

00:02:48:26 - 00:03:12:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, oh yeah, definitely. And so you have to understand that if you're the youth pastor, maybe you're young, maybe you're afraid of like, people thinking you mean students not liking you. Like you can still be firm and they can still like you? Those two things are allowed to be the same thing at the same time. Right? And another thing that I've actually even done is like, I've gone directly up to some of the bigger tables, in the last couple of weeks.

00:03:12:24 - 00:03:26:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I said, hey, listen, do you guys want me to split you into two tables? Like, no, no, no, please don't do that. Please don't do that. And I'm like, great, I will not. But I'm also going to expect you to act like adults, which means I am not going to ask you guys multiple times to be quiet.

00:03:26:27 - 00:03:40:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if I do have to ask you to be quiet, then I will begin to split the tables. But if I can trust you, and if you can lock in, if you can engage, then I'll let you stay together. And that that has actually really worked really well for some of our tables. Because you know how it is.

00:03:41:00 - 00:04:16:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You got a big table. You look over there, this is what you get. It wasn't me, it was them. It was their zoom. It was then. It wasn't me. So the second level is know them, right? No. These students know how they learn. Right. And one of the things that we have leaned into consistently is I cannot tell you in youth ministry, the last time that I spoke my entire message without any sort of gap or without any sort of break, like youth pastor, if you're trying to teach for 30 minutes straight, like, what are you doing?

00:04:16:14 - 00:04:53:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, you know that your students don't learn that way. In fact, if you look here at the Pyramid of learning, auditory lecture style based learning is the least effective of all the styles of learning. So why are you trying to keep their attention with a lecture style message for 30 or greater minutes? In fact, there's like the whole theory that, Gen Z and Gen Alpha's attention span is less than seven seconds, and we get that data from click through rates and like, bounce off rates from websites like people spend only on average seven seconds or less on a website.

00:04:53:28 - 00:05:14:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the theory is that they have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. But the reality is, is that they know within seven seconds or less if this thing is going to be worth their time. Take for example, on the other hand, the flip side, the highest grossing movie movies of all time are all greater than 2 to 3 hours.

00:05:14:04 - 00:05:37:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Avengers endgame is an over three hour movie, and when it came out, it became the highest grossing movie of all time. Why can't a movie that's greater than 3.5 hour or greater than three hours, at least keep a student's attention because it knows how to keep things moving and students, if they're interested, they will lean in. So know them and break your message up with a gap in the middle.

00:05:37:10 - 00:05:59:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yet for some reason, you continue to drone on and this is what you get. The inside of a middle school boy's brain. Did I eat dinner? Is his shirt inside out? When is this? Over six. Seven? Is it actually why? I have a Patreon devoted to this. Every single week I share with you how I'm breaking up my message.

00:05:59:20 - 00:06:25:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in the past, when I was younger, listening to the way other youth pastors that are a little bit further along than me were planning and programing their services, help get my creative juices going. So for just $4 a month, $48 for a year, not only will you get my weekly breakdown of what we're doing in our youth ministry, but you'll also get access to my full seasonal social media pack in all the seasonal social media packs as the seasons rotate through.

00:06:25:29 - 00:06:43:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. You see, you don't need that kind of stress this fall.

00:06:43:03 - 00:07:06:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts. See? See? Here's the thing. You can grab my pack right now over on Patreon.

00:07:06:14 - 00:07:26:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And did you know that monthly Hybrid hero 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. Either way, it is a steal for you and it will take away the stress of posting.

00:07:26:25 - 00:07:55:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. The third thing I want to, challenge you to do is to include them, right? Like include the students. And so one of the things that we do is in addition to the breaks is while we're in the gaps of our teaching, we'll also include moments that we call table talks.

00:07:55:08 - 00:08:16:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you don't have the ability to set tables, you can also call it a turn and talk. And you still get the alliteration, which is exactly what all of us Baptists want to do. But we have to somehow try and move our students from a passive consumer to an active contributor. And I get it. Like most churches in America, especially like big church where you're senior pastors, preaching is a passive consumer setting.

00:08:16:08 - 00:08:36:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But we say you need to get involved in serve. You need to get involved in the community. You need to get involved in the life of our church. And yet then the way to get involved is just make sure that you come and sit here and listen to us talk instead. What if you gave them an opportunity to, think through this, to analyze, to evaluate, to discuss, to wrestle with the truth that's coming at them from God's Word.

00:08:36:27 - 00:08:47:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And when I'm teaching, teaching, teaching. And then all of a sudden I throw a table, talk. They're not allowed to just sit there like this anymore.

00:08:47:28 - 00:09:12:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I don't, I will, I wasn't listening. Well, what do you say to when I throw a table talk? I say, hey, listen out loud with words. Go. The fourth level is to engage them. So give breaks, create table talk. So these are both natural rhythms and breaks and pattern interrupts that are going to help with the kind of Marvel theory, the keep it moving.

00:09:12:08 - 00:09:34:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Keep it going. Don't get stale, don't get stagnant seven second thing but now when you're actually teaching, use creativity. And once again, this is why I have my Patreon, because I want to help you lean into your creativity. You can make your illustrations better, right? Like we're using Collider. And one of the lessons, was talking about a dog pooping on the lawn.

00:09:34:22 - 00:10:06:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, that's a great illustration of a self collider. Best curriculum on the planet. Use hybrid ministry. 1001 word to get 10% off your first year of it. But I punched it up a little bit. How I, I took their dog pooping illustration, and I added a photo of a cute dog. All right. And then after adding the photo of the cute dog, I decided, hey, let's name this cute dog to the point that as I'm making this illustration about forgiveness of a dog pooping on your front lawn, I had a student all the way leaned in, eventually.

00:10:06:21 - 00:10:38:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Say we named the dog Buttercup based off the sidekick voting feature. I said, hey, Buttercup, is cooked, okay? And you got to be using sidekick on the regular because you can add in things. And I added this one on the fly. In fact, on the episode, I just recorded five minutes ago, the breakdown episode, I explained to you how I came up with this and how I instituted it, and link down below in the show notes will help you know how you can run sidekick and pro presenter at the exact same time, but you need to engage their creativity.

00:10:39:05 - 00:11:00:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You need to make your your lessons and your illustrations more creative and help them lean in. And then the fifth and final, level here of, teaching a wild room is to actually teach them, like, actually teach them God's Word. In fact, in an episode link down below, I talk about a couple students who came up to me afterward and they said, you need to do that more.

00:11:00:25 - 00:11:28:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, what is that? And they said, you, you actually like, taught us, like you gave us like a sheet of paper or our Bible, and you were underlining and circling and drawing arrows and, and helping, create like parallels between different like things in the text, like, do that more like actually leaning in to teach them, not just give them a motivational message, not just give them creativity, not just break up our programing, but actually teach them something valuable and meaningful found in God's Word.

00:11:28:22 - 00:11:50:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the fifth level of helping tame a wild room and doing all five of these things on a regular and consistent basis for us has really helped lean in and created value and opportunity within our youth ministry. Well, hey everyone, I hope you found this episode helpful. Tap the next episode. Subscribe here on screen. But until next time and as always, don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 172: The Cellphone Problem in Youth Groups

Nick Clason — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, we tackle the cellphone problem in youth groups and reveal a 3-step phone prevention strategy for youth ministry that actually works. Instead of fighting students for their phones, you’ll learn how youth pastors can use a variety of tools to their benefit, including how to turn phones from a distraction to an actual asset. If you’re looking for practical youth ministry tips, phone management strategies, and digital discipleship tools to keep students engaged, this episode is for you.

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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/172

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Phones in Youth Group
00:23 How Do you Keep Kids off Phones?
00:38 Step #1
01:24 Step #2
02:15 Step #3
04:09 Idea #1
06:09 Fall Social Media Plan
07:22 Idea #2

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:08:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In this episode, we're going to talk about my three step phone prevention strategy for youth ministry.

00:00:08:05 - 00:00:17:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But what I also want to show you is how I've turned phones from a distraction to an asset in our youth ministry. And frankly, it's

00:00:17:01 - 00:00:24:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a lot easier than fighting kids to get rid of their phones. Welcome everyone to the Hybrid Ministry Show.

00:00:24:10 - 00:00:29:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, hey, everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. In this episode, we are answering this question.

00:00:29:05 - 00:00:34:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What are the ways that you have been able to keep students from being on phones during lessons and smog?

00:00:34:17 - 00:00:34:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Glad you

00:00:34:26 - 00:00:51:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
asked. Here's my three step strategy. Step number one is a central parking location. Like you read the comments of this post and just about everyone has either like some charging stations solution a little like hanging basket,

00:00:51:02 - 00:00:54:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
place for them to just like, leave their phones in the middle.

00:00:54:23 - 00:01:11:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Some different pictures, some different links to different things. We even had at our church at one point in time, we had like cell phone lockers. So this is like lockers with temporary codes where you go, you put your phone in, you create your own code, and then you come back and you get it. At the end of the night, we no longer have them.

00:01:11:12 - 00:01:30:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I tell you why in a minute, but, that's an option that was like the most, like next level solution. But basically everybody does it. Like, you just make that the thing. Hey, everyone, put your phones here before we go on into the room for youth group. The other option, let's be honest, like one of the good things that they could be using on their phone is like the Bible app.

00:01:30:26 - 00:01:49:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you're teaching from the Bible, you're going to give them some sort of like scripture lesson, and they're going to pull their Bibles out on their phone to read it. But then you know how phones work. That's because distraction there, over there, then playing clash clans in a minute, and they're no longer reading the Bible because you stopped reading the Bible in your lesson.

00:01:49:19 - 00:02:15:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, the solution set in two is just very simply like, provide paper Bibles, like if you want kids not on their phones and you want kids in the Bible, provide paper Bibles everywhere, all throughout your space so that there's no excuse for it and or also encourage, and even like potentially bribe and reward students who do bring their paper, Bibles to youth group to engage with Scripture in that way.

00:02:15:23 - 00:02:16:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The third

00:02:16:13 - 00:02:20:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and most effective way, in my opinion, this is more of like in a small group setting.

00:02:20:04 - 00:02:25:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you're in like a large group, room, this doesn't quite work. But in a small group setting,

00:02:25:04 - 00:02:35:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm a huge fan of the idea of a thing called a group covenant. Okay. And a group covenant is essentially something that you do at the beginning of a small group term or cycle.

00:02:36:09 - 00:02:55:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you got to think about this. If you have like groups that never break for any sort of rhythm or any sort of reason, then you got to create natural kind of like start points. So, you know, beginning of the school year, maybe like beginning of the calendar year, something like that. Or in certain contexts I've worked in, we've, we had three distinct small groups cycles.

00:02:55:12 - 00:03:15:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we had the fall, the winter and then the summer. And so and then each of those ran for 12 weeks at a time or whatever. And so, during the beginning section of those, you, you have a small group covenant. So you talk about rules and expectations. What's the expectation in this group for treating one another and all those types of things?

00:03:15:21 - 00:03:20:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, in that the other thing that I recommend,

00:03:20:13 - 00:03:41:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
is you ask, what are we going to do about phones? And you let the students decide, and that's more powerful than you having temporary cell phone lockers. That's more powerful than you having paper Bibles. When you let the student say, decide and dictate what's going to happen with phones, that's where the wind is found.

00:03:41:10 - 00:04:07:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you just simply ask, what are we going to do about phones? They come up with it. And I've always found that students in a group covenant setting actually make stricter rules than rules that you would probably want to make for them. And so let them decide through the avenue of a group covenant, which, by the way, is one of the things I did not see in the comments of the description, however, of that of that question.

00:04:07:11 - 00:04:24:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, this is the hybrid ministry show, and so I would be remiss to not talk about the ways in which I have actually tried to use phones as an asset. And so in our student ministry, when I started here and this episode links right

00:04:24:00 - 00:04:31:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
here, I detailed and discussed how our hybrid ministry strategy has to our growth over the last three years.

00:04:31:29 - 00:04:55:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so when I got here, one of the moves we made was we went from rows to tables. That was a major decision and quite frankly, a thing that people had. Some issue with that at first. But now we do tables pretty much consistently. And whenever we take them away, people like you don't like rows anymore. So it's just funny to watch how people kind of change and transform over time.

00:04:55:18 - 00:05:21:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But one of the things that we're leaning into is sidekick. And so we have a poll, a QR based poll, which is one of the features of the new beta sidekick, which, by the way, if you didn't know, you can jump into co-leader or co-leader Premium plus, with code Hybrid Ministry 1001 word. They'll give you 10% off co-leader, which also gives you access to all of the sidekick stuff.

00:05:21:08 - 00:05:41:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so one of the benefits and they're still kind of working out some of the kinks, about sidekick and its relationship with the legacy version. But one of the kinks or but one of the best parts about the new version, the beta version of sidekick is, the, the poll voting. And so we use that all the time.

00:05:41:20 - 00:05:59:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so poll voting kids get their phone out their skin and they can vote. They can use it for games. They can use it for messages. We even use it sometimes in the pre-roll. I tell you what, I'm going to do that I'm going to link down below our sidekick set up because, it's still not all the way full proof yet.

00:05:59:12 - 00:06:09:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so sometimes pro presenter is a better option. And so we actually run both on two different machines, and show you how we set that up. Link down below.

00:06:09:06 - 00:06:16:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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?

00:06:16:11 - 00:06:45:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. You see, you don't need that kind of stress this fall. That's why I created this 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.

00:06:45:27 - 00:07:05:24
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 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 where the pack is 1799.

00:07:05:24 - 00:07:22:24
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.

00:07:22:24 - 00:07:37:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The other thing that we use is a feature called Digital Notes, which is just a US leaning into the resource and the platform of the YouVersion Bible app, live event section that, YouVersion includes.

00:07:37:06 - 00:07:59:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we set up a YouVersion live events, reading plan. Or it's not even a reading plan necessarily, but a YouVersion live events to follow along with the notes every single week. And like I said, we sit at tables and so we have like a little placard, plastic about this big. It sits in the middle of the table and it says, follow along with this week's digital notes, and it's got a QR code.

00:07:59:28 - 00:08:27:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the QR code stays the same. But then on our QR code service generator, we turn around and we change the link to that every single week. So we change the link to the newest, iteration of the digital notes of the YouVersion, events plan. And so, they can also, you know, navigate into it and find it on the YouVersion live, section of the YouVersion events, and they can follow along.

00:08:27:10 - 00:08:49:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
As you know, we're very like, video centric and hybrid ministry centric youth ministry. So we create thumbnails for all of our talks. And so all of our in-room talks also have the thumbnails that go at the top of the YouVersion live events plan. But the, other beautiful thing, frankly, about the YouVersion live events plan is you can link to things external.

00:08:49:16 - 00:09:10:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So once they're on there, you got them hooked in and you can help them follow along. You can ask them questions and they're things that they can interact with. They can highlight scripture, they can take notes. But then you can also include external links. So we have a next step like form on our website that we use. And so at the end of every single lesson we say are you ready to take a next step?

00:09:10:12 - 00:09:30:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Click here to let us know and it'll navigate them off to our website. And then the final piece in the YouVersion events is we include a Bible reading plan that relates to the topic of sorts. And so any single given week a student on the YouVersion live event plan, they are encouraged or asked at least if they want to take some sort of spiritual next step.

00:09:30:13 - 00:09:37:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And they're also fed some sort of Bible reading plan. And so I want to point that out as a way to say we have

00:09:37:13 - 00:09:55:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
use phones and sidekick gives us a sliver of that. But our digital notes really opens up a wide avenue of ways that we can help students take next steps and be more intentional and meaningful during the lesson, so that they're using their phones to follow along with what's going on.

00:09:55:15 - 00:10:15:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, I told you I made a calculated risk with tables. I also want to let you know that phones is another calculated risk. And in fact, like one of the one of the comments on this post of the question that I'm reading said, man, just let kids have their phones, stop making it a fight. And like I tend to actually agree with that guy, but I will let you know.

00:10:15:00 - 00:10:37:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like phones are still a fight and they are still a distraction. Just last week, two nights ago in our youth group, one of our leaders, one of our table leaders. So we have students that are in, senior high that are leading groups in discussions. He was playing a game on his phone, and one of our staff one up, and they said, our table leaders are allowed to play games on their phones.

00:10:37:01 - 00:10:54:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And he knew the answer to that was like, no. And so he had to go to that kid and say, hey, put your phone down. So if that's coming from one of our leaders, it's there's that much even trickle down to the rest of students. So, well, hear me say, what we do is not foolproof, all right. But it's a calculated risk that I'm willing to take.

00:10:54:01 - 00:11:12:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And one that when a student brings their friend for the first time and a mom and dad. Imagine this. Your parent, you send your kid to imagine you send your kid to a completely different denomination or different religion to go with one of their friends, and then they don't have their phones for an hour. How would you feel if you couldn't get in contact with them?

00:11:12:17 - 00:11:32:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, we're the millennial generation of of parents. We want to have contact with our children, especially if we've paid for and given them a phone. And so we try not to make that an obstacle for people to be able to come into our ministry. But again, it's a calculated risk and one that we are, used to, fighting and using.

00:11:32:11 - 00:11:48:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So let us know down below in the comments what you do in your youth ministry as it pertains to cell phones. And go ahead and subscribe what you see right here on the screen and check out the next question. Video. There's also here on screen. But until next time. And as always my friends, don't forget stay happy.

Episode 171: Grow Your Youth Group: EXPLOSIVE Attendance Secrets

Nick Clason — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0500

These 5 Shifts in my approach to volunteers revolutionized by youth ministry.
These aren’t quick hacks — they’re the foundational principles that changed my thinking but they led to real, measurable growth.

The best news of all, not for me in the moment, but you is that each of these shifts were like levels in a video game that come with the big bad boss of a failure story that I had to defeat, from one of my 15 years in youth ministry, each boss becoming more and more epic, the final one left me questioning not only my job, but my career in ministry.

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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/171

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 5 Levels of Volunteer Shifts
01:14 FAQ Playlist
02:04 Level 1: Chaos
04:21 Level 2: Lone Ranger
07:38 Level 3: Event
11:08 Level 4: Desperation
15:03 Level 5: Arrogance

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:08 - 00:00:25:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For years, I thought the formula to youth ministry growth were better sermons and bigger events and flashier games. But I'm just going to be honest, none of that, none of it moved the needle. It wasn't until I learned not only that volunteer leaders matter, but it's when I unlocked these five shifts. It directly impacted the size in the health in the reach of my youth ministry.

00:00:25:04 - 00:00:46:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
These aren't just some quick hacks. No, they're foundational principles that have revolutionized my thinking and led to real, measurable growth. But the best news of all for you? Not necessarily me. In each of these moments is that each one of these shifts, similar to like levels in a video game, come with a big bad boss of a failure story.

00:00:46:23 - 00:01:08:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I'm going to share each and every one of those failure stories with you until I had to defeat a different boss in one of my different 15 years of youth ministry, each boss becoming worse and the failure stories becoming more and more epic until we get to the final one, which left me not only questioning my job in that church, but also my youth ministry career.

00:01:08:27 - 00:01:29:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to share these together in the hybrid ministry. So welcome everyone. Glad to have you. Well what's up everybody. Welcome to the Hybrid Minister Show. If you didn't know, we've been in a playlist here, talking and answering some different questions that I stumbled across in youth pastor Facebook groups. And this one today says I have officially crossed the line of 50 small group leaders.

00:01:29:00 - 00:01:47:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And for those of you who have 50 plus volunteers that are deeply invested in a week, how is you? How is your leadership of that team different than maybe a smaller team or so those of you who've crossed that line, how did you shift your leadership? So we're going to talk about the five levels of leadership, shifts that I've made.

00:01:47:02 - 00:02:07:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, frankly, I'm sitting right now at a position with greater than 50 leaders, and I would attribute, some of these shifts to be, what, some of those kind of, like, main things are. So with kind of that context out of the way, let's look through and chat through the five different levels. So the first level was the chaos level okay.

00:02:07:13 - 00:02:22:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So like in this chaos level I would constantly be frantically getting things set up. And I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit of a time optimist. And so what that means is like if I was like, okay, youth group starts at six, that means I need to get there at five to start getting things ready.

00:02:22:20 - 00:02:40:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I quickly learned I had to start moving that time back more and more because, you know, one of the things that would happen is I'm getting ready when students start showing up and I think they're going to show up at like 550, but instead students show up at like 530, and I am running out of time to get things set up.

00:02:40:18 - 00:03:02:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I feel chaotic in my spirit as they're there. And I'm also not able to give them any sort of attention or any sort of like relational equity, because I'm getting set up. So the next week I bump it back to five to maybe say 430, so I get a little bit more time. But then as I grow and as things in the ministry get more and more elaborate, and as we add more and more elements, I need more and more time.

00:03:02:05 - 00:03:21:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So the shift I had to make was the shift from the chaos to the control. Right? And so I could be in control. I could make that a moment that I actually owned that thing. And that was honestly a very like level one, very rookie mistake. And so the main shift I had to do is I had to start getting ready earlier.

00:03:21:08 - 00:03:36:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I had to start planning before Wednesday. I had to start planning on Tuesday, I had to start setting up earlier in the day. Whatever I needed to do. And the feel is this is that, early on, kids would walk in while I'm getting ready and I would be annoyed that a kid is there and like, I shouldn't be that way.

00:03:36:25 - 00:03:53:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, I'm a youth pastor, right? And so the shift, the very simple shift I had to make was if I just get set up earlier, then when a kid walks in, I'm done. They're not taking away something that I feel like I need to do, and I can devote and give my full attention to that kid who shows up early, which is a great thing for that kid.

00:03:53:27 - 00:04:14:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And with just that small, subtle shift, I started to see, more and more kind of like growth. I was more prepared for my leaders. I wasn't scrambling to get them things like printed out and handouts and service orders and all those types of things like those are all ready to go. When I started to do that, when I was more in control, when I was in less of a chaotic vibe, that all started to help.

00:04:14:23 - 00:04:35:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, there wasn't much right in that first level, as it pertains with volunteer leaders, because the second level here is the lone Ranger level. And for many, many years in youth ministry, I felt like it was my job because frankly, I'm getting paid by the church to do the youth ministry. But it wasn't until I started to learn this idea of delegation.

00:04:36:01 - 00:04:57:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right? And, the only real moments where I was able to get to a spot where I realized I had to go from Lone Ranger to delegation was when I had to defeat this big, bad boss. One Thursday. I was sitting in my office and I had, like, 20 to 25 new student, welcome. Like postcards that I had to write.

00:04:57:12 - 00:05:21:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It was just something that we had to do. Every time we had a new student, we had to write out a card. And every single week at this church, I was getting more and more new students, like 20, 25, like I was at a multi-site megachurch, and I was getting more than 20 new students every single week. And so I was, I had just started, taking over that position full time, independently.

00:05:21:04 - 00:05:37:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I had worked with, a coworker for, several months, and it was my first week without her, as kind of my counterpart in my my boss walks in, who's my campus pastor who didn't know anything about these cards or anything like that. It wasn't him who assigned those to me. And so he's like, hey, you got a minute?

00:05:37:28 - 00:06:02:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, literally, no. And I didn't look up. And I kept frantically writing while he's at my door and I'm trying to talk within. I'm trying to have conversation with them. I can't even remember what it was about, but. And I knew that that was rude. I knew I should have put my pin down. I looked at him, but what that was going to mean was I wasn't going to get to leave work on time when I needed to leave work, and that was also a value of mine.

00:06:02:07 - 00:06:25:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in that moment, I was like, I never want to get to the spot again. Like, I need to delegate some of this off. I need to do what only I can do. And there are plenty of volunteers and there are plenty of people. I had an amazing check in team that could have very easily at the end of check in when you know, it's like, let's say the event starts at six and it's 610 and most of the students have checked in.

00:06:25:06 - 00:06:46:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're there for the next hour and 20 minutes like they had plenty of time to write 25 notes between five of them, you know what I'm saying? But I didn't delegate it to them. So therefore the fail was that it ended up on my desk the very next day. And I had, instead of five cards to write, which is what five different volunteers with 25 cards would have, written.

00:06:46:15 - 00:07:06:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I wrote all 25 of them, and so I had to learn to start delegating. And it took a minute. And that's part of the the, the fail in this is that it takes a minute to get up over that initial hurdle of creating a system of delegation, like getting the postcards down there, telling them where they are, telling them how to check on who the first time guests are.

00:07:06:20 - 00:07:27:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know how we're going to handle that, because they might not know in the moment, like when a kid checks in. But once we get past all of that, then, I start to experience a little bit more, success. And I beat that level. Of delegation. We all know that there's only a certain amount of capacity that any one person has, and you might be a person with an extraordinarily high capacity.

00:07:27:25 - 00:07:47:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But as your church and as your youth ministry grows, you're going to reach a breaking point where you definitely need to move on and defeat that big bad boss to delegation. Which led me then to my third level, where I had to shift my mindset, from the event is this is the event level. I had to move from event to hybrid.

00:07:47:03 - 00:08:06:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the fail is that early on in some of my early on days, every single event was crucial, and every single attendance marker in that event was even more crucial. So if we had a big event, the first thing I was doing was I was checking guest cards and I was checking our, check in kiosks because I wanted to see how many kids we had.

00:08:06:21 - 00:08:24:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I thought to myself, you know, like, if we have this event and last event we had, say 50 kids, I wanted to get to 55, or I wanted to get to 60, or I wanted to get to 65. And I started to put all my effort and my worth honestly into that bottom line number. And I started making it all about events.

00:08:24:26 - 00:08:46:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then Covid happened and what I realized during Covid, was that we had and I actually share this entire story right here at this video linked up, here at the top of the screen in my 100th episode, I made a little documentary style, like, kind of how and where this hybrid thing all came from. But what I realized was that there were multiple avenues of touch points.

00:08:46:02 - 00:09:09:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, my very first day, on a job at a church was the first day of Covid. And in that I realized, out of sheer like constraints, like we didn't have in-person, I couldn't speak to the students live in a room. So all of the normal touchpoints were gone. And so I had to get creative about how we can still connect with students through writing things like postcards, which probably were some of that started.

00:09:09:17 - 00:09:27:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I wasn't delegating quite yet. Right. Or, social media or all those types of things. And that's really where a lot of this hybrid stuff came from, realizing that we can still do pastoral care even when we're not in the room. Now, I wouldn't recommend, like, Covid going back to that where we we're never in the room and that's never a possibility.

00:09:27:29 - 00:09:45:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But there's some both and right there's there's the both of being able to be in the room and also some of the pastoral care that can happen when we're not in the room and we can lean in to some of that sort of hybrid thing. And so the fail was when I would ride or die based off of some of those event numbers.

00:09:45:25 - 00:10:02:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I had to get over and realize that Covid allows me to have more touch points with it, which is honestly the entire reason why this podcast exists. 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?

00:10:02:15 - 00:10:31:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. You see, you don't need that kind of stress this fall. That's why I created this, 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.

00:10:32:02 - 00:10:51:27
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 hero 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.

00:10:51:27 - 00:11:11:09
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. The fourth level is to move.

00:11:11:11 - 00:11:35:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is called the desperation level. I don't know if you've ever been there before, but you look at a spreadsheet and you just realize, like, man, I have so many gaps. I have so many holes in our, volunteer schedule and so you're desperate and you're recruiting people that, might not even be the best fit. You're recruiting people that you don't even really want to recruit, but you are desperate.

00:11:35:16 - 00:11:55:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, the shift I had to make was I had to move from desperation to confidence. And the confidence comes from this. Right. And I don't know how to tell you to to move from this aside from prayer, and just a mindset shift. But the confidence should come from the fact that this is not your student ministry.

00:11:55:06 - 00:12:12:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And while, yes, you're being paid to run and manage this student ministry, this is God's church. And Jesus told Peter that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, that he is going to set up like you have the ability. And so therefore, you should have the confidence to lean on that promise. This is God's church.

00:12:12:20 - 00:12:31:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is God's student ministry. And so you don't have to be desperate. He cares more about it than you do. And so I will tell you one year, this is the boss that I had to defeat. This is the fail story that I had to overcome. One year I was, rolling hard. Like the weeks were just going by me to do.

00:12:31:10 - 00:12:49:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And all of a sudden, like, the the drop dead deadline for me where I needed to have all my leaders in place for small groups and new students and promotion week, we did it at the end of the summer. And so it was like early to mid August, which meant by like Labor Day or maybe even a little bit before that was going to be back to school.

00:12:49:14 - 00:13:04:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We were going to be having new students roll on up into our student ministry, and this particular class of students had a couple of kids in it that were, known throughout the entire church that like, they were tough ones. Right. And so I was having a really hard time because no one really wanted to be their leader.

00:13:04:23 - 00:13:27:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, I was I was trying in that moment to practice the confidence. And I remember, low key inside freaking out. But I was sitting in church, okay. And I just, I remember exactly where I was sitting, and I looked across the auditorium a little bit of the ways, and I laid eyes on just this dude.

00:13:27:06 - 00:13:45:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I knew, that he worked with, the homeless shelter in town. I knew that he had kind of like a, history of volunteering in sort of that arena and and he worked with a demographics that were maybe a little bit, above and beyond what our normal volunteers were used to working with, let's just say.

00:13:45:08 - 00:14:06:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I looked at him and I felt the Spirit of God say, go ask him. And so I went straight over to him and I said, hey, I got an idea for you, and I got a proposition. And we hadn't even really met. Right? Like his, his step kids were in my ministry, so like, we had that relationship like him, and I hadn't really talked very much, and he jumped in, and it was a beautiful pairing.

00:14:06:16 - 00:14:24:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It was a beautiful like decision. Like he was exactly the right guy for that moment. And I just remember I look back at that story a lot of times and that's a success story, frankly. But it was almost a fail story because I almost didn't have enough volunteers to start the year. But God reminded me, this is my student ministry.

00:14:24:21 - 00:14:43:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is not yours. And so, you should still put the work in. You should still make the asks, you should still do the recruiting. But at the end of the day, you can operate out of a position of confidence. And quite frankly, this is something that I'm always working on because even in my current setting right now, we're still short a few volunteers.

00:14:43:23 - 00:15:03:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I'm not trying to be desperate. I'm trying to come from a position of strength, and I'm trying to come from a position of confidence. And when I did that in my spirit, well, maybe not all the holes got plugged from a pragmatic standpoint in my spirit, I was able to rest and relax and just lean on God and realizing this is his student ministry.

00:15:03:25 - 00:15:20:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Which leads me to my fifth level. And it was the arrogance level, right? Very similar to level two, which is the Lone Ranger level behind the Lone Ranger level is this idea that, like, I can do it and I want people to know that I can do it, that I can do an amazing job in the Lone Ranger level.

00:15:20:03 - 00:15:43:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's I'm just bad at delegating. But in this level, not only was I bad at delegating, I refused to delegate because I wanted the glory. I wanted the accolades, I wanted the credit and the the massive fail story. And this is, I was brand new in a church, and I changed what they did for camp. So the first year I went, it was my actual very first week on the job.

00:15:43:09 - 00:16:04:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I went to camp the very next year. I knew in my spirit I wanted to run my own camp. I wanted, all of the the glory, all the accolades that went along with that. And I could have gotten my leaders on board, but I was a being a lone Ranger and b being arrogant because I wanted to prove that I could do it, and I wanted them to be impressed with what I could do and what I could pull off.

00:16:04:12 - 00:16:21:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And frankly, what we pulled off was great. And we had a lot of like, God still used it, right? It's like that verse where where Paul says, like, I don't care why people are preaching. Like the fact that, Jesus is being preached like that's still the wind, but like, in that, like I lost a lot of equity.

00:16:21:12 - 00:16:42:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I lost a lot of track record. I lost a lot of trust with my leaders. And one night I was sitting out outside on, like a bank at the camp, kind of in a private spot, fielding a phone call from my senior pastor who said, hey, listen, if you wouldn't have handled this conversation a little bit better, we might be talking about your job.

00:16:42:06 - 00:17:03:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was I was in that moment was one of my deepest, darkest, worst kind of moments in all of ministry. And simply, it was because I needed to make the shift from arrogance to humility and realized that the the leaders that God had put around me got to put around them, put them around me, to help maybe overcome some of the weaknesses that he knew that that I had.

00:17:03:15 - 00:17:28:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I could lean on them and I could trust them. And they were willing participants and willing people there that wanted to help me. I had to defeat that big, bad boss of arrogance. So these five leadership shifts have absolutely revolutionized my thinking. From chaos to control, from Lone Ranger to delegation, from event based to a hybrid ministry strategy, from desperation to confidence, and finally from arrogance to humility.

00:17:28:26 - 00:17:38:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I pray, and I hope that you can make those five shifts in your youth ministry and in your volunteer leadership delegation rooting you on. And don't forget, my friends, to 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 163: Event Evaluation that WORKS! How to Actually Improve Your Youth Ministry

Nick Clason — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, we’re unpacking a proven event evaluation strategy for youth ministry that will help you actually improve your events instead of just surviving them. Learn how to run a productive post-event debrief using a 3-question framework that works for digital and in-person debrief meetings alike. Plus, get access to a sample evaluation form, hear a big announcement, and upgrade your fall youth ministry strategy with intentional feedback tools.

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/163

☀️ 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

✅ 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 Post Event Debriefs
00:25 Your Complete Fall Strategy Session
01:33 Proven Debrief Strategy
04:02 This Strategy was GENIUS!!
07:22 Your Fall Social Media Strategy is HERE!

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:06:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Post-event debriefs can feel like a roast session if we're not careful. That's why I recommend this

00:00:06:12 - 00:00:19:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
proven three part strategy for evaluating and making sure that your events not only get the proper evaluation that they deserve, but are even better on into the future

00:00:19:29 - 00:00:26:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
for your next year's event. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Minister show.

00:00:26:00 - 00:00:29:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, hey everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Minister Show.

00:00:29:07 - 00:00:57:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I am your host, Nicolas. And in this episode, episode 163. If you want to head to the show notes with transcripts. Hybrid Ministry dot xyzzy slash 163. That would be incredible. And a subscribe while you there would also just do us wonders. But if you have been following along here on YouTube, we are in a playlist for your complete fall like strategy guide and strategy session for, not only your upcoming fall outreach event.

00:00:57:12 - 00:01:22:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How we run outreach events. And it's all kind of been centered around like some principles for like, fall outreach and fall launches. But if you're looking for one, and one of my favorite kind of strategies is a, month long, ongoing, like, bracket style event, and I'm giving one away or I'm giving away an event guide, to one of my products over on download this ministry called the World's Greatest Donut Bracket Event.

00:01:23:01 - 00:01:42:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've been walking through what those nights look like, how to include and incorporate free time, how to welcome your new guests. But now that all the dust has settled, now that all of the donut madness is over, you're ready to evaluate your event. So whether you're evaluating this particular event or just any of your fall events, this is my proven three part strategy and framework.

00:01:42:05 - 00:02:06:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I mean, I'm just going to be honest, like you've maybe heard this before. It's not unique or original to me. I've I've used it in a couple of last churches that I've worked in. But there's a few kind of like tweaks and adaptations to it. And so you might have heard this, but the first, you know, the first question worth asking in an event evaluation debrief is what went right, like, let's celebrate the wins straight out of the gate.

00:02:06:12 - 00:02:26:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, what were the wins? What were the good things? And kind of go that route. The next question that I like to do and, you know, one of the church that I worked at, we call these questions the for hopefuls, but I like to combine these next two. And so that's why it's only three, three questions because I think these two, are cousins of one another.

00:02:26:05 - 00:02:46:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And so, I like this one of, like the broken what was broken slash confusing. So, broken and confusing can kind of get, like I said, close to one another when you're kind of passing them out, you're like, oh, is this one broken? I'm not sure if that thing, that QR code was broken or if it was just confusing.

00:02:46:15 - 00:03:04:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And and maybe the Q QR code was actually broken, or maybe students just don't know what they're doing, and it made it confusing. And that's kind of how I found that question to kind of land. And so just sticking those two together really like will help you in this question right here. Here's the thing I want to encourage you, don't make this personal.

00:03:04:09 - 00:03:35:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Don't take these things personal, but really like lean into these right here because this is how and this is where, and this is when and how and why you can make this event even better next year when you pull this thing together. Right. Like, this event becomes so much better when you take care of the broken and the confusing parts and you can really turn around, you can optimize, your next event or your next year's event or, some elements of this event that you're going to bring to, like the next Wednesday night, whatever the case might be like, but this is your chance to optimize it.

00:03:35:01 - 00:03:53:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Perfect. It really kind of like hone it in. And then finally, this last question, what was missing? And so it could be like, you know, while we were in the middle of the event, I thought it would have been great if we had this. We didn't think of it ahead of time. But let's next year, let's let's kind of plan to make this happen now a couple different ways that you can handle debriefs.

00:03:53:11 - 00:04:11:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think probably the most common is just like an in person. Right. Like you get together, you talk about it with your team and you, you know, take notes and you go off to the next one. And for major events like big events like this ones you spend maybe a lot of budget money on, I would recommend doing some sort of like in-person debrief.

00:04:11:00 - 00:04:30:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, if you're debriefing every single event, you're never not debriefing because let's just be honest, like, if you meet once a week in youth ministry, there's always one time a week we got to get together and get a debrief. And then if you're meeting twice a week, say Wednesday night and Sunday morning, you're also getting together another time to kind of look back at Sunday morning.

00:04:30:28 - 00:04:54:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what if you're meeting Sunday night then now you're meeting three different times for three different evaluations. And so it can become a lot and it can become a lot of meetings. And sometimes it's just like, man, we just got work to do. Right. And so, one of the things that my boss, has instituted is we use base camp, and he instituted this idea, and he just cause, our debriefs sometimes, we keep them all digital.

00:04:54:21 - 00:05:19:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's a digital debrief. We go into base camp, into the the message board there, and he'll ask three different questions. Sometimes he'll ask, right, right. Wrong, broken, confused. Like all that. But other times he'll throw in, like a curveball or, you know, like, and I think like this question, for example, is a good example of like, missing, you know, but he'll be like, what's one thing that we could have done to really take this event over the top?

00:05:19:19 - 00:05:35:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so it just get your brain thinking in a little bit of a different category, though, it is probably like an answer to the missing question. But it's framed really well. That makes you like, think in a different kind of way, you know what I'm saying? So but what we'll do then is everyone on the team has to complete that digital debrief comment done when they're done.

00:05:35:22 - 00:05:51:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, he'll take those and he'll, he'll archive the, the plan. So it's out of our, like, base camp. But then next year, as we're getting ready to pull that back together, he'll, he'll go grab those archive notes. Because who in the world can remember what we did a year ago, let alone a month ago?

00:05:51:17 - 00:06:16:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right, take those archive notes and add them to the upcoming plan. So then, when the upcoming plan is coming, we look back and say, what did we say last year? And like a great example of this is like at summer camp, people said like last, like not the most recent summer camp we did, but the one from the summer last summer, people said something small like, hey, we should have a lost and found, or we should have more trash cans.

00:06:16:16 - 00:06:33:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, you know, a week or two before we went, really? Hey, let's let's look back at that. Those debrief notes were like, oh, yeah, that's right. The lost and found in the trash cans. We pull those together quick. There are small things we were going to completely forget to do them, because we were so focused on all the other kind of like things and elements of camp.

00:06:33:14 - 00:06:51:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But we looked back at our debrief notes and those two little small things like, really help. Like I said, kind of like May made the difference, right? And so however you choose to do it, one of the words that my boss always kind of used was, we need a place to memorialize these thoughts, right? So like we say them, write them down for us.

00:06:51:26 - 00:07:21:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's base camp. You can use whatever kind of project management tool or software that you want to do and go ahead and take that to the races, but you should use these right? Broken slash confusing and missing. Use them in your next event evaluation. And here's the thing. If you go ahead and download my donate, event guide, come back to this episode or check this episode out right after your event is over so that you can really, truly lean in to, these questions and make your event as good as it can be, on and off into the future.

00:07:21:06 - 00:07:38:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, here's the thing. All of this has been ramping up. This is a this has been focused on one night, right? One night of like a big event, one night of like bring your friends. And you know, we talked about in the first episode, but the the spiritual CPR strategy. So cultivate and then plant and then reap. That's a cultivate event.

00:07:38:22 - 00:08:06:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a cultivate night. How do you then carry on that momentum on into the next coming weeks? One of the elements, one of the small slivers component, but one that I really think has been super huge in our student ministry around, reaching, frankly, reaching more students, and reaching more lost students in an effort to be, both like planting seeds of like, spirituality as well as just like having fun is, is through using, the means of social media.

00:08:06:18 - 00:08:26:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so obviously, here I am. It's a hybrid ministry podcast. You probably saw that one coming, but that's been a hugely beneficial and hugely big piece in our overall strategy. And it's become one of our primary evangelism mechanisms. And next week I am dropping the fall seasonal social media pack. Now here's how this is going to work next Thursday.

00:08:26:08 - 00:08:47:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're subscribed, you're going to get it as soon as it drops. It's over on my Patreon. So is Patreon.com slash hybrid ministry. And over there there is a tier of podcast, a bonus weekly podcast where I'm just detailing an outline, all of my events, and all of our Wednesday nights, our programing, what's going well, what we're doing on social media, moves are making changes that we got going on.

00:08:47:29 - 00:09:03:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Here's the thing. This week at time of of filming that one, this episode drops. So at time of filming, my boss actually just submitted his resignation. So I'm actually stepping into a new role and I'm stepping into a new seat. And so I'm going to have the opportunity to share some of that with you. And I'm really excited.

00:09:03:13 - 00:09:34:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But that podcast that patrons hear is $4 per month. Now, here's the thing. The seasonal social media pack is like 1799, and it is meant to last for three months. So if you do the math, you actually come out ahead on the, on the tier. And so what I would recommend right now, if you're listening to this week leading into launch, go over to Patreon, give me the $4 per month, getting in on that tier, and then you will get everything in the store, not just this upcoming seasonal pack, but you can grab the summer pack.

00:09:34:13 - 00:10:02:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, on Thursday, you can grab the fall pack, and there's actually a free week trial there, for you to check it out. So click the link down below. Become what we call a hybrid hero at that $4 per month tier. So excited to do that. And we're going to be dropping not only that pack next week and kind of walking through what that is, but then we're also going to start looking at how can you build and create a social media team within the the gathering in your in your context as is, that's fully and completely run by teenagers?

00:10:02:02 - 00:10:19:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to walk you how we did it and how you can do it in your youth ministry to reach students, but also create momentum for your students that are attending your church in person as well. So once again, thank you guys so much for being here. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did like it, subscribe, share with the friend.

00:10:19:10 - 00:10:23:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But until next time and as always, don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 162: 10 Free Time Stations for Youth Ministry - Fun, Easy & FREE!

Nick Clason — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Looking for fun, easy, and totally free youth ministry ideas that actually engage students? In this episode of The Hybrid Ministry Show, Nick Clason shares 10 high-energy, low-prep free time station ideas—from donut decorating to Mario Kart tournaments, 9 Square, Gaga Ball, social challenges, and more—all designed to boost student engagement and connection. If you're a youth pastor craving creative youth group games, fall event strategy, or hybrid ministry tips that work, this episode is packed with stealable ideas and a bonus resource you don’t want to miss!

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/162

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

USE CODE: “HYBRIDMINISTRY” FOR 10% OFF
COLEADER.CO

GAGA BALL vs 9 SQUARE RECOMMENDATIONS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZuiyBdjX6c
SOCIAL CHALLENGE 4-PART FRAMEWORK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B6Qeaa_hPA&list=PLngXlSr64YaKLwZqOkQe7NzOqSVR0-P1s

✅ 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 This Strategy Make Him say what?!
00:36 The Freetime Strategy Explained
06:25 Donut Tattoos
06:39 Scavenger Hunt - Hybridized!
09:19 Board Games
09:36 Decorating
09:52 Steal The (Fill in the Blank)
10:29 Kajabi Can Can
11:14 Big Screen Mario Kart Tourney
11:37 9-Square
11:44 Gaga Ball
12:09 The Social Challenge

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

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:19:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Your students don't want to sit through another 90 minute program. Can we be honest? Do you? In this episode, I'm going to break down my outreach event strategy, which when I shared it with my friend Eric with the kids, he had this to say about it. I love that thank you notes. That's something I'm gonna steal for future videos.

00:00:19:27 - 00:00:52:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In this episode, I'm going to hit you with ten ideas that you are definitely going to want to head over to my YouTube channel so that you can screenshot these and use them for your upcoming fall outreach event. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show! Well, hey everyone, welcome to episode 162 of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am your host, Nick Claussen, and I'm going to be talking about one of the, strategies that we have for our outreach events that we've sort of stumbled into, and it's a little bit unique.

00:00:52:26 - 00:01:14:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, you heard what my friend Eric had to say about it, but essentially what it is, is it's creating moments of free time for your students. And so what I mean by that is we're not taking the full 90 minute block, or we're not taking the full 120 minute block of programing time that you have for your youth ministry and scheduling every single minute and making every single student do every single thing the entire time.

00:01:15:00 - 00:01:35:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But instead, what we're doing is we're opening up a window of time within our night, within our program to allow your students to kind of, like, choose their own adventure and do what they want to do. Now, if you're going to be using linked right here, the, download from the World's Greatest Donut Event Guide that we've been talking about, like, that's what, we've done before.

00:01:35:19 - 00:01:54:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I want, you know, if you're looking for something to do, I want you to consider maybe doing that event and you can incorporate these ideas, this strategy, into your upcoming fall outreach event. And so, go ahead and go grab that download. It's completely free. It's going to point you to a resource over On demand that you can use and implement.

00:01:54:07 - 00:02:22:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And these ideas are things that you can use, borrow, steal, and include in your upcoming fall outreach event. But the the philosophy behind it is, as we talked about a couple episodes ago, this is a cultivate in the spiritual CPR. This is a cultivate night. We're we're inviting friends were hanging out. We're just, kind of letting our hair down, kicking our feet up and hanging out with students and helping them see that church doesn't have to be confusing.

00:02:22:00 - 00:02:44:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Church doesn't have to be weird. But the other reason that this is advantageous is very simply, when you have a message included in your night, you don't have as much time to program. When you don't include your message, you have more time to program. And here's what we do. Oftentimes, we're still like plugging through our scope and sequence like we use Collider.

00:02:44:04 - 00:03:07:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, if you use Code hybrid ministry, I'll give you 10% off Collider for a year. So go check that out. They just dropped roadmaps. The first part of roadmaps year three. Really excited about the the judges series included in that. But, we'll just kind of keep plugging along in what we, you know, for a message that we should have taught on the night our outreach event is Worcester, upload it to YouTube.

00:03:08:01 - 00:03:30:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then our Sunday morning curriculum is derived off of our Wednesday night curriculum. And so we'll still have that conversation on Sunday morning, even though we didn't have the message on Wednesday night. And it's just on YouTube. And so at the end of the night, a lot of times we'll just show a little teaser clip and say, hey, this is over on YouTube, go check it out, scan this QR code if you want to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

00:03:30:08 - 00:03:55:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And they're off to the races. And I mean the whole the whole good news right about these, this donut event is that it's getting students onto your social media, which at the end of this completely free fall masterclass playlist, I'm going to teach you how to build a social media team run completely by students that helps them create content not only for other students in your ministry, but create content with other students in your ministry.

00:03:55:28 - 00:04:15:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so having this free time event opens up all of these things, opens up more options. And, you know, one of the things that we'll do is we'll, offer anywhere from like four or 5 or 6 different, like, things, little stations. And they have anywhere from 30 to maybe 45 minutes on the longer end to do whatever them that they want.

00:04:15:18 - 00:04:36:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But one of the things that we've done to kind of encourage them or highlight what's available is we'll create a little passport or like a punch card, or if they go to a station and complete it, they'll get a little sticker for it. And what that does is it just helps them. First of all, give gives your students, and anyone who's new like a little map of your area, what's included where what's going on?

00:04:36:06 - 00:04:53:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What can we do right now? And then we'll say, hey, if you, complete if you go to all six stations, come and submit this card back in and we will give you a candy bar. And then we'll also put your, you know, name or your passport in, a drawing for the grand prize at the end of the night or something like that.

00:04:53:27 - 00:05:11:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, you know, if students are maybe not interested in all six of the things, and that's one of the reasons why we do it is because we know, like, not every single student is going to want to do every single type of game that you do. And so we'll include like some artsy and crafty type things. But then we'll also include some really, really active type things.

00:05:11:27 - 00:05:30:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so some students may be like, I'm more artsy. I don't want to do that active thing at all. And they're going to opt out of doing every single thing on the passport. But other kids, they might want to try to do all of it. And so they're going to try to run to every single station. So it just it it communicates what's available and it gives students an option to just win something.

00:05:30:13 - 00:05:47:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's just a fun way to kind of program it. I try to program the amount of time, like if we got 5 or 6 stations, I want to give them 30 to 35 minutes. I want there to be nearly not enough time for them to do everything, because when they leave, I want them to have in their mind like, oh my word, that event was so fun.

00:05:47:14 - 00:06:03:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I didn't even get to everything. And that's kind of like the vibe I want them to get in the car with with their parents, right? And when they're parents, like, how was it there? Like it was awesome. There is so much to do, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's kind of the vibe that we're going for. So if you're here on YouTube, these are going to flash up here on the screen.

00:06:04:01 - 00:06:24:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
These are free time stations that are high fun, but they're low prep. And some of these we've done before, others of them are ideas that I have for future ones. And if you're doing the World's Greatest Donut Event launch guide, you can use some of these. These are ones that we actually have pulled together, for the donut event starting with.

00:06:24:29 - 00:06:50:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The first one is we had a donut temporary tattoo parlor. And so we can have students come in and just get a temporary donut tattoo. Right. And it's like you're doing the scavenger hunt. Like, one of the things I've done is, a future idea is like, we've done a scavenger hunt is one of the clues on the scavenger hunt was to have to go and prove that you got a donut tattoo, so it's like you kind of kill two birds with one stone.

00:06:50:00 - 00:07:10:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They come to the scavenger hunt, which is a second idea, by the way. Come to the scavenger hunt. One of the one of the clues is you know, go to the donut tattoo thing and they prove that they've done it. And so in addition to it, we like I try to hybridize my scavenger hunt, which, if you didn't know by the way, I have a weekly bonus podcast over on Patreon.

00:07:10:00 - 00:07:36:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's only $4 a month, and I want you to think about that. Investment of $4 is like your creative programing assistant. Like, here's my question is $50 per year worth it for you to have? Almost like a programing and social media consultant and coach? Because that's essentially what this $4 tier would do. It's going to give you, for $48 for you, 12 times four.

00:07:36:07 - 00:07:57:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's going to give you, someone who's just doing this on the front lines and is evaluating everything that I'm doing and boots on the ground. I'm not just like some, you know, youth ministry content guy. Like, these are things I'm actually doing. And I'll, I'll coach you through just by the evaluation of my own strategy, how it's going, what's going well, what's not going as well.

00:07:57:00 - 00:08:15:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can just steal all that I'm doing and bonus points, at the end of this episode, I'm going to be dropping a product that's $17. That's going to be incredibly valuable to you as you continue to lean in on social media. That's going to be free if you're already a $4 tier member of the Hybrid Heroes podcast.

00:08:15:27 - 00:08:33:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I try to hybridize, and this is an example of thing I'll talk about on my podcast, The Scavenger Hunt. So, for example, we say, hey, prove to us that you voted on the first round of the donuts, because remember, at this event we're launching the bracket. And so we're doing donuts, seed number one versus donuts. Seed number 16.

00:08:33:28 - 00:08:53:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Donuts number eight versus donut seed number nine. Prove to us that you voted. And so, they can either vote with paper printouts which is the most boring, or they go on Instagram or YouTube and cast a poll style vote. Another one I'll do is I'll say, like in our most recent uploaded YouTube video, what was on so-and-so's shirt?

00:08:53:10 - 00:09:15:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What color was so-and-so's hat, who's teaching like or whatever? And so that'll also encourage them to pull their phones out. If they don't have a phone, go find someone who does have a phone and look at our YouTube channel. And then, you know, bonus points if you subscribe, like all those types of things, like, I'm trying to kind of lean into not only the other stations like the donut tattoo station, but also some of our hybrid ideas.

00:09:15:26 - 00:09:32:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so Scavenger Hunt is one of my all time favorite stations. Another one is just simple, right? Like create a board game station. Like we already have a bunch of board games in our cafe. In our game room. We'll just lay those on a table and say, you can go do board games. And here's the thing so low prep on your part.

00:09:32:22 - 00:09:53:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You don't have to do anything with it. We in this donut event, we've done donut decorating for like a couple nights ago in our youth ministry, it was National Sugar Cookie Day. We did sugar cookie decorating like you could do some sort of food decorating or craft decorating of sorts. One of the one of my all time favorite active games is steal the Bacon.

00:09:53:19 - 00:10:10:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this event, we just do steal the donut. You can buy a big donut plush on Amazon, or you can just very simply like throw anything out there, like a piece of, like we've done, like I've done like a duck tape night before. And I took a piece of cardboard and I duct taped all around the cardboard, and we played steal the duct Tape.

00:10:11:03 - 00:10:27:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, whatever theme event you're doing, like, steal that thing for, like, a steal the bacon style game where you have ten people on one side, ten people on the other, or however many. Right. And you can number them off. So this is one, this is one, this is two. This is two. When you call that number, they run on into the middle.

00:10:27:22 - 00:10:45:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Another one of our all time favorite active games is we call it One of our volunteers labeled it here called poison, but I've grown up calling it Kajabi can can just with the big trash can in the middle. And you try to not touch the trash can by holding someone's, you know, hands and dragging them into the trash can.

00:10:45:14 - 00:11:08:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You want to be the last person standing. Here's a pro tip grab dog rope. Chew toys so that you're not holding someone's like, wrist and like, crushing their knuckles because inevitably you're going to have like a senior guy football player next to like, a seventh grade girl. And he's going to destroy her hand. So give them both, like, dog rope, chew toys to hang onto with, like the ropes on the end.

00:11:08:23 - 00:11:29:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
She's got a rope here. He's got rope here. And of course, if you break the chain, you're also out. Another thing that we've done before, and I'm just going to be honest, I don't know how well it worked, but we did like, big screen Mario Kart video game, tournament video games, and Mario Kart always a hit. The part that I'm not sure that worked was the tournament aspect.

00:11:29:24 - 00:11:45:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like it was kind of chaotic and didn't really know who's next and who's in line and, you know, whatever. But it was still fun. Overall, we have in our space, we have like a nine square, so we'll just say eight. You can you know, play nine square if you want. So that's an option. Gaga ball. That's an option.

00:11:45:17 - 00:12:04:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you don't know like I recommend two portable versions. And so maybe you're in like a shared space. But for an event like this, you can drag those out and set them up. Link down. Below is my, recommended nine square option and my recommended Gaga ball option. So those are things you make a little financial investment here on the front side, but then you can use this whenever you have a big event like this.

00:12:04:29 - 00:12:23:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And those can be a part of your station, some of the things that you offer. And then finally the social challenge. So social challenge I'm going to teach you how to do that here in a couple episodes. So make sure that you're subscribed. But the social challenge is we some social media content with our students, by our students every single Wednesday night.

00:12:24:01 - 00:12:43:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in the link below, I am going to share with you exactly how you can, build your own social media team and the exact strategy that we use. And like I said in a couple episodes, I'm going to flesh out a full class on how to build out a social media team based on student ministry volunteers and what that does.

00:12:43:13 - 00:13:03:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That just helps kind of continue to create those hybrid connections. You're doing it via social media. And like I said on August 28th, we're dropping something big that is going to help you get that social media team up and off the ground. So you're definitely going to want to make sure that you're subscribed. But for the next video here, we are going to now talk about we've done this donut event.

00:13:03:09 - 00:13:25:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've welcome new students. We've included free time stations. Now let's look at event evaluation. How do we know whether or not we hit the mark? How do we know whether or not this event was successful? How do we know whether or not the budget money that we spent with, whether the juice there was worth the squeeze? We're going to answer all of those questions on the video that's linked right here on screen.

00:13:25:05 - 00:13:31:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So make sure that you tap into that and until next time, and as always my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 161: How to Welcome New Students in Youth Ministry Without Overwhelming Them

Nick Clason — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Welcoming new students to your youth ministry shouldn’t feel like a firehose of information—this episode unpacks how to create an intentional, low-pressure first-time guest follow-up system. We’ll explore the psychology behind making guests feel valued, how to use a youth group welcome box, and why timing your church guest process matters. Plus, get a walkthrough of our youth ministry calendar, a peek at our welcome video strategy, and how to keep student connections alive on social media all fall long!

🗓️NEW CALENDAR + The Ultimate Guest Box
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry/shop/ultimate-first-time-guest-box-579557?source=storefront

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/161

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

WELCOME BOX VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzUQ-DwS32g&t=27s

WELCOME VIDEO
https://youtu.be/RRKGELKuJsc?si=Yb5RyayhDa-cQsQj

✅ CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU
Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications!
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📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
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📋 "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
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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How to Wow New Students
00:26 The psychology of the Welcome Guest Box
02:12 Why We Mail a Box
04:21 The Hybrid Part of the Box

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:17 - 00:00:23:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You got new students showing up to your youth ministry, to your fall kickoff events. Are you ready to wow them or just hand them a stale pizza coupon? In this episode, we are going to detail an outline my full guest Strategy Newcomers Welcome box. It is linked down below if you want to check it out. And of course, as always, there are chapters listed down below.

00:00:23:25 - 00:00:47:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everybody, welcome to the Hybrid Minister Show. If you not haven't had a chance to meet yet. My name is Nick. In a 15 year youth ministry veteran, and in recent years I've stumbled into this idea of a welcome guest box. In fact, we detailed and outlined it in this episode, linked right here on screen or down below if you want to go check that out.

00:00:47:17 - 00:01:11:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the fact of the matter is that we have discovered that the psychology behind creating an intentional follow up box is threefold. First of all, you want the students who come to your youth ministry for the very first time. You want them to feel like a million bucks. You want to roll out the red carpet for them, and you want them to feel like you have thought about them and that you have, you know, you've planned to have them there.

00:01:11:01 - 00:01:30:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, like in recent years, we've discovered more and more with this generation that it's an overwhelming experience to walk into a youth ministry for the very first time. And so imagine walking into a place it's completely foreign, completely new, completely wild and completely crazy. And then you're like, here, here's this, and here's this, and here's this. And here's this.

00:01:30:18 - 00:01:52:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you're like, swag ING them out. And like, that's a great notion. However, in the moment they're just figuring out like, where's the bathroom? Meanwhile, they have to hold and track and keep all this stuff that you're just like loading them up with. And they're awkward because they're holding it, but like nobody else has it. And like, if you want them to truly get involved in your youth ministry, you want them like jumping into things like Gaga Ball and Nine square.

00:01:52:29 - 00:02:08:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like, they have things that they have to keep track of and like they don't know where's a safe place to actually lay it down. And so therefore, that's why we've pivoted to recently in our student ministry, sending a guest welcome box. And so they come, we gather all their information. We say, hey, thank you so much. So glad you're here.

00:02:08:27 - 00:02:26:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We pair them up with someone new and then we treat them just like any other normal student. Meanwhile, a few days later, they'll get on their doorstep a welcome box branded all the things, helping welcome them to our student ministry. And in that moment, they're then able to be completely swagged out and have all of the things that they need.

00:02:26:22 - 00:02:57:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But they're able to do it in a less threatening environment. They're able to do it at home. And so we love this strategy. And again, as I said in the previous episode, I've given a full breakdown of it. You can go check that out. And I also include some artwork for it. But in this episode, I'm going to include the artwork for my 2025 FA calendars so that you can include and you can start using that to start laying out and dishing out your full 2025 calendar.

00:02:57:08 - 00:03:20:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because again, if you're in this masterclass, which you are, this is video part two of the Fall Masterclass for Youth Ministry. Last week we talked about the world's Greatest Donut Kickoff event. And if you if that event did its job and new students came, then those students came to your youth ministry. And then now you're going to use today's episode, this welcome box to send out and welcome the new students to your ministry.

00:03:20:10 - 00:03:55:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, this first time or this, this calendar that's included in the welcome box, it is free for all members of my Patreon. If not, you can jump on and you can grab it for just a few bucks. I think it's like 3 or $4 over there on Patreon. But if you become a member, which is only $4 per month, not only do you get access to every single thing on my store, including like my seasonal social media packs, the welcome box from that past episode, and this fall calendar, but you also get a weekly bonus podcast where I go through what we do in our youth ministry and in our kickoff events,

00:03:55:12 - 00:04:16:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and it's basically like your weekly debrief meeting. Even if you don't have a team around you, it's always helpful to have someone else's voice and to just hear those things, to kind of get those ideas going in your in your brain and like in your creative juices. And so that's the value of, again, $4 per month is the, bonus podcast.

00:04:16:25 - 00:04:35:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's the other reason that I love this welcome box idea is because as soon as you open it up, we have a gigantic QR code, right when they open it up and at the top it says Welcome video and they scan it and it takes him to our YouTube channel. And so it's a welcome video from me and other people on our team.

00:04:35:07 - 00:04:56:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, if you're following this fall playlist last week, you also got them on your social media. So they hopefully went and checked out your social media last week because voting for the donuts was on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever you have. And then this video also takes them to YouTube. So now it's the second social media touchpoint for them in as many days.

00:04:56:20 - 00:05:15:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if they're going to continue on, with this donut thing, if they're going to continue on to see this thing through, if they're going to keep coming back, they're going to interact with your social media more and more. And as we talked about in the previous video over the summer, the key to social media in youth ministry is not like a one time amazing viral video.

00:05:15:09 - 00:05:35:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The key is many micro connections over time so that they get used to and they get familiar with your brand and your social media, which is why it's so important to not only stay custom on social media, but also to stay, regular and consistent on social media, which is what my seasonal social media pack was meant to do over the summer.

00:05:35:18 - 00:05:58:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And big news in four episodes. The final episode of this fall, when we are launching our fall seasonal social media pack, we want to help you when creating not only custom content, but also creating serving opportunities for your students to to level up and lead these social media teams. And so now you might be thinking like, okay, so we got the world's greatest donut event, and now we got this welcome box.

00:05:58:20 - 00:06:21:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How do I know if any of these things are actually hitting, if we're actually making any discernible difference in the life of our student? I'm glad you asked, because in the next episode, we're going to talk about one of the key components of this, fall kickoff event. And it's the fact that we include we alluded to a little bit in last episode, but we include this moment of like 45 minutes of free time for students to do whatever they want.

00:06:21:14 - 00:06:33:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That video is going to be linked here on screen. Make sure that you're subscribed. If you're watching this live, so that you don't miss when that episode drops next Thursday. But until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hydrated.

Episode 160: My #1 Fall Outreach Event for Youth Ministry + Free Donut Game Download!

Nick Clason — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 05:00:00 -0500

The ultimate fall youth ministry outreach event that actually gets students to show up—plus grab a free donut event download to boost your next youth group outreach. Whether you're planning fall events, student ministry games, or looking for fresh youth group outreach ideas, this episode breaks down how to win students with Sonlife's classic CPR strategy: Win, Build, Equip. Don’t miss this youth pastor resource that combines social media, donuts, and brackets into one unforgettable church outreach event!

🍩 "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/160

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

✅ CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU
Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications!
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📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
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📋 "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 Best Event Ever?
00:20 Youth Ministry CPR?
05:16 Why I use this Event Type Constantly!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 155: The Secret Sauce to Consistent Summer Engagement

Nick Clason — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Consistency is hard—unless you steal my system. In this episode, I break down my exact weekly summer content rhythm for youth ministry using the ☀️ Summer Seasonal Social Media Pack: 1 spiritual reel, 1 fun reel, 1 carousel, and some bonus hybrid magic. You’ll get the full template, schedule, and content—so you can stay consistent, connected, and (mostly) sane all summer long.

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

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/155

✅ 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 Dodgeball in a Cornfield & Summer Youth Ministry
00:55 My Secret Sauce Strategy
01:46 Monday’s Post
03:17 Wednesday’s Post
04:25 Friday’s Post
05:08 Bonus Ideas
06:11 Amazing Deal

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:06 - 00:00:29:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Consistency is hard unless you have a system. So steal mine if I'm giving you permission. So can we just be honest? Like summer youth ministry is kind of like playing dodgeball in a cornfield. No walls, no rules. Just pure chaos. You're leaders gone. You're students at camp. You simply trying to keep your Instagram feed, not looking like a ghost town.

00:00:29:08 - 00:00:56:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you my weekly social media strategy and how I grew a YouTube channel, along with several other social accounts to over 900 subscribers, completely organically. And best yet, it's actually all available to you. Link in the description. For less than a cost of a weekly cup of Starbucks. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00:00:56:24 - 00:01:18:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well hey everyone, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet you. My name is Nick Clayton and in the trenches youth pastor currently serving on assignment in the DFW Dallas Fort Worth area. And I've been passionate about this thing. Digital ministry. I'm trying to make it, possible, accessible and frankly, easy for all of us.

00:01:18:22 - 00:01:45:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I have a full proof system that I actually I want to share with you. And like I said in the open, steal it, man, it is yours. And so every single Monday, I post some sort of spiritual real. My goal, my goal is to post two pieces of content per day. However, what I recommend for most churches and most youth pastors who, maybe don't have as big of a team or as much experience with content is to post three reels per week.

00:01:45:12 - 00:02:04:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you are following my proposed and recommended secret sauce strategy, it would be posting some sort of spiritual reel per day. Now, if you prefilled your messages, or even if you like, capture your video live in the room somehow, then I recommend posting it into something like an opus clip. There's a link down below for you to check out.

00:02:04:25 - 00:02:28:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Opus clip where I'll take your message and I'll just chop it up for you using I super easy, super great. The other good thing is, if you do have some sort of like long form message version of your, of your message, if you're teaching in some way, shape or form, when you upload that to like YouTube shorts, you can link a featured video to the short and it can link out to your long form of that.

00:02:28:28 - 00:02:57:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's what that's what we do. If you don't have either a, the capacity to sit down ahead of time film, that's what we do and that's what I recommend or B, capture it live in the room when you're teaching, then see if you download my social media pack. I actually have, but a bunch of different scripts to help you get through the summer of videos that you can just shoot on your phone selfie style and edit directly in something like a TikTok editor, an Instagram Reels editor, or even something like Cap Cut.

00:02:57:15 - 00:03:16:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's what I would recommend you doing on Monday. And listen, if you're going to steal this, you're just going to grab my strategy. The number one way that you could give back to this channel is a very simple like or a subscribe. It really it costs you nothing over on YouTube or on your podcast catcher. And it really does help us out a whole bunch.

00:03:17:01 - 00:03:35:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Moving on. The second style of post I recommend that you do is do something fun. You know, I think a lot of times in youth ministry we feel like we have to be serious all the time, especially when it comes to what's going on on social media. But the fact of the matter is that think about your personal social media habits, whatever platform it is for you.

00:03:35:23 - 00:03:56:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's TikTok, maybe it's YouTube, maybe it's even something like Reddit or Facebook. You know, I feel a lot of youth pastors on Facebook. Why do you get on social media? Maybe you always get on to, like, do your devotions in a low key sort of sense of the way, hoping that your church that you follow is going to post scripture and, and some sort of reels like that.

00:03:57:01 - 00:04:15:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you're like me, you get on to laugh, to be entertained. Maybe I'm a huge basketball fan. I get on to, watch basketball content. And sometimes, sometimes I'm just going to be very honest with you. Sometimes I even I even get in arguments about my favorite team. So, that's a confession I'm willing to make, but post something fun.

00:04:15:12 - 00:04:48:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in this downloaded pack, I include some done for you fun content, emoji guesses, or transition hook style videos. Things to have fun with your students. And then Friday, go ahead and post some sort of carousel post. Post a Bible verse or post, something spiritual like what to do if you're facing anxiety. You know, I, I posted that, recently, actually, this link right up here at the top of the screen is, from a video what I posted using my weekly summer content pack and the carousel post performed incredibly well.

00:04:48:08 - 00:05:02:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Go back and listen to that one. You'll see the ways that people were responding to it and says what to do when I'm facing anxiety, what to do when I'm struggling with anger, what to do when I'm struggling with lust, and we feel some of those in there completely done for you. Grab them, download them, post them to your feed and use them.

00:05:02:24 - 00:05:38:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And they're there for you and they're there for the taking. But I also recommend, in addition to some of these things that I've given to you, I've included some of my bonus content. And every week we get together with some of our students and we do man on the street interview style videos, or we do, tier rankings, or we do a guessing game called seven questions like, and we'll get students together on camera, either me versus them, them versus a staff person or them versus each other with podcast microphones or just a little like Bluetooth connected to your phone's sort of microphone, and which interview them we like, have fun, chatting it

00:05:38:26 - 00:05:57:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
up with students, hearing their opinion, and then also like kind of messing around with them on on the edit, which is another really kind of like fun way to create content not only for your students, but also with your students and all of that, all of that. The good news is included in my summer seasonal social media pack.

00:05:57:20 - 00:06:20:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's it. That's my one week. You take that, you repeat, you rinse, you repeat. You do it again, copy it, steal it, and implement it in your ministry. But hold on a second. I got an amazing deal for you on the other side. Check it out. So there's a lot going on this summer, I get it. And you want to stay active even when you're doing slip and slide kickball.

00:06:20:16 - 00:06:42:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This isn't a metaphor. I really own this, and someone's probably definitely gotten hurt on it before. So here's the deal I don't spend six hours a day. I don't spend six hours a week on all of this. I've put all of this together. So all you need to do is hit the link in the description and go download the Summer Seasonal Social Media pack.

00:06:42:02 - 00:07:01:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It has my weekly proposed schedule for you for the summer. It also has some pre-made templates, things like man on the street, questions, graphics. All you got to do is overlay that in an editor and you can do it directly on your phone, or even in something a little bit more upgraded, like an Adobe Premiere Pro or a DaVinci resolve.

00:07:01:09 - 00:07:21:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then half of the post that you're going to get are completely done for you. Plug and play and you're off to the races. The other 50% is custom, because I don't think that a fully downloadable, where it removes your face and removes your voice and it removes your personality. I don't think that's a good strategy for social media in 2025.

00:07:21:07 - 00:07:40:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the good news about my pack is that I still allow you to be the voice, to be the face, to create content with and for your students. And you and your students are featured on your social platforms. But I've done all the heavy lifting on their scripts and graphics and templates and, telling you exactly what to do.

00:07:40:02 - 00:08:04:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All you gotta do is follow my instructions, put a cell phone camera and you are off to the races. The result? Consistency, engagement, and not fumbling the bag on your social media feeds this summer. Listen, I got you a link down in the description. Thank you guys so much for being here on the Hybrid Ministry Show as we attempt to make digital discipleship easy and possible and accessible.

00:08:04:10 - 00:08:08:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 153: What I Posted This Week Using My Summer Content Pack

Nick Clason — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 05:00:00 -0500

I didn’t make anything new this week. I literally just hit post. Let me show you exactly what I shared using my Summer Content Pack—and how it performed.
Plus two bonus pieces of content that were the true all-stars at the end of this video!

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

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/153

✅ 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 I didn't make anything new this week!
00:29 Post #1
01:13 Post #2
02:18 Post #3
03:05 When a post doesn't perform…
04:34 Easy Summer Social Media Strategy
06:06 Post #4
07:16 Bonus Post: 7 Questions
07:55 Bonus Post #2: Drafts
08:37 The Power of Variety

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I didn't make anything new this week.

00:00:02:10 - 00:00:06:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I downloaded, I posted, or I used the scripts included.

00:00:06:29 - 00:00:15:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to show you exactly what I use out of my summer social Media content pack, as well as let you know how it performed,

00:00:15:02 - 00:00:17:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
plus two bonus

00:00:17:08 - 00:00:23:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
pieces of content that are also included in the pack. And I'm gonna let you know how those perform as well.

00:00:23:08 - 00:00:28:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They were really the all stars of the week. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00:00:28:17 - 00:00:44:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right, so first up, we have the what to do if archetype. This is included in the done for you section of the Summer social media pack. And this particular post if you're watching here on screen, which is why you should definitely be subscribe to our YouTube channel.

00:00:44:11 - 00:01:03:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you can see some of this stuff is because, this one says what to do if you're feeling anxious. We had a lot of great engagement on this, including some shares. One of our leaders shared the whole carousel to her Instagram story. Why? Because it's relevant to what people are going through. And so here's what's so cool on Instagram, we had

00:01:03:15 - 00:01:08:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
483 people view the post, 13 likes, five shares.

00:01:08:13 - 00:01:09:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then over on

00:01:09:08 - 00:01:13:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
TikTok we had 151 views with 12 likes.

00:01:13:12 - 00:01:29:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The second post type that you're going to see is the Devo style clip. Now this one is included in the custom for use section, where I've included scripts and graphics and templates, and depending on what that type of post is. But this particular one, I use one of the scripts that I've included.

00:01:29:14 - 00:01:52:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I shot this 1 in 1 take. You'll notice I'm going to cut off because I'm just getting ready to play pickup basketball on Tuesday morning of, before staff meeting this week. And so I just still had that outfit on. I grab my phone selfie style video, low pressure sitting in my office, and then I use this script, like I said, included in the social media pack, and I think it landed perfectly.

00:01:52:13 - 00:01:56:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But best of all, again, if you're watching here on YouTube, check this thing out.

00:01:56:00 - 00:02:06:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I edited this whole thing in the TikTok TikTok video. TikTok was that TikTok video editor at man, and it looks so professional.

00:02:06:24 - 00:02:10:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here's how it performed on Instagram. We got 179 views, ten likes,

00:02:10:21 - 00:02:18:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
YouTube, 895 views, four likes and then TikTok 535 views and 55 likes.

00:02:18:17 - 00:02:40:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Post three is another one of the custom for you. This is the transition hook style video, so this one is a vertical piece of content where I include the start of the video and then here at the very end, it cuts to one of our, students in our ministry that's actually, acting out the rest of it, where he then stands up and he talks to people about God.

00:02:40:27 - 00:02:52:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, sometimes we invite people to church. Sometimes we invite people to events to Sunday morning to Wednesday night, or we just simply talk about the importance of leaning in to God and trusting him. But what I want you to see here is look at this on

00:02:52:07 - 00:02:55:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Instagram. 427 views, 16 likes

00:02:55:01 - 00:02:59:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
YouTube 1686 views 16 likes. Check this one out

00:02:59:13 - 00:03:03:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
TikTok only 50 views zero likes.

00:03:03:13 - 00:03:03:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now I want to

00:03:03:23 - 00:03:20:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
stop here and talk for a second. What do you do when you experience a post like this? My guess is, you've done something like this before. You've tried something before, you've tried your hand at social media, and you've gotten a post like this one, right? Here's the thing. Just like basketball, many of you know I'm a huge basketball fan.

00:03:20:13 - 00:03:41:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Just like basketball, you have to trust the process. Sometimes you guard your kids to the best of your ability. And here is where we do turn around. Three pointer at the end of the shot clock and it goes in. But all you can do is control what you can control, get in position, practice and use and do the fundamentals and just continue to execute.

00:03:41:29 - 00:04:00:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Sometimes it goes well for you and other times not so well. But the fact of the matter is you just got to keep showing up. And that's really the game with social media. And that's what makes it so hard. I think a lot of times for youth pastors is to continue to show up when you experience less than, you know, less than encouraging results.

00:04:00:29 - 00:04:19:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Kind of like this one, right? And you'll notice this is a clunker, but it's a clunker on TikTok. And that's why I recommend diversifying the platforms that you use. I have analytics from YouTube. I have analytics from Instagram, and I like how both of those performed, even though on TikTok it didn't quite perform how I want it to.

00:04:19:16 - 00:04:33:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But that's okay because I still got over 2000 views, or at least close to it. I'm doing math in my head on the fly. Never a good recipe, but, I and I got over 2000 views, across two other platforms, even though I only got 50 on one.

00:04:33:28 - 00:05:11:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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 packets. A new product that I'm rolling out exclusively on my Patreon is 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.

00:05:11:19 - 00:05:32:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So here's what you're going to get. You're going to get 50% of the content completely done. 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.

00:05:32:24 - 00:05:54:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. 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.

00:05:55:02 - 00:05:57:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Patreon members get it for free.

00:05:57:20 - 00:06:11:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right, post number four is the fourth and final one I'm going to share with you today. This one is again from the done for you section. And this woman is so plug and play. I've already created it for you, even though the thumbnail says I created none of these.

00:06:11:15 - 00:06:27:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I created all of these, but I created them for you to take and to do and to download. And I supply all of the different verse texts. And here's how it performed. Instagram 207 views eight likes YouTube 1198 views 62 likes

00:06:27:01 - 00:06:30:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
one comment from Jenna Jack which says I memorized this passage.

00:06:30:29 - 00:06:36:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then on TikTok 507 views 95 likes one comment to save

00:06:36:12 - 00:06:41:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
the summer social media pack includes eight different types of videos.

00:06:41:10 - 00:07:00:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I've shared four of them with you. Two of the ones I share with you were from the done for you section, and two of the ones I share with you are from the custom for you section. The custom for you are making your social media about you, you, your leaders, your students like making you guys the real heroes on your social media.

00:07:00:24 - 00:07:07:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But to channel my inner Billy Mays here, I want to say, but wait, there's more.

00:07:07:04 - 00:07:25:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I also pulled out one of our seven questions archetypes, and that's included in the bonus section of the content with over 100 different topic type ideas. And on this particular seven questions, we took it to our studio in our church, and I sat down with two of our students, two of our high school girls, and they played seven questions.

00:07:25:03 - 00:07:45:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
One of them was thinking of something in their head, and the category was beach item, and she was thinking of Beach Umbrella. And the other one had to guess. And for that one on Instagram, we had 431 views and 19 likes. On YouTube we had 227 views, eight likes, and on TikTok we had 963 views and 21 likes.

00:07:46:00 - 00:08:02:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We also then, with a couple of our high school boys, sat down and did a NBA dress section, which I do have words for these guys because nobody, nobody included the MVP of the NBA this year one Shay Gilgeous Alexander. Regardless of that, here's

00:08:02:18 - 00:08:08:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
how their post performed on our social media on Instagram 500 views, 17 likes, two comments, seven shares

00:08:08:27 - 00:08:17:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
YouTube 1244 views 13 likes TikTok 862 views 36 likes three

00:08:17:04 - 00:08:18:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
comments and two saves.

00:08:18:05 - 00:08:27:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And listen, the comments are not always the nicest, especially when you do sports stuff. So just be on the lookout for that. Protect your students. Or, you know, I don't know, maybe don't.

00:08:27:19 - 00:08:39:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's what I notice, right? Variety works. You'll notice I share with you, two from our PAC, two from Denver. Done for you, two from custom, and then two of my bonus ideas.

00:08:40:01 - 00:09:05:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All very different varieties. Some spiritual, some not spiritual, some plug and play, some where you have to do a little bit of editing, but every style hits differently. Some are more reflective, some were more scroll stopping. But the big takeaway is that I didn't actually create any of these from scratch. And so like I said, every single one of these comes straight out of my summer content social media pack.

00:09:05:17 - 00:09:10:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You get it for just 1799 is linked down below in the description, which is

00:09:10:17 - 00:09:32:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
three months worth of your social media strategy. And that's actually only $0.07 per post idea. It's insane value. You would not avoid buying something for $0.07 if it was going to really increase. And add so much value to your life. Just look at how performed on our social channels.

00:09:32:16 - 00:09:58:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
These are real results from a real student ministry in Dallas, Texas area. They can be your results to. All you got to do is head over to the link and download those. You won't. You will not regret it. Listen, I want you to save actual time this summer for actual ministry. Let me do the work. Let me play on your social media calendar and hey, I'll see you next week with more info and deep dives like this.

00:09:58:27 - 00:10:02:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And don't forget, as always my friends, to stay hybrid.

Episode 149: Youth Ministry in the Summer? Should You Shut It Down or Show Up Strong?

Nick Clason — Thu, 15 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500

Summer is coming, and youth pastors everywhere are asking—do we keep programming or hit pause? In this video, we’ll break down the pros and cons of both options and help you decide what’s right for your ministry this summer. Stick around till the end for a FREE resource: 100 social media ideas to keep students engaged—even if you hit pause.
Plus 3 tips for summer ministry, regardless of the direction you choose

☀️ 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 IT FOR FREE!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/149

//AVOID BURNOUT WITH DERRY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do3WGIctHDs&t=43s

//SOCIAL CHALLENGE PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaKLwZqOkQe7NzOqSVR0-P1s

//100 IDEAS
https://share.hsforms.com/1JOHqd4XOTbC5ZgfXB85BCwnumis

✅ 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 Youth Ministry in the Summer?
00:56 PROS: Meeting in the Summer
03:50 Lock in Your Social Media this Summer!
05:18 CONS: Meeting in the Summer
06:45 PROS: Taking a Summer Programming Break
08:24 CONS: Taking a Summer Programming Break
09:32 Tip #1
11:13 Tip #2
12:05 Tip #3

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Summer is coming, whether you like it or not, and youth pastors everywhere are trying to decide whether they should hit pause on their programing or whether they should keep going strong. I want to encourage you in this video, we're going to explore the pros of keeping your programing going and contrast it with the cons of what it would look like if you chose to take a little bit of a break.

00:00:22:12 - 00:00:43:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Make sure that you stick around for the entire video, because at the end, I have a hundred social media ideas for you to go ahead and take and adopt in your ministry, especially if we choose to hit pause as well as three tips for an amazing summer, regardless of the decision that you choose. Don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss a single one of our episodes.

00:00:43:08 - 00:01:04:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, as we are leading into summer and during the entire course of the summer, and as always, there are chapters listed down below so that you can hop ahead to the part of the show that makes the most sense to you. Welcome everyone to the Hybrid Minister Show. What's up everyone? Welcome to the Hybrid Minister Show. In this episode, we're going to compare and contrast summer programing versus taking a break.

00:01:04:08 - 00:01:27:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So let's not waste any time. What are the pros of staying engaged with having summer programing in your youth ministry? Well, the first pro I would say is that students, sports schedules and students extracurricular vehicular activities tend to take a little bit more of a dip. And so historically, youth ministries have been going strong through the summer. And I'm sorry if they've been going strong through the school year.

00:01:27:23 - 00:01:48:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then they take a break during the summer, they match the students schedules. So while students are going strong during the school year, we're going strong during the school year when students tend to take a dip. We would also take a dip. And I think it's worthwhile to consider while student schedules take a little bit of a dip, what if our programing ramps up or at least doesn't go anywhere?

00:01:48:10 - 00:02:10:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Why? Because you may or may not have some students who are so busy during the school year that they're just simply not able to make a Wednesday night or Sunday night. But you have in programing, you do have an opportunity to now catch them when their schedule does tend to take a break. I remember one time, it was the very first week of our summer schedule, and it was the first time that I ever chose to stay to stay engaged during the summer.

00:02:10:23 - 00:02:31:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I looked out across the audience and I saw a student who I hadn't seen for the entire time of my duration and my tenure as a youth pastor at that church. And I had messaged with her mom, and her mom was lamenting the fact that, you know, her dance schedule didn't line up with what our student ministry was, and our student sister had just made a change from Wednesday to Sunday.

00:02:31:01 - 00:02:47:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And at that same time, when our student ministry made that change, her dance schedule also made that exact same change. And so she was so bummed out that we shifted from Wednesday to Sunday because her dance schedule had just shifted from Wednesday to Sunday. So she missed literally the entire school year. But I looked out and boom, there she was.

00:02:47:20 - 00:03:08:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, man, had we not chosen to meet, she still wouldn't have been there. And so I know that you as a youth pastor, you have a heart to reach and capture your students. And so staying engaged in your programing during the summer can offer and allow you to have that sort of opportunity. The other thing that summer programing does is, honestly, it gives you a chance to try out some creative ideas.

00:03:08:28 - 00:03:28:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, if you didn't know this, I have a, Patreon account where I, weekly share what we're doing in our youth ministry. And it's just $4 a month, which is $1 per episode, where I detail and breakdown everything I'm doing to be creative and stay hybrid. And so this summer, I'm going to be taking you along on that journey.

00:03:28:05 - 00:03:51:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I would love to encourage you if you're one that wants to increase your creativity in your youth ministry, lean into your social media and your digital presence. Come hang out with us over on Patreon, and we're going to be giving that out $1 per week for, the bonus podcast episodes. But it gives you a chance to to be a little bit creative, to try something different that maybe, I don't know, before wouldn't have worked on.

00:03:51:11 - 00:04:26:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This episode is actually brought to you by my very own Patreon. The Patreon is my bonus podcast community, and I call those people over there who are subscribers. They're my hybrid heroes, and what we do over on my Patreon is a every single resource that I've created, and my shop is free for all Patreon members, along with a weekly bonus podcast episode and the cost right now to join my Patreon, I may go up, but right now legacy members can get it for $4 a month.

00:04:26:20 - 00:04:50:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So every single time I create a resource that's just through my Patreon that costs money for people who want to go on to my shop and buy something, you get it for free as a patron member, plus a weekly bonus podcast where I talk about what I do on social media every week. I talk about what I do in my programing every week to try and keep it creative and hybrid, and how we're using sidekick over there.

00:04:51:01 - 00:05:09:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, this week I talk, for example, about how I didn't even have a tech person to run Pro presenter. I ran a game from the stage on my computer with name picker on sidekick by myself on my computer. It's amazing. I'll tell you how I do all that type of stuff on my Patreon, so go check it out.

00:05:09:21 - 00:05:29:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Link down below in the description where it says become a Hybrid Hero. Click that link and check it out. Hey, you get a free week trial if you're interested in it. Back to the show. All right, so what are the cons? Well, the cons are of course, that you don't get a break in your programing. If you go straight into your school, you're programing into your summer programing.

00:05:29:20 - 00:05:50:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You don't get any little bit of a rest. And, additionally speaking, neither do your leaders. And so that, of course, is the con. And that's probably one of the major players in this decision is you've been working hard all September, from September through May all school year. And, and you're maybe looking forward to getting a little bit of a break, maybe a little bit of a breather.

00:05:50:11 - 00:06:14:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, staying strong with your programing throughout the summer doesn't really give you that option. And in addition to that, because school year and, like fall based launches and the start, you know, post Labor Day and welcome back and back to school Sunday and all the things that go along with traditional church ministry, especially as it pertains to launching strong and launching hard in the fall.

00:06:14:29 - 00:06:31:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You might need to be recruiting leaders. Not taking a break over the summer may not give you as much space to retool and get ready to launch strong in the fall. Or at least that may be some of what you're thinking and some of what, you know, you, you kind of have going on in, in your mind there.

00:06:31:14 - 00:06:52:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, I just want to encourage you, like, as you're kind of debating through this, like if your priority is having a strong, school year based student ministry, end of summer Rob's from that. I can imagine where that might be a con. Let let's take a look then, here at some of the pros and the cons of, choosing to take a break during the summer.

00:06:52:26 - 00:07:11:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So the pros are that if you do feel like you're running just so hard and so fast and so strong, all during the school year, the summer definitely does offer a little bit of a reprieve. You know, burnout is real among youth pastors. Shout out to my friend dairy. Link down below or right here on YouTube at the top of the screen.

00:07:12:03 - 00:07:48:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
On my episode with him where I interviewed, how does he avoid burnout? It is a fantastic episode, and what I'll just say is, if taking time off during the summer is a way to help you avoid, burning out, then it's more advantageous to not meet during the summer so that you can tend to your soul. But I would just say, maybe it's worthwhile to go take a look at that episode from Derry and see if during this next school year, if there are some practices and some principles that he laid out, that you can actually apply so that when next summer rolls around, if you are considering maybe, not breaking for

00:07:48:00 - 00:08:07:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your programing as opposed to breaking that, you won't be so tired and so burnout by the time you get on the doorstep of summer. So that you can maybe show up for your students. Another pro, of course, is that you do give an opportunity to give your leaders a break. So if you you know how important it is to lean on leaders.

00:08:07:27 - 00:08:24:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And leaders really are the backbone of student ministry. If you, don't meet during the summer, obviously you don't need your leaders to be there. If you do meet during the summer, you kind of need your leaders to show up, you know what I'm saying? So, that that is one of the pros of choosing to take a break during the summer.

00:08:24:00 - 00:08:50:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The cons, of course, are like, just think about this. Do you really want to go three months without meeting, like, just like basketball? Student ministry is a momentum game. And so, taking three months off, especially when you probably got, a high level, high flying thing, like camp or a mission trip, woven throughout the programing of your summer to just do that and then come back and not have anything for several months.

00:08:51:01 - 00:09:17:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, that's really a con that is worth considering. Like, do you really want to come back and then just be like, all right, see you guys after Labor Day? Like for me personally, that feels like a little bit long and a little bit of an arduous, break. The other thing, of course, is that you're not meeting during summer students most available seasons is the pro, to the reason why you maybe should consider keeping summer programing going.

00:09:17:08 - 00:09:38:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so those are both sides. You can probably tell that objectively speaking, we do choose to meet during the summer. We retool, we scale it back. We we're very creative. We do things that are very different. And so let me just give you three tips, regardless of which decision you're going to, land on which which camp you fallen for this debate.

00:09:38:23 - 00:10:00:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Three tips to help you program amazing things, or at least, do amazing youth ministry during the summer, whether you're meeting or not. So tip number one is follow your church's guide. If you have regular, say, midweek or regular Sunday night activities, church wide kids, ministry ministries, all the things and they take a break, then perhaps consider also taking a break.

00:10:00:21 - 00:10:18:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If if you're the only group that meets on campus when you meet, then that's not as big of a deal. But but consider following your church's lead. However, unlike the last video in this playlist where I talked about the importance of following your church's lead as a as it pertains to promotion, that's like a level like, absolutely.

00:10:18:06 - 00:10:43:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Do not deviate from your church's plan on this one. I would say I think things can be a little bit different because while some of the offerings for Kids Ministry and some of the offerings for adult ministry may be a little more elective based or a little more optional, if this is your main meeting time, then if you do choose to meet during the summer while the rest of your church takes time off, then stand strong on that and and communicate the importance of meeting when students are more available.

00:10:43:28 - 00:11:11:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again, you don't have to do as wholesale or full scale of a programing. You can scale it back, you can throw some creative options. Again, I'm going to give you some of those and some of what we're doing, in our student ministry. But you can you can kind of pull back the, the, the programing, intensity a little bit so that you can have some fun and just make it a little bit more of a casual hangout, but the tip is, if you're sure you like, follow, follow your church's lead.

00:11:11:01 - 00:11:27:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're unsure which direction to lean on this debate. The second tip I have for you is if you do take a break, and even if you don't, but if you definitely if you do lean in harder than on social media, because you may not be meeting on a Wednesday night or a Sunday night or whatever night you choose to meet, so you have more time in the office.

00:11:27:10 - 00:11:48:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So lean harder into social media, which is linked down below. The freebie tease at the beginning of the video. A hundred different topic ideas for you, for different concepts that, you can use on social media. So for us, I have a four part social media, strategy and social challenge guide, a whole playlist detailed for free, listed down below in the description.

00:11:48:25 - 00:12:08:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Go check that out one episode per video, but this freebie gives you 100 different topic ideas to help you lean into some of the creativity and some of the social media, ideas. And then you can continue to kind of show up where your students are, even if you choose not to meet. And then the third and final idea is just simply this it's summer, man.

00:12:08:15 - 00:12:26:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Have fun. Like if you do choose to meet, have fun while you do. If you don't have fun, do it on social media. Have a blast with your students creating content both for them and also consider doing it with them. And the thing about summer that's so fun. And one of the things that we do is we try to kind of ride the National Day trend.

00:12:26:10 - 00:12:46:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you didn't know there is a National day every single day, multiple national days. So this summer, for example, we're choosing like, beautiful Grandparent Day where we're going to play Extreme Bingo, and National Cheesecake Day is going to round out our summer, you know, programing. And and Leon Day, which is, June 25th. It is the, backwards.

00:12:46:24 - 00:13:08:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, Leon spelled backwards is Noel. So June 25th is when crafters start getting their Christmas supplies out. Last summer we did like National Avocado Day, and we celebrated some holidays like that. And so there's always an option of a thing that you can just kind of trend. So if we don't, we don't female our midweek throughout the, the the regular school year.

00:13:08:00 - 00:13:26:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But during the summer we do we kind of have fun with it. It also is a fun way to kind of create some social media content around it. We'll go around, interview people and ask them, you know, things about each of those topics or whatever, and kind of do a man on the street style video and again, some of that is detailed in that line down below in that 100 free thing.

00:13:26:15 - 00:13:47:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So go ahead and and grab that freebie so that you don't neglect in that you don't avoid social media this summer. Hey, everyone. Coming up in the next episode is the fourth and final installment of this versus playlist, where we're going to be looking at digital ministry versus in-person ministry. And if you're watching this, after its release, it's going to be linked right here on the screen.

00:13:47:29 - 00:13:54:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching this live, it'll be releasing next Thursday. But until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 148: How I’m Doing 3 Months of Content with THIS One Resource

Nick Clason — Thu, 08 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500

This is your youth ministry summer social media game-changer. With 3 months of ready-to-go posts, training videos, and templates, you’ll never stress about what to post again. Designed for youth pastors by a youth pastor using a proven hybrid ministry model.

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

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/148

//TRY OPUS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//SOCIAL CHALLENGE PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaKLwZqOkQe7NzOqSVR0-P1s

✅ 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 Digital vs In-Person Ministry
01:02 Why Hybrid Ministry Matters
06:47 Summer Social Media
09:22 Gear You’ll Need
09:39 Summer Social Posting Schedule
10:01 Done For You 1
10:21 Done For You 2
10:41 Done For You 3
11:11 Done For You 4
11:51 Custom For You 1
13:26 Custom For You 2
15:57 Custom For You 3
16:51 Custom For You 4
17:40 Bonus Idea

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In this video, we're going to explore the world between digital ministry and in-person ministry, a thing that I like to call hybrid

00:00:09:27 - 00:00:37:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
ministry. Welcome to the hybrid Ministry show, My friends. And in today's episode, what I want to look at is I want to look at the competition between hybrid ministry and in-person ministry. In fact, linked right here at the very top of the video is one of my favorite episodes I've ever done, where my friend Josh sat down with me and he he asked me to take an in-person youth ministry program and make it hybrid or bring about a hybrid component.

00:00:37:07 - 00:00:55:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we're going to explore what exactly I mean by that. What exactly is digital ministry? And make sure you stick around to the end, because I have a resource that I think will help you absolutely crush, lock in and make your summer youth ministry social media absolutely

00:00:55:14 - 00:00:59:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
pop. I have a resource for you. It's going to blow your mind.

00:00:59:17 - 00:01:19:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry show. Well, hey everyone, welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Nick Klassen. I'm a youth pastor of 14.5 years, and I have been pursuing this thing called hybrid ministry for a while now. And let me just help you understand some

00:01:19:15 - 00:01:20:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of the reasons why.

00:01:20:12 - 00:01:24:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For me. So for me, there are kind of three core

00:01:24:15 - 00:01:30:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
statistics. There's several out there, honestly, but three that really stick with me is that Gen

00:01:30:21 - 00:01:45:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Z. And we can assume Gen Alpha because we don't have data yet on them. But but this we can assume this to be true. Gen z, Gen Alpha. They use their mobile device more than they use any other device combined.

00:01:45:08 - 00:02:03:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Furthermore, 69% of students own a smartphone, but I get this the age of 12. We do have data for them, and then also 90%, according to Pew Research, use YouTube. 90% of teenagers say that they use YouTube. And I get it, man. Like if you're a youth

00:02:03:06 - 00:02:08:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
pastor, you're like, phones are a distraction. Gotta get rid of, use paper Bibles.

00:02:08:19 - 00:02:36:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, digital Bibles don't count all the things like I've heard it. I've been there. I've been a part of youth ministry for a long time. But there's a verse in Jeremiah chapter 29, no, not 2911, but right before that verse, Jeremiah is having a conversation with God. And here's what God says to Jeremiah. He says you should build homes, plan to stay, plant gardens, eat the foods that they produce, marry and have children, and find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren.

00:02:36:18 - 00:02:41:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Multiply. Do not dwindle away. But you gotta understand the context here,

00:02:41:21 - 00:03:04:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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. Stop trying to find a way out. Stop trying to leave. Instead, invest in where you live and youth pastors, pastors, church communications people, discipleship pastors, college pastors.

00:03:04:23 - 00:03:22:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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

00:03:22:01 - 00:03:24:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
mean that their in-person attendance is going to go away.

00:03:24:22 - 00:03:43:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a lot of the fears of us in church leadership is that if we offer a digital component, they're 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.

00:03:43:07 - 00:04:06:25
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're going Home Depot.

00:04:07:01 - 00:04:29:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And but you don't really have like an agenda, right? You're just walking around. 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.

00:04:29:15 - 00:04:37:05
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

00:04:37:05 - 00:05:01:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
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.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:19:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, well, 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 taking 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

00:05:19:28 - 00:05:24:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
announcements on their feed, just assuming that social media is another announcement platform.

00:05:24:27 - 00:05:45:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the reality is that that's not what social media is best made for. It doesn't mean that we can't still get the word out about what we have going on, 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.

00:05:45:07 - 00:05:51:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Remember, 90% teenagers say that they use YouTube in the ways that they're consuming it reels TikTok videos and

00:05:51:27 - 00:06:05:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
YouTube shorts. And so the good news is that you can create the same type of content short form, vertical based video that goes on TikTok, that goes on Instagram, that goes on YouTube, and maybe even Facebook if you choose to post it there as well.

00:06:05:17 - 00:06:25:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But you don't have to create multiple different types of content like I did when I first started in youth ministry 15 years ago. Instead, you post that, you know, 180 or 1080 by 1920, vertical based video. And then you post it in all the places that you want to post it. Don't have a TikTok account, no

00:06:25:26 - 00:06:27:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video post on Instagram and YouTube.

00:06:27:22 - 00:06:48:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Don't have a YouTube account? No big deal. Post on TikTok and Instagram. Don't have an Instagram account? No problem. Post on TikTok and YouTube. Don't have any of them? Start a YouTube account and start posting YouTube shorts because 90% of teenagers self-identify that they're on it. So what should you post? I'm glad that you asked. Let's dive!

00:06:48:25 - 00:07:10:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I'm so excited to roll this out because I can't lie, I have been looking for a thing to provide for youth pastors on a social media platform. Landscape that is custom. That's not just a bunch of pretty graphics, but also doesn't add more work to your plate. And I can't lie, I've been wrestling with what kind of service can I offer?

00:07:10:21 - 00:07:37:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I think I have something, at least messaging wise, for youth pastors, but once they get into it becomes a lot of work and it gets a little bit overwhelming. So if you're watching here on screen, you'll see my screen. And this is what I'm offering. So I'm offering this brand new program called Seasonal Social Media, which essentially is 40 posts, three months worth.

00:07:37:02 - 00:07:58:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you follow my recommended posting strategy, I recommend that youth pastors post three times per week and this will satisfy that reality. And so what you get is three months of custom, youth, ministry, social media content and it all costs less than $20. And here's the good news. Just like this ad copy here says it's not just content.

00:07:58:06 - 00:08:19:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It really is a full social media strategy included in the download. If you choose to go ahead and do this, is you get my complete Hybrid Strategy guide, which will detail and outline a lot of what I have just been saying on this video and I've been saying in other podcasts for years and years and years. And so this will lay the foundation and the philosophy.

00:08:19:15 - 00:08:46:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then this is what you're actually going to get. You're going to, take this, this social media, package. And it's got two different categories, and it's got completely done for you content that you literally download and you post and you plug and you play, set it and forget it. The other 50% is custom content. So you're going to be filming this, but the good news is you don't need to film every single thing yourself.

00:08:46:17 - 00:09:04:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You don't need to edit everything yourself. And if you don't have any of those skills, I'll walk you through how to do all of that on this podcast, as well as in this little document here. If you go ahead and download this thing where you can import some of what I have to offer, that's custom, but I have templates and I have layovers and I have scripts and I have things that you can do

00:09:04:28 - 00:09:15:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and things that you should say, and all of those things that you can edit in an in-app editor, like a TikTok or an Instagram Reels, or even over on something like Cap Cut.

00:09:15:17 - 00:09:32:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you got, like I said, you got done for you. You got things that are still left for you to shoot, but I provide all the assets that you're going to need for it. Here are things that you can buy all you really, honestly need is your camera phone. You can upgrade some microphones, which I do recommend upgrading some microphones.

00:09:32:03 - 00:09:50:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can check out some of those links there. And optionally if you want to buy a better camera, if you have a little bit of budget, here's what I recommend. Here is also your posting schedule. Okay, so the week of June 2nd post this video, then post this video, then post this video the week of June 9th.

00:09:50:20 - 00:10:09:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This video, this video, this video all the way on through. Don't like my schedule? No big deal. Make your own. All right. Here you go. But what's going to happen? Let me show you first when you open these up. Here's what the done for you package looks like in, you open it up and there are four different types of videos.

00:10:09:15 - 00:10:25:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, there are Bible verse videos and there are five different Bible verse videos. And so what you can do is you'll see right here, you just very simply posted Bible verse, add a caption and you're good to go. This one right here is one of my all time favorites a sell it over and download youth ministry as well.

00:10:25:18 - 00:10:47:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But it is emoji phraseology and I combine these two together because I used to make these for stories, but now I'm trying to make them for reals. So see if you can comment what this summer edition emoji phraseology is intending to say. The correct answer of courses. Sunburn. You continue on down. I have five of those. And here I have five different spiritual practice videos.

00:10:47:09 - 00:11:08:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So for example, a student scrolling and they stop across one of your reels or TikToks or YouTubes that you post and you encourage them to actually lean in to some spiritual practices that they can actually, they can actually, while they're on social media, connect with God in a real and meaningful way. And so this one is a 32nd take time to pray.

00:11:08:23 - 00:11:32:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this timer counts down that. And then lastly this is the only non video post. These are like carousel based posts like that you can post on Instagram. But the good news once again you can also post photo slides on TikTok. And you can also post that on your YouTube, post feed as well on your on your community use, because the community tab now is just called the Post Feed.

00:11:32:12 - 00:11:52:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I created these. What do you do if you feel anxious. And it's got Bible verses, along with the header of an instruction of what you can do. And I got it for five different categories about anxiety, loneliness, giving up temptation or anger. So those are the done for you. Those are turnkey okay. Here's the custom for you.

00:11:52:12 - 00:12:18:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. So in every single one of these there's an instruction. And then the instruction video tells you exactly what to do along with gives you an example along with in most cases gives you some sort of script. So in this case this is Bible trivia. You hop on your cell phone, you shoot a selfie style video under 60s, and you simply ask these questions and all you gotta do is print this out, or pull this up on your computer screen and read it directly to the camera.

00:12:18:13 - 00:12:23:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then when you're done, you can go ahead and you can, post a video and you can

00:12:23:06 - 00:12:37:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
overlay it with one of these overlays. In fact, right here on screen, if you're watching on YouTube, is an example of me editing a video that I did for our ministry in our context, using this exact same overlay, using the TikTok, video editor.

00:12:38:05 - 00:13:00:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When I was done and I posted it, TikTok now auto saved my video without a watermark, and so then I could go to Instagram and post that same video. And then I could also go over to YouTube shorts and post that exact same video. If you don't have TikTok, you can also use it in the Instagram Reels editor by using the little sticker, button and then put this in, drag it to full screen.

00:13:00:14 - 00:13:21:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the only thing you're probably gonna have to do at the end, because Instagram doesn't auto save your reels that you post, go on to Google Chrome, search it, download Instagram reel without watermark, save that, video, and then go post it wherever else you choose to post it. Perhaps TikTok or perhaps YouTube. Let me just recommend, if you do have TikTok, just start there.

00:13:21:05 - 00:13:26:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's a lot easier than some of these other platforms to start with. So that's Bible trivia. This

00:13:26:13 - 00:13:44:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
one right here is either your devotional or your recap content. So let me let me speak to what your options are here. You preach a sermon every week, so get on your cellphone again. Self-styled video lesson 60s. And just riff on one of the points of your last sermon.

00:13:44:17 - 00:14:00:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, for example, you talked about God is Love. Pull up in your camera and say, you know what? Sometimes it's hard to love people and go on and talk for 60s I know you can do it. All right. Here are three best practices with that. Number one, always add a caption. Number two

00:14:00:27 - 00:14:03:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
add some sort of title on screen.

00:14:03:13 - 00:14:04:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. And then number three

00:14:04:17 - 00:14:09:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
add music. And then a bonus. Best practice a hack is do

00:14:09:06 - 00:14:18:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
not listen to me. Do not reference your in-person gathering. Not that you shouldn't. And other people shouldn't have to know about it. But

00:14:18:15 - 00:14:25:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
don't say something like, you know, last Wednesday we talked about such, such and such. Leave that be on social media.

00:14:25:11 - 00:14:49:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
People are stumbling upon your content organically. They have no frame of reference for what you're talking about. So you can both serve your current students because they're going to remember what you just talked about, along with any potential new viewers. The other thing you do is if you're only given 60s, which is what I recommend to keep under, is that if you say under 60s saying, you know, last Wednesday night, it was great.

00:14:49:27 - 00:15:13:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We had a lot of good time. Remember that dessert auction we had? Don't forget those of you that were there. And maybe if you weren't, that we talked about love, you just wasted, like, five, eight, seven seconds of your precious 62nd real estate. Now, you don't have to just recap your videos. You can do like if you click on this little example here, this is a a clip from a long form message that that I do, which is what I recommend doing.

00:15:13:20 - 00:15:26:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you see my hybrid strategy guys also included in here, I recommend long form versions of videos posted on YouTube. But for right now, if you're just downloading this pack and you're just focusing on social media, do some

00:15:26:01 - 00:15:37:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
sort of devotional recap. If you don't have a video of your sermon, if you do, go ahead and, throw it into a service like Opus Stock Pro, which is what we use, to clip our long form down into short form.

00:15:38:03 - 00:15:59:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But again, if not just use a Devo style, video or, if you don't have like a recap or something to say, you can use some of these, scripts that I've created that you can, just follow verbatim, follow some of the instructions, and you can post those and you'll be good to go. These right here are called man on the street style interviews.

00:15:59:25 - 00:16:32:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
These are one of the lowest hanging fruit ways to, interact with your students. You basically go around, you just interview them. And this is where you get any, like, a microphone, to buy, you can get a super cheap USB Bluetooth microphone that plugs directly into your phone, but you go around, you interview students. And what I always recommend doing is interviewing 5 to 8 students, ask them these same five questions, and then you can splice that up again in something like the TikTok editor or in something like Cap Cut and I've also created this transparent overlays that you can use that you can import in.

00:16:32:29 - 00:16:50:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the question would you rather sing instead of speak, or would you have to dance everywhere? Would you rather hop like a frog or moo whenever you get nervous? These are completely included. You can put those over. You can look like a pro. Add captions from the in-app editor that does it for you completely. For free, and you're off to the races.

00:16:50:29 - 00:17:09:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the last one. Here are some of my favorite style videos. These transition invite style videos. This is the best way to invite people to what's going on at your church. And so what I've done is I've created these videos here that are the beginning of a hook. And so you see right here, this guy is skateboarding. Immediately he falls on this railing right here.

00:17:09:11 - 00:17:28:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what you would do as you would cut to a student on a railing somewhere else, sitting just like that, acting like he's a guy falling off the skateboard. And then he says, hey man, come to youth Wednesday night. We'd love to see you. And I gave you five of these that you can do, right? Including right here in the instruction video, an example with inspiration.

00:17:28:22 - 00:17:52:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I think it's inspiration from this, this bike video right here. Now, that's for three posts, you know, per week. What if you got bandwidth for more? Well, right here is your, bonus content. 100 different ideas here. 100 social challenge ideas. This is what we do in our ministry. We post two times a day, five days a week.

00:17:52:19 - 00:18:15:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the way that we accomplish that is by this is from this playlist right here, linked right here in this document. And then here all of the bonus ideas and ways that you can not only see examples, but also bonus content to be able to see, you know what what our students are up to, and different like different categories that you can use for these different challenge style videos.

00:18:15:19 - 00:18:24:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is the summer social media pack. All right. This will last you for three months. And so you download it now

00:18:24:29 - 00:18:39:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you got 50% film your own content. And again you can you can do selfie style videos in your office for these first two right here. And then you can hand these off to a volunteer on any given Wednesday or any given Sunday night.

00:18:39:22 - 00:19:12:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I just want to encourage you that it is time to stop ignoring digital and social media. It is the way of the future is where our students are again, not as Hebrews 1024 and 25 says, not forsaking and neglecting, meeting together, but we're using the medium of the day. Just like the Apostle Paul wrote and sent letters, we're using the medium of the day that we have an advantage on of many other people in church history, because they wouldn't have had this kind of access into the lives of the people that they're trying to minister to.

00:19:12:04 - 00:19:31:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's why I think hybrid ministry is so important, and that's why I think that this product is so valuable. So check it out down below, link in the description. And let me just say, I also post and host a weekly bonus podcast where I talk about everything I'm doing in hybrid ministry, everything I'm doing on social media, and everything I'm doing in my programing.

00:19:32:02 - 00:19:53:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I'm only doing it for $4 per month. If you become a Patreon, a hybrid here for $4 a month, you will get this social media pack which is valued at greater than what, three months worth it? Becoming a Patreon will be. You will get it completely for free or at least completely included in your membership. $4 a month.

00:19:53:23 - 00:20:15:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Charge it to your church budget. Call it a developing expense because it's what it is. It's a professional expense for you to become more creative, more hybrid, in your programing and on your social media. And it'll also unlock this seasonal summer, social media pack, which we're going to start releasing for every single season. And this right here is the summer version.

00:20:15:04 - 00:20:28:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I hope you guys found this episode helpful. Share it with a friend. Let somebody know that the summer season the social media pack is finally here. But until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget 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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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/147

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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 145: 10 Simple & Effective Partnering with Parent Tips that REALLY work!

Nick Clason — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In this conversation, Nick Clason (Hybrid Ministry) and Josh Boldman (Download Youth Ministry) discuss the importance of partnering with parents in youth ministry. Josh gives 10 tips from the perspective of a parent NOT working at a church. Several tips are incredibly Hybrid, and best of all, it's not going to add anymore work to your plate!

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Why Partnering with Parents?
02:52 Tip #1
4:34 Tip #2
05:22 Tip #3
06:04 Tip #4
08:55 Tip #5
10:18 Tip #6
13:02 Why does starting on time honor parents?
14:26 Tip #7
15:03 Tip #8
15:47 Tip #9
17:33 Tip #10

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00.93)
Well, so here we are. And Josh, you might be the most frequented guest now on the Hybrid Ministry podcast, which with all I would, I think I sent you one actually. So, so yeah. But today I've been asking people like, what do you feel like you're kind of like an expert on? So we're in this kind of mini series called How I, and so you said, let's talk about partnering with parents. And so.

Josh Boldman (00:06.494)
Yes Do I get a jacket like do I get a like there's like a that's true actually, you know, that's fair

Josh Boldman (00:29.991)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (00:31.124)
over all your different years of experience, what do you feel like uniquely positions you from a mindset or experience-wise or whatever about this idea of partnering with parents?

Josh Boldman (00:38.9)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, over the course of 20 years in youth ministry, I did the traditional route of before I had a kid, feeling like I knew everything more than any of the parents. Like I was way smarter than them. And then I had my own kid, and then I was able to actually have the blessing of having my own kid in my own ministry. And then recently have now,

Nick Clason (00:55.712)
yeah.

Nick Clason (01:03.937)
Mmm.

Josh Boldman (01:08.465)
like a life stage where my kid is a part of a ministry that I do not lead. And so it's like, there, that's what I should have. Okay, those are the questions that I now have that I should have been answering.

Nick Clason (01:13.358)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (01:19.904)
I do actually think that's a really, really fascinating perspective and one worth exploring. So what are a couple of principles or takeaways, especially in the lane of I'm a youth pastor veteran, I work for a youth ministry company, but as a parent, as a customer, so to speak, of this youth group, like what do you wish you were getting back from the youth ministry?

Josh Boldman (01:23.826)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Josh Boldman (01:35.303)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Boldman (01:42.291)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something that every youth minister needs to remember is that you are ministering to a family and not just to a student. Hands down, because like a student is a product, I mean, not entirely, but like they're a product of their family, right? Their parents. when you talk, you talk to a kid, half the things they say are things that they have either heard their parents say or they've

Nick Clason (01:53.965)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (02:02.028)
Yeah.

Josh Boldman (02:11.835)
or are in like rebellion against something that their parents have said, right? So like, so like the better that you know the parents, the better you are going to know the student. And whether that that kid has a awesome relationship with their parents or a terrible relationship with their parents or no relationship with their parents, whoever it is at home that takes care of them, that makes them feel safe. You are on the same team with that person, whether you know them or not.

Nick Clason (02:15.598)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (02:22.446)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (02:30.702)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Boldman (02:41.583)
And it, it, it, I will be as blunt as I can be in saying if, you're on the same team as that, of those people and you don't know them, that is dumb. Like it just don't, don't put yourself in a position of being on a team with someone you don't even know.

Nick Clason (02:50.563)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (02:56.28)
So you've worked in some larger contexts, let's say. How would you recommend someone who has a youth group of 50 students with, let's say, 50 unique family units? so probably more than 50 because siblings, whatever. How do they get to know parents? Because I would imagine the pushback from a youth pastor is like, well, I try. have a well, and we have meetings and they never come to the meetings and all this stuff like what. So.

Josh Boldman (03:00.646)
Yep.

Josh Boldman (03:08.23)
Yeah, yeah, Uh-huh.

Josh Boldman (03:17.757)
Yep, I can't know them all yet.

Josh Boldman (03:24.465)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:24.812)
We've all been there, we've all experienced it. what, as a parent now on the other side, give us some tips.

Josh Boldman (03:30.418)
Yeah, yeah, I would say one, especially if you're talking about a middle school ministry, do check in at the beginning of the night and be at the check-in station. And I know that seems so like antithetical to like, I should be hanging out with the kids. you know, yes, that's great. Go play nine square, go play gaga ball, whatever, but spend some time at check-in because especially if they're in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, their parents are going to probably walk in with them.

Nick Clason (03:42.775)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (03:51.938)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:56.471)
Right.

Josh Boldman (04:00.274)
Like, so that's a great opportunity. but even if it's not then like clock the times that, know, like, Hey, when are my best opportunities to meet this parent? And it's, it's almost always going to be a drop-off pickup. Um, we, know, sometimes we'll do like, uh, you know, depending on like the layout of your building and how close the room is to the actual parking lot. Like, um, we used to do a thing where we'd have somebody inside with a walkie talkie and somebody outside with a walkie talkie. So what a parent would pull up.

they would say, hey, I'm here to pick up Johnny. And so the person on the radio would be like, Johnny. And so then we'd call Johnny's name inside. I was like, why am I not the person outside with the walkie talkie? Like go be that person talking to the parent. you know, that, you know, and, plus one of the best things you can do in that situation is they're like, Hey, I'm here to pick up Johnny. You can be like, dude, Johnny's awesome. Like, let me tell you about Johnny. Johnny is so stinking cool. Yup. Yeah.

Nick Clason (04:30.774)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (04:40.906)
Yeah, that's so smart.

Nick Clason (04:50.902)
Yeah, and what parent doesn't want to hear that about their kid?

Josh Boldman (04:56.562)
Oh yeah, cause think of every time a parent gets called by a teacher, it's to tell them that their kid's not doing great. know, so like if you can be like the one time that you like, or I mean, if you're open enough to literally calling parents, like go call a parent and be like, Hey, I need to tell you something about Johnny. And they're like, what do you do now? They're like, he was amazing. Like, you know, and I mean, don't lie about Johnny. Like if Johnny's a little turd, like, know, you can be honest about it, but like, don't, but don't drag Johnny through.

Nick Clason (05:02.294)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (05:14.924)
Yeah, yeah. That's cool, yeah.

Yeah.

Josh Boldman (05:26.62)
You know, go out of your way to tell them how awesome it is.

Nick Clason (05:26.872)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:30.284)
Yeah, that's so good. It's like the whole idea of positive reinforcement versus negative, so much more powerful. And we can just be strategic and intentional to position ourselves to do that. Even if you're like, I'll give myself 20 minutes on the calendar a week and I'll try to call as many parents and just say something nice about their kids. And if they're quick conversations or even, bro, leave a voicemail. Maybe they don't answer, whatever. It'll still be awesome. can be like, okay, no need to

Josh Boldman (05:33.859)
Mm-hmm. Totally, totally.

Josh Boldman (05:46.779)
Yeah. yeah.

Josh Boldman (05:56.422)
Yeah!

Nick Clason (05:59.67)
No need to call back, just wanted to let you know whatever, that'd be really good.

Josh Boldman (06:01.999)
Yeah. Yeah. And especially if you know, you have a kid who is, you know, mean, gosh, I don't know what it has been about the, you know, the 20 years I spent in ministry, but it was like, it was just like every kid with an attention deficit of something, something, something like they all just showed up at our ministry. Right. It was grabbing it, which is a lot of fun. I'm just like, I'll be the first to say like, it is a party, but yes. man. Until the broken arms, but

Nick Clason (06:16.854)
Mm-hmm

Nick Clason (06:26.348)
You had fun during the games.

haha

Josh Boldman (06:30.781)
you would, but the thing was, is you would see parents drop off their kids and those parents were exhausted, right? And they were just like exasperated. Like they are saying like, Hey, please help. And also please give me a break for a minute. And so like, if you can call and like, if they, you know that they're having trouble with their kid at school and you can then brag about something awesome about that kid, like I cannot tell you how that feels. you know, just to be able to know like, cause

Nick Clason (06:36.013)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (06:44.053)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (06:49.464)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (06:56.216)
Yeah.

Josh Boldman (07:00.066)
And you know, let's call it what it is. Parents need to hear that not everybody hates their kid. Like, I mean, I know that sounds harsh, but like...

Nick Clason (07:05.15)
Mm-hmm. Well, no, you're always questioning, like, are our kids weird? are they? You're always asking that thing.

Josh Boldman (07:10.244)
Right? Yes. It's like, it's like my own kid. Like I love my kid, but I don't know how other people feel about him unless they tell me, you know? So yeah.

Nick Clason (07:17.634)
That's it, yeah, no, you're so right. Yeah, so, so far, you know, it's interesting. Like nothing you've said had anything to do with like the youth pastor's sermon or cue cards or so like, what else, man?

Josh Boldman (07:27.48)
Not even a little. yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not, yeah, it's not the, every year we do a message series where we talk about be nice to your parents. Like, no, that's not, that doesn't help. mean, can't, please do that. yeah, but some things that I have noticed, you know, in times, especially when I started in a ministry where I followed someone who left poorly.

Nick Clason (07:38.958)
Yeah, yeah, it sure can help,

Josh Boldman (07:54.064)
what I almost across the board saw was that that person, especially when it came to parents, was disorganized and did not communicate well. So like, and this may sound so minor, but like send an email every week. Like even if it is literally the same email, like it's the same template, just change two things, whatever. But that way when parents are trying to figure out what's going on, they can always look at the last email and see what it was.

Nick Clason (08:10.382)
It's not that hard.

Nick Clason (08:15.02)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (08:20.92)
Yeah.

Josh Boldman (08:21.668)
Don't expect them to open it and read it right when you send it and be like, this email was great.

Nick Clason (08:26.05)
Well, and that's what I would say with our, even the little bit of hybrid strategies, make sure your website's up to date, because how annoying is it when you have a question about what time does that event start, and you go to the website, and it's not even there. And it's like, I send it in the email. It's like, do you know how many emails I've gotten? And so I recommend a do that, do both. Just keep both things, yeah, keep both things updated.

Josh Boldman (08:30.669)
Yeah! Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yup.

Josh Boldman (08:39.76)
huh. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Boldman (08:47.184)
All of them.

Yeah, anything you can do. Yup, 100%.

Nick Clason (08:55.308)
because they may not be hanging, like you said, on your every word. like, give me your outline from your last 10 messages so that can go over them with my kid. But no, the parents, they do just want to be able to stay in the loop, and they got a lot going on, just like you do. so help them figure out where they can snag that info, for sure.

Josh Boldman (08:59.021)
Right.

Josh Boldman (09:08.898)
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm, yeah, totally. Another good one that we do, and this is literally every place that I started, this was something I instituted within the first month. And I got most pushback from volunteers, which is interesting, was we start and end on time, every week, period. And my gosh, mean, to tell you that, so I was at a place once where when I came in,

Nick Clason (09:25.441)
Yeah.

Interesting.

Nick Clason (09:32.915)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh Boldman (09:40.751)
We started youth group at seven, which really meant it was 7 15. And then youth or the small groups went and they started at like eight 30, which is too late. And that meant that they went until nine on a school night. And then the, the, the overall ministry philosophy was we don't start cleaning up until the last kid leaves because we don't want them to feel like we're like, we're pushing them out. And my thing

Nick Clason (09:44.642)
Right.

Nick Clason (09:51.35)
Yeah, on a school night. Yep.

Nick Clason (10:03.618)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (10:07.19)
Which like I get the sentiment.

Josh Boldman (10:08.846)
I totally get it. and it does, it makes so much sense. But at the end of the day, think, think this through. Like we would have students there till like 10 30 and 11 and then we would clean and I'm there with my own son. So I can't even go home with my own kid and get him to bed. And he's got to go to school the next morning. Right. And so, so now if I'm a parent and I notice a pattern that my kid keeps getting in trouble on Thursdays and

Nick Clason (10:23.806)
Mm-hmm. You're in prison. Yeah, you're locked up like.

Josh Boldman (10:38.221)
then I also piece it together that they're out late every Wednesday, I'm gonna start putting two and two together and I'm gonna start blaming somebody. And so like...

Nick Clason (10:41.762)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:46.2)
Bro, that's, I mean, we don't, we, so we homeschool our kids this year, first year. They couldn't go to like Wednesday night activities at the church, because it was too tough of a turnaround for their like first and second grade bodies. Like the alarm goes off at 6 a.m. after church on Wednesday night. was like, exactly, it was brutal. And so it's like now the nice thing is like, hey, we're homeschooled and you know what's cool? We can take our kids to church.

Josh Boldman (10:50.126)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Boldman (10:53.901)
Yeah!

Josh Boldman (10:57.645)
Yeah, dude!

so hard.

Which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And what it let us do is we said 8 45. That's when we start cleaning up whether students are there or not. And any student who's still there gets to help. And, and so one that actually taught the students that, okay, I'm going to go ahead and leave it at 30. But yeah. But, then when parents would show up and they'd see their kid helping, like even that was like, my gosh, this

Nick Clason (11:18.296)
Mm-hmm.

gets to help.

Nick Clason (11:26.734)
Or the good ones will, you know, how can it help?

Nick Clason (11:34.999)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Boldman (11:37.858)
what are you doing here and how is this magic and how can I do this at home? And so suddenly that just creates so many more opportunities for conversations with parents and for us to say, we're doing this and we're keeping a tight schedule so that you know what to expect and what your kid knows what to expect at school the next day.

Nick Clason (11:54.946)
Yeah, so good. When you say start, how would you see it being helpful? Maybe I understand the ending, the beginning. How is it helpful starting on time as opposed to like a delayed 15 minutes? I feel like that's a staple in youth ministry.

Josh Boldman (12:02.541)
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So like same thing. Like I know it's a hard turnaround. Like if you your kid gets home from school, you get home from work, you're trying to get dinner, all that. You rush, rush, rush, rush, and you rush to get them there at seven. And then you just see everybody just sitting around and you're like, why did I rush so hard to get here? And yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (12:27.906)
So it's like an honoring of the effort that it took to, yeah. So like you actually, yeah, it's good, it's good, I like it.

Josh Boldman (12:35.118)
You know, mean, it's never perfect, right? know, mean, you stuff's always gonna go sideways, but like, if you, if you can give them what to expect, then when it does go a little long or, you know, things don't quite work out the way that then it's like, it's not their, their internal monologue is like, again, you know, it's just like, oh, okay, yeah, get it. happens, you know, yeah.

Nick Clason (12:43.949)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (12:54.678)
Hmm It happened yeah, you have the kind of credibility of like we always end on time Sorry tonight went five minutes late and that's I mean I'm with you like if you're gonna go like late like five minutes is your Absolute max like that's my that's my absolute max. I'm like and I'm sweating bullets in the back like Band we don't need you to play that interlude again. Just pray. Let's go get him out of here. Yeah

Josh Boldman (13:04.119)
Yep. Yep.

Josh Boldman (13:11.958)
Totally. yeah.

Josh Boldman (13:20.652)
Right, please actually don't. Please don't. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:24.24)
alright, anything else?

Josh Boldman (13:26.413)
I would say, so something we did was we started a text chain where we would send parents discussion questions during the lesson. So that if they were picking their kid up later, they'd be like, instead of saying, how was youth group? They could be like, hey, I heard you were talking about Joshua chapter two. would you have? Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:35.456)
I like it.

Nick Clason (13:41.654)
Yeah, it's good. And it goes right to them. Being on the phone, that, as opposed to a cue card, you know, we posted on a Facebook group and I still don't even think that's the most effective place for it. And even, yeah, exactly, that's really good. That's good.

Josh Boldman (13:54.529)
Right, mm-hmm, yeah. And it lets them opt in. Man, mm-hmm. Two other kind of small things that we used to do is we created an observation deck where it was like a row where parents could come and sit and watch. But it was where, and we always had a volunteer assigned to them, so it was like, you know, we always said, if you're gonna be around kids, you gotta be background checked, yada, yada, and all that. like, but, but.

Nick Clason (14:11.186)
that's cool.

Nick Clason (14:20.63)
Yeah, all the things,

Josh Boldman (14:22.461)
If you're a parent, you're just like genuinely curious about what happens here. You don't have to go through that whole process, but we're going to stick a volunteer with you that has, and they're going to be with you the entire time. and, that at least let, let parents know that, this is not a secret. What we do here. We're not, you know, trying to like turn your kids against you or anything like that. yeah. And then, last bit of advice I would give is just when you are talking to parents,

Nick Clason (14:32.012)
Yeah, come hang out.

Nick Clason (14:36.622)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (14:41.836)
Yeah, that's just like a full transparency moment. So that's cool.

Josh Boldman (14:51.38)
Remember that they are adults and not students. And it's hard to turn that, know, you'd switch that, you know, flip that switch or whatever. Cause you can be really quick going from talking to a bunch of kids to then talking to parents and that same, that same demeanor, that same way, you know, you're addressing, like there's a, the parent that brought the kid and the parent that wants to take that kid home needs, needs respect. And you know, that

and it needs respect shown in a way that's different than the way you show respect to a student. So I say, just remember that, remember you're on the same team. It's not you versus them, it's you and them trying to help the kid.

Nick Clason (15:24.995)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:30.732)
Yeah. And I think the, as I listened to every single thing you said, right? I think the encouraging part is nothing really added anything to your workload. You're not creating some crazy parent seminar. You're not adding some big once a year conference. Like you are subtly shifting your positioning at the beginning and end of service. You're subtly shifting your mindset and your organization and

Josh Boldman (15:45.833)
Right, no.

Nick Clason (16:00.214)
you're adding maybe a text thread, right? Which like, it'll take you less than 10 minutes for your entire series to type out two questions per message. You know, like.

Josh Boldman (16:02.9)
Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh Boldman (16:10.503)
yeah, well, and what we do, we use questions that were small group questions anyway. Yeah, sure.

Nick Clason (16:15.596)
Yeah, yeah, and you can copy and paste or reframe slightly and you're right there. So that's so good. Josh, anything else that the people need to know about partnering with parents or anything else they need to know in general?

Josh Boldman (16:20.393)
Yeah, uh-huh, Yep. Totally.

It, I will say this, okay, and because this is the mistake I made and I think a mistake so many people make, if you don't have kids, do not assume that you know better than the parent. Assume that you are, you can help the parent, assume that you are, you are still a resource and you know, you know students. But just parenting is hard, dude. Like it's so hard. And by, you don't know what, what that parent,

Nick Clason (16:40.194)
Mm, that's good.

Nick Clason (16:53.32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh Boldman (16:58.333)
is walking in with or what they're walking out with. You might think that that kid is just the golden child, but that might not be what is happening at home. Just don't assume. So go into any conversation with parents, I think, with a posture of learning and a posture of, want to support you, I think is good. Yeah.

Nick Clason (17:09.228)
Mm. Yeah.

Nick Clason (17:16.248)
Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, all Josh social media, all his stuff's linked down below. Go check him out. But for Josh, this is Nick. Thanks for being here, guys. We'll talk to you next time.

Josh Boldman (17:29.042)
Later. Bye.

Episode 144: How I Recruit Awesome Youth Volunteers that Stick

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

In this episode, Nick sits down with one of his best friends, and also, boss, and they discuss volunteer, not only recruiting, but also how to create such a strong volunteer team that volunteers would never choose to leave your team. Be sure to stick around for the surprising strategy that actually keeps volunteers on the team longer!

📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
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✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/144

LINKS
EVERYONE’S CALLED TO YOUTH MINISTRY, THEY JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET
https://www.leadertreks.org/product/everyones-called-to-youth-ministry/?srsltid=AfmBOopjL0EcxJ7aqwuXWiyd0z77tkUIsMPqfIA4dgVOHCPIIdNg32GE

//CONNECT WITH DARREN
https://www.facebook.com/darrensutton.mi
https://www.instagram.com/veteranyp/

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Meet My Boss & Friend, Darren Sutton
01:02 35 Years in 35 Seconds
04:10 Shocking Bar Raising Leader Strategy
05:33 What if Leaders Don’t Respond?
07:56 Start Recruiting Leaders from Scratch
19:33 How do you keep good leaders?
21:57 Conducting Leader Debriefs
25:45 A Complete List of Roles
31:20 Final Encouragement

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:01.036)
We've recorded so many podcasts together. I don't even know how I feel like we're supposed to Well, everyone here we are. I am with my boss, Darren Sutton, who has his youth ministry till I die shirt on, which I was wearing yesterday. So I'm glad that we coordinated this. But I wanted to get on here and I've been working for Darren now for five years, two different places.

Darren Sutton (00:04.982)
Welcome back.

Darren Sutton (00:20.691)
Thank you.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:29.72)
And aside from having written a book, I would also say practically speaking, Darren has a lot to say about volunteers. But Darren, first, tell us a brief overview. Distill your 35-year youth ministry journey down to 35 seconds. But why in that did volunteers become such a thing for you?

Darren Sutton (00:53.484)
Yeah, I don't know if I can say that in 35 seconds, but I will say this. I was pretty much the Lone Ranger youth pastor who would just grab chaperones when I was absolutely desperate for adults to be in the room or whatever. I would have adults lead Bible study classes and go to summer camp with me and the stuff where you know you can't do everything, so you have them there. But I didn't realize the...

extent of needing people to carry the mission forward and to lean into their own calling until I was about maybe 10 years in and we were having our yeah we were having our third baby and my lead volunteer was like I can't do this and you need you need more people you're not doing this right so my wife basically was like listen you're you are

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:32.354)
Did something happen?

Darren Sutton (01:48.29)
fantastic and you have lots of adult leaders, but you're not equipping them for ministry. You're just having them hold down the pieces that you can't hold down and they have more to offer than that. And you're not, you're not giving them, you know, the runway to do that. And that changed everything. It totally transformed my whole philosophy about why we use volunteers and how we keep them and why that matters.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:57.676)
Mmm. Mmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:03.98)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:16.982)
Okay, so yeah, so like I would imagine that, you know, average youth pastor listening is like, you know, they have that mentality, right? The volunteers are a necessary like evil, I don't wanna say, you know, but like they just, know they have to have them. There you go. They're a necessary component, but maybe like, maybe they don't even know what to do with them.

Darren Sutton (02:36.088)
Component. Let's go with component. They're necessary component.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:46.028)
You know what mean? like that, would imagine maybe some of that was your story too. Like maybe control a little bit, but also like, what do I even do with these guys? So yeah, so how did you, before we dive into kind of the recruiting conversation, how did you mentally release yourself and be able to trust that you could actually hand off like meaningful things to said volunteer?

Darren Sutton (02:53.294)
You worked for me, you know part of it was control.

Darren Sutton (03:13.89)
Yeah, great question. This, I mean, you know, this is gonna sound like a no brainer, but 25 years ago it wasn't. I started writing job descriptions and I just sat down and said, okay, if I was handing off deeper parts of this, or if the people who were already serving were gonna own it the way I wanted them to.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:23.96)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:35.0)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (03:37.58)
What did I want that to look like? Like, what did I want them to do? Part of the struggle is that I wasn't recruiting them to anything other than filling the spot and hanging out with kids. And so if I wanted them to be at football games and, you know, choir performances, and if I wanted them to be writing cards to kids who weren't there, and if I wanted them to be reaching out to parents on the regular and all that, I needed to spell that out, and I hadn't done that. And so I was doing all that part, and they were just showing up.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:46.978)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:01.261)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:05.622)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (04:05.866)
And as soon as I kind of raised the bar and said, here's what I really need you to be doing in this role. If you love Jesus and love students and you want to make an eternal impact, it looks like this. It changed everything. So job descriptions were my number one thing. And again, that sounds a little bit like a no brainer now, I think for a lot of people, but we weren't doing that back then.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:25.962)
Yeah. So and then they did they did race to the challenge, right? Were you nervous that they wouldn't or couldn't or didn't have the time to or was there any of that?

Darren Sutton (04:31.902)
yeah. Yeah.

Darren Sutton (04:37.71)
You know, I don't remember being nervous about it as much as I was just, was at a point in my ministry and in my family life where I was like, they have to do this. You know, so it never dawned on me, I think, and also young and arrogant. Like it never dawned on me that anybody would say, I don't want to do that. And to their credit, nobody did. Like everybody rose to the challenge. And I really think that

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:56.802)
Sure.

Darren Sutton (05:07.32)
we sell the body of Christ, not volunteers, they're the body. We sell the body short when we assume that they won't invest more. Give them a chance to show you that, right? And if they do, then you know, like they might be better suited for a different role in your ministry, but this role with the job description as it's written, they're just not good for that. And it also gives you a great entry point for a conversation when you do need a leader to level up.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:18.348)
Hmm. Yeah, that's good.

Darren Sutton (05:37.078)
to say like, listen, here's what we signed on for. Help me understand what's a struggle for you in this. Because it seems like these components aren't happening. And I'm just wondering, is that because you're unsure of what to do? Is that because you don't want to do that? You've had bad success with it? Like, help, teach me. Teach me what this, you know, where the holes are here.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:41.944)
Hmm

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:56.672)
Mm, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:00.844)
But then you have, like you said, have teeth, right, a little bit to go back if volunteer's not performing and there's nothing more awkward than trying to fire someone who's not getting paid. So.

Darren Sutton (06:04.152)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (06:10.798)
I'm sure. Helping them find their fit in the body of Christ.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:17.46)
Yep. So, okay, so aside from, you know, someone just buying your book, which is linked down below in the description, obviously.

Darren Sutton (06:25.514)
hey, thanks. I don't even know if I have a link to my book. Yeah, probably. Maybe the three people who bought it are done with it.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:27.956)
Yeah, well, we'll scrounge it up. It's on eBay or something. What? So if you're if someone's just, know, regular old youth pastor and they're like, just like, OK, I hear you. Yeah, I'm doing too much. I'm spinning my wheels. Job description, maybe step one. Step two. Let's talk recruiting like because you.

you may not even have any leaders to write a job description for. So help someone start. Just rattle off the best recruiting strategies, methods, ideas, and I'll take notes for our own ministry as we're trying to also recruit some people.

Darren Sutton (07:00.908)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (07:08.172)
Yeah.

because there are always holes. Well, where I started was I'm not a big fan of cattle calls from the pulpit or anything like that. Yeah, that's a struggle. Yeah, or you don't get anybody because nobody listens during announcements.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:21.686)
Yeah, the youth need volunteers. You're gonna get weirdos.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:29.047)
Yeah.

Well, it's a plural you, right? So it's like, you all interested? And so the individual you assumes one of the other ones is gonna take it and they're off the hook.

Darren Sutton (07:36.118)
Yes, exactly. So let me tell you guys, so here's what I did, Nick. Like I, you're right. The individual ask is everything. And I don't mean a fly by, you know, I don't mean a fly by conversation in the hallway on your way to the bathroom. I mean a sit down, real talk. but it takes a minute to get to that, right? Especially if you don't know everybody in our current context, the student ministry is literally a

across a creek from the rest of the building and so.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (08:07.372)
Yeah. It's one of the most distant locations I've ever served and I would imagine the same for you. So us being a part of the rest of the life of the church, we have to be incredibly intentional to overcome that for sure.

Darren Sutton (08:16.588)
Yeah, for sure.

Darren Sutton (08:22.27)
Exactly. And that's true everywhere, especially if your facility or the space that you occupy is siloed from the rest of the church.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (08:31.372)
Yeah, because it's great to have the youth space, but that their inherent challenge of that is you're in the youth space and not, yeah.

Darren Sutton (08:37.132)
Yeah, it's a youth space. Yeah, it's a youth space. So if you're not a youth, you're not in it. So, yeah, the first thing I did was I went to my senior pastor and said, our students need more visibility. And, you know, in in that church, like where this whole philosophy of how I handle volunteers was born, my space was was attached, but it was up and to the back on a second floor in the far corner of the property. Right.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (08:50.253)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:06.06)
Yeah, so was separated.

Darren Sutton (09:07.362)
Yeah, exactly. Like you would see kids coming down from the upstairs and be like, my gosh, I'm glad I'm not serving up there. And that was it. So we started using students to take the offering, serve communion, do greeting. And I just, you know, kind of poached a dozen of my highest capacity students and said, let's help the church understand why youth ministry matters.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:13.334)
Right? Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:31.405)
Mm.

Darren Sutton (09:31.854)
And that didn't require them to be on the platform. We did have some on the platform. We had some students doing worship. We would occasionally do a youth night or youth day at church where students would speak and, or I would speak and all of that. starting there was actually the most critical, I think, the most critical component because people started seeing teenagers.

And it's a little bit like, you know, trying to acclimate people to wild animals. Like you got to get them a little bit close while they're in a cage and then you stick a little, you stick your hand in the cage and then you're in the cage, you know? And so that was the start of it. Also helping my senior pastor catch the vision that student ministry is not babysitting.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:07.682)
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:18.04)
Yeah, how do, can you talk about that for just a quick second? how do, I would imagine, you someone might be listening and they're like, oh yeah, I love that, but I'm either A, getting or I'm anticipating that I would get pushback. How do you lead up in that?

Darren Sutton (10:32.994)
Well, if you're anticipating, stop doing that. Like give them a chance to say, you're a babysitter. But also I think storytelling is the most critical component. We had this kid come in, let me tell you this story about this student who shared their faith at school and not necessarily about what student ministry is doing in the building, but what student ministry is doing outside of the building.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:35.992)
That's good, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:41.105)
Heh.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:51.405)
Hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:59.608)
That's good.

Darren Sutton (11:00.908)
you know, was super helpful. It also helped that I had a very open senior pastor. You know what? I didn't turn my phone off.

Sorry, Nick. You probably couldn't hear that, but I could. Okay, sorry. Are you editing this? I'm assuming you edit. All right, I'm gonna go back then. It didn't hurt that I had just a really open senior pastor. I think he hired me with the babysitting mindset, but it didn't take him long to see that student mystery could be way more than that. So I was fortunate in that way.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:11.224)
That's good.

No, I heard it. It was great. It was a great sound.

I mean, I will, yeah. Yeah, okay.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:34.548)
Mm. Yeah, that's good.

Darren Sutton (11:36.3)
So once we had students kind of operating around the building, it made it way easier for me to go up to randos and say, hey, so and so told me you'd be great. Or I'm gonna out myself with some really shallow things. I'm just gonna say. So if we were in worship and I saw folks who I felt like were truly connecting with worship.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:52.856)
lol

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:04.663)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (12:05.132)
That mattered to me, not because we had a worship ministry, but because I felt like those people were intentionally trying to connect with the heart of God when we were doing, you know, church. And so I just started introducing myself and doing a slow kind of a slow ask. Some might call it chess, where I would, I know you would, you know, where I would just go introduce myself. I'm a student pastor. Hey, just, you know,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:07.703)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:12.354)
Hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:24.472)
I would call it chest.

Darren Sutton (12:32.429)
appreciated your investment in church today or whatever. And then a of weeks later, I asked them how they were doing. Like I would start trying to build a relationship knowing that my end game, which didn't always work out, but my end game was to get them involved in students. The Lord might've had a different end game and sometimes he did, but I did that. I made sure that this was easier.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:57.282)
So this is everyone's permission to keep your eyes open during worship.

Darren Sutton (13:01.228)
Yeah, 100 % 100%. And you know, not to say that hands raised means anything because it doesn't, but I looked at people and went, look, their hands up. They're volunteering. Another thing that was again, a little easier in the context I was in, I got involved in a in a connect group and a life group Sunday school class, whatever your know, whatever your church calls it. And while

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:07.884)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:11.584)
you

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:22.614)
Yeah, A D group.

I wanted to keep rattling them off but my brain went completely dead.

Darren Sutton (13:31.534)
While that didn't, I wasn't necessarily pulling people from that group. That group of all kind of young parents, it was early in our ministry, like they were the movers and shakers in our church. And so they were talking up the student ministry. I was able to talk it up in my small group. And then the last thing I did was done a little bit because I...

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:47.949)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (13:59.936)
you know, because I just felt stubborn about it. We had a set of senior adults in our church who were fantastic. I mean, you know, they did everything. They did all the serving. We had a Wednesday night meal. This is a long time ago. We a Wednesday night meal and they cooked the meal and they ran the kitchen and they just did everything. And I intentionally started developing relationships with those ladies.

and started trying to get them involved in doing some things. And I have always kind of felt like senior adults make some really great student ministers. And so I was intentionally going after them and there was a lady, her name was Belle. Belle was a little bit of your typical cranky church lady. And I said something about, you know, being involved in student ministry or whatever. And she was like, I'll never work with students. And I just went.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:35.028)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Darren Sutton (14:55.148)
before I die, you will, whatever it takes. And so a little bit, I would target people, I think that way. don't, target's probably not the right word, but I would just, I would set my sight on somebody that I really wanted and I just kind of wouldn't let it go. Didn't harass. Sometimes that took a long time. It took me maybe like three-ish or four years before I finally got Bell to start something in students. And by the time we were,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:04.152)
lol

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:09.089)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:22.861)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (15:24.84)
She was all in like she was hosting D nows at her house and you know all kinds of stuff. So I just think that it is not being afraid to ask, making sure that your students are visible so that people know that teenagers don't bite. They're not scary and then not counting anybody out. I mean from from 21 we are our age range started at 21. We wanted to give kids some separation from student ministry, but from 21 to death.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:28.258)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:36.482)
Mm-hmm.

Darren Sutton (15:54.208)
It didn't matter who you were, parent, not a parent, old lady, college student. Like we would go after everybody and did. just never, I never met a person that I didn't think was called. And you know, my dad, yeah, I think there was a book title and a full philosophy. And I just wouldn't, I mean, I took no for an answer. I didn't try to get people to serve who didn't really didn't want to.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:54.242)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:02.476)
Yeah, that's good.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:08.29)
Some might say there's a book title in that.

Darren Sutton (16:23.148)
but I wouldn't take no as the first answer. So Belle said no and I was like, well, will you make sandwiches for Wednesday night? We didn't need sandwiches for Wednesday night. We already have Wednesday night supper, but she did it. You know what I'm saying? She started there. And then I would get some of those key students and say, hey, you guys make sure and thank Ms. Belle for these sandwiches. so, you know.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:33.431)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:43.032)
Well, and I think there's a, probably a principle in there of like, if you only ever like recruit to the need, then when the need is great, then your anxiety is high because you have like a lot of, a lot of need and a lot of holes to fill. But if you're always have your eye on this sort of like recruiting or onboarding mindset, even if you are onboarding them and there's nowhere to put them, like it's better.

Darren Sutton (17:10.733)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:12.044)
to have an overabundance, a wealth of riches, than to just be like, well, I'm fully staffed, quote unquote, right now. But in a few months you might not be, and then again, you're like, man, I'm failing again. So I think the good principle is for anyone in youth ministry who feels like they're struggling with volunteers, just start asking people and keep asking them.

Darren Sutton (17:14.091)
percent.

Darren Sutton (17:35.852)
never, it didn't matter how full I was, I never told somebody no. And in that church specifically, and in several of my churches, like I would have every spot full and I would be creating roles because I just wanted to make sure that people who wanted to be involved in the next generation could be.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:40.087)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:47.928)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:54.7)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (17:54.894)
And I tried really hard to not enlist them to a position, but to enlist them to a vision, to a purpose and what their life could mean, even if all they were doing is making sandwiches. And sometimes that's what it was, right? I don't have a spot for this person, but hey, could you go shopping for me on Tuesday? I would find things for them to do so I didn't have to tell them no. Because you might be fully staffed today and tomorrow, you know,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:02.102)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:10.828)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:20.342)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (18:24.848)
your leader has a parent who has to move in with them and their whole life changes and they need to step out. So I never counted on being fully staffed. And when I was fully staffed, I felt like I was always kind of back filling with the people who were the next to step in.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:41.58)
Yeah. So that's a flex, being fully staffed or being so staffed that you have volunteers that you're just like making stuff up. So that leads to like, in my opinion, the next sort of like big bucket of this conversation is like, how do you, how do you keep good leaders so that they don't dip out on you?

Darren Sutton (18:51.255)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (19:03.405)
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. You know, I think this just happened because a little bit it's my personality bit. I wasn't being intentional about this. I just felt like, you know, as I knew that volunteers were important and that part of my job was shepherding them and it wasn't just about hanging out with the kids and you know, all of that. So I was very...

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (19:15.512)
You

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (19:26.306)
Right.

Darren Sutton (19:32.066)
what's the right word? Pastoral is the only word I can think of. I knew my job was to shepherd them. It wasn't just to enlist them and get them sitting in front of teenagers, it was to help them along. So, you know, I...

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (19:39.159)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (19:48.148)
I'm pretty good at sending notes of appreciation and not generic notes. Hey, I saw you talking to this kid. Hey, I heard a parent say this about you. Hey, you know, so that they would know that what they were doing was being seen. And I think that's a piece of it. know, gift cards go a long way, even if it's five bucks to Starbucks, because we all know five bucks isn't going to buy anything at Starbucks. But it's not that it's not that it is.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:01.826)
yeah

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:15.625)
Mm-hmm.

Darren Sutton (20:15.936)
it is noticing them that matters, right? I was a little bit of a bulldog, absolutely insistent on leader training. Not necessarily to make them better, but to make them better, but more to build community among our leaders so that they didn't want to leave.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:24.971)
Hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:33.048)
Mm.

Darren Sutton (20:36.91)
Often volunteers who serve in students sacrifice a community group of some sort in order to serve so they don't have that. And a lot of times when they don't have that or they don't sense the feel of community, they'll dip so they can go be in their own Sunday school class or, you know, life group or whatever it is. And so I even though we weren't that we weren't doing Bible studies together every week, I wanted them to feel like, man, if something happens, my student

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:43.052)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:55.607)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (21:07.044)
team has my back and so and you know this because you work with me I'm pretty intentional still to this day about making sure that those leader training times are as much about building community and connection as they are about becoming a better you know volunteer.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:08.152)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:19.544)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:23.041)
Yeah, for sure.

Darren Sutton (21:24.416)
And then I'm a big fan of not recruiting people until death. So we actually recruit to a cycle. So we're gonna ask you to step in here and we're gonna ask you to go until this point. And then if you wanna step out, we'll embrace you and be sad when you go, most of you. You you occasionally have that one leader where that ending date really helps you.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:37.536)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:43.606)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (21:49.966)
what you said earlier, like kind of helps you fire somebody. Like, hey, it's coming to the end of your term, thanks so much. Like, here's a Sunday school class for you to go to, you know, whatever. But largely, it was an opportunity for me to be more mindful and intentional about recruiting division. So if they didn't hear it any other time, once a year in the kind of re-recruiting phase,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:53.431)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:56.856)
Yeah

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:07.233)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:16.823)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (22:17.33)
They were going to be reminded of what they were doing. It was an opportunity for me to say, tell me, tell me what to struggle. What? How can I help you? Do you still love this role? Is there another role that you've seen other people performing in that you would like to try out? Would you so they don't feel like, hey man, if I say yes to leading this, you know, home group, I'm going to be leading it until I die. Yeah, exactly. You know.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:26.295)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:31.894)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:38.018)
I'm stuck for life, yeah.

But I think that might give some youth pastors listening hives, because they're already feeling strapped with leaders, and then they get good ones and they're like, wait, you give them an end date? And the irony in that is that doing that, again, I won't put words in your mouth, but doing that helps them feel like seen and appreciated and that you value them. so rather than them leaving at the end of the term,

Darren Sutton (22:55.148)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:11.562)
they like immediately re-up and come back.

Darren Sutton (23:13.612)
Yeah, yeah. And the truth is when you're when you have equipped them well, they know what their mission is. They feel supported by their community. They don't want to leave. We we in all kinds of different ways for the last 25 years, I've tried to give my volunteers breaks, whether that was a bucket of time like, hey, everybody's off in the summer and we'll take care of it. Or, know, what we currently do is

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:32.311)
Mm.

Darren Sutton (23:40.672)
a day off about every six-ish weeks where we just say to our volunteers, don't come, the student ministry's got it, students got it, you know, whatever. Giving them those moments basically to come up for air helps them stay in the water a lot longer. So yeah, we do give an end date, but I have only had a few people take advantage of that. And when they have, it's never been because they didn't want to do student ministry anymore.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:44.343)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:54.413)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:09.89)
Right.

Darren Sutton (24:10.228)
It's always been because my life circumstances have changed and I need a break. And, you know, the other piece of that that is helpful is when life circumstances do change, most of them won't dip until they get to that end date. And so even though their trauma, you know, whatever it was, their job change, their, you know, sickness, their parents or kids or whatever happened in November.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:15.074)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:34.367)
Mm. Yeah.

Darren Sutton (24:39.63)
They know they committed until June 1st and they're going to say occasionally, occasionally, you know, to be a good pastor, you're going to say, listen, I know your life is upside down right now. Uh, just go ahead and step out. Like let's take a break. And then you're going to bring in, you know, somebody who's on the bench, who's been begging to be involved, who you've got in a, you know, maybe a less influential position, but who's ready to step up. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:41.666)
and they'll still ride it out. Yeah, that's good.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:49.409)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:52.78)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (25:03.35)
Yeah, so real quick before we leave, let's just make a big list of volunteer roles that are a little bit, because I think, again, Average Joe, Normal Youth Pastor, Normal Youth Ministry in America, every volunteer that they have is to lead discussion, small group, school, whatever you want to call it with students.

Darren Sutton (25:29.134)
Yeah, for sure.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (25:31.064)
But there's a million other things and some people don't want to do that. Like we have a guy on our team right now who's awesome. He's like, I don't want to lead a Bible study, but he loves teenagers. He's like fun at heart. You know, like he's, he's the type of guy you'd want on your team, but he, he felt disqualified because he's like, I'm not equipped for that slash don't want to do it. And so like, to your point, there's a million things you can do. can make sandwiches. So what are some over the years, you're 35.

Darren Sutton (25:53.112)
Right.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:00.28)
plus years of experience. What are some of the different roles that you've had created, invented? Like give us some of the funniest best ones you got.

Darren Sutton (26:09.102)
Oh, I don't know. I have some that you couldn't do anymore. You know, I mean, I love that the, you're just going to show up at their like, you don't, you don't have to lead a Bible study, but I want you to show up at every single basketball game this kid has, you know, as just kind of a, you know, a big brother figure. You know, we had a lot of over the years had different

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:12.024)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Share those two from the the crypt.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:29.464)
Mm.

Darren Sutton (26:39.53)
spots had a lot of rec space. and so, you know, listen, I don't want you to do anything except play basketball. That's all you have to do. Play basketball and talk to students. you know, we also had the proverbial like set up chairs and, you know, come in and create, you know, new student, new student guest kits and, know, that kind of stuff. Probably the funniest one that we had was, in one church that I was in.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:41.816)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:48.534)
I love that job.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:00.684)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darren Sutton (27:09.224)
our student center was a kind of refabbed pavilion on the back of an acre and a half plot. So the church was at the front right and the student ministry area was at the back left and no lights, barely electricity. We threw up fake walls. We had window units kind of shoved in the corner and you know, as janky as it could be.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:16.578)
Okay.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:23.755)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (27:38.478)
and so every week we would have fire ants that were building in the building, right? Like building these nests in the building. So we had our, our guy who would come in and kill the fire ants every week, and sweep it all out. That was his only job. Like he didn't want to hang out with students and all that, but he felt like that was a contribution he can make. had people in that same church, like one of the ways that we

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:53.046)
You

Darren Sutton (28:05.814)
kind of lighted the path in the middle of the night to that back area where with tiki torches. And so we had folks who would come in and, you know, light the tiki torches and sweep the pathway off and, you know, that kind of thing. So those were kind of unique. We had for a time, folks who would be, you know, kind of the bus run, except in their vehicles, we, don't do that anymore. Just generally for ministry safe purposes, but

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (28:10.359)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (28:28.941)
Right.

Darren Sutton (28:31.822)
Their only job was to pick kids up and drive them back and forth to church. They didn't stay in the youth ministry. didn't, but we gave them like in that job description, here are some questions you can be asking when kids get in your car to get the conversation going and you know, make sure you meet the parents and you know, things like that to help them be a little bit more invested in real life with kids. Had some volunteers whose main job was to reach out to parents.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (28:37.016)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (28:59.886)
and make sure that, you know, hey, we know parenting teenagers is tough. Is there anything the student ministry can do for you? That was their only job to just keep a list of parents would love this. Parents would need that. And they pass that over to me and I'd figure out what we could do and you know, what was a really stupid idea we had to throw away. So some stuff like that. Once, you know, this one is selfish, but was important.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:07.672)
Hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:18.136)
Yeah, nice. keep going.

Darren Sutton (29:27.694)
uh, more important than I realized, I think at the time, uh, I enlisted somebody to pay attention to my kids. Uh, your job is and not just mine, but in that, in that church, just mine. But if we were in our context, we're having multiple staff members, it would be staff kids. Uh, but I, I was like, you know, my kids sacrifice a lot for me to be in student ministry and they were not teenagers yet. They were, you know, I don't know, 11, nine and seven, they were young. I just said, can you

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:35.063)
Uh-huh.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:42.646)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:53.708)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darren Sutton (29:56.792)
Can you just notice my kids? Like they're here a lot. They sacrifice a lot for ministry. Their dad's a pastor and so I'm sure that they're they need adults who are not their pastor. You know as well and your your jobs to just notice my kids and they crushed that like our kids to this day feel like those people are their grandparents even more than their actual grandparents. So that's another one.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:02.263)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:10.028)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:21.4)
It's cool.

Yeah, that's cool.

Darren Sutton (30:25.21)
You can come up with everything. Host homes and sandwich makers and so many ways to get people close enough to see what Jesus is doing without them having to lead a Bible study ever.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:27.832)
.

Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:37.335)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:43.512)
Yeah, that's good. So, okay, last thing. Talk to the youth pastor who's struggling, floundering, drowning. Find a word of encouragement about the importance of leaders and maybe just a basic for them next step. Hey, if you're gonna do anything, first thing to do is just do this. Don't feel overwhelmed by all of this. Maybe you don't have the...

Capacity to get a fire ant guy yet. Okay, that's fine But speak speak to that speak to the guy who's just like man. don't leaders are killing like it's just the hardest, you know part of my job, whatever like Encourage them for a second

Darren Sutton (31:22.712)
Yeah. Well, let me just say first, it's not your job. That's not your job. That's the job of the Holy Spirit. And he's very clear in scripture that we all have a part to play.

and that our job as pastors is to equip the saints for the work of service. Our job is not to make sure we have plenty of volunteers, not to make sure every hole gets filled. Our job is just to equip the people that the Holy Spirit brings. We can be more proactive in bringing them, but the Holy Spirit is the one who quickens their heart to be involved. So that's not your job. Your job isn't to convince them. Your job is to shepherd them and to give them an opportunity to step into what God is calling them to do.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (31:39.352)
Mm-hmm.

Darren Sutton (32:04.718)
Don't take the whole burden on yourself. And I mean that in two ways. It's the Holy Spirit's job and also you have some people, you definitely have some people who care about student ministry who will help recruit for you. You utilize that, whether that's other staff members, folks that are currently on your volunteer team, a parent who just happens to take a particular interest in what's going on in student ministry.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:20.792)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:31.224)
Teenagers.

Darren Sutton (32:32.364)
Yeah, for sure. 100 % ask a kid who they think would make a great youth leader. They'll have a list guaranteed. So.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:34.519)
you

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:38.742)
Yeah, yeah. I had a teenager one time go and list the head usher on his own. Yeah, I was like, well, I'll talk to him too. But it was great.

Darren Sutton (32:44.891)
Poach them from other ministries? I love it.

That's fantastic. But just don't feel the burden that it's all on you and don't feel the burden that it all has to happen right now. For me, it was a slow, kind of a slow burn into that whole idea that volunteers could be more and I needed to ask them to do more and be more. That took time. And it's not a foolproof, like,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (33:16.502)
Yeah.

Darren Sutton (33:21.322)
I mean, we serving in church right now and across from this podcast, there's a big sheet on my door that lists every volunteer hole we have right now. And we have a lot. There's probably 20 people on there that we need to fill. So, you know, you're always going to have the need. You can't let the holes be what drives you. You've got to let the people who are in the room, you know, a little bit.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (33:31.384)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darren Sutton (33:47.384)
be what drives you. So, and it's totally doable because Jesus wants those kids even more than you do. And he's gonna raise up the people that are needed to help get them where he needs them to be.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (33:48.984)
That's good.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:01.304)
Nice, that's good. All right, anything else? Did we get it all?

Darren Sutton (34:05.312)
Yeah, think we, I mean, I'm sure we didn't get it all, but we got, you got all I got.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:08.28)
Well, that's a lot it's helpful so where do people find you Darren?

Darren Sutton (34:18.03)
listen, I'm everywhere. I'm, I'm almost like the Holy Spirit everywhere you are. am, I'm on all, I'm on all social stuff. if you're, yes. Well, actually I can't, you can't say that anymore. I deleted my account after it banned.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:22.039)
Woo!

That's scary.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:29.738)
including band TikTok. If you'd like to send...

It's back, it's back now.

Darren Sutton (34:38.464)
I know I'm trying to decide like, listen, I had so this whole podcast, I had so much time open up in my life that I'm like, maybe I don't want to, I'm not sure if I want to, if I want to take it back. But yeah, I mean, you know, Insta and Facebook and Twitter and you know, all that, I have a blog. everyone's called the youth ministry.com and, I'm not, you know, I have, I'm just like you. I'm an in the trenches youth pastor. So if you're looking for a regular, like,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:42.712)
You

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:56.856)
Nice. We'll link it down below.

Darren Sutton (35:08.184)
podcast and a blog post. I don't do that. But I've been in this thing for a few minutes and I'm not planning on going anywhere. And so I love talking to you pastors. And if you ever need a guy who has made as many mistakes as you feel like you're making, you can reach out. Cause I got a whole list. Lots of stories. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (35:24.856)
You

There you go. That's big right there. All right. Well, hey, for Darren, this is Nick signing off. See you guys.

Darren Sutton (35:33.944)
Bye guys.

Episode 143: How I Avoid Burnout with Derry Prenkert

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

In this Episode Derry Breaks down 3 principles to avoiding burnout.
From Self-Awareness, to Working Genius to Sabbathing Well this episode has it all!
Derry's take on Vacationing is worth the entire episode.

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SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/143

LINKS
//FREE COHORT EXPERIENCE
https://www.ymlcohort.com/

//FIRST 5 WORKING GENIUS
[derry.prenkert@standingstoneministry.org](mailto: derry.prenkert@standingstoneministry.org)

//WALK, SPRINT, RUN PODCAST EPISODE
https://open.spotify.com/episode/19iNIsh6Qc1FCQU8ZVNpxD?si=myh1h8o0Tfu5Msa_OD4L4g

//CONNECT WITH DERRY
https://www.facebook.com/derryprenkert
https://www.instagram.com/derryprenkert/

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Introduction and Background
04:37 Principle #1 - Self Awareness
05:54 Personality Profiles
14:08 Refueling Strategies
17:54 Get a Hobby Out of Church
19:47 Be Aware of Seasons
25:03 Balance over Time - Grading Principle
30:06 The Walk, Sprint, Rest Explained
33:21 Find your True Unplug - Sabbath
34:32 Maximizing Vacation Days

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.178)
Well, what's up everyone? Here I am with my friend Derry, who we're just, what were we doing? Like last week we were like counting it out. We've known each other now like nine years, I think it is, which is, that's actually like a weird number to say. That makes me feel old. And I don't think of myself as old, but I think I am now. So Derry, how you doing this morning, bro?

Derry (00:23.319)
I'm good. You're not old. You're like my youngest brother old does that make sense? I can't be I could be your uncle, but ultimately

Nick Clason (00:27.654)
Sure, I'll take it. Yeah, so give us like a 30 second flyover, like who are you, in, know, what qualifies you to talk about this topic today of burnout?

Derry (00:43.758)
I am a youth pastor at heart that served in traditional youth ministry in a youth pastor role for 26 years, 23 of those at one church, three at another. And now I work with ministry leaders as a whole, but really it's all next gen people is where my heart is. And that's what I do through an organization called Standing Stone Ministry and run that in a lot of different formats. And it's all free, confidential, all about coaching, consultation and care.

And why I can talk about this is because I've had incredible victories in it and deep, massive failures when it comes to, I think, avoiding burnout in a lot of places, but also coming face to face with burnout, because it sneaks up on us. And so I can speak from both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, which is an old ABC-wide world of sports thing. If you've never seen it, watch the YouTube clip. It's amazing.

Nick Clason (01:37.946)
Well, I'll listen, I'll just say, for those of you who are like, you know, later on in maybe your youth ministry career and you're trying to create like coaching and cohorts, like Derry is the guy that is throwing a wrench into all of your plans because, I'll just plug like the youth ministry leader cohort, which is incredible value, which people would pay typically thousands of dollars to be a part of your offering now for somehow free. And I don't know how you're doing it.

but I've been a part of it, I've helped facilitate one. I mean, it's awesome. So there's your plug and that's at least a step in this whole burnout deal. So.

Derry (02:10.958)
Yeah. Thanks, man.

Absolutely, it's huge. how we do it, you just said part of it, because there's some amazing people that do it where by payment is friendship. And then there's a group of people and organizations that believe in this stuff. They love the church and they love the next generation, and they are footing the bill for us to do this. And I hope that alone brings hope to this youth ministry world. Like we just sometimes feel like, you know, everybody's against us. And it is, there's parts that are lot against us. There are people that are

Nick Clason (02:23.982)
Hahaha

Nick Clason (02:29.988)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (02:35.27)
Which is really cool.

Derry (02:45.95)
So no, they just so know the value. They're either paying it forward from their youth ministry experience, they just recognize that the church and the hope of the church is found in this next generation, and so why not invest in the people investing in them? so, yeah, that's how we do it, but also it's just a reminder to anybody listening to this. Because if you're watching this and you're thinking you're burnt out, part of it is I just, don't make a difference and nobody sees what I'm doing. No, that's seen.

Nick Clason (02:48.998)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (02:59.302)
Yeah, it's good.

Nick Clason (03:07.056)
Hmm, that's good. Well, so Derry has like kind of like a three step sort of framework or little outline, I guess, of what we're gonna kind of walk through today. So what, Derry, take us through like step number one of this whole burnout conversation, where does someone start?

Derry (03:24.942)
Yeah, yeah, think, you know, it's so hard because burnout comes in so many forms. I mean, there's I'm just way overworked burnout. There's I'm not fulfilled burnout. There's relational burnout, which I don't think I'm to be able to hit that one a lot, but that's big, you know, and that's that's a little bit different. And then there's just like I'm in the wrong kind of work burnout, you know. So so it goes all these different ways. So ultimately, I was just thinking like you said, how do I? And I would say here's how I either have burnout.

or in the midst of burnout, caught it and recognize and put in practices, not so much to get out of it to avoid it the next time. Because I have burnout multiple times, you know? And so people are like, yeah, you lasted 23 years. OK, so three things. they're not like steps, but just like I guess I'd go principles and then some ways I do it. The first, I think, a key to avoiding burnout is self-awareness. I mean, it's just a simple thing. It's self-awareness because we're all wired in different ways.

Nick Clason (04:02.021)
you

Nick Clason (04:10.576)
Okay.

Nick Clason (04:16.39)
Hmm.

Derry (04:21.326)
that we will find our fuel, we'll find our exhaustion, we'll find ourselves caught up in our head and we'll refuel in different ways. And so that's a big one and I'll give you three pieces inside of self-awareness and you can stop me and ask me along in this. I would say the first one that I would throw out is your personality and your working genius is what I throw out. There's profiles out there that help you just learn.

what, like who you are. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, they're, they're profiles, right? They're not, they're not like, I got really tired of the Enneagram when it hit because I, I was into the disc profile. Others are Myers and Briggs, Myers Briggs. And I got annoyed with the Enneagram because people were like, this is the answer to everything. I never forget. sat in this like a millennial group and a person said, Enneagram is like a color wheel. And I was like, you just basically said this thing.

Nick Clason (04:52.592)
Like who you are, how you work, how you recharge, all that, yeah.

Nick Clason (05:02.726)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (05:15.206)
Ha

Derry (05:20.856)
can say whatever you want. Like there is a reality of that, but no, like there is absolutely wiring inside of it. So I don't care what it is, if you take it and it resonates with you, pause and say, okay, if I am a personality that comes alive when I'm helping people versus I'm a personality and it's behind the scenes and I don't want credit versus I do want to be out front. Well, then when you're aware in that and you're catching that, you recognize.

Nick Clason (05:22.435)
You

Nick Clason (05:39.942)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (05:48.854)
man, I gotta find myself over toward the work that's gonna bring life to me. And if I'm living too much over, and those profiles help you a lot with that.

Nick Clason (05:55.43)
Well, and then conversely, right? Like how you rest too, right? In that, so even like, like I'm a task type person. Like I'm an Enneagram one, my wife is an Enneagram two, so she likes to help people. So like she recharges a lot through like relationships where like I not quite as much. And so even within our own like marriage and relationship, understanding like a thing that might bring her life might drain me, you know? And so we kind of need to know even how to strike the balance like within that too.

Derry (05:58.772)
Exactly right.

Mm-hmm.

Derry (06:23.822)
Yeah, and Nick, for those that are married, personality stuff and I'll talk about the working genius in a second, awesome to do with your spouse because let's be honest, when they're out of whack, if our spouse is not in a good space and they're burning out, it burns us out too. And it's not their fault. It's actually maybe we gotta take the responsibility to go, am I aware enough?

Nick Clason (06:29.902)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (06:41.826)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah.

Derry (06:47.586)
I'm telling you, man, I've dove into the working genius side a whole lot more. We're getting ready to learn more on some personality profile stuff, my wife and I to help people. But it makes sense, right? Like the love language talk, you're going to tend to express love in the way you want it. But if that's not somebody's love language, they might not receive it to the level you think they can. so so so that it is just big. So personality profiles really good. If you aren't aware of this thing called working genius, it's a lot like if you've ever heard of strength Clifton strength finder. It's a similar thing, but it's a work.

productivity tool. wish it was called like working energizing or working joys because genius can throw you off. The idea is there's these six different parts to work and all of us come alive in two parts to it. It might not be step one. It might be or step one and step two. It might be step one and step five. So it mixes all around, but we come alive into, we can get by into and we die into meaning

Nick Clason (07:18.8)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (07:29.082)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (07:37.914)
Mm.

Nick Clason (07:45.636)
Yeah.

Derry (07:46.146)
There's two of them that like when we're in it, we're like, we're Captain America. I could do it all day. So like work, if you're a creative person that then loves to track down the creatives, your invention to nasty. I don't know anybody like that. Yeah.

Nick Clason (07:50.288)
You

Nick Clason (07:55.738)
Give us yours, like what are you, like what, talk about a project that you're Captain America in, like you could do all day, and then talk about a type of project that like you can't, you don't wanna do, or you wanna hand off, or you just wanna like, you know, be done, cause it's the worst.

Derry (08:01.026)
Yeah. Yep.

Derry (08:06.658)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me help you with it even. Because I think there's that way to do it. There's also just the, it's every work involves all six of these steps. And so it's also an awareness of if I have to do this from beginning and end, when I'm aware of that, I can do that. But also you're usually working in a team. So there's wonder, which is you love pondering the possibilities. There's invention where you're the, me a blank whiteboard and I come up with ideas. There's discernment where I'm processing through.

Nick Clason (08:15.696)
Yeah.

Derry (08:34.926)
what ideas have merit, where there's themes, and just kind of catching what goes on. There's galvanizing, where it's like the cheer everybody, bring everybody together and go, let's go for this. It's the rally cry person. A lot of youth pastors are galvanizing geniuses, because they love to rally the group together. It's that, like the greatest accomplishment is we're all excited, don't know what we're doing, but we're all, no. No, but that's galvanizing. Then there's enablement, not the best name for it, but that's where you want to come alongside.

Nick Clason (08:50.923)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Derry (09:03.926)
and help whatever the vision is happen. Also, youth pastors are enablement geniuses, especially if they last a while, because you're often having to fulfill the mission of the greater church and then come alongside. you're the moment when they go, we're looking for volunteers to help with. you might not, you just go, would love to, yes, thank you, let me do this. And then there's tenacity. And that's like the hit the deadline, nail the detail stuff, right? So my genius is invention and discernment.

Nick Clason (09:08.251)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (09:13.638)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (09:20.132)
Yeah, let's the youth pastor. Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:28.87)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (09:33.154)
give me a blank whiteboard or a brainstorm session and I come alive. Because not only like you present and the second, they call it the genius, competency and your frustration. So my genius is invention and discernment. They are back to back. My competency is wonder. So I don't mind pondering the questions and galvanizing is my other competency. So I can rally the team together. But I'm at my greatest on service, like semester planning.

Nick Clason (09:45.168)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (09:53.062)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (10:02.85)
When we would do that in my team, it was the greatest day in the world because that was our time where we were going to brainstorm. We were going to identify possibilities of what we could do. We were going to try to see how the Holy Spirit would bring together all these ideas we put up on the whiteboard and find the themes and go, there's a series. Here's the scripture we're going to come out of, or here's the scripture we're going to start with. But here's how we can flesh this out for students. Here's this new idea we have on something. I mean, like you can see me like talking about, right? And then.

Nick Clason (10:28.996)
Yeah, but as someone that is like tenacity, like a whiteboard meeting's great, but I feel like I'm losing a day's worth of work.

Derry (10:36.052)
Exactly right, right? So that's the key in this thing is because there's that part for you where your genius is dying when you're in that one spot because you want to get to it. But then there's also your frustration that when you get into that portion. So my assistant for years, best assistant in the world because she was amazing and she wasn't an assistant. She was like a co-pastor. She just loved the behind the scenes and getting things done.

Nick Clason (10:41.83)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (10:59.974)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (11:03.138)
Okay, I wish we had a map, but wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing. Remember, that's all the beginning of the work. And I am either good to go or fully alive in that. And then my frustration is actually the enablement piece of being delegated out to me, especially if it's not my idea. kind of like, gosh, don't call on me to do it. It sounds so selfish, but I get it, I'll do it, but it kills me. And then finish the project. So my big joke I tell people all the time is I'm amazing at starting things.

Nick Clason (11:09.296)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (11:23.078)
No, I get it.

Derry (11:32.846)
period.

Nick Clason (11:33.476)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (11:35.278)
Um, but she was enabled into nasty genius. So she's dying in these brainstorm meetings. I'm frustrated in part because like, why aren't you excited about this? And she's like, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And then, and then she's coming back to me and going, give me the details. like, I just gave you the big vision. I, know, I don't want to get in your way. Well, that's because I don't want people to get in my way, but we, we also found ways to work together. So that's team side. Personally, here's why this is so important in burnout. They've done a ton of study on the thing, like 2 million assessments and

Nick Clason (11:39.366)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:45.83)
Mm.

Nick Clason (12:03.334)
Hmm.

Derry (12:04.738)
Remember, there's three areas. There's the place you're a genius where you come alive fully. There's then your frustration, the one where it's like, just get me out of here. Then there's like, yeah. Then there's your competency, where you're actually good at it. People affirm you, you know you're good at it. But the trick is over time, it loses its fulfillment. That's where people burn out. Because if you're not aware of that's like my competency space, and I'm hitting resistance again and again on that, or

Nick Clason (12:11.802)
Yeah, you know you hate it, don't wanna do it, yeah.

Nick Clason (12:18.438)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (12:23.108)
Hmm. Hmm.

Derry (12:33.518)
I'm living all my tasks. For me, I was in a place where I needed to galvanize in the midst of COVID, a team that wasn't all together on stuff and didn't have a ton of trust in me yet. And I burn out. I burn out inside. I was at a church for three years. Remember, I was at the other one for 23 years. And this is not the fault of anyone. In fact, I think the Lord led me toward it, but a piece that happened that if I could go back over again, I would go.

Nick Clason (12:45.466)
Yeah, you were pretty new at your role. Yeah.

Nick Clason (12:51.429)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (12:59.938)
Who's the galvanizer on my team that I'm gonna go to and say, I need you when it comes time to bring us all together. I wanna work on our relationship so you can trust me, I can trust you, and I need you to step up and galvanize and help me out. So the awareness in that is huge. And I know we dove into that a little bit more. Anybody wants to know more about that, I actually am. I got a certification and facilitation for that. I will be happy to like, you the first five people that.

reach out to me that watch this. I'll do a free assessment and a free debrief for you because there's something to be learned in this. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:34.33)
That's huge value too, so yeah. We'll link stuff down below in the show notes. can reach out to Dairy for sure. So let's talk about how you then, how do you refuel? How do you refuel in your self-awareness piece of this?

Derry (13:39.352)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So.

Derry (13:46.636)
Yeah. Yeah, this is really good. Yep, yeah, and I think the biggest one, and this is just simply being aware, are you an introvert and an extrovert or an ambervert? You know, and I don't even know if that's scientific. I haven't done a lot of study on it. It's just the ultimate question is what really refuels you when you need to unplug, which we'll talk about un plugging a little bit, but in the moments of unplug, when work needs just be shut off, what is it that actually refuels you? Not what

Nick Clason (13:57.52)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (14:04.805)
Yeah, yeah.

Derry (14:16.46)
What do you, what you do to cope or just zone out? You know, cause people are like, yeah, doom scrolling video games, you know, for some people, man, it is, I just sitting by myself or I, our buddy, Josh Griffin, he is an extrovert off the charts. People refuel him. And I remember he loved online gaming. So video games, it wasn't about the video games that refueled him. was plenty, but he loved video games too, but he was playing with others.

Nick Clason (14:21.712)
Doom scroll and eat pie.

Derry (14:44.59)
I don't even know. I'm saying video games that shows how lame I am in that world. I am a creative in nature. love I love like try and I love like seeing creative and trying to pull themes from it. So movies are a great thing, but I'm also I I love people, but I actually refuel when I'm on my own. And so for me, a long there's a long season, the dumbest thing that I think this would help people. So if that's the reality, I kind of refuel on my own, creative things.

Nick Clason (14:47.366)
You

Nick Clason (15:04.806)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (15:14.168)
I'll give you two moments where I'm most greatly refilled that you go, that's stupid. Why would you do that? One was I would weekly on Thursdays pick a movie that had been out for about two or three weeks and go to a local movie theater that I knew it had like daytime matinee times. And this was before kids. And I would try to go to the movie. And my greatest accomplishment was when I got to sit in the movie theater all by myself and watch that movie. Like that was my goal. Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:29.412)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (15:38.71)
You create like a little bingo card of it. Like, you know, how many times do I get to go to this movie by myself?

Derry (15:43.884)
Right? Yeah. And it was weird. It was like this one. was just really cool when I said when I would get to that point, because I was just sitting there. It was also a little sense of accomplishment with it. What was really awkward is a lot of old ladies like to go watch movies at that time, too. So it often end up with me and two old ladies in the same studio. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And a lot of old ladies really like action movies. That's another thing. So but that was just that to me, like

Nick Clason (16:00.634)
Which who knew, right? But now you do because that was your goal.

Nick Clason (16:06.886)
You

Derry (16:12.334)
A joke. mean, my wife would laugh at me. People would go, you don't do them movies by yourself. I'm like, I do. You know, I could watch them at my house and do the same. But there was something about that. The other one was for my 40th birthday, you and I both are Disney lovers. And I think I helped you fall in love with Disney. I apologize to your bank account for that. But for my 40th birthday, we spent a lot of time going to Disney World. I was going out to California to a DYM event. And Janelle said, hey, for your birthday, if you're interested, treat yourself to a couple of days at Disneyland.

Nick Clason (16:24.858)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (16:29.346)
Yeah, I need it.

Derry (16:42.378)
And so I did, I flew out early and I spent a full day and then a half day at Disneyland all by myself. Nick is so dumb. I was walking through the Magic Kingdom purposely wearing headphones so nobody would talk to me and I started crying because I realized it was the first time in a long time where I was just on my own at nobody else's agenda. I didn't have to worry about anybody else's agenda.

Nick Clason (16:59.206)
You

Mm.

Derry (17:10.862)
Now that's partly because I was in the season where I was leading team. had little kids. My main role was helping others. Yeah. Yep. And so, so I needed a refuel in a creative space. Like that's what I For me, it's not about the rides. It's the design. It's the creativity. It's the brilliance of a guy like Walt Disney that the single lives on. And so I got it there. So, so that's for me, how I refuel. That's not going to be the same for you. That's not going to be the same for somebody else that's listening. Another person's like, I need to join a book club.

Nick Clason (17:16.474)
A lot of people vying for your, just your attention, yeah.

Nick Clason (17:28.166)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Derry (17:40.718)
because I love reading, but I love talking with people about it. Others, might, you whatever it might be.

Nick Clason (17:44.634)
But I think within that though, right, like one thing that's really key for youth pastors, I would say, is like try to find that community or if you do need like people to recharge, like try to find that, but try to find it in like a lane of like a hobby and not like by being a part of a church small group. You know what I mean? Or like where you're around church people and you still have to sort of like lean back into your role, like find something that truly genuinely like allows you to

Derry (18:00.141)
Yes.

Derry (18:04.492)
Yeah. Yep.

Derry (18:13.742)
That's good, Nick. That's good. You even got me just thinking out loud right now of that moment. I'm sure there's many couples that have set together and said, man, I'm just burned out by this place and we need to find fellowship. And then the next thought is we need to find fellowship in here because that will make us fall back in love with place. And that might be true, but it also might be the greatest mistake you could make is actually, no, we need to find community by going and joining a gaming like board game group.

Nick Clason (18:14.318)
separate.

Derry (18:43.022)
or forming a board game group with people, maybe a couple people from the church, but outside the church, but we make it really clear upfront, this is not sponsored by our church whatsoever. Or if you're feeling a level of burnout because you're always leading, what's the thing you can go join that's a group where nobody even knows that you're the leader? Because you walk into your church, and I did it, part of some awesome small groups, but the minute a big theological question came up, or a question about the church, even though I wasn't leading the group, where did all the eyes go? Boom.

Nick Clason (19:01.55)
Yeah, you're not the leader.

Nick Clason (19:11.11)
All eyes on you. Yep. Yep.

Derry (19:12.588)
You know, so yeah, that's right on. like there's a lot of layers we could take that. How do I refuel introvert extrovert? What brings life to you? What type of seasons you're in? I mean, I just thought about this. was telling you part of that Disneyland moment was I needed a space because I was on so many on the demand of so many people. And my wife and I just hit this. She's heading down to Florida with a good friend because she's been in five years of just just always being there for others.

Nick Clason (19:30.576)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (19:38.969)
on. Yeah.

Derry (19:39.864)
So even our vacations, she's still on, she's gotta be mama. And I'm like, babe, you are gonna go and it is treat yourself, you know? So there we go. that's self-awareness is key, personality. And then let me give one last one. We can do this one really quick, but it's important. If you've been in ministry for a while, be aware of the seasons that hit extra hard and the seasons that you just come alive in. And if that's the case, then you wanna be aware of it. So like there's season, like we have seasons.

Nick Clason (19:42.726)
100%, yep.

Nick Clason (19:46.95)
haha

Derry (20:09.006)
that will hit literally in the calendar. If I were to talk to somebody who's been in ministry five or six years or longer and say, tell me some of the toughest times you've gone through. And we were to list out like 15 of them. I guarantee you will notice something that it hit in a certain month or right after a certain event or just in a fall time. I was talking with a counselor who works in the same church I worked in. My season was February, March. And I think a lot of youth pastors do that. February.

Nick Clason (20:11.044)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (20:19.866)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (20:29.03)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (20:38.86)
And March is like halfway through this year. Students are kind of like in the doldrums of things, especially in where I live. I'm in the Midwest where the official colors of February and March are brown or gray. And so there's that piece.

Nick Clason (20:53.144)
And it's just a long, I've learned too, from a youth ministry standpoint, it's a long stretch of nothing. Like the fall, you get to like come back from summer, but it's a quick, honestly, two to three months sprint until the holidays. And that's exciting. But then you come back in January and there's really nothing until like, know, Easter, but that's not for us. That's not for youth pastors.

Derry (21:07.788)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not January. Yeah. January is kind of the joy of getting back together, kicking off here and then it hits. And I just would love for you, you pastors, think about the times where you had to like do an intervention on a suicide, a call to Child Protective Services because of something that came up in the group or a really weird situation where you're like, gosh, that was heavy.

and ask yourself, how many times did it fall right in that time? I would like literally tell my team guys, it's February. Once you'd be ready for an extra late night coming up somewhere, cause we're to have to sort through something. Now that, now the counselor that I was working with, he talked about how October was his time, which I love October around here. It's beautiful for him. The trick is it's like, he's in a lot of adult ministry stuff. Groups get kicked off. It's like, he's going, going, going, going. And then it's done. And it's just like a crash time. And so he just hits really, really hard. So

Nick Clason (21:45.083)
Mm.

Nick Clason (21:52.026)
Hmm. Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:58.906)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Derry (22:06.926)
The fellow youth pastor with me who was very like contemplative in nature it was right after summer camp and right there's like this short gap between summer camp and starting for the fall where he would just like struggle and want to quit. So it's different for all of us and I just would say be when you're aware of that one just the awareness alone helps you go. I'm not burning out right now. I'm just in a tough season.

Nick Clason (22:14.18)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (22:22.118)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (22:31.734)
Mmm. Mmm.

Derry (22:34.698)
Also, maybe this is the time where I need to book a vacation or get away, you know, so there's that. So be aware of those areas.

Nick Clason (22:38.316)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, when we lived in the Midwest, we were like, we gotta get outta here in January, February, March. Especially March, because March, when we lived in Chicago, March was like fake spring. It tricks you and you're like, it's spring now, but no, it's not, still in the 30s, it's still in the 40s, and it's still very gray. And you're like, dang, it never switches to spring until really like May. And so that's where we were like, we need to,

Derry (22:47.544)
Yep. Yeah.

Derry (22:52.718)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (23:07.746)
What we would always do, we weren't good at getting in front of it, is during that time, that's when we would book a vacation. And then we'd book it for like September when it's like beautiful. like...

Derry (23:14.498)
Yeah, right. Good.

Yeah, but the anticipation of that and that's probably somewhat inside of how do you refuel? I also refuel on the planning of the vacation almost as much as going on it. And so, yeah, yeah, right, right. So yeah, that's good. And I'm officially lobbying for a fifth season and the season is called Blah. It runs from February up until either Easter or spring break. It's one of those two.

Nick Clason (23:21.84)
For sure.

Nick Clason (23:26.47)
Hmm, especially if you're a Disney person that you gotta like you gotta get nerdy about it. So Yeah

Derry (23:43.842)
The mascot's a leprechaun that's angry, kicking a groundhog. I've got colors, I've got the general, I mean, like, I think we should do it. Name it that and call it what it is.

Nick Clason (23:50.596)
Listen.

We already have it. you, yeah, it's not on the calendar technically, but like it's already there for real. like consider it done. The club is formed. You have your season. Yeah.

Derry (23:58.53)
Yep. Yeah.

There we go. We did it. We did it. Okay, so there we go. That's all I, but that's all inside self-aware for me is know your personality, working genius, recognize how you refuel and then pay attention to where the seasons hit. And we didn't hit it, but where do you come alive and be aware of those times and make sure you're capitalizing on those times in what you come alive with.

Nick Clason (24:08.282)
You gotta know. Yep.

Nick Clason (24:16.262)
Mm.

Nick Clason (24:21.348)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, so all self-awareness, like the piece of like burning out into your point, like as people in ministry and maybe even families, like you have a lot of responsibility. And so it almost sometimes feels like even selfish to consider who am I, understanding yourself, where do I come alive, and what do, like this question, what do I need, right? And so part of that burnout piece is like being bold enough

to declare what you really need in order to stay healthy. And so, all that being said, that's step one. What's step two?

Derry (24:53.422)
Mm-hmm. You're still the right...

Derry (24:59.118)
Yeah, yeah. in that, and then I'll go right into step two out of that. Give yourself permission to speak up for yourself with this mantra in your head. A burnout me is not a successful me. And so you go, man, I can't do that. And grit, yeah, dang it, grit yourself through. There's some of us that are being lazy. We're giving this as excuses. We're saying, need more time off. And it's on us. But also recognize, there's a legit.

Nick Clason (25:11.951)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (25:19.184)
For sure.

Nick Clason (25:22.886)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (25:27.15)
breaking point at times that can happen in some of the stuff. so advocating to say like, hey, I need to schedule a little lighter during this time. I need to... Okay. So with that, that leads great into the next part is recognizing that balance is something you find over time, not in the moment. Yeah. know, balance gets used a lot. am I in balance? And yeah, work-life balance.

Nick Clason (25:34.586)
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that, which is so good.

Nick Clason (25:45.84)
Hmm. Flush that out.

Work-life balance.

Derry (25:55.086)
You know is just like I got it I can't I feel so out of balance and I was feeling that for so long and I remember I was sitting with a in a network valuable that also helps you avoid burnout I was sitting in a network and a guy that been a little longer the topic is balance He goes I've just learned balance is a pipe dream. It's a pipe dream I'm never gonna get it and I was like Balaan. That's ridiculous now. He unfortunately didn't Yeah, he didn't He didn't really flesh it out over time. I'm like

Nick Clason (26:13.478)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (26:17.798)
You're like watch this I'm gonna get balance

Derry (26:25.314)
But I started thinking through it and I was talking to with my mentor and he said, I agree with him if you're looking at it on a day by day basis. The real question is how do I find balance over time? We're gonna probably, like today, my day will be out of balance when it comes to time with my kids because they're at school and it's church tonight and we all head off to our different spaces. But Saturday,

Nick Clason (26:46.886)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (26:50.54)
areas,

Derry (26:54.112)
As it sits right now, my daughter has a musical that I'm gonna go, she's three days with a musical for a middle school musical. We've learned. Whole family's going Friday. I'm going Saturday. Wife's going Sunday. Now people that might wanna get mad at me, she's like prop crew. I'm only gonna see her foot once. So Saturday is a ton of family time. But I'm not gonna work at all. That's out of balance, right? My work home life in Saturday.

Nick Clason (27:13.626)
Yeah

Nick Clason (27:20.304)
Yeah.

Derry (27:22.316)
So the whole idea is what does it look like over time? And two tools that I would just say I've learned. One was I taught it to myself. The other was a really brilliant man with wonderful calves named Josh Griffin. I was talking to him right at the time he was finishing up at, what's that one? Saddleback, yeah. I don't know if you ever heard of it. Small church out in California.

Nick Clason (27:40.537)
Ever heard of it? Yeah.

Derry (27:43.88)
And he was also starting up DYM, student leadership conference was running like crazy. He was traveling around and doing stuff. And he had like four kids all in like, I got to be on. And I just said, dude, how do you do it? You know, like how in the world do you work this whole balance of stuff? And he goes, no, not great. And then he said, but what I've learned to do is I'm constantly grading myself in those categories. I'm just constantly giving myself a grade. I stop, I pause, I reflect, you know, so saddle back.

Nick Clason (27:54.224)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (28:06.374)
Hmm.

Derry (28:13.774)
How am I right now? know what? Camp just finished up A minus. Like I've given them my best and I feel like I'm crushing it there. How am I doing on the DYM world? You know what? It's a B minus, but the reality is we're in summer and a lot of stuff can go on autopilot there. So that's totally fine. How am I on my own soul? Man, I'm really good. I'm gonna live. I'm gonna give that an A because I got great times with Jesus at camp.

Nick Clason (28:17.67)
Mm.

Nick Clason (28:32.869)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (28:43.726)
He didn't tell me this. I'm making this up, but this would be like I could see this be like he didn't tell me these grades, but but then he said, you know, but man, my wife and my kids, I'm going to see minus. And so that's now time where I need to shift over there. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And he said, and that's that's the recognition. And I recognize, you know what? I can go ahead and let Saddleback get down to a BB minus right now. I can I can continue to. Yeah, right.

Nick Clason (28:49.114)
Bye bye.

Nick Clason (28:54.982)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (28:58.914)
There's self-awareness, right? Like that goes back to that first step there.

Nick Clason (29:10.758)
Yeah, my job's safe. Not getting fired.

Derry (29:13.74)
Yeah, and let me tell you that like youth pastor, not every not every program has to be an A. There are times where it's OK for it to be a C. I know that's hard and you might have your bosses tell you otherwise. Well, I'm telling you it's OK. It's going to happen.

Nick Clason (29:26.852)
Yeah, we talk about all the time the principle of good enough. it's like, we've been having this conversation with some of our residents and say, hey, listen, I appreciate how much time you're pouring into message prep, but it's taking away from the other things that we need you to do and that you're really also very good at as well. so like make this message be, or for the love of all that is good, just use co-leader, which is already like better than anything you and I are gonna come up with.

Derry (29:43.97)
Yep. Yep.

Derry (29:51.362)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Nick Clason (29:54.062)
Just use it, because sadly the kids aren't gonna remember it. so fudge so that you can give yourself other places. I love that principle, because you gotta find that, like you said, you gotta find that balance over time. You gotta.

Derry (30:03.363)
Yeah, yeah.

Derry (30:08.846)
Yeah, yeah. So it's yeah, as you're grading, sometimes it's, oh, this grades low and I got to get it back up. Other times it's this grades low and that's really OK. Like we have misapplied. I don't get it wrong, but that Colossians passage about whatever you do, do it all for the glory of the Lord, that that that doing it for the glory of Lord equals one hundred and fifty percent. And I absolutely would say, no, that's actually not to the glory of the Lord. You're burning yourself out. And if I give one hundred and fifty percent to make an announcement video where I spend 30 hours turning it into like, you know,

Nick Clason (30:13.144)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Derry (30:38.67)
MCU movie trailer quality. I was actually wasn't to the glory of the Lord. That was actually to the glory of me or to the glory. And it was a loss that I could have been spending that time with students listening to their struggles and praying and you know, so I think that's really important in it. So there's that grading thing. This is the other one. This one has been huge for me. I we joked about it. I do have a podcast that set dormant forever. And I did a whole episode on this principle. And it's the idea of

Nick Clason (30:43.609)
Hmm.

Interesting.

Nick Clason (30:53.808)
Mm.

Nick Clason (31:07.654)
Yeah, we'll link it. We'll link it. What's it? 2018 when it aired? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derry (31:10.874)
It. 2018, 2019, but it is one of my favorite episodes I've ever done, to be really honest, because it just walks through this idea is simply walk, sprint, rest, understanding that that I need to have seasons of all three of those in my own life. And also in my actual ministry flow. And what do I mean by that? I think most of us live with the idea of it's sprint rest more times than not, or if we're lazy.

Nick Clason (31:20.422)
Mm.

Nick Clason (31:25.702)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (31:37.499)
Hmm.

Derry (31:38.978)
We do walk and then rest. But what do I mean by sprint? Sprint is when it's all hands on deck. I'm not gonna fit inside of the 36, 50 hours or whatever that are expected of me. It's gonna be more than that. And it's worth it. Summer camp for me, I recognize that was the time where I got the full group together. We would build vision and we'd do a mission strip before that and something after it. That was a sprint time. Like right around October in our ministry, was outreach season.

Nick Clason (31:42.278)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (31:50.95)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (32:08.203)
be able to just have our kids grab ahold of evangelism. And so it was worthy of the extra time. And so that was like that sprint and it needed my best efforts and the ministry needed my best efforts. But then there's also times like where it stop and ask, wait, do we just need to walk right now? And this is almost going back to this is okay if we're at B level or C level here. And in my ministry, December was that time. We would shut down, we would like,

Nick Clason (32:33.701)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (32:37.006)
December leading into Christmas. We would shut down the ministry pretty much at Christmas, so that was even rest. You the only thing I had to do was show up to Christmas Eve. But in December, we recognized like, man, if we just hand things over to small groups, that we're gonna crush it, and that takes less planning for us. Like all we have to do is just make sure we've set up small groups well. And so, and we didn't add, like I remember we were wanting to add a fall retreat, and we couldn't find a November, we started to move it to December, and I was like, no, nope, no, that, we were gonna walk in December. We're not gonna throw one more thing in.

Nick Clason (32:38.406)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (33:06.19)
And then, and what's crazy, now recognize this, that is a walk season for me. And then my worship pastor, total sprint season, right? But June and summer camps, almost like a rest season for him, right? So, so it's, it's, it's different. So being aware of that, looking at your calendar and even like marking it out and just knowing like, Hey, if there's a sprint season, sometimes it might be, it might be two weeks. It might be six to eight weeks. Now, if they're all like six to eight weeks and you don't see it.

Nick Clason (33:13.902)
Exactly, yeah.

Nick Clason (33:19.206)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (33:30.363)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (33:34.19)
But this is the idea, like, I think we get into this idea, sprint, rest, sprint, rest, sprint, rest. I don't think we're resting. We're sprinting and then we're crashing. Rest actually involves rejuvenating. And then if we're sprinting and then we say we're resting, but all we're doing is walking, we're not taking any time off, then we're in trouble. So finding those things where those come into play and remembering the seasons. So if it's a season where it gets really, really rough, I might personally...

need to get the ministry at a walk pace so I can hand it over and I can truly rest and go take a vacation. Honestly, sometimes during a sprint season in the ministry, if you get there long enough, you might actually be able to, again, rest some. I got to the point where I planned some of my vacations over that October time because I had residents that would run without reach, they got the vision, and we'd get away. And it was really, really good for me. again, that grading system and that walk sprint rest system were huge and have been huge for me in helping learn.

Nick Clason (34:06.714)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (34:20.272)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (34:32.152)
to avoid burnout.

Nick Clason (34:34.256)
So then that's, so step one, be self-aware. Step two, aim for balance over time using those two things, walk, sprint, rest, and the grading system. So then your third one, how do you do, how do you manage and avoid burnout? What's this last piece here?

Derry (34:51.406)
Yeah, Yeah, and this is where the rest part is key is finding my true unplug. That's the way the principle is the idea of find my true unplug. Rest is unplugging, especially, let's just look at it from ministry, unplugging from the church and the ministry so that I can truly rest or in that rest invest into my soul, my family. And two things for me that are big, and I'll be honest, the one,

I'm learning more now over the last couple years that I didn't do well in my ministry life. And that Sabbath, understanding the principle of Sabbath, if you've not read or listened to anything from John Mark Comer on just the idea of the ruthless elimination of hurry and the difference between a day off and Sabbath, there's some great principles in there to hit and what it means to truly just stop, to stop and find joy in the day.

Nick Clason (35:36.507)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (35:49.986)
been rediscovering that dude and it's wild and that's a lot more for me that I need that. With the recognition of my family. But the one that has people would ask me all the time. How'd you last 23 years at one church? And I'd say all the time. This is not the reason, but it's the number one thing that I think gets missed so often. And it was huge for us as vacationing. We are in a small town at a very large church that

Nick Clason (36:14.694)
Hmm.

Derry (36:18.498)
that just goes, I loved and still love youth mystery. And so I can't stop thinking about it. It's on my mind all the time everywhere I'm going. And so the ability to truly unplug from the church, I needed to get away. And so my wife and I learned, yeah.

Nick Clason (36:24.762)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (36:31.728)
Mm-hmm. Because you can't just do it in town because it's the church is such a big component of that area. Yeah.

Derry (36:38.53)
Yeah. Yeah, we would literally have to go on dates if we wanted to like get away. We would go like two towns over just so we wouldn't run into people. And and and so the idea of a prolonged time to truly get a week to go on vacation. I some people do staycations didn't work for us because my mind was too on. so getting and traveling somewhere and we got pretty pretty dedicated and it was huge. It became significant before kids. We went six years without kids and we had

Nick Clason (36:44.292)
Yeah. Yeah.

Derry (37:08.974)
two significant vacations a year most of the time. And some people would go like, can't afford it. Well, we found ways to do one.

Nick Clason (37:17.296)
That's, I was gonna ask that, like, youth pastors notoriously, I can't do it, I don't have money, like, how do you do it?

Derry (37:22.668)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll say there's two things. One would be you find creative ways, you know, my parents, I'm fortunate my parents had a cabin up in Michigan that we would go to and that was a much cheaper vacation. But Dave Ramsey would get mad at me for this. But I say, I think you got more money than you realize. It's just where you spend money. And so we committed to run our cars into the ground and not like do a new

Nick Clason (37:38.438)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (37:50.949)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (37:52.59)
new lease. We dropped a lot of subscriptions other people would have because we said, man, this is where the money goes. But this is my Dave Ramseyism. would I so believe in this. would have even risked debt in that area to go on a vacation because I don't think this money we're spending on vacations is spending, it's investing. And so Disney, like you and I have talked about, Disney became our thing. Well, there's not a way to do Disney cheap. There's a way to do

Nick Clason (37:56.486)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (38:06.288)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (38:12.215)
Yeah, that's good.

Derry (38:20.728)
There's a way to save money on Disney if you learn how to do it. And so we did, we found ways to do that. And but what we did with that, was a couple key things we learned over time. One was Janelle would say it all the time. First, that's my wife, by the way. She would first say it was just the two of us. It's like, that's the one time where I have you. Like I have you. Like you're totally there and present with us. And it's not like she was saying you're a terrible husband who never does, but.

Nick Clason (38:22.048)
Do it cheaper. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (38:39.174)
Hmm.

Derry (38:47.906)
But I know you love the ministry and I love the ministry too. She worked at the church as well most of time. so that was so significant. But also man, memories that have been built. With my kids, we sit around the table lot of times and we just do a, hey, share a favorite family memory. Do you know how many of them are tied around that one time at Disney when my youngest who had always walked into the house after swimming in our backyard and just pull his shorts down? like, know, so we were like.

Nick Clason (38:54.928)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (39:02.372)
Mm.

Derry (39:15.842)
done in the way pool, gonna go grab lunch. And we just look over and he's like walking naked in the middle of a water park at Disney because, know, we're like all laughing and remember like you just the memories, the piece of that so key. But this is the other part and a key rule we did. We set a 30 minute, 30 mile rule where because we were both working in the church, it was like, once we get to a certain point, we don't talk church at all. And we kind of got really belligerent with it where it was like, we aren't even gonna talk about.

Nick Clason (39:23.565)
Thank

Nick Clason (39:32.144)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (39:42.374)
Hmm.

Derry (39:44.268)
our friends who go to the church. Because we were just so enveloped in it. was like just such a part of like we both worked there. We loved it, but also it drove us nuts at times. so.

Nick Clason (39:45.892)
Hmm.

Nick Clason (39:51.312)
Yeah. Yeah.

That, I've tried that too, like I tried implementing that and it's hard, bro. Like it's really difficult to do and I actually like failed a lot at it.

Derry (40:00.212)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we've been able to hold. She's great at holding me accountable to it in a loving way. But also there were moments I needed it. And so so we would we would stick to it. We didn't like, you know, when we fail, we'd go, OK, tomorrow we pick back up again. But what that did would often lead to some really awkward. don't know what to talk about time. And then on the other end, it would lead to I wouldn't call it like.

Nick Clason (40:13.381)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (40:25.51)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (40:29.858)
deep, rich, like all of sudden, you know, we're burying our souls to the, you know, the Lord's speaking new vision to us. Sometimes it was, but sometimes it was just, we just got to like talk about random things from our childhood that we never knew before, because we needed to find a topic to talk about. We just like watched some really, really stupid videos together because we weren't sure what to do and laughed a ton. And so things like...

Nick Clason (40:46.394)
Hmm. Yeah.

Derry (40:56.854)
just other topics and other things and zeroing in, been enormous for us.

Nick Clason (41:00.164)
That's so good. Yeah. think, I think, like listen, if you're watching, listening, maybe for some of you, like this is your next step, like plan a vacation, right? I know you might not feel like you have money, the means, whatever, but like you have vacation time. And one of the things you said on a podcast years ago that resonated deeply with me is don't leave any vacation days on the table.

Derry (41:16.386)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (41:21.485)
Yeah.

Derry (41:26.146)
I'm so glad you just said that. Yeah. Explain it. Explain it.

Nick Clason (41:27.524)
Yeah, because like here's the thing. What I now tell people is like, you're if you get two weeks of vacation, you are being hired like in America, we stink at this, first of all, but like you're being hired to work 50 weeks out of 52 weeks. So if you work 51 weeks because you only take one week off, you gave your church a free week of your work and that's not fair to you. And they're taking advantage of it. And nobody is going to say anything. Like if you have a great manager who's

Derry (41:40.888)
Yes.

Derry (41:47.96)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (41:56.326)
pushing you to do that, that's fantastic, but that's typically the exception, not the rule. And so if you get 50, if you get two weeks of vacation, you better only work 50 of them. And even if like you, even if you said, do a staycation, don't go anywhere, but like don't go to the office. it's, the job will get done without you because the other thing that I hate to break it to you is one day you're gonna leave cause you're gonna resign, you're gonna retire, you're gonna die and they will figure out.

what to do with that position. But you will never be able to be the husband to your wife or the wife to your husband or the father to your children or any of those other relationships like you uniquely can only invest in those places. And so don't leave days on table.

Derry (42:39.278)
Yeah, yep. thank you. Like you're right on, that's so key. It's, you know, like I would just love people to reflect. Are you at a church where when you do your all staff and you come together and you go through and you just celebrate everybody that worked extra hard, right? And everybody cheers. Why doesn't the church ever go, hey, it's the end of the year. We just want to celebrate the following people that used up every one of their vacation days. You know, they're not going to do that, but actually they'd be smart.

Nick Clason (42:56.249)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (43:04.548)
Yeah. No.

Derry (43:08.312)
What you're saying is true, but the reverse is true as well. If I haven't taken that time to unplug that 51st week and probably the 49th, 48th and 47th aren't even going to be the best versions of me, right? Like you're, you're, you're actually making it suffer because there's, we could go forever in this. When you're away, you have to delegate. So you now are living out the Ephesians four principle that you got to equip people for ministry. And then also you're reminded, I love this place, but they don't need me. Everything. Nothing fell apart.

Nick Clason (43:17.238)
Mm. Yeah, they suffer a little bit, but...

Nick Clason (43:27.194)
Mm-hmm.

That's it. Yeah.

Nick Clason (43:35.76)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Derry (43:37.154)
And so now you get to do it out of joy, not out of obligation. And then here's, let me give one more on top of this. This is what people are doing that are listening to this right now. I've really sucked at this. I really need to do it. And then if their vacation recycles in December or mine always recycled in June, they're like, I'm to do that. But then there's a real problem you've got probably where you're, moving toward burnout. If you find yourself every year when it's about time to recycle that you have to all of sudden cash in all your vacation days or you lose them.

Nick Clason (43:39.662)
Absolutely.

Nick Clason (44:04.432)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (44:04.834)
And so you're saying, no, I take all my days off. But what you do is not spread them out. Well, go back to the walk, sprint and rest. Look at that plan ahead, block out where the times are, find what works for you and recognize that I got so sick in the team. I was leading that I, I put my money where my mouth is on this, where I would say, how many vacation days are you at? And like, I'd celebrate it, but it also they are vacation time would recycle in June. And we had till August to use it.

Nick Clason (44:09.03)
Mm.

Yup.

Derry (44:33.56)
Well, that was all our summer camp season that went right into the fall break. And I would have like people gone in between camp and fall. And I was like, listen, I believe in this so much, we're gonna figure it out. But next year, please think through, you know, cause this isn't good for you. So there's like, I would just say that's really, really important to think through with it all. And again, find your true unplug. Nick and I love Disney.

Nick Clason (44:36.09)
Yeah, can't, you can't. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (44:44.794)
Yeah, do something in March, bro. Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (45:00.358)
Mm-hmm.

Derry (45:01.016)
That might be the worst place for you to go do an unplug. And quite honestly, I'm not doing it much now because my oldest son, he's too cool for it. We've made the shift over to national parks because our kids can walk. And my word, man, like I'm exhausted, but God is alive in the beauty of it. So find your unplug.

Nick Clason (45:14.896)
But it's good, yeah.

Well, and I would say for us, the reason we like it is because it keeps us so busy, we don't really have time to sit around and talk about work. You know what mean? That's one of the reasons that we like Disney so much is like you said, it's just our family, it's just us trying to accomplish the thing and with all, trying to get the schedules and everything locked in.

Derry (45:26.21)
Yep. Right.

Derry (45:36.664)
Yeah, your boys are at a spot where like they you get to see there's nothing quite like seeing your kids overwhelmed with a joy. Yeah, like man, I'm getting flooded with even great memories right now of some times with that. Yeah, man. I love it.

Nick Clason (45:42.798)
See Mickey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so true. Yeah, yeah. Man, Derry, you crushed it. Thank you. People wanna do some of the stuff you got offering, like plug it up, plug it up here real quick before we wrap up.

Derry (45:53.57)
Thank you, man.

Derry (45:59.992)
Yeah, yeah, still working on the best way. don't, you know, I'm not, I don't have a great corporate master plan in this all, but I would say the first thing to check out from a website is YML cohort.com. That's Y is in yodel, is in marry, L is in ladle. I don't know. cohort. Yeah. Youthministereleadercohort.com. That's something we're doing that Nick talked about. and we, we run them in winter, spring, and in the fall and they're 10 weeks long.

Nick Clason (46:15.993)
or youth ministry leader.

Derry (46:28.97)
I'm toying around with maybe a summer one. I don't know. But check that out. But even if it's like in the middle where there's not one, there's an interest form you can fill out there. Always reach out to me anywhere on social. Like I offered that working genius thing. It's just at Dairy Prinkert. So D-E-R-R-Y P-R-E-N K-E-R-T. Find me. I'm not on TikTok.

Nick Clason (46:51.77)
That's okay, people aren't finding people on TikTok anyway. They're just watching funny videos, yeah.

Derry (46:53.612)
Yeah, it's hard to find. I'm on Instagram and I'm on Facebook the most and so find me there. And if you don't like anything, go post it over on X and I won't read it.

Nick Clason (47:06.544)
There you go. Love it, man. Hey, thank you so much for investing in youth leaders in this way and how you avoid burnout. Absolutely. Thanks, dude. All right. Hey guys, until next time, we'll see you. Bye.

Derry (47:09.602)
Thank you, dude. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for your investment, man. I love what you're doing.

Episode 142: How I Got Started doing Youth Group Social Media from scratch with Andrew Ostrander

Nick Clason — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 05:00:00 -0500

In this episode, I interview Andrew Ostrander, who shares his journey from education to youth ministry, discussing the challenges and surprises he faced during the transition. He walks you through the importance of engaging social media content to connect with students, detailing his approach to creating interview-style videos that resonate with youth culture. Andrew also highlights the benefits of delegating tasks, the significance of personal connections in ministry, and his future plans for expanding social media efforts. The conversation concludes with encouragement for new youth pastors to embrace social media as a tool for building community and fostering relationships.

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Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/142

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How I Run My Youth Group Social Media
02:16 How did you end up here?
04:42 Tell us your social media journey
06:39 What Type of Content do you Make?
10:31 What Equipment do you use?
12:36 In-Person Benefits Have you Seen?
14:55 Do you have Future Plans?
17:20 What Would you Tell a Hesitant Youth Pastor?

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:29.856)
Well hey what is up everybody I am here with none other than Andrew Ostrander did I say that right? Yes! It doesn't feel like it's that difficult but it feels like it might trip some people up you know what saying?

Andrew Ostrander (00:47.413)
You nailed it.

Thanks.

I've gotten Ostrander more than I've ever gotten Ostrander. So you're in the right.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:57.918)
Really? Yes, okay, nice, good. My gut, my intuition was right. So you and I, met through a youth ministry leader cohort and we were in that together on calls together and stuff like that. But I started just kind of noticing and paying attention to you and your social media, because that's really the only way to like...

pay attention to some thing from someone who lives over a thousand miles away. And so, but I started noticing, I was like, I like what this guy's doing. And so that's why you're here. Talk to me, you know, we're gonna talk a little bit about your social media, but before we do, why don't you let like the people know like, who are you, where are you at, how long you've been in youth ministry, all that, you good stuff.

Andrew Ostrander (01:29.518)
the

Andrew Ostrander (01:46.712)
Yep, so you've already touched on it. I'm Andrew Ostrander and I'm currently the director of student ministries at Waukerusa Missionary Church in a super small town, Waukerusa, Indiana. This is month seven or eight of my role in youth ministry. I had volunteered for multiple years beforehand, but I actually came from the education world. So I was a fifth and sixth grade teacher for three years before this position opened up and

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:53.396)
Nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:05.055)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (02:13.206)
was very clearly that God was shoving me through this doorway in youth ministry. And so that's how I ended up where I am.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:17.426)
Nice. Yeah, so you didn't even go to like school for youth ministry or whatever. And so here you find yourself now kind of like thrust into it. Before we hop into like the particular social media stuff, tell me what's been like the biggest shift or the biggest surprise or the biggest just difference that you've noticed between your two kind of careers if you put them side by side.

Andrew Ostrander (02:42.85)
Yeah, I think there's a glaring amount of similarities that people wouldn't expect between education and ministry, but those are definitely there. I think the biggest difference or thing that we weren't fully prepared for, I was to the point where after God had clearly guided me here and I knew this is where I needed to be, I was ready to switch jobs. But then the act of switching churches is what really hit us hardest. I had grown up and attended one church for much of my, all of my upbringing.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:59.637)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:02.912)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:10.098)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (03:12.396)
And then most of my adult life after college. And so that was just such a huge change of pace and where you're so used to being on Sundays, you're no longer there on Sundays. So I think that was the biggest.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:20.256)
Mmm.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing about it too, like, I mean, I've always said this, but like when you move and you're in ministry, like you don't just like move jobs, but like you move everything, like everything up roots, including your community and your, you know, your church, your, family, like your church family, all that type of stuff. So yeah, that's, that is so true and probably super relatable to, you know, most youth pastors. okay. But then go ahead.

Andrew Ostrander (03:47.79)
I know you've experienced that even way more than I have, so you can relate.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:53.2)
Yeah, yeah, definitely can. But if you're not used to it or know it, right, you're like, whoa, it is a little culture shocky or whatever, for sure. So, okay, then tell me then what sort of spurred you, led you towards what you're doing with your student ministry social media? Maybe first of all, what shone a light to you that was like, I should do more than just post announcement graphics on my social media feed.

Andrew Ostrander (04:21.868)
Yeah, so I was never a super avid social media user. Twitter and sports Twitter was where I was at in college and after. But I had just always seen the church. Like you said, it's like a hey, Wednesday nights coming up tomorrow, that type of thing, or ice skating this Friday. Join us for week three of this series. even even I was like, wow, that's not not that that's dumb, but I was uninspired.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:30.665)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:37.844)
Don't forget, yes, yeah. Yeah, no one cares about your series, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:47.944)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (04:50.986)
And so when I started here, I was interested in social media. But then as you touched on the way that we met through that cohort, you had given a specific lesson and not to stroke your ego or build you up. But it's a lot of credit towards you and just how you guided that. It's really stuck with me when you said, we know that the students are there and it doesn't matter how we feel about it or if we like it. Why are we not meeting them where they're at?

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:51.026)
Right.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:59.029)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:03.904)
Hahaha

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:13.215)
Yeah.

Hmm. Hmm, yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (05:18.722)
And so that was just a huge challenge to me of making engaging social media of some sort and really just trying to get students to buy in.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:23.946)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and you know, like the cohort was an interactive deal and you know, the kind of like lesson or whatever that I led on all that was made for exactly that. But I'll link down below an episode that's like really similar to like that conversation that we walked through on that. So if any of you are like, what was that? Like you can check that out down below. But so now you, that was your inspiration sort of.

And everyone does things a little different, know, and I my like ebook and stuff like that I give tips and whatever like what exactly Did you like or what have you sort of like stumbled into like doing that's like been working really well For like you and like your particular like church student ministry social media

Andrew Ostrander (06:13.944)
Yeah, so when talking about the sports social media background that I've interacted with, I never ran anything as myself, but I've just interacted with that a ton. And so one of the podcasts I had previously listened to talked about the difference of short form and long form video. And so I had really, and you had touched on it as well, the importance and prevalence of short form video. So that's really where we started to focus in and without having any...

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:18.302)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:23.402)
Sure.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:30.665)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:37.568)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Ostrander (06:42.964)
studio or recording equipment. Yeah. We really appreciate and love the space that we have. It's not set up for having a quiet, conducive recording area for anything longer or even anything specifically for social media. And so we really went on the interview style, man on the street style videos. And so when I transferred over here, one of my former students also came along with me as a now volunteer.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:43.976)
Right. Space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:52.864)
Right, right.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:58.73)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:03.017)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:09.733)
cool. That's awesome.

Andrew Ostrander (07:12.118)
And so I knew that I wouldn't have the capacity on Wednesday nights to record and do all of these. And so I proposed to him of a weekly routine of when students are welcome into the doors, but we haven't started programming, that I give him a question of the week and he goes around and asks random, funny, sometimes not as funny questions just to hear what students say. And the results are pretty amusing.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:18.154)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:25.321)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:32.766)
Sure.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:36.287)
Oh, bro, there's so much good in that, right? So like a couple of principles I heard. Number one, like, cause this is one of the common pushbacks I feel like I hear is like, I don't have time and you acknowledge that, right? You, you knew your limits already, but you were like, that's okay. I'm going to hand this off to somebody else. So like in and of itself right there, genius, like get it off your plate. You're

promoting it, facilitating an opportunity for it to happen. However, so like that's leadership, but you're getting out of the way and delegating and letting somebody else kind of like own it, which is just fantastic. And then the second is like you said, like you didn't let the constraints of what you felt like your space offered or maybe didn't offer like stop you. And that's again, another like thing that I think is so good because we oftentimes like, I don't have, you know, the best equipment or the, you know,

bougie is set up or whatever and it's like, who cares? We all carry around a camera in our pockets and the ability to use that to make content that ends up where students are, like you said, so, good. So tell us a little bit of what are some of your favorite questions or what have been some of the things that have maybe taken root culturally within your student ministry that people are like, that video was hilarious because X, Y, and Z. What are some of the...

The funniest ones you've had are the ones that have gotten the most talk about afterwards or just even been like, yeah, the most amusing.

Andrew Ostrander (09:07.736)
Yeah, the first one that we actually did, so I had wanted to do it after you talked about social media and I was just figuring out what I wanted to do. And then my wife and I were out to dinner with two of our volunteers, our sponsors, and we got into controversies or like conspiracy theories that this individual was bigly bought into. And so that actually stemmed our first question of, you believe in aliens? And so I think that question has provided the most like,

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:13.896)
Yeah. Okay.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:20.156)
Okay.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:25.728)
You

Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:33.248)
that's so funny.

Andrew Ostrander (09:38.2)
people would pause and then they automatically had the answer that they believed in, but could not explain why or why not that they believed the way that they did.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:40.224)
Right, so funny. Yeah. yeah, that's funny. So then how, like, what are you doing for that? Like, tell me what exactly, you know, your volunteer is doing. Is he using his camera? Is he using any gear? you know, get kind of nerdy on us. Like, what actual stuff are you doing to capture it, record it, and then maybe even like edit it?

Andrew Ostrander (10:08.12)
Yeah, so it's about to be like the lamest set of nerdy equipment that we use.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:12.468)
That's okay. Here's the thing, before you answer, this is what the boat, almost everyone is in. And that's why I love it, is because you're not letting whatever constraints you have stop you, you're just going for it. And yeah, it might just be a cell phone camera or whatever, but that's okay. Just do it. So yeah, let us have it.

Andrew Ostrander (10:33.015)
so the compilation of questions that we've come up with is stored on my phone notes app. And then we, sat down and decide what question we're going to ask that night. And then it is just a cell phone camera. And so I had gone online and was looking out for mic options quickly realizing that most of them were super expensive. So we have, I think it was like a $10 pair of the, lav mics and it's so cheap and old that

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:38.857)
Yep.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:45.077)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:50.174)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (10:59.616)
My phone is the only one that we can use because it has the lightning connector. And so he takes my phone and those $10, $20 lav mics. And that is how it gets recorded. We just figured out how to change video settings to try to increase the video quality a little bit, but that took a couple of months before we got to. then editing is something that I set aside time for every week. So I've been using Final Cut Pro on my Mac and that's, go through and edit and.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:02.464)
nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:07.456)
A $10 microphone,

Okay.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:17.16)
There you go.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:23.88)
Yeah. Nice.

Yeah. And so then are you doing, are you just sending him around all throughout the program? Like is he doing it ahead of time, after, both? Like what's sort of like his schedule as far as like the interview person?

Andrew Ostrander (11:29.464)
change scenes how I want to.

Andrew Ostrander (11:42.318)
Yep. So we have like a team volunteer huddle every Wednesday night. So we're there until 6.15, 6.20. And then by that time, a lot of the students are here after our doors open. So he goes out from 6.20 until we start programming at 6.35, 6.40. So he only really does it for 15 or 20 minutes. So some weeks it's pretty limited if it's a longer question.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:46.196)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:51.124)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:01.76)
Okay.

Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (12:08.11)
but it just has that time where students are roaming and choosing what to do before programming starts to get those interviews in.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:08.117)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:13.192)
Yeah, so okay, so now my question is, do you have students who seek him out now every week wanting to answer so that they can be on social?

Andrew Ostrander (12:22.993)
Yes, I have certain students that I see their video every single week after he records. I'm pushing like, hey, let's try to get some others. But there's clearly students that are super excited. And I see the students that run away from him as soon as they see the mic out.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:32.435)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:36.648)
Sure, yeah, Yeah, that's been my experience too, right? Like we do a social challenge every single week and we try to like batch record as much as we can, kind of like you. And almost every week as I like look at the footage after I'm like that kid's always in there, you know? And that's fine, right? Like that's fine for them to want to do it because it's whatever, it's how they connect and how they want to connect. Have you noticed any like...

in-person benefits to what you're doing on social? Like anything that has camaraderie, even just creating conversation because of a certain video or topic or whatever, or the, I don't know, even like the feel and the vibe because you're filming something to go online. Has there been any in-person benefits that you've noticed?

Andrew Ostrander (13:23.16)
Yeah, I think absolutely. think the specific content or question that gets talked about for that day and then after programming a little bit, but then that conversation dies down. And there are a lot of different factors that I think have played into this, but since adding it and rolling it out and how our ministry has adjusted the pre-service time a little bit, students are really excited to be there and excited to interact whether or not it's with a camera in front of them.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:27.156)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:31.602)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:45.758)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:52.794)
Interesting. Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (13:52.812)
And so there's just been that shift of that vibe of being willing to be open or just hanging out together.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:59.88)
That's cool. like that's a really that not even when I started on this whole journey and podcast, whatever, that's not even a thing that was even like on my radar, you know, but I've noticed that too in our in our context. And it's it's really cool to hear that for sure. What would you say like is anything that you're maybe like thinking about for the future? Like this is kind of your current rhythm and iteration. Are you like

content with it and you just want to keep doing this or what if you had the capacity would be something that's maybe on the horizon that you've been thinking about or maybe wanting to do.

Andrew Ostrander (14:38.254)
So there are multiple different things that where I'm wanting to take it. And so I've created a weekly posting schedule that I want to figure out either for the end of the school year or just really gear up to do it next school year. We're redesigning a little bit of our space to better meet our needs. And part of that, I'm really trying to push or find a spot to create a more studio like area so that we could do longer form or like five, 10 minute videos.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:43.199)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:51.518)
Okay.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:54.952)
Nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:02.814)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:07.401)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (15:07.724)
while the interviews are happening elsewhere. And so there are lots of different places that I'm wanting to take in it, just seeing whether or not any of them are possible.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:10.089)
Nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:15.888)
Yeah, cool. So cool. What do you mind? Like, are you able off top your head or pull it up? Like, what is your proposed posting schedule that you want to aim for, you know, start the next school year?

Andrew Ostrander (15:29.1)
Yeah. So it would just be the weekdays because I know like content limits and I try to set time aside to network. Monday, we want to be doing a message Monday. And so that's just a one, two minute Devo, primarily probably just adults. And then I have a student intern. And so just whatever word is laid on our hearts or minds for that day for Monday, Tuesday would be one of our interview style videos. So that's the ones that we're currently posting most frequently.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:33.353)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's great.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:41.362)
Okay. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:47.689)
Nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:51.796)
great.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:58.463)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (15:58.994)
the Wednesday one would be dependent on having a space to record it, but I want to do like a Wednesday word from a student. there again, pretty similar to Monday minute or two, Devo reading scripture style video Thursday, my intern and I have been recording, what we think are funny videos when we have internships together. And so Thursday would be that type of video right now. We're asking chat GPT to create a video for us and we just.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:05.522)
Nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:09.289)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:19.072)
You

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:23.85)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (16:28.106)
acted out. So those will be Thursday and then Friday. My idea would be for the slightly longer form video like drafts or tier list type things if we have the capability of doing that.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:28.927)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:37.842)
Nice. Nice, cool. Okay, so like last little thing here. What would you say to anybody who was like you, you know, you're not even a year yet into like student ministry and all the demands and all the things that like come with the job are there and you know, have to.

manage it, schedules, manage relationships and personalities, and they just feel overwhelmed by even the thought of social. What would just be your encouragement to other youth pastors out there who are maybe on the fence or not sure if doubling down on creating social content is for them?

Andrew Ostrander (17:18.626)
Yeah, so I think a couple of things come to mind. The first one you kind of touched on, it's a mix of starting small and passing it off. So my church leadership, my bosses are huge on a leader doesn't have to do everything. Like we're to the point where it's better if you're training up other people to do it than doing it yourself. So start small or find someone to do it for you on your big programming nights. But then also find whatever part of social media sounds fun to you.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:25.382)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:33.119)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:37.812)
Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (17:48.288)
start with that. Like I've loved editing so far up to this point because I'm amused by it. And so find whatever part of the process you enjoy and really just start and focus there learning how to do that so that it's more fun for you.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:49.151)
Hmm.

Nice.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:59.794)
Yeah, yeah, that's so true. Okay, is there anything else about what you do social media-wise that I haven't really asked you, but you're like, this is important, I wanna make sure I share that too.

Andrew Ostrander (18:14.382)
I think we've touched a lot on it. It's been fun. The personal connections that I form through it. So my volunteer that does the Wednesday night, we get to talk and reflect and discuss it a lot. And then my relationship with my intern has taken a huge upswing because of we're just hanging out together and making stupid, fun youth videos together. so like you asked about the in-person effects, even just on

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:25.78)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:29.386)
Sure.

Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:39.007)
Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:42.654)
Yeah.

Andrew Ostrander (18:43.754)
on my personal and my perspective. It's had a huge impact on relationships that I get to form because of these seemingly what a lot of people would view as pointless or menial impact videos.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:46.942)
Hmm. Yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:53.64)
Yeah. No, that's really, that's actually really like profound. And I really appreciate you saying that because I do think it's more than just, you know.

satisfying social media algorithms or feeding the beast or you know, that's what I call it. Like you gotta keep feeding the beast. But I like that you're saying like, there's been some, you know, relational equity that kind of comes out of that. And that really is the ultimate goal. Like if you look at the inception of social, like it's social, right? In nature, like that's where it came from. And so if it's not at least, you know, playing a part in that within like the context of your local community, like you might be missing out on it, but it's,

The fact that you're doing it is creating a good vibe and good energy. that's, I think, one of my main goals always in social is not like to go viral on our church account and have a bunch of views and all that stuff. Like really it's to serve our community like best, you know? And then if it goes viral or if it gets a lot of views or whatever, like that's great, but that's like a secondary.

thing that I'm looking for. Primarily it's just like I want to serve the students that God has entrusted to me here and disciple them as best I can through the means and avenues of social. So it's great. Okay, so last thing, people want to know if they want to see what you're doing, they want to see some of the stuff you're doing, where do they go? What can they go follow and go check out online or whatever?

Andrew Ostrander (20:23.042)
Yeah, so right now I'm posting on two separate places, the YouTube channel, Walker's Student Ministries, and then the Instagram, which is either Walker's Student Ministries or Waukee with a Y Student Ministries. I would have to go shuffle check. I'm not sure that was created.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:35.936)
We'll link them both down below. We'll get it locked in. So if you're like, I don't know how to WakaRusa, the type text down below will be spelled hopefully correctly and it'll take you where you need to go. Nice. Andrew, anything else before we cut you loose?

Andrew Ostrander (20:47.438)
You

Andrew Ostrander (20:53.646)
I think just obviously with the people that you have or the following you have, it's either of interest to them or could be something that they're already doing. I think it is really just super important to try one. The first video I made lasted me for three weeks because you just had enough to work with from it. And so it feels like huge undertaking. It's not as bad as what I initially went into it expecting.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:01.152)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:05.6)
Mm.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:11.838)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:16.748)
Yeah, no, that's a really good point. It's a new skill for a lot of people. So it is gonna feel a little bit overwhelming. But like you said, once you kind of get into it, you might learn something like, like editing, like you said, and you'll find a new skill or at least something else that you enjoy. So it's awesome. All right, guys, well, for Andrew, this is Nick. We're signing off and talk to you next time. See ya.

Episode 141: How I Plan Events with Kaylen Adams

Nick Clason — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 05:00:00 -0500

This episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show kicks off the "How I..." playlist with a deep dive into event planning with guest Kaylen Adams, an expert in coordination and logistics. Kaylen shares her step-by-step approach to organizing youth ministry events, covering everything from volunteer recruitment and communication to detailed schedules and contingency planning. Whether you're a youth pastor who struggles with organization or looking to refine your event strategy, this conversation is packed with practical insights to help you run seamless, high-impact events.

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How I Plan Events like a Pro!
01:10 Kaylen, who are you?
05:06 What Lanes did you own?
07:03 How can you help someone think?
08:07 How did you communicate?
11:54 How did you determine call times?
16:30 How do you recruit for an event?
20:05 How many jobs do you give a leader?
21:24 How do you calculate for food?
24:21 What Else?
26:28 What if my church doesn't do all that?
28:34 Keep People's Personalities in Mind

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For what is up everybody? Today I am going to introduce you and have you in for a treat, because I am going to be interviewing one of my friends and coworkers, Kaylen Adams, who's fantastic at event planning. This is going to be the start of a new little playlist series on my podcast, and here on YouTube, where I am going to introduce you to some of the people that I know who do things the best in youth ministry and particular lanes.

00:00:25:00 - 00:00:46:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And Kaylen is the queen of event coordination and event management. Not only is she like, really fun and have a really good mind, but she is fantastic at getting volunteers, recruiting them. And when a volunteer comes in just feeling like they know exactly what to do. And you will. If you implement these things, you will look like a rock star.

00:00:46:09 - 00:01:04:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you're a typical youth worker who's not very organized, this episode is for you because it will help you and if you think that all hope is lost on you, then this is a great, podcast to send to a volunteer or a high level admin who might step in and help you with some of the logistical things, but you are in for a treat regardless.

00:01:04:10 - 00:01:31:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With my interview today with my friend and coworker Kaylen Adams. What's up everyone? Here we are. I am with Kaylen Adams. Which yes, you don't even find that on your name on here because that's how that's how new this is. So it is formerly known as Maltais, not hyphenated. Straight up Adams. Which means you just got married and,

00:01:31:08 - 00:01:52:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you might not know Kaylen, but I know Kaylen. I worked with Kaylen. Worked in the past tense. We are still on staff together, but she has switched departments, so now she's in the kids department. And the reason I ask Kaylen on here is, what was it last weekend? Two weekends ago, we had our high school weekend.

00:01:52:02 - 00:02:14:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you still worked with me then, and, oh, my gosh, Kaylen crushed it. Like, you guys don't have any idea. And as she was, like, literally crushing every, like, logistical and administrative detail of the weekend, in the back of my mind, I was like, we got to get Kaylen on so I can ask her, how do you plan for these big events?

00:02:14:01 - 00:02:38:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So why don't you give us just kind of a quick overview? Kaylen, first of all, like a 20 or 30 second like synopsis of who you are, how we ended up working together. But then, like, what did you oversee, at these events? Like what particular? Like lanes and areas and avenues. And then I just think what you did is such a helpful tool to many of the youth passers that I've ever seen or worked with. And so I just think this would be helpful to get out, you know, to people. Yeah. Yeah.

00:02:38:10 - 00:03:02:13
Kaylen Adams
So we've started working together because I, I went to college at the University of Wyoming and I got a degree in human resources management and entrepreneurship with minors in hospitality anthropology. There you go. So so that was. Yeah. Yeah. And so I did that.

00:03:02:13 - 00:03:29:13
Kaylen Adams
Fell in love with ministry there. And then around like my senior year, I learned the opportunity to do a residency in Texas, which I hate sweating. So my family was like, I was like, I think because I love Jesus, I don't know. So I applied and I ended up getting hired in January. And so after I graduated, I moved to Texas, and I did a residency at Cross Creek Church and guest services.

00:03:29:15 - 00:03:50:22
Kaylen Adams
But I love that, like ministerial aspect. And I still was kind of doing some of more of that support ministry with it. So needed and very, very special. Big shout out to everybody in support ministries. And so that's when I transitioned into students and I kind of brought a lot of my guest services and undergrad knowledge, which infuse that into what I was doing.

00:03:50:22 - 00:04:08:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And students. Yeah. So then like for the first little bit, I remember you're like, I don't really know exactly what you guys want me to do. And we were like, just keep doing like, I mean, like, you guys don't understand. Like, Kaylen was just she just knew what to do. Like, even if she didn't know what to do, she pretend like she knew what to do.

00:04:08:00 - 00:04:30:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it seemed like she's known what she she's doing. But it was this last high school weekend where, like, you were pulling out, like, spreadsheets and folders and instructions and, even, like, I remember distinctly I was talking with you about our t shirt order number, and, like, our student registration was, like, lower than anticipated. And you were like, no, we're going to need this many t shirts.

00:04:30:06 - 00:04:50:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, why? And you're like, because of all of our volunteers. And I was like, do you really like, do you really think that? And your confidence, you're like, absolutely. And you were right, by the way. So what like lanes did you let's talk about specifically our high school weekend, which for those of you who don't know the context, it's like a D now without the spending the night element.

00:04:50:22 - 00:05:10:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's like two days on campus. Yeah. Like Friday night, Saturday until like 3:00. And so it's probably like our second biggest event next to, like, a thing like summer camp, right? So yeah, in that event, what particularly did you own, like, what were those areas? And I just want to ask you kind of pepper you questions.

00:05:10:02 - 00:05:33:02
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. In that in those arenas. Well so this was we originally had one winter we to middle school and high school. Was it split into middle school night high school. Well for middle school night Darren, the student pastor at Rush Creek pitched and I met my boss, so he. Yeah. So he did a lot of the the directional things for that division.

00:05:33:02 - 00:05:56:21
Kaylen Adams
And then programing. And I took everything else and like, did the logistics of the event planned it all. So by the time high school weekend came around, because I wasn't middle school night, so I didn't play a part at all, which is relevant because when we played high school night, we did a lot of the same stuff. We just like copy and paste a lot of the stuff that worked and made it a little more, for high school and that middle school.

00:05:56:23 - 00:06:20:20
Kaylen Adams
Oh yeah. And then we had known, like, what worked and what didn't. So we're check in by the time we got to high school again. Yeah, that's good. But yeah, by the time we got there, Nick you did programing. So like everything that you were sitting in a session and watching and experiencing. Nick was all in of planning and talking to the people, like worship people and yeah, yeah, I did everything outside of that.

00:06:20:22 - 00:06:44:20
Kaylen Adams
So and how we move through the timelines, you know, when were kids eating, where were they going to be, what activities were they going to be doing. And then we had food making sure we had enough food, making sure. Yeah, we had t shirts. And there they were out and that, you know, we gave away a little like pin to all of our students, like, you made sure that that was where it needed to get and left, you know, passing out our note sheets and pens.

00:06:44:20 - 00:07:08:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, I mean, you just you thought of like, every detail. So, like, I know your background helps you with that, but like, imagine you're talking to someone who's not as organized as you like. So you come by that naturally, which is what was just like a marvel to behold. But like what? What would you tell someone? Or how would you encourage someone to think if they're like planning something like that?

00:07:08:09 - 00:07:29:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like what? What's the way that you help us get inside your brain for some of the logistics?

Kaylen Adams
Well, when you're planning an event, yes, for a job, for ministry, ever. You write down all of your ideas like, no one is like, I'm just taking this all right here. I will accept it later. It's going to be there like you always write it down.

00:07:29:11 - 00:07:54:20
Kaylen Adams
You make it through for you. And I just thought, you know, would probably be really helpful for a volunteers to see that map. Like, I don't know why I would keep it from them. They should know, like how we got from point A to point B, because by the time we're at point B and we're doing the thing, they deeply understand what they're doing and not only do what I'm telling them to do, they can actually take initiative and do the things that I missed.

00:07:54:22 - 00:08:13:05
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. And so that's a huge part of it is just like, if I were a volunteer, what would I want to know? So I could do my job? Well, I feel good about it. Yeah. So then how how did you go about communicating? Like, did you have a meeting? Did you send them a text? Did you send them an email?

00:08:13:05 - 00:08:31:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like what? Because that's probably, I would imagine, a lot of stuff. And I think again, most youth pastors are like, I don't either have the time or be want to overwhelm my volunteers, or maybe see just another reason I didn't actually write it down. It is all in my head. So, I mean, I would say probably for all of us.

00:08:31:06 - 00:08:55:12
Kaylen Adams
Step one is get it out of your head onto paper somehow. And then two, how did you communicate it? Yeah. So I communicated a couple different ways. So the only time that I was texting volunteers instructions or anything was a, when I was recruiting them. Okay. I never sent them like, all the information they needed individually because I needed them all to be kind of in one part.

00:08:55:12 - 00:09:16:24
Kaylen Adams
So I knew who was getting one information and it always the same. Yeah. If I ever was giving instructions, it was in a group chat or a group of people that had a specialized role. Those came last minute. They weren't actually accounted for. Next time we did an event, I probably would account for them in advance. So I'm not texting information because for the smaller like you're saying, the.

00:09:17:01 - 00:09:51:02
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, the smaller, more specialized groups groupings of people. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I like to create an escape room. We had game masters and we didn't know about that until like pretty close to the event. I probably would have included them into all the mass event communication before that time. Got it as okay. Got it. Yeah. Okay. So and then and then putting together all this information, I'm kind of stockpiling it in a folder called Volunteer Prep, and I'm organizing it by like, this document, they need to know this document.

00:09:51:02 - 00:10:11:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They need to know if they don't really need to know that, I'll pull it back. What are those documents? Can you give us just a few examples, like pull back the curtain a little bit?

Kaylen Adams
Yeah, yeah. So I'll make a volunteer schedule that's like five position. And then I sang people to that position per day. So it's not by time blocks, it's by day and what they're doing okay.

00:10:11:16 - 00:10:28:21
Kaylen Adams
And then I have a document a volunteer job description. They need to know what they're doing, why they're doing how they do it. Yeah. And then I do a document. If we're doing anything outside or in a weird space, I'll do an aerial map and I'll make, like, different stations and positions of where they're going to be.

00:10:28:23 - 00:10:51:09
Kaylen Adams
I'll give them a service order so they can see just how we do, how the whole day is going to go through. They even see like how different session parts are going to work, like what sounds work. It's going to do all the stuff because they help with transitions, like really help because it's easier to be like, hey, after they do a million little miracles, I need you to come out here rather than at 737.

00:10:51:09 - 00:11:11:20
Kaylen Adams
I need you to. Yeah. The more like more like, big landmarks on a map. Yeah. Once you get this song, then this is your cue to come out and help set up for lunch, like, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. That's why the service order is so important. And for them to see what's in Planning Center is for that.

00:11:11:20 - 00:11:34:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We updated everything for the whole event kind of revolves around that. And you're doing the same for your volunteers. And so because then I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, you're able to be like, hey, if you're in charge of lunch, like, these are your three areas or meals, I guess, like these are your three. So like Friday night dinner, Saturday morning breakfast and, you know, Saturday lunch.

00:11:34:07 - 00:11:56:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like at this time you need to be here for this. Because if we say lunch is at 12, let's say I'm imagining you're having your volunteer get there at 11:15 or 11:30 or something like that. So how do you real quick answer this question for me. How do you determine, what time to to call for them? Like, yeah.

00:11:56:10 - 00:12:18:11
Kaylen Adams
So when it comes to like food stuff because you're dealing with catering and vendors usually like I wouldn't have that start. So we had lunch at like, what was it this year? 12 I think it started and I don't remember the exact time. I just know we had it and it was ready. And that's why you're here. We had food dropped off at like 1115.

00:12:18:16 - 00:12:41:10
Kaylen Adams
Okay. So plenty of time. And most of that was not because I was worried about my volunteers because they knew what to do. And we're not in like the biggest space ever is to account for vendors being late or not knowing where to park and, stuff. Yeah. When it comes to other transitions, they're a lot tighter windows and they're a lot quicker usually it was like the song before something started.

00:12:41:10 - 00:13:04:10
Kaylen Adams
I would send them to go do something, but again, that's also because their space isn't really big and any materials they needed or resources. I set out in a central location, a table in the main space. We all were operating out of the auditorium, and I labeled everything with all the different times that it's going to be needed, and even put under, like during this song, you should take that, this place.

00:13:04:10 - 00:13:25:17
Kaylen Adams
So my volunteers knew to flock to that table when transition times are happening. Yeah, that was so good. So then are you. So you're just labeling those like yeah, color you label like for anything. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You label like crazy. If you think like oh that'd be really obvious for someone to know it's now you should label.

00:13:25:23 - 00:13:45:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Because again, your brain versus reality. Right. Like it makes sense in your brain, our brain as we're planning the events. But it might not make sense to volunteer. Yeah, because they're just dropping in. Right. You know. Yeah. After work. Right. They've been at work all day and their mind is in a million other places.

00:13:45:10 - 00:14:06:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so like, they're, you know, giving up their time and they're willing and they're helpful and all those things. But like I like that. I like what you're saying, like, almost, almost dummy proof it. Right? Not that they're dumb, but, like, make it so simple. Okay. Yeah. Do it. Yeah. Well, my volunteers, they do best when they're confident.

00:14:06:24 - 00:14:24:06
Kaylen Adams
When they're confident, they are empowered to take initiative, make decisions, do something really well when they're not confident in whether or not they're in the right place, holding the right thing, putting it where it should be. Then you have a lot of lag and you have a lot of like question. And that's when things start to like frame fall apart.

00:14:24:09 - 00:14:59:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. So your job as an event coordinator is just to how can I give my volunteers the most confidence they need in this decision. That's good. Okay. So then anything else on what you tell volunteers? I want to maybe go a different direction if you feel like you've kind of got everything in that lack thing is leading up to the event, you want to send out the longest email of your life, and then is where all of the equipment I talked about keeping in that volunteer folder and you go through, you give an overview and you kind of describe how the event's going, and they need to read those attachments.

00:14:59:24 - 00:15:26:05
Kaylen Adams
I sent it all beforehand because that's our big meeting, and they can refer back to you and have in writing. And then by the time we are at the event, like 30 minutes an hour before the start, that meeting is a refresher or a question. That's not the entire meeting. Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing you did, which I thought was brilliant, was you, taped all those attachments to a wall of one of our leader workrooms.

00:15:26:07 - 00:15:47:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, yeah, if they didn't want to, you know, fight with their email to find it again, they could just go reference quickly off a printed copy. So again, you don't like you think about your dummy proofing it like, yes, you communicated it in the email. And this is one of the concepts I talk about in communication a lot is like, we live in like a Netflix culture, so people live it with like an on demand mindset.

00:15:47:10 - 00:16:05:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you sent it on like a Thursday at 3:30 p.m., but like, they were in the middle of like a business meeting. And so it wasn't in their mind then, but it will be in their mind when they show up on Friday at six. But like they've gotten 27 more emails since then and so. Oh yeah, where is that?

00:16:05:03 - 00:16:24:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think it's brilliant to put it somewhere just quick and accessible and maybe even another hack that we didn't even do or think about, but like maybe even having like a static like landing page or like QR code that they could like scan and pull open, like in a, just a tab in their safari. And then that gives them access to everything, you know, that they need.

00:16:24:23 - 00:16:58:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But yeah, I think that was that was so smart. So then how do you go about, like, help us get in your brain because, you know, you had a couple volunteers there that I was like, oh, like, I wouldn't have thought that they would be here. Not because they did, like a bad job or they're just they weren't like as maybe like involved or like, maybe they're only serving like once a month or once every other, week, like in our student ministry and like, you had the, like, in charge of, like, food or like certain like, you know, snack type areas, like, how did you go through and think, who am

00:16:58:15 - 00:17:16:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I going to recruit? Because I thought that was one of the other really special things was like, you asked a very particular or like, dedicated ask for like just very, again, very specific volunteers. You didn't I didn't feel like you did like an all call, though. You maybe you did to kind of pick up anyone who might be interested.

00:17:16:22 - 00:17:39:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then I think you went particularly after, like certain names or certain individuals. How did you how did you like, think about them to, to ask them and like what goes into you? You know, determining this person would be good for that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you definitely do an all call because, well, we are desperate for people to help.

00:17:39:13 - 00:18:06:02
Kaylen Adams
We're not gonna act like or not, but, honestly, I just kind of go with a philosophy of I'll never say no for somebody like, you know, I think sometimes we do that even if we say that we're not like, well, they only serve on Sundays and they're very particular about their job. And I'm like, yes. But they also probably like high school is I don't know, maybe the chances are, and so I just kind of like we always have conversations for like, oh, that person would be like, so good at this.

00:18:06:02 - 00:18:27:03
Kaylen Adams
Or if only they do it. And I usually take that person and then ask, yeah, like I make a list of all. Yeah. As I am planning events and I just keep people's personalities in mind like I, we see them work all Sunday and we see them work Wednesday. And you kind of see like what things kind of light them up and what things they're like, oh can I do anything else but that.

00:18:27:07 - 00:18:42:18
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. And so I just kind of catalog that and that way. And I do kind of mentally. But it wouldn't hurt to like make a list of people like I love reaching out to this person for this. This is this. And I've noticed that they've done events. We have volunteers that really get fired up for events like that.

00:18:42:18 - 00:19:02:24
Kaylen Adams
Just being a part of a big beast of a programing thing, like kind of lights them up and exciting. And so I have people that I regularly reach out with, like Kyra Allen Love. She's one of our checking people. I remember when I came in, she was on like some sort of kind of understanding that she was only going to volunteer a couple times because she had some things going on.

00:19:02:24 - 00:19:26:20
Kaylen Adams
And I just remember, like, she was so stoked to do this back to school bash experience. That was like a Wednesday night special because, like, I definitely would love to do events and she's been my event checking person every single time I day. Yeah, yeah that's good. Yeah. She loves it. So you have like a you're very in tune to to them like just ongoing right.

00:19:26:20 - 00:19:44:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like you're keeping an eye as you're doing your job. And so that makes it easier obviously. Then when you go to to think and yeah I like that it is not creepy but it is. No. Yeah. But I think that's part of the that again I when I saw some of those people that was like interesting but also awesome and like that was all kudos to you right.

00:19:44:20 - 00:20:01:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I'll kudos you because like I wouldn't have thought to ask that person. Like I would have thrown a link in our leader group chat. Hey, you know, want to volunteer? They did it. And now I'm desperate, you know? And, so yeah, I was we were more than fully staffed, you know, for. Yeah. And so that was the other thing.

00:20:01:11 - 00:20:20:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like how, like how many jobs do you try to give a leader? Like how many are you trying to, like, let people do double duty? Or like, hey, you're in charge of like, food and like, that's your job the whole weekend. Like, how do you make those decisions?

Kaylen Adams
Yeah, some of our jobs, like, they feel very crucial and important because they are.

00:20:20:13 - 00:20:40:05
Kaylen Adams
But they're not crucial. Important in that they happen the entire time of the program. Like right there. Yeah. There are a window a very important window. But then and. Yeah, and you have to remember, when you're dealing with these volunteers, they're adults with full time jobs are like at the leaders, if they're they're at your event, they are high capacity.

00:20:40:07 - 00:21:01:24
Kaylen Adams
They don't do well, bored or sitting and doing nothing. They want to do something. And if they're doing something that morale is high and they'll probably do another event because they're like, that was awesome though. So yeah, it's good. Yeah. So I assign generally like 2 or 3 roles throughout the service order to people. So they're like constantly transitioning and moving to do so.

00:21:02:01 - 00:21:22:02
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. And that comes back to your like schedule your map. And you're like you're thinking that ahead. Like okay. Do they after this window closes they can go to this, but then they maybe can't do this next thing because they're going to be busy doing that. Like, again, that's the next level stuff, Kaylen, that you're like, you're very good at.

00:21:22:02 - 00:21:44:02
Kaylen Adams
So, okay, so then, let's talk a little bit about like, food. Okay. How do you determine, how much to order? Like, is it just as simple as, like, as many as there are registered. How do you account for, like, walk ins at an event like this where we do leave registration open all the way up until you know, it starts.

00:21:44:02 - 00:22:05:20
Kaylen Adams
And so theoretically, a kid could walk in and do you have enough food for them, like how do you how do you kind of try and manage that or think about that? Yeah. It all it does depend on how, big of an invite event. This is like I think high school weekend was an invite like, but we didn't like push super hard and say like my friends going for it.

00:22:05:22 - 00:22:25:12
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, yeah. So always keep that in mind. Yes. You keep the registration number, but you also want to account for all of the adults in the building. Don't forget yourself or your staff then volunteers. And if you're providing food for tech and worship or if they're doing their own thing so that all is in that number. Yeah.

00:22:25:14 - 00:22:49:00
Kaylen Adams
But registration, I just kind of. I don't want to have too big of a margin because then we're spending a lot of money on food. But things that I can give out is like door prizes, like pizza. I'm a little more willing to have extra of because we could have done or do to make their night, but like, same with, you know, because no one wants like a cold, soggy sandwich by the end of like 12 of them.

00:22:49:06 - 00:23:10:08
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. So I would be a little bit more tight on food like that. And also keep in mind that everyone's like, kids are so hungry they're going to eat three slices of pizza. You keep in mind the girls, because girls don't eat as much food as boys. And, like, I definitely like they're just there's camping retreat food.

00:23:10:08 - 00:23:32:14
Kaylen Adams
That is great because you're hungry, but it's not a lot of kids. First choice. Really like one of it. Yeah, they'll like maybe one and a half will split with a friend. Yeah. So just keep that in mind. Like the ratio is not as monstrous as you think. Yeah, I think the ratio I've tried to use for pizza is, two and a half times your number.

00:23:32:14 - 00:23:51:06
Kaylen Adams
So, like, think you're big number of all the people including tech and worship and check in and staff and everyone. And then you multiply it by two and a half. That'll give you the total number of slices that you need. And then you can divide that by eight, because that's how many slices of pizza are in, your pizza box.

00:23:51:06 - 00:24:06:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then that'll give you a number with a decimal. And you can either round up around whatever you, you know, feel. And what's really nice is like, you know, you do the random picker thing, like, with their name. And for those who don't know, you picked the names and then they just get a random prize for doing nothing.

00:24:06:03 - 00:24:22:03
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, that great. Pick that food leftovers too, because you don't want to bank on having extra if you're just kind of guessing because kids might be really hungry and you don't have it, and then you just lost a prize for a game. Yeah. So you want that to be like a random moment that if they don't get it, they have no idea.

00:24:22:05 - 00:24:48:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. All right. Let's see what else. What else do you what else do you think about for an event that I'm not thinking even to, like, ask you? Listen, you have to know if your church has any sort of, like, admin team, administrative volunteers that help put these things together with your operations at all, like your facilities and your finance people or whatever it might be.

00:24:48:04 - 00:25:09:00
Kaylen Adams
You need to meet with them, like way ahead of time. So I see way ahead of time. Yeah. So I start meeting with people. We've been cutting it kind of close and cutting it close to meeting two months in advance. Okay. So you need to some of us that might be like, oh, that's when I start thinking about it.

00:25:09:02 - 00:25:34:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. No. Especially if it's like a really big event. Which high school weekend is a really big event for us? We need to start planning that month in advance. And depending on, like, the capacity of your team, that could fluctuate a little bit. Like if it's just you and one other person, I would say probably start looking at that at like six months and having if you have a couple other people who can share that, you could maybe do a little bit less.

00:25:34:19 - 00:25:59:21
Kaylen Adams
But you definitely need to start meeting with administrative people on your church staff that are handling this, because their personalities are a lot different than yours. As a ministry person, you're used to pivoting and being creative and all the things and pulling it off at the last minute. Yeah, they are not. They love systems and processes and if you break their system, it's going to be really, really hard to get them to like be on the same wavelength with you.

00:26:00:01 - 00:26:22:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Good. Yeah, yeah. And like in our particular, you know, setting, we have like our facilities people like they set everything up for us, which is fantastic. But to your point, like, only if we're on top of it, if we slide in in the ninth hour and we're like, this is what we want, they're like, yo, we're already on to like, stuff for like later, next weekend.

00:26:22:11 - 00:26:43:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like we've already, you know, planned our day. So, you know, to her point like, and whether you know so like, here's the thing I do know if like you're listening, you're like, okay, I don't work at a church anywhere near that. Has any of that. Like, I am the operations, I am the admin. And what I would say is, lean into your volunteers if you're like that sounds fantastic.

00:26:43:23 - 00:27:15:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I would love that. But I don't have anyone that works for me with me on my team. Anything like that like that doesn't mean you can't do it, and it doesn't mean you still can't delegate and dish out. You just may have to do that more of like a volunteer capacity. So find a mother. Or like someone who, like, works in like an administrative like role that has a little bit of, bandwidth and margin and like, ask them, you know, like, I'm sure if I'm saying that many of you right now, as you're listening, you're like, oh, yeah, I could probably ask so and so, like that person's come into your mind like, let

00:27:15:12 - 00:27:33:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that person be your Kaylen for your event. And like, yes, we had the luxury of like Kaylen being on our team payroll, but like, you know, it doesn't it doesn't, they don't have to be right. And like. Yeah, setting up you can. I mean, we employ teenagers, like, students to, like, come early and do stuff like that.

00:27:33:00 - 00:28:00:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, you know, we call them what we call them. Simps. Yet SMPs student is tone texting is for like, student oh my gosh. Okay. Do not disturb do that anyway. Ministry student minutes protege. Protege. Yeah yeah yeah. Protege. Yeah. And so anyway, we employ them, they, get free camp, and stuff like that, but they come early in, like, sets, set things up.

00:28:00:12 - 00:28:25:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, like, they can be like facilities team. So again, as we're saying it like, don't don't be like I had never be there like you for sure can like employ volunteers and people that'll do it for free. And they like to to Kaylen's point. Yeah they do. That might not be your gifting. And you're like, no one would ever want to run administrative or set chairs up like some people genuinely do.

00:28:25:02 - 00:28:47:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so don't rob other people of being able to serve your youth ministry, God's kingdom, whatever. By not asking them. What else Kaylen. Anything else or do we hit it all. I just would in mind people's personalities. You're going to have people who, when they're planning events, they just run just like that's just their personality and that's how they work best.

00:28:47:19 - 00:29:06:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so they're going to ask a lot of questions and they're going to want to meet with you last minute and their vibe might kind of like make you kind of thrown off because you're like, I thought we had all this plan. Why do you need to meet and double check? They've probably done a great job. They just want to make sure that they've done everything you need to help you.

00:29:06:14 - 00:29:25:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you have someone in your life who's like that, just remember, like, just have your questions kind of written out of what you know, that they text and have those input ready for them. And that's going to help those meetings a lot quicker. I had a at one churches I worked at, I had a volunteer like that.

00:29:25:20 - 00:29:47:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Her name was Sarah. And the way that I would think logistically when I was planning things because, like, I was a one man band, we had a church secretary 20 hours a week that served the entire church. Right. So, like, I could get some stuff, you know, to for her to do for the youth ministry, but not like she wasn't like, there to, like at my beck and call for everything.

00:29:48:00 - 00:30:12:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so as I was like dishing things off to volunteers and whatnot, like my, my filter in my head was always like, what would Sarah want to know? Right? It's I think that's a good like a good way to think about it is like, think about the volunteer who has the most questions for you. And then ask the question like, would the amount of information that I'm sending up, would it satisfy that person?

00:30:12:16 - 00:30:37:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if yes, then you're on the right track. If not, then you probably need more detail. So yeah. Yeah, I love that. Cool. Kaylen, is that it? Do we hit it? Yeah. There's our all events for future and for always going to be planned, do you think? I think I think so well, yeah probably. All right. Well hey, this was how I plan events with Kaylen.

00:30:37:14 - 00:30:57:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Not Morty's Kaylen Adams. And, she's awesome. So, Kaylen, I mean, like, can people, like, follow you, like, on social media or anything if they want to? Yeah. Yeah. Where, where where can they find you? It's funny. I have to, like, go double check. Well, I can't fake my name. Oh, wait. What is it? Now that I just had to change my social media handles?

00:30:57:18 - 00:31:22:13
Kaylen Adams
Because I just got mail? I know well, and Instagram is actually really hard to change your last name on, so it hasn't been changed yet. My handle, but my name on there stage so you can find me at K Maltese Underscore on Instagram. It's cmake lta s underscore on Instagram Facebook Palin Adams look me up. I think that's all in I'm on because I'm old and TikTok that's okay.

00:31:22:17 - 00:31:32:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's banned anyway. So actually it's back. I don't know if you heard but oh all right people. Well I'm signing off for Kayla and this is Nick. Talk to you next time. Stay hybrid guys.

Episode 131: Secrets Revealed for Middle School Phone Usage

Nick Clason — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 04:00:00 -0600

✏️Collaborative Worksheet
https://share.hsforms.com/1t_3g3O3XTBqI-vq1Orq7ngnumis

🎧 Ronald's Podcast
https://podcast.downloadyouthministry.com/category/middle-school-ministry/

DESCRIPTION
In this conversation, Nick Clason and Ronald Long discuss the challenges and opportunities of youth ministry in the digital age, particularly focusing on the role of technology and cell phones among middle schoolers. They explore the importance of engagement in content creation, the necessity of guidelines for responsible phone use, and the balance between digital and in-person ministry. The discussion emphasizes the need for open conversations between parents and children regarding technology, as well as collaborative resources for youth pastors to navigate these challenges effectively.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/131

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⌚TIMECODES
00:00 The Role of Technology in Middle School Ministry
04:50 Guidelines for Responsible Cell Phone Use
09:50 Balancing Digital and In-Person Youth Ministry
14:53 Encouraging Healthy Conversations About Technology
20:01 Collaborative Resources for Youth Pastors

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00)
What's up everybody? I'm Nick and this is.

Ronald (00:04)
Hey guys, I'm Ronald Long. How you doing?

Nick Clason (00:06)
We're excited to be here, Ronald. This is a weird thing. This is your show, this is my show, this is our show.

Ronald (00:08)
we are excited to be here.

Whose show is it really? That's a question.

Nick Clason (00:15)
That is the question that people want to know the answer to.

Ronald (00:19)
Did I just take over hybrid youth ministry? I think I did. I did. great. This is mine now. And yours? You get middle school ministry. Yeah, this is it. Tell Andrea. no.

Nick Clason (00:23)
You did, you did. Yeah. Welcome. Well, actually, yeah, and I'm taking over middle school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you have exactly. Bye, Andrea. Bye. Anyway, you know, Ronald, it's interesting and I'm excited to have this conversation because probably the biggest, one of the biggest pushbacks I get when I'm pushing stuff like in my hybrid ministry, just idea and whatnot is what about middle schoolers?

especially like in our context, we don't get middle schoolers until like, or we get them at sixth grade, which there's an inflection point. And depending on the conservative nature of your church, there could be a lot of those students that have cell phones. And then a lot of students that don't, you know? And so like my main thing with hybrid ministry is trying to intersect people where they are. And I think the cell phone is just a great spot to try and aim for. Right. But what about those middle schoolers that are young and like don't have cell phones? And so.

Ronald (00:57)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Nick Clason (01:21)
I'm excited to have this conversation with you because you as a lifelong middle school youth pastor and host of podcasts, like you and a dad of daughters in that age age range, right? Like I want to hear your perspective because I'm it feels to me and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels to me like middle schoolers kind of run the gamut. Some that don't even have access to any technology and then some that are just all in way too much. You're a little scared for their well-being, you know.

Ronald (01:29)
EW.

Yeah.

Absolutely, and you're right because their parents also run the gambit too. So for people listening who don't know, I have in my house four teenage daughters. I have 18 year old senior graduating this year, then I have a freshman, a seventh grader, and a fifth grader. So I've got everybody.

Nick Clason (01:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you're right there.

Ronald (02:15)
And my elementary school kid who's in fifth grade, Ruth is telling me about like her friends who have cell phones and have had cell phones since like third and fourth grade. Like that's just been their reality. They have always had a phone. Think of the iPad kid who just like parents are like, yeah, whatever here, right? Here's just the next step up. Go ahead and have a phone. Don't care. Put whatever on it. And then like,

Nick Clason (02:42)
So

Ronald (02:45)
me and my family, this has become our rule, it was our rule with our first, you get your cell phone at the end of fifth grade. And so, and we'll talk a little bit more about this too because I have really appreciated what other parents like told me and helped me figure out. That cell phone only can do a couple things, right? And we stair-step eventually through it.

Nick Clason (02:54)
Okay.

Hmm. So as we like lean into this, first of all, everyone should know, no matter where you're listening, hit the link down below, because Ronald and I put together kind of like a collaborative hybrid ministry for middle schoolers kind of resource. So take it, download it, use it, share it with your parents, whatever you want to do. But especially like here we are post-Christmas, and isn't it so true that most middle schoolers

Ronald (03:30)
Use it.

Nick Clason (03:41)
there's a lot of technology that's given under the tree. And so this is just a very timely conversation, right? Like let's talk about technology use and middle schoolers. give us, like, why you start there where you did a little bit, like dive a little deeper into that. Fifth grader, that's your rule. Is that your recommendation? Do you take it, would you recommend parents take that on more of a case by case type basis? What's the wisdom principle in that, or is it?

Ronald (03:44)
100%.

yeah.

Nick Clason (04:08)
you know, hard and fast, like, yeah, as soon as they're done with fifth grade, they're mature enough to have a cell phone or like, what's your, how do you make that decision? I guess, or how would you coach parents to make that decision?

Ronald (04:17)
So what we went through and what was kind of like the deciding factor for us is, I live in San Antonio and so we have, once my kid was finished with elementary school, our oldest, she had friends who were splitting up into like the four winds, right? And we wanted to give her a way to stay connected to them and so we were like, okay, we're going to give you a phone, but.

Nick Clason (04:36)
Mm.

Yeah.

Ronald (04:46)
Big stipulations. We had it, it's an iPhone, so we locked it down pretty tight to where she couldn't download any apps without requesting permission, so that's a big deal. There's no browser on it. So in fact, my high schooler just got a browser this year for ninth grade. to put that in, yeah, no browser.

Nick Clason (04:51)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Okay, so that's like all of middle school. Yeah.

Ronald (05:16)
Specifically also, no social media. She actually also just got her first social media, which was Pinterest. you, stair steppin' man. That's a stair step. But that, okay, here's what I tell parents, and here's what I have told parents and what I am taking through. Imagine a cell phone like a car, right? You are, even for the visual.

Nick Clason (05:25)
Okay. Which, does that even count? know, like that's one of those fringe ones.

For sure.

Mm-hmm.

Ronald (05:46)
You're giving keys away to your kid. for the audio too. on. There we go. Little foley. Little foley for our audio listeners. You don't just give the Ferrari away to a 16 year old or a 15 year old and say, right, go figure that out. guess you know more about this than I do. Like, no, no.

Nick Clason (05:46)
There you go.

Those are car keys, people. Ronald's jingling them. We'll narrate this.

Yeah.

Ronald (06:15)
you start that kid backing in and out of your driveway in the beater, right? And so we took that principle and applied it to our kids having cell phones. So like, okay, you're going to get like a not great iPhones, not the brand new one. It's going to be like, the one with the one camera. Yeah. The one camera type deal. And we're going to stair step you through this. Well, that's just an Android, Nick. That's what you.

Nick Clason (06:30)
Mm-hmm. me down. Yeah.

Maybe some crack screens like my Android here.

The glass is apparently weaker.

Ronald (06:45)
That's fine. No, and so we've stair-stepped. so my seventh grader who has a phone, also has a phone in middle school, has a phone but doesn't have, again, social media doesn't have a browser. And we also put like a stipulation on where the phone can go. My girls, I live in a two-story house. All the bedrooms are upstairs. No phones upstairs. Like that's a rule for us. And so when ...

Nick Clason (07:11)
Great rule, by the way. I approve. Yeah.

Ronald (07:14)
When it's time to go to bed, the charger's downstairs and they have to charge their phone downstairs. No phones at the dinner table. In fact, even it's no phones after dinner. So we say, hey, get it done after dinner, no phones. Those are just like things that we have done as a family to be like, hey, here's the deal. We are going to give you permission that expands with responsibility. And then also cool thing as a parent, my kids don't have a cell phone after supper.

Nick Clason (07:18)
Yeah, good.

Mmm. It's good. It's good.

Mm-hmm.

Ronald (07:44)
So if I'm just scrolling on my cell phone after supper, they're like, hey dad, what are you doing? I'm like, yeah, you're right. I need to be off my phone. I need to pay attention to you.

Nick Clason (07:46)
They're calling you out.

That's so smart. That's just like built in accountability right there, for sure. Yeah. And you know, the thing that I, I try and tell parents as well in our context and other youth ministry avenues and whatever, honestly, just like a lot of times the question is what product or what resource do you use to like monitor like your kids screen usage and all those types of things. And rest assured, there are a million different like resources and things out there that you can use and you can lean into.

Ronald (07:57)
It's huge.

Absolutely.

Nick Clason (08:22)
But at the end of the day, the goal is for that thing not to become your kid's parent. The goal is for you to be the parent of it. Right. And so I love your rules because those guidelines are things that you've put in place. Like you can lock down an iPhone all you want, but you can still abuse it if it's in the room and they're on it until way after bedtime or you know, the no, no phones after dinner thing. Like there can be indiscriminate use or just like mindless use of it. And so.

Ronald (08:50)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (08:51)
You're being proactive and in on top of it, you know, and that's, that's what I really like and appreciate because that's the tech. There's always a workaround in the technology. That's what I've found. Like there's no foolproof piece of technology. It's always a work.

Ronald (09:02)
Heck yeah.

No, I figured it out when I was dealing dial-up modem internet and my parents had the protective things when I was in high school. like, I can figure this out, you know? So no amount of blocking software or things like that will get around actual discipleship of your kids. Because you are a person who is imperfect, just like your kids. They're gonna make mistakes. So what do do?

Nick Clason (09:10)
Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

That's it. That's it. That's good. That's good. Let's shift gears a little bit then. Let's talk about your, how you've noticed technology, cell phones, whatever, within actual confines of youth ministry. Not just, you you parenting your kids with it, but like, what's it like navigating? Cause in a lot of cases, like we said, you got kids that don't even have it at all versus kids who are like using and fully on like all the social apps. So.

Ronald (09:36)
Like, how do you figure that out? Big deal.

Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:03)
What was your typical practice as a middle school pastor with technology?

Ronald (10:10)
Yeah, of it was just being open about that being a potential barrier between you and other people. And the other thing was not, because I was in a real conservative context, there was almost like some judgment to kids who did have a phone, which was really funny. And so I had to like stamp, yeah, I'm glad you get it. So.

Nick Clason (10:28)
Mm

Yeah, same here by the way, so I can relate to that.

Ronald (10:39)
On the one hand, whenever I had a parent being like, you know what, my kid just say that they don't connect very, they don't have any friends in youth ministry. And I'm looking at their kid, I so remember this one specific instance of girl, phone here, face down, and even her hair like covered the side of her face to where all it was, and she was in a corner on her phone looking down at it and not engaging with the room.

Nick Clason (10:59)
Yeah.

Ronald (11:07)
And then like I got a email three weeks later being like, my daughter is just not making any friends. I'm like, yeah, no joke. I've tried. And so trying to have a conversation with students where it's both not being judgmental, but also making sure they're aware of like, hey guys, if you feel lonely, one of the reasons in a list might be you're on your phone too much and you're missing what's going on right in front of you.

Nick Clason (11:13)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ronald (11:36)
you care more about your online persona or the next funny video than you do your friend who's literally sitting three feet away from you. so trying to navigate that well was always the thing. And so that would just be like application. But on the other hand, you can do that in really great ways to be like, Hey guys, if you've got a phone, text a friend verse right now, someone who's not in this room, text an encouraging verse.

Nick Clason (11:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ronald (12:03)
so that you can be a light in their life, right? It's both and, right? So I don't like telling a kid, hey, cell phones are the devil, you should never have one. And I don't like telling parents, just give your kid a phone and don't worry about it, because it's absolutely both and.

Nick Clason (12:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's honestly, that's exactly like what I feel like my entire podcast is predicated on. what this started out of, I don't know, I guess like a moment of frustration and a little bit of like an inflection point. like we'd gone pretty hard in on like digital ministry during COVID. I was working in Chicago and so it was necessitated, like it had to happen.

But then we found some really fun and cool wins out of doing ministry in a digital sort of context and some opportunities that actually opened up for us that weren't available to us doing ministry pre-COVID. And so as we were all sort of coming back from, you know, restrictions and lockdown and all those types of things, we were then trying to navigate this like tension between like how much should we swing the pendulum, right? And so my whole, like my whole thing, like the whole name of this like hybrid ministry is like,

Ronald (13:08)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:13)
It's not just your digital, but it's not just your in-person. It's kind of that both and, and I think in all of life, it's easier for us. We like to draw hard and hard and fast lines and be like, cell phones are bad. So you should not, but I like your, you know, your Ferrari example because you have to work, you have to work up to it. You don't just earn it immediately. And so like my contention is as much as we, especially older generations want to lament cell phones and how difficult they are for

ministry and connection and they are like in some cases they definitely are, but like there's also a lot of good, you know, that comes out of them. your friend a verse or group chats. Like group chats are such a simple thing that didn't exist. Was it 10 years ago? 15 years ago? Like even if you have people with Android, like group chats are still a way to stay connected, you know, to one another. but you know, so like that's, that's kind of like my contention is like

Ronald (13:54)
Mm-hmm.

No, you can't connect with people with Androids over group chat. It doesn't happen.

Nick Clason (14:11)
we have to help students navigate this well and not just settle for the easy answer of just throw your cell phone in a river. It's terrible and it's the enemy. And if we think that, then why are we getting our kids these things for Christmas? It's like, I just need to call them at practice. Okay, but now you've opened Pandora's box and that's not necessarily a bad thing, not condemning any parent for doing that. I'm just saying now we have to help them navigate that well, both at the parent level and also while we're like...

Ronald (14:20)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Nick Clason (14:40)
navigating and managing that within like our student ministries.

Ronald (14:44)
Sure, and it's just as important as showing your kid what you version can do and be like, hey, you know what's really cool about you version? It's a Bible reading plan. Let's you and me do it together, parent and kid. Or, hey, as a ministry, we're gonna do this month long Bible reading plan. That's on your phone. Yeah, it's absolutely being able to use the tools that are available to us, because we could have said the same thing about lamenting the invention of the car, taking away our, aw man, we're not as

Nick Clason (14:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Course privileges.

Ronald (15:14)
connected. So yeah, and since this is the middle school ministry podcast too, it matters to a middle school student what you model to them. Because they take that to heart. so my whole thing was not trying to judge those who had a cell phone. But yeah, absolutely. If they're going to be on YouTube,

Nick Clason (15:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Ronald (15:44)
watching you know Mr. Beast do whatever Mr. Beast does then I kind of also want them to hear from their youth pastor every now and then and so that's an easy thing to do like you pastor to take your phone spend five minutes making five reels and then or five shorts for YouTube and be like hey look my kids are gonna get some encouragement for me this week that's it's out there

Nick Clason (15:51)
Why not? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely. And one thing I've noticed and I've seen in like studies and stuff here recently is like, you know, Gen X boomers even have all sort of like settled in on Facebook millennials. Are you millennial, Ronald? Yeah. All right. Me too. Me too. Instagram, right? It's kind of like millennials favorite platform. Gen Z sort of like made tick tock its thing. We're noticing

Ronald (16:22)
yes, and how dare you.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (16:34)
Jen Alpha's making YouTube kind of their spot. And I, yeah. And I even read that it, for Jen Alpha, it's taking the place of Google as its preferred search engine. And so what an opportunity for us like to be on there, you know, and for middle school kids to see us, to see their youth pastor, to maybe even see themselves or their friends from youth group. You know, if you post shorts, reels, all that type of stuff on there, like

Ronald (16:36)
Yeah, it is YouTube.

Absolutely.

Nick Clason (17:01)
You're so right. Like it's such a fantastic opportunity. it really, just exactly what my whole goal with hybrid is like showing up where they are. Like if they're on YouTube, how cool is it? Like they can get on there and they can watch MrBeast who's all across the country and also their church.

Ronald (17:17)
Well, and to even use the platform like it's currently being used then, how cool would it be if your kid typed in how to study the Bible and they got an answer from their youth pastor immediately? Like you already had a five minute video on how to study the Bible that you had prepared for your kids and it was there, right? Because that's how they're using the platform.

Nick Clason (17:30)
Right? Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah, it's not just like, it's not just there for you as a youth pastor to have another channel for announcements, though you can be, but I would, what I encourage people to do is use the platforms for their intended uses. And so if you're going to use it for a thing that you think is what your ministry needs, but it's not in alignment with the intended use of the platform, you're not going to see the same types of results than if you actually use it for what it's being used for, which is answering specific questions.

Ronald (17:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yep.

Nick Clason (18:09)
And frankly, entertainment, right? And maybe like a little bit of inspiration too. So that's good. So what would you say to a middle school youth pastor or any youth pastor out there, like who's got people in their church like you and like me who are a little leery about cell phone, cell phone usage, middle school. Like what's the, how would you coach them, you know, to either lean in and have that conversation or.

Ronald (18:26)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (18:38)
with parents or how to like manage maybe some of that potential like turbulent waters of, you know, angry parents who think cell phones are evil and of the devil.

Ronald (18:48)
You know what's funny is when I first started in ministry, there was a big deal where we said, don't bring any cell phones to camp. And then there was a really turbulent season in between when we arrived to my kid as a parent saying, my kid will bring their phone to camp or they're not going.

Nick Clason (18:58)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Ronald (19:18)
And so navigating that in between, I think there are far fewer parents who are going to say that a cell phone is evil. They might be saying, my kid has to have one because I need to be connected and know what's up with my kid at all times.

Nick Clason (19:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ronald (19:35)
which is a different type of unhealth, that's fine. We can go from there. To help a youth pastor navigate the cell phones. Cell phones are bad, right? A cell phone is the same, to use the car analogy. It's a tool. can take you someplace great. It can take you someplace awful. And if you want to be the youth pastor who's like, no cell phones in the youth room. They go in this box over here and we use paper Bible still. Like that's fine.

Nick Clason (19:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, you can do that. Yeah, yeah.

Ronald (20:04)
if you explain that, right? As long as you're saying, why we do this as a ministry, this is the vision, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Do that, but you're going to have parents who, when you go to camp, when you go to retreat, they're gonna push back on you and be like, hey, my kid is going to take their cell phone. I don't care what their rules are.

Nick Clason (20:28)
Yeah. Well, like when did you get a cell phone? Like how old were you when you got a cell phone? Yeah.

Ronald (20:31)
I was 16 and I got a cell phone because my parents were afraid that I was going to get lost when I started driving by myself. So I got my dad's secretary's old Nokia phone.

Nick Clason (20:45)
But so you're 16, right? And now you're the type of parent in that particular age bracket and demographic, you're sending your daughter's kids to camp. like that's all, know, cell phones from the age of 16 for you and on up. Like I was about the same, you know, so here in a couple of years when my kids are old enough to go to camp, I only, that's my like comfort zone, you know? And so like I get their scary stuff on it, but

Ronald (20:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:14)
It's also gonna, it's not, you're not never gonna give your kid a cell phone. So how do we, and that's my thing, how do we help lean in and teach them the good things of it? Put good, good rules and guidelines and guardrails all around it so that you're hopefully protecting your kids and having conversations, you know, with it.

Ronald (21:25)
Yeah.

It's exactly that. It's continued conversations with kids. And even as a parent being okay to say, these are our non-cell phone times to where we're going to talk. I know parents who like to say no phones in the car because that 15 minute, 20 minute drive can be like, hey, we can actually have a conversation as we drive around. But just having conversations about your phone usage. Hey, who are you following? Hey.

Nick Clason (21:35)
That's it, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so true.

Mm-hmm.

Ronald (22:00)
I or even telling like I will do this with my girls. I'll send them goofy videos and goofy memes Not because I think they're the funniest thing in the world But I'm trying to connect with them on their level like to my own kids and so like It's funny because they don't have social media what I'm doing is screen recording a funny reel I saw and then sending that to them as a message

Nick Clason (22:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah dude. Yeah, for sure.

Bro, that's so committed, but I love it. Like that's, you you're like, we're not doing the social media thing, but I still want you to see this thing that I saw on social media and it's funny. So you'll like it. It's great.

Ronald (22:34)
Yeah, and I want you to know that I'm thinking of you throughout the day. I want you to laugh. This is a funny thing. And yeah, phones aren't the devil. Yeah, so it's trying to continually have a conversation with your kid. And even where you're saying, hopefully they're coming to you and being like, my friend is being dumb in the group chat. They go, okay, what did they say? Talking through what's good to text, what's not good to text, how...

Nick Clason (22:43)
That's great,

Ronald (23:02)
inflection matters and be like, Hey, I know you hate it, but this might be a FaceTime moment because it sounds like you guys are not seeing each other texting back and forth. Maybe you need to like actually talk.

Nick Clason (23:12)
Yeah. Yeah, man, that's so good. Well, anything else, Ronald, before we hang this sucker up?

Ronald (23:19)
I think the most important thing a parent can do with their kid and having a phone is have some guidelines and have lots of conversations. I think if you stick into those two places, like you're gonna be in a spot where maybe sometimes it's uncomfortable, maybe it's sometimes you're giving a little bit more, you're giving more unearned responsibility away than you're ready for, but like that's parenting as a whole. You don't want your 18 year old kid.

to get a cell phone and all social media all at once and be like, well, now I'm gonna learn everything. It's much, I think it's a much better experience for you and the kid if you walk them through the process together with you in the driver's seat sometimes and them in the driver's seat sometimes.

Nick Clason (24:04)
That's good. Yeah, actually, if anyone's listening to this, watching this like here live, like in the next several weeks, like that's what I'm doing on my podcast is I'm doing like some parent and kid kind of like tech talks. And so they're like aimed for youth pastors to like curate or have that conversation with like some downloadable worksheets and stuff like that that they can share. because I think that's, that's the key in all of this. Like it's, it's easier to draw a line in the sand and be like, no, this, like this is it. We're not doing that, but like we,

Ronald (24:16)
Mmm, yeah.

Nick Clason (24:34)
That's the phone has not allowed us to do that. It's not going away. So instead we got to figure out how do we lean into it into what's uncomfortable and maybe like uncertain waters, like lean into it to just open up that continued kind of conversation thing. So I think that's, that's so good. So, yo, if you're listening here for me on my channel, go follow everything Ronald's doing, middle school ministry podcast. It's dope. It's all about middle schoolers and he's got dope co-hosts.

Ronald (24:48)
Absolutely.

Yeah. I just want to thank everybody for listening to my podcast, the hybrid ministry podcast. Thank you so much. That's really great. No, and if you're, if you're listening to this from middle school ministry podcast, you should definitely go check out what Nick Clayson is doing over in hybrid ministry. Some really good stuff, some really helpful things to carry the conversation forward when it comes to the digital world and youth ministry.

Nick Clason (25:05)
that you've taken over.

Yeah, no, I love it. So good. And like I said, we both collabed on a little resource. It's free in both of our show notes, so go grab that. that's it, man. We'll talk to guys next time.

Ronald (25:34)
See you around.

Episode 130: 2024 - A Celebration of You: Hybrid Ministry Stats & Stories in Review

Nick Clason — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0600

🎧 Become a “Hybrid Hero”
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

✅Let me Run Your Church Social Media
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

DESCRIPTION
Join us as we celebrate YOU in the "Year in Review for 2024" of the Hybrid Ministry show.
We'll celebrate some statistics, give some shout outs and share the "best of" clips from the 2024 Hybrid Ministry Show.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/130

//BONUS Pod!
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

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

//GIFlashback Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVHcraeNlC8&list=PLngXlSr64YaIui8LNpnlUI3yFAm9SGrLy&index=5&t=24s

//9 Best DYM Games
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

//No Prep Games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=melm8BS97es&list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg&index=6&t=164s

//Youth Ministry Planning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQXsananwI&list=PLngXlSr64YaKjRX2ytO0tvzo8VnF6X03t&index=2&t=202s

//YouTube for Youth Ministry
https://youtu.be/ucvXfaVRJ6E?si=aNYGzB08DV6HHD3G

//Interview Series
https://youtu.be/D4vE7_ZqBpE?si=Hdk5X2KRn_SGr6HM

//Hybrid Tools
https://youtu.be/0np1d4Trcn0?si=7OkkCVCmY8Kvx6ha

//Meet Gen Alpha
https://youtu.be/DWYvsn2Kglk?si=FrnlS3C1xDHITyDb

//Social Challenge Framework
https://youtu.be/K_9Ch2KVNH0?si=THozXMi9NqzxJeUt

//Sidekick
https://youtu.be/lXI3ZKSvFY0?si=O-Em7X00hV9waXBE

//Sidekick + ProPresenter Setup
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup

//Interview with Nate Clason
https://youtu.be/uplCz1S1nz4?si=sne7LvdGvAgrKU72

//DYM Blog Post
https://blog.downloadyouthministry.com/introducing-hybrid-ministry-with-nick-clason/

⌚TIMECODES
00:00 Welcome to 2025!
00:40 Some Stats & Wins
08:47 Personal Reflections
11:21 Thank You to our Amazing Guests!
14:45 Year in Review

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;36;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What a year it has been. From the incredible wins to the unforgettable moments, we have covered so much ground together. And in this special Year in Review episode, we on the Hybrid Ministry show, we are celebrating you, our amazing community with highlights and stats and the best of the hybrid minstrel show here in 2024. Make sure that you stick around because I've actually distilled a highlight reel of the 2024 Hybrid Mr. Podcast Best Moments.

00;00;36;14 - 00;01;08;04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This just might be your favorite episode yet. Welcome back, everybody to the Hybrid Minister Show. I as always, I'm your host, Nick Claassen. And today we're going to be taking a little bit of a trip down memory lane to celebrate the amazing year and this incredible journey that you and I have been on together. As we always have on this podcast, we're going to be exploring the cutting edge ministry ideas and equip you with the tools to dominate the digital space in 2025.

00;01;08;04 - 00;01;35;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's been a ride in 2024, and 2025 is only going to get better. And it is all thank you to you. You know, in 2024, we released a total of 52 audio podcast episodes because we release one every single Thursday. If you haven't liked or subscribed yet, wherever you listen to your podcast, it's free and it will show up in your podcast.

00;01;35;14 - 00;02;13;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Catcher. Every single Thursday. Why? Because youth ministry often happens for most youth ministries across the country on Wednesday, so who doesn't need a little jolt of energy to get the to get them through the rest of their week on Thursdays? But 52 episodes released because we have not missed a single Thursday in the two and a half or so plus years that we've been doing this podcast, I just want to share with you some some highlights of the top performing video over this last year was a video that I titled top five Last Minute Game Ideas.

00;02;13;17 - 00;02;36;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching here on YouTube, you can see some of the clips being overlaid with B-roll. We also over this year we've had nine different playlists that we've worked through. And so in each of those playlists, there's a obviously a top performing video in each of those playlists. And so our very first playlist we had was the 2024 On Demand masterclass.

00;02;36;22 - 00;02;56;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in that video, the five No Prep games was a part of the masterclass. And that video had to, 361 views. And so that was not only the number one video for the year, but obviously the number one in the masterclass playlist. We also dropped a bonus you might not notice we dropped a bonus playlist called the Friday Game Day Series.

00;02;56;28 - 00;03;28;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It released every Friday on YouTube, and, we covered nine of my favorite DRM games that I use. And so actually, if you had any of those or linked down below in this episode nine of my all time favorite do swim games, I'm giving them away to you completely for free. They are games that are on the, they're on the, they're on the website, the download Youth Ministry website, but I'm giving them away to you in this episode, 100% completely for free.

00;03;28;06 - 00;03;49;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the best performing video in that playlist was the GIF flashback episode. We also went through a playlist titled some of the Youth Pastor's Biggest Problems, and the number one episode in that was youth Ministry planning weekend services versus mid week programing. And actually in that episode we ranked youth ministry curriculum. Spoiler it's clear you should try it.

00;03;49;29 - 00;04;12;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, if you haven't yet, hit the link down below. Sidekick.tv/pricing if you've never signed up for anything with Diam or Calendar, use the code Hybrid Ministry ten. All one word for get 10% off your first order. We went through the YouTube for Youth Ministry Play lesson playlist in the best performing video, and that playlist was the flagship title episode YouTube for Youth Ministry.

00;04;12;22 - 00;04;33;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I then took you through some of the hybrid ministry tools and gear that you needed and the the best episode, and that the highest performing episode was the best gear for Digital Ministry in 2024. Must have tech accessories. Then over the summer, we went through an interview series and that episode, the one that was best in that playlist, was the solution to distractions.

00;04;33;07 - 00;04;56;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
At youth group, where I interviewed my good friend Josh Baldwin from Download Youth Ministry sidekick and co-leader. Then we went through Meat Generation Alpha, and in that playlist, the Ora and Bach versus Covenant Eyes. An honest youth pastor review was the highest performing video in that playlist. Finally, I went to my Social Challenge framework, which is the four things that I'm creating content with students and for students.

00;04;56;24 - 00;05;17;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I can't tell you, I think that might be my most popular playlist to date cumulatively, and just word of mouth and things I've heard from youth pastors on the street. So thank you so much for that feedback. But the best episode and that one was the third one, how churches can use social media ideas and examples. And finally, the sidekick more engaging youth ministry.

00;05;17;16 - 00;05;39;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again, the best episode on that one was the live sidekick demo at the day of recording. And again, don't forget Code Hybrid Ministry ten. If you're interested in sidekick or link down below for how we are using to computers to run Sidekick and Pro Presenter seamlessly. To switch between the two, grab that black magic video switcher, it will make your life so much easier.

00;05;39;10 - 00;06;05;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now listen on YouTube. In total, we had 84,569 views, including our shorts content with 522 hours of watch time and 151 new subscribers. And in the youth ministry space is a fantastic number and I'm so thrilled, with those stats and with those numbers, simply because here I am in my guest bedroom late at night, recording a podcast into the back of my cell phone.

00;06;05;23 - 00;06;26;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, I have a real job, and I'm just doing this on the side with my own. Sort of like, equipment at home. And so thank you so much for your support. You might also not know this, but we have an audio only podcast. It drops anywhere you get your podcasts, including Spotify or Apple Music, not Apple Music, Apple Podcasts.

00;06;26;12 - 00;06;51;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we had almost 5000 downloads. Our biggest month was by far August, with almost nearly 1000 downloads in that month alone. And the number one downloaded audio podcast was my interview with my brother himself. The, YouTube video is linked down below in the show notes. But here's my interview with my brother, Nate Clayson. We talked about social media and how he's doing it in his context and in his youth ministry.

00;06;51;11 - 00;07;13;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So shout out to all of you again, thank you for an amazing year. Thank you for cruising through the stats with me. But what I wanted to do now is I wanted to share some of the best comments that we've gotten so far this year, and so far today. So from Jesse Johnson, first of all, he disagreed with my take on coffee and saying that Duncan was terrible, which I'll give him that it's not great.

00;07;13;00 - 00;07;30;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's a chain. But if I have to choose between that and Starbucks, that's what I'm stuck with. That's what I'm going to choose. But he said he said using polls in the welcome loop in sidekick is so easy, I can't believe I didn't think of it. Excited to try that one out. Claire said this in our best parenting app podcast.

00;07;30;01 - 00;07;49;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We use bark and it has been so wonderful for our family. We have an 11 year old, and it has been a lifesaver. We can monitor everything that she does online, block her from seeing certain websites, track her locations, etc. recently, she disabled the app because her and my husband, we both get notifications, so we went to our daughter immediately.

00;07;49;05 - 00;08;06;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It turns out she had disabled it because she wanted to watch South Park and Family Guy, as well as some other PG 13 movies. She said nope. Luckily, my husband and I got there before she could see anything inappropriate. We're grateful for bark to bark, for protecting our little girl from online dangers, and protecting her from innocence and inappropriate content.

00;08;06;29 - 00;08;26;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We love bark. Paul Turner said this about our, why youth ministry. Follow up isn't working. He said, this is great stuff. Lots of idea. I went and bought it. Talking about the box that I sold. I'll be sharing this with my newsletter. If you ever want to collab, let me know. Keep up the great work! And finally, a frequent guest here on this podcast.

00;08;26;05 - 00;08;59;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Over a year ago we did a Christmas episode together. He was also on one of my interview series over the summer, Eric with the K Williams. He said this is great. Anyone starting out needs to watch this and he's talking about my church social media from scratch episode in the hybrid ministry tools. Man, what an amazing year. But if I'm looking back and if I'm taking on some of my reflections and kind of key moments, I'd have to say it's two individuals, a guy by the name of Tim Kelly and Kendall Eaton, both, by the way, who happen to live in the state of Indiana.

00;08;59;05 - 00;09;21;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I don't think that the collab done this, but both of them at two different times. Tim actually reached out to me for some custom coaching this year, and that was a super fun and super, just a honestly rewarding process to walk through. And it showed me the value of custom coaching, because what I would have recommended to you in my guest bedroom and to the back of my cell phone camera was a little bit different.

00;09;21;14 - 00;09;38;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Once I started talking to Tim, which is why I believe custom coaching is valuable for anyone who's interested it. Link down below if you want to inquire about what that looks like. It is a very modest and a very cheap price for custom coaching. Or if you don't want like the one on one zoom type interaction and consider joining our Patreon page.

00;09;38;21 - 00;09;55;04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a dollar per week for a bonus episode, $4 per month, and I'll just share, stream of consciousness ideas. And you might not need the actual, like, coaching to do this, to do this, but you'll get to glean ideas. And then I was at the I 100 conference, a month ago or so, and Kendall walked up to me.

00;09;55;04 - 00;10;20;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
He said, man, thank you so much for your podcast is really helpful. It's really beneficial. I shared your playlist, your ideas with some of our social media people and is incredibly, incredibly helpful. And so it's just really rewarding for me to be able to do this and just put this content out into the world, out into the ether and get feedback from real, live human beings and real life people who've come to me, in different instances, in different cases.

00;10;20;02 - 00;10;39;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Tim, all virtually Kendall in person to say, man, thank you for what you're doing. It really is helpful to me to hear that. And so if if you know you have feedback or anything like that, I would obviously and always welcome that. Lines and channels of communication are completely open. You know, here on this podcast we have a couple of really cool benchmarks.

00;10;40;12 - 00;10;56;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Just in the month of December, we launched a Patreon page, are selling a couple of products over there, as well as that monthly podcast that I'm talking about. And so that's a pretty fun kind of benchmark kind of new thing for us. And new endeavor. Would love to have you, check that out if that's something you're interested in.

00;10;56;27 - 00;11;19;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then also, back in August, I got the opportunity to start posting these podcasts to the Download a Youth Ministry blog. So if you're interested in that, you can go blog that download Youth ministry.com to check that out. And the link down below introduces my very first, post on there, actually, Josh Bowman, he introduced me and then I now am an author there on the doing blog.

00;11;19;06 - 00;11;48;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that's something that's really, really exciting. But speaking of Josh Bullman, as well as many of our other guests, I would like to thank my different guests that I had on this year. So Josh Boardman, of course, from down the youth ministry, we actually had him on twice. We talked once about sidekick and solutions to distractions and youth ministry and harnessing sidekick and utilizing and using cell phones, to not be a distraction, but instead to be something that you can use to help promote creativity and involvement engagement.

00;11;48;07 - 00;12;13;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then one episode, my all time, my favorite episode this entire year was there. Him and I sat down and he brought a service, a mock service order sheet that he put on, and then he said, hey, how can you hybridize this? How can you, make this, accessible to the people sitting online streaming at home? Man, both those episodes go to either one of them now, but that was one of my all time favorite episodes.

00;12;13;11 - 00;12;31;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I had, Eric with a K on when we talked about better event for promotion, and that was actually a collaborative episode. So the first part of that interview was on his channel, Practical Youth Ministry Tips, and the second part was over here on my channel. And so if you only listen to on my channel, you only heard really half of that conversation.

00;12;31;24 - 00;12;53;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Of course, I mentioned earlier, my brother, we had David Carpenter, youth pastor from Kentucky, my former resident, Caleb Fly mule, fly wheel, Miata, and again, Zeus take on what we've been doing. And youth ministry and student ministry. He worked with and for me for an entire year in this sort of hybrid, infrastructure. So if you want to hear an honest take here from him.

00;12;53;00 - 00;13;18;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we had a really special episode dropped this year, our 100th episode. And so for our 100th episode, I went all the way back to the beginning, even before this podcast started. And I talked about, when I started at church in Covid. And so I interviewed my current boss now and my boss then, Darren Sutton, his son, who is our video editor for much of what we did, for our digital online presence, for a show that we created on YouTube called unscripted.

00;13;18;10 - 00;13;44;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So his son Isaac was on the show. And then I also interviewed Sam Voss, good friend of mine and host of the unscripted show and podcast Super Fun Time. But hey, listen, this year, like, I'm wondering if, as you know, I'm recapping and recounting 2024 if as you got your eyes set on 2025, what are you doing to have a more hybrid, more digital, more creative youth ministry?

00;13;44;03 - 00;14;14;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because as my friend and boss Darren says, digital is no longer a luxury. It is now a necessity. And so that's what we're trying to accomplish again over on our Patreon page. If that's something that you're interested in, where I will talk about what we're doing on a week to week basis in our youth ministry over on Patreon, I would love to have you just come check out, listen in on what we're doing, and hopefully maybe just that $4 a month is an investment, enough to help kickstart and spur on your own creativity.

00;14;14;16 - 00;14;38;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We love to have you join us over there. It's super fun. Community. There's all sorts of perks as well. But hey, thank you so much for sticking around for this entire episode. And as promised, at the very top right here, we have an amazing, recap overlay. I went back through every single episode, and I pulled out some of my favorite snippets and clips from the last year.

00;14;38;16 - 00;15;00;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So enjoy this. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid. Okay, so there are like three kind of core tenets philosophical things that you guys need to understand when it comes to time management. These aren't tips. These aren't tactics. These are things that you have to understand first. And these have to inform the tips and the tactics.

00;15;00;10 - 00;15;24;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Know my tips. No amount of tactics will be helpful to you if you don't understand these things. So core tenet number one is that you are 100% responsible for your time. The reason this matters is because this is the difference between is that kid and kid in ministry or is that kid and youth ministry? And if we're talking about youth group numbers and youth group attendance, we need to understand Gen Alpha, but we also need to understand Gen Z.

00;15;24;19 - 00;15;47;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The kicker on this is that Gen Z, really the youngest Gen Z that we have, is going to be freshmen and sophomores in high school. And now after that, they're waiting on up there in college already, and they are entering the workforce. What should you be? Gen one, number one, start posting longform to YouTube, get a DUI gym membership.

00;15;47;03 - 00;16;14;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it looks very different in 2024 and frankly, beyond because of generation Z and now Generation Alpha saving up Z into the adult ministry, conversation Alpha into the youth ministry conversation, it makes me wonder if the future is already here. I think it might be Megan and all her friends, and she brought a lot of her friends to youth group, so this, like kind of mattered because, like, she could bring two, 3 or 4 different friends with her.

00;16;14;00 - 00;16;35;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The youth group, they had show choir and it met every single Wednesday night. And so that made Wednesday nights a really tricky night to do youth ministry. But Brandon, the only other boy in the youth ministry, had Tuesday night and Thursday night karate. And then of course, Friday nights are like the football game. Like for most towns USA.

00;16;35;23 - 00;16;58;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's when the high school team is playing his football game. So that really left us with Monday night as an option, which but the pro of, of Wednesday night to me is probably the your most traditional youth night. It's been what, a lot of churches, a lot of youth groups have done for years. And like down here where I live in DFW, Dallas-Fort worth area, a lot of churches do.

00;16;58;18 - 00;17;22;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Wednesday night, and I came from Chicago. Not many churches did did Wednesday night. And that's just kind of a cultural thing, right. But the pro to me is it's like a midweek kind of jolt of energy. Well. Hey, everyone, welcome to Friday Game Day. In this episode, link down below 100% completely for free. I have for you back to school.

00;17;22;15 - 00;18;04;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Bingo. And if you're like, I don't need back to school bingo, it's not back to school yet. Well, then head on over to download Youth ministry.com and you can grab my end of the school year. Bingo! Well, that idea of course, is go hybrid. And listen, I'm not saying to completely abandon your in-person meetings. In fact, that would go completely against the hybrid strategy because hybrid is melding together of your digital presence in your in-person presence and making it one in the same, but linked right here on screen and down in the description or wherever you're getting this or hybrid ministry X, y, Z/089 is my 100% completely free strategy guide, is my e-book on

00;18;04;03 - 00;18;32;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
how I build out a full fledged digital strategy. It's mostly focusing on a done for you social media strategy, but it's anchored by the, long form teaching video, which takes place and is posted weekly every time we teach pre filmed messages on YouTube direct to Camera Pro. Number one, of course, is like develop mentally splitting middle school and high school seems to be appropriate.

00;18;32;09 - 00;19;07;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In my over a year journey on this podcast, I have grown to love YouTube. When I started with social media and what I started trying to reach students on the internet, YouTube was a distant kind of far strategy that was on my radar. Like it was like, I'll post some videos over there. But in my time since that, which was probably five, six, seven years ago, I have come to love YouTube and I am more and more convinced that YouTube, in addition to all other digital and social mediums that we can effectively reach students with.

00;19;07;19 - 00;19;30;04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But YouTube is one of the best resources out there. You can always say down below in the description are links. And so for every single video that I post on my Student Ministries YouTube channel, we post two links. The first link is a Next Steps digital type Connect card, and I think about your own viewing habits on social media.

00;19;30;04 - 00;19;55;08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When you're on there, you're not necessarily on there to just, be informed, right? Link down below is a complete log of every single piece of gear that I have built in the studio.

Isaac Sutton
All of the students in the room who are watching unscripted have bingo cards that coordinated to stuff that know yes, digital integration is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

00;19;55;10 - 00;20;19;09
Sam Vos
It was probably I probably felt God's hand more in like my career, my life in that moment than a lot of other moments.

Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Unscripted played a really major role in like the catalyst to especially my podcast and everything like that. I would say the reason for that is simply realizing and understand that students live online.

Darren Sutton
There's a lot I've messed up in my years of youth ministry, but that is one thing that I'm really proud of.

00;20;19;13 - 00;20;30;14
Darren Sutton
Like in the middle of the pandemic, there was not a blank ministry kept going. We're going to try something different.

00;20;30;17 - 00;20;53;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you should use your cell phone to your advantage.

Caleb "Flywheel" Maeda
I think. I think the things that have been working the most has been getting students involved on the page, not even in terms of like on the page traction as much as like in-person traction.

David Carpenter
We speak to our students on Wednesday nights for about 18 to 22 minutes. Sunday morning there's a, you know, 28 to 32 minutes.

00;20;53;14 - 00;21;24;18
David Carpenter
And we think they probably remember everything we said, right? Like they they wrote the notes, they've got it and they've already applied every one of these points. You know, it was alliterative. And remember my great illustration. And one, you know, when when we're including things that are reflecting on the teachings, I think that reinforces and reminds those who were in the room.

Nate Clason
and seeing you, like, super passionate about it and watching your podcast really, honestly like, and your different videos and clips on like TikTok and stuff to sign it

Josh Boldman | Download Youth Ministry & The Greatest programming specialist in America
every single time you had to type in the password.

00;21;24;19 - 00;21;47;00
Josh Boldman | Download Youth Ministry & The Greatest programming specialist in America
It was a great and I, I got into trouble. One time I was in front of our I like our whole camp, like it was like a thousand kids, right? And sidekick was running and then it crashed and then they had to reopen it. And they're like, from the booth they yell out, what's the password? And in front of 1000 students, I had to say a password into the microphone.

00;21;47;00 - 00;22;09;14
Josh Boldman | Download Youth Ministry & The Greatest programming specialist in America
And here's the best part. You ready for this? It was the same password for everything. Like my my bank account and, all this stuff. So, like, we need to not be afraid of what our students want, and we need to not be afraid of them expressing their opinion. And we need to not be afraid of them disagreeing with each other or with us.

00;22;09;14 - 00;22;36;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Better event promotion as well as a holistic digital and social media approach for your church and your youth ministry. And this is actually part two. Part one is linked right here at the top of the screen over on another channel, because we're doing a massive mashup collab. And I am joined today by my friend Eric with the K petition, because in just a minute, we're gonna look at the Bark vs Aura

00;22;36;20 - 00;23;01;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But Aura has parental controls and they are now in partnership with circle. You might remember Circle by Disney, the first video idea that we do it's called Drafts challenge idea number two that we do in our church and in our student ministry is a game called name of the game is seven Questions. A man on the street named transition stab video is where it starts with the video of something else.

00;23;01;20 - 00;23;22;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the most popular one I can think about is like a a bull, ramming a guy during the running of the bulls. And then all these people cutting right there to jumping into the back of some chairs and millennial churchgoers said this. They said hybrid church just as much as physical church will be a get this good fit for them.

00;23;22;26 - 00;23;44;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
One of the things about five minute countdowns that I actually hate, and I know that as talking to a guy who works for Download Youth Ministry, and that's where a lot of the money is made and a lot of five minute countdowns are sold. I actually prefer, which, by the way, talking to you right now, let this be an unofficial sidekick feature request.

00;23;44;24 - 00;24;11;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. Because right now in sidekick, you can, you can loop your announcements, right? You can loop some, like, graphic slides. And I actually prefer that to be the five minute countdown with just the five minute countdown overlaid in the corner, so that all of the announcements that you're announcing and trying to let your students know about are happening, is being seen on the screen.

00;24;11;18 - 00;24;37;06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then the very last piece of it, my favorite piece of it, the piece that I think makes it hybrid, is right. When you open the box, you see this QR code here and it just says welcome video. Scan me. And so we'll have students who are new to the open this up theoretically on their porch, on their patio or wherever they will scan it, and then it will take them to a video right here will be launching here during the course of this playlist, starting officially on December 2nd.

00;24;37;09 - 00;25;00;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
A brand new bonus podcast. I'm going to be releasing it one time per week. Going to be over on my Patreon page, but a student give them an opportunity to to be a part of this. Give them a seat at the table to let them know that that this church is about the next generation and that matters. Again, it's no longer the day where we can just hand this off to to an unpaid intern.

00;25;00;24 - 00;25;11;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Hope that they keep our social media on life support. Like get after it. My friends, 2025 is going to be your year. We are here in the Hybrid Ministry show to help.

Episode 128: I made this podcast so you wouldn't have to hire me

Nick Clason — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 05:00:00 -0600

🎧 Become a “Hybrid Hero”
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

✅Let me Run Your Church Social Media
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

DESCRIPTION
This episode of Hybrid Ministry is your ultimate DIY guide to building a thriving online presence—without hiring me or anyone else. From cracking the content schedule code to creating evergreen videos to simply understanding "hybrid," you’ll get practical tips, tools, and resources to dominate digital ministry in your church or youth ministry.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/128

//Become a “Hybrid Hero”
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

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

//VidIQ
https://www.vidiq.com/hybrid

//Easy and Effective Social Challenges
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaKLwZqOkQe7NzOqSVR0-P1s

//Studio Gear
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/studio

//Opus Clip
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

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

//Custom Hybrid Coaching
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching

//Communications Done for You
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms

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

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

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

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

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Church Social Media Explained
02:05 What is Hybrid Ministry?
05:55 Why Hybrid Ministry?
08:34 What is your content creation and capturing schedule?
14:04 How do you edit your videos?
15:17 If I consulted with you, how would you recommend I get started?

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Pastor, youth pastor, church

00:00:02:01 - 00:00:03:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
communications person. Are you struggling

00:00:03:25 - 00:00:06:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to figure out digital ministry?

00:00:06:00 - 00:00:07:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, here's the deal.

00:00:07:20 - 00:00:13:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I created this video so that you can stop googling church social media tips.

00:00:13:23 - 00:00:18:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And in fact, I created this video so that you don't have to hire me or anybody else.

00:00:18:16 - 00:00:27:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to show you and give you what it takes to be able to create a thriving online and digital hybrid presence.

00:00:27:22 - 00:00:30:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, here's the thing. I've been doing this podcast for

00:00:30:02 - 00:00:47:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
over two years now, and in my over two year journey of this podcast and hybrid ministry, I am helping churches do online well. But I'm also helping churches maintain their in-person presence and find that intersection, which is always the goal as we're trying to create

00:00:47:18 - 00:00:53:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a church so that it matches and mirrors people where they are.

00:00:53:01 - 00:00:59:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that intersection is what I like to call hybrid right there in the middle. And so we're

00:00:59:02 - 00:01:11:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
going to dive into some of the frequently asked questions here on the Hybrid Ministry show as we round out 2024 and set our sights to 2025.

00:01:11:01 - 00:01:13:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. If you not haven't had a chance to meet you.

00:01:13:27 - 00:01:24:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
My name is Nicholas, and while I've been doing this podcast for two and a half years, I've been doing ministry for 14 years. And, my journey all along the way has led me towards this hybrid

00:01:24:01 - 00:01:31:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
sort of ministry. But in this episode, we are going to tackle some of the frequently asked questions that I've gotten from people all across the internet.

00:01:31:20 - 00:01:37:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Different groups have been in cohorts. I've run workshops, so I've led asking questions like, what

00:01:37:04 - 00:01:50:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
is hybrid ministry? Why is it even important? What is your content schedule? What's your capturing schedule? How do you edit the videos? What is, what would you consult me to do if I was just getting started? And

00:01:50:01 - 00:01:52:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we are going to walk through all of those things.

00:01:52:25 - 00:02:04:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, if you're here on YouTube, don't forget there are chapters down below at the bottom of the screen so that you can jump around to the question that means the most to you. Welcome to Hybrid Ministry show.

00:02:04:17 - 00:02:16:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Question number one. We alluded to it in the intro, but what is hybrid ministry? My favorite analogy, and this is actually some of the stuff that we're exploring over on my brand new Patreon

00:02:16:18 - 00:02:16:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
page.

00:02:16:29 - 00:02:34:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And some of these questions actually came from some of our brand new Patreon members. Shout out to Jesse. Johnson. Love having you over here. But, some of these questions, are like, what is hybrid ministry? Okay. So some of the questions are like, why? What's the purpose of this? What even is it? So it's important.

00:02:34:20 - 00:02:55:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's get a baseline okay. Again, chapters at the bottom. If you already know this, jump ahead. But hybrid ministry is intersecting your in-person and your digital, right. We all know in Covid we had digital church only. And we know that we hated it. Struggle with it, didn't know how to engage students. Well, we missed the in-person. And so when, restrictions are lifted, we all came back to in-person.

00:02:55:26 - 00:03:02:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we miss it. We miss community. We miss friendship. We miss praying with one another. We missed sharing meals together,

00:03:02:22 - 00:03:15:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
but we did a lot of good ministry over here too. Digitally. Right. And so, we kind of got these two buckets here. You got online only and you got in-person only. Let's let's examine

00:03:15:09 - 00:03:16:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
what each of those are good for.

00:03:16:14 - 00:03:30:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
My opinion online is a fantastic content delivery system. So emails, information announcements but also content sermons, podcasts, long form teaching courses, things like that. What is in-person good for

00:03:30:29 - 00:03:37:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that? Online struggles with real, authentic community. Like you. You can have a version of community

00:03:37:06 - 00:03:41:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
because of in-person friendships through like a means like texting or even like chats and stuff like that.

00:03:41:27 - 00:04:03:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I mean real in-person community, like, we all kind of hunger for it long for. And you, some people like, are in the metaverse and and that's satisfying that sort of age. They're friends with people from a distance. But but a lot of ways like real community life on life, sharing meals together, carrying one another's burdens, prayer requests, honestly, everything in like a shepherding, sort of like

00:04:03:05 - 00:04:04:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
small group space.

00:04:04:18 - 00:04:28:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But if we look at a typical Sunday morning sermon, most of it is what we can accomplish with online. And thus in lies the inherent tension. Because everything we can do on a Sunday morning can be easily replicable. And frankly, it's even a little bit more attractive, especially to people like Gen, Gen Z, millennials, even Gen Alpha to consume content, sermons and church services online.

00:04:29:05 - 00:04:45:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But what younger generations are craving and the church has to figure out how to offer it in a way that, either takes the place of Sunday morning or as an attractive alternative to what's going on Sunday morning. Is that real, deep, authentic life on life, biblical community

00:04:45:19 - 00:04:50:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and that intersection of where you're online, which you should have online.

00:04:50:15 - 00:04:59:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you if you're a mostly in-person church hybrid ministry for you is adding in online so that you can have a more robust experience of your church, if you're an online

00:04:59:10 - 00:05:13:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
only church, which are very few and far between, you should figure out how to add some more in-person type elements so that we can intersect between the two online, online, in-person intersects at that hybrid ministry spot.

00:05:13:14 - 00:05:14:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I liken it to

00:05:14:25 - 00:05:39:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Home Depot. Okay, so I can go buy something on Home Depot website completely online experience, or I can go browse the aisles completely in-person experience. But that hybrid moment happens when I pull up my phone and I look on the app and it tells me exactly where I can find that boat, exactly what aisle and exactly what bay I'm in person, but I'm experiencing it through the app digitally, and thus it creates that sort of hybrid moment.

00:05:39:13 - 00:05:55:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you're not, again, already over with us on Patreon, I would love to invite you because that's what we're doing. We're answering how I take my in-person services, and I'm sprinkling in hybrid, and I'm just literally walking you through what I'm doing on a week by week basis. Question number two

00:05:55:12 - 00:05:59:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
why? Like, why all this digital content?

00:05:59:03 - 00:06:05:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Why social media? Why YouTube? Why why why? Well, link down below is my 100% free

00:06:05:23 - 00:06:12:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
hybrid ministry strategy guide. I have been offering this now for over a year and it's gone

00:06:12:29 - 00:06:27:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
through a couple of rebrands, but the majority of what I've created in that has remained the same because social media, around the, pandemic time has actually shifted the way that it's been done.

00:06:27:09 - 00:06:29:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right? We were previously in what was known

00:06:29:06 - 00:06:37:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
as the Social Graph era, and now we're in what's called the Discovery era. Okay, so here's just a couple of things that are really important to know.

00:06:37:23 - 00:06:46:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
95% of teenagers say that they have been, will be, or plan to be on YouTube. Now, obviously some of those are power users, and others of those are just

00:06:46:28 - 00:06:50:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
dabbling in it and looking up videos and stuff for their science fair projects.

00:06:50:09 - 00:06:54:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the fact of the matter is, 95% of teenagers are on YouTube.

00:06:54:16 - 00:07:08:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Furthermore, according to a recent book by Mccrindle. And so it's called Meeting Gen Alpha. They say that Google number one search engine in the world is now being supplanted by Generation Alpha with, you guessed

00:07:08:04 - 00:07:12:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
it, YouTube. Also, here's the beautiful thing about YouTube.

00:07:12:14 - 00:07:23:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I got to tell you, like, like I said, I've been creating content for this podcast for over two years and I will still sometimes get I also sometimes get comments I'll get referrals, I'll get people clicking links to

00:07:23:22 - 00:07:36:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
videos that I've made even over a year ago. Right. We don't have that luxury. Oftentimes in churches we create something for the moment, and then that thing dies on our hard drive and we continue on.

00:07:36:06 - 00:07:43:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
YouTube is masterful at promoting and allowing content to live on forever. Content creation,

00:07:43:20 - 00:08:00:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
marketing specialists, they call it evergreen content. If you want to know the type of content that teenagers, Gen Alpha, Gen Z, young people in your church are searching, you can use a keyword tool like vid IQ. In fact, I have a link down below if you want to give it a shot and a trial on using it.

00:08:00:24 - 00:08:24:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can do some research. Like what are teenagers asking? And then you go answer those questions. I'm just gonna be honest with you. Like like you should start there always. As you're planning a sermon series, right? Get some keyword research. What are people looking up online? What are the the big questions to life that they're asking. And then have that and then develop a sermon series.

00:08:24:17 - 00:08:33:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And by the way, if you develop your sermon series based off that keyword research is also going to make a fantastic YouTube video and fantastic YouTube

00:08:33:24 - 00:08:34:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
playlist.

00:08:34:04 - 00:08:42:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. Question number three. What is your content schedule and what is your capturing of that content schedule?

00:08:42:16 - 00:08:58:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So according to a website video, 90% of the internet's traffic today and moving on is short form discovery based vertical video, TikTok style, real style YouTube short style videos.

00:08:58:06 - 00:09:10:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, I have a playlist linked right here on the content that I am creating, not only for my students, but with my students. It's my easy and effective social media playlist. It is the four different

00:09:10:25 - 00:09:20:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
social media types that not only do I have students capturing, but also that I have students editing and helping create that final piece form of content.

00:09:20:20 - 00:09:23:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So my schedule is I post two days a

00:09:23:11 - 00:09:45:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
week, I'm sorry, two times a day, five days a week. So ten different pieces of content. Let me walk through it with you. So in my playlist linked back up here that I said just a second ago my easy and effective playlist. We do four different game style videos, so we do drafts, we do seven questions, we do man on the Street and we do transition and invite style videos.

00:09:45:27 - 00:10:07:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Go to that playlist to check out the full, detailed, in-depth thing along with some free templates and downloads. And then an additional piece that we do is a Stay or scroll devotional style video. So that's five different videos, one of each of those that I post every single week. Okay. And I just kind of sprinkle them throughout the pieces of my content calendar that are a little bit like stronger.

00:10:07:15 - 00:10:32:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again, short form vertical based video is three teaching clips, and those teaching clips come as clips off of our long form teaching content. Now I'm a youth pastor. We don't have live streaming capabilities, nor do we capture our videos live in our auditorium or in our worship space. So we actually sit down direct to camera and pre-filled. More messages made for YouTube with that vid IQ research indicator.

00:10:32:20 - 00:10:50:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we make those videos hopefully answering teenagers questions, creating evergreen content, and also playlists and sermon series that kids are asking for. And then they can go back to in the future when they're struggling with or have big questions about life, faith, God, whatever the case may be. And so that just that piece of content, we drop a different video every single week.

00:10:50:03 - 00:11:10:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It lines up just when we preach a sermon. Right? So if you're preaching a sermon this Wednesday night, you're preaching a sermon the Sunday night. Put that on video posted to YouTube. But off that YouTube video, three short form clips I use opus. I there's a link down below if you want to try out Opus Clip. It's a fantastic AI sermon short generator.

00:11:10:27 - 00:11:30:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I use it every single week in my ministry, so that's five different pieces of, easy and effective content off that playlist through different pieces of social content, using opus to clip them up. And then I got two more other pieces of content. One is our, meme Monday style video. Not video. I'm sorry meme Monday style post.

00:11:30:08 - 00:11:47:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's just about the only, non video post that I do. Not that I'm against non video post, but don't forget I'm a busy youth pastor and so I got this strategy sort of locked in. And so I don't have a lot of time to go back to the drawing board. And I got students and volunteers help them kind of keep it afloat.

00:11:47:01 - 00:12:00:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we'll reiterate and rehydrate when we need to. But for right now, this has been working for us. And then the 10th final piece of content is, anytime we meet, I get my phone out. I create little like 5 to 8 second clips, vertical video. I take it

00:12:00:24 - 00:12:04:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
into something like a TikTok. I click that auto cut button and boom!

00:12:04:22 - 00:12:15:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I then have a recap video for anytime we meet Sunday morning. Wednesday night I typically do Wednesday night. Now, like I said, my capturing is during the week. Me and anyone else on our team is going

00:12:15:27 - 00:12:23:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to be preaching. We sit down, we pre film all of our series. Like if we do like a four part series, we film all four of those in one day.

00:12:23:06 - 00:12:41:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
One shot off teleprompter. All the things link down below is my studio guide. It has all the links to all the gear that we use. If you want to use a teleprompter or if you want to use, get a tripod, different lighting, all that type of stuff, check that out. So that's when we do those. And then on Wednesday nights when our youth ministry is going on

00:12:41:27 - 00:12:46:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
before and after, we have a social challenge that's happening every single Wednesday night.

00:12:46:19 - 00:12:53:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Students know about it. They seek it out. They want to know when and where is the social challenge happening. So two of those videos,

00:12:53:06 - 00:12:56:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Jason, seven questions. Those take place inside, behind a locked door.

00:12:56:22 - 00:13:04:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I walked over a closed door of our studio to come up with soundproofing and all those things run by volunteers and very few leaders.

00:13:04:14 - 00:13:13:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, our other two videos are transition videos and man on the Street style videos. And so that's us being out and around in our building, in our space. So

00:13:13:06 - 00:13:25:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
it's a little bit more visible. And it also helps students sort of be gravitated towards and drawn to what we're doing here on social media. And as far as editing goes, opus II takes care of my editing for my message clips.

00:13:25:07 - 00:13:33:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I do the auto cut one on one on, Wednesday nights. I do that, like right before I start my car and get in to go home. And then the last one I have students

00:13:33:16 - 00:13:44:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
come in early, like early, early on Wednesday night. They're homeschool students, which are two of them. Fantastic. And around 2:00, 3:00 or so, submissions start till about six.

00:13:44:23 - 00:13:49:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so they're in there for 2 or 3 hours, editing videos and, you know, like we give them, you know,

00:13:49:24 - 00:14:00:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
some of them like free retreats or special incentives or we let them stay after and like eat at the leader lunch, you know, eat a leader lunch that we have or whatever. But, mostly they're just doing it because they like it.

00:14:00:14 - 00:14:03:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're fun doing it, and it's a good time. All right. Next question.

00:14:03:28 - 00:14:14:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How do you edit videos? Well, I just told you, like, I got students that are helping me, carry that load. I use some I but like the actual platform that I use is my preference is

00:14:14:24 - 00:14:18:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Adobe Premiere Pro. It is the most expensive of all the options.

00:14:18:29 - 00:14:22:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Final Cut Pro is another option. You can check that out if you're interested, or

00:14:22:16 - 00:14:41:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
DaVinci resolve, both of which are cheaper than Adobe Premiere Pro, primarily because Adobe Premiere Pro has a monthly subscription cost associated with it. However, what I learned, churches have paid for it for me for now. And I mean, I, you know, wish I could do something new, do something cheaper, but I don't have the bandwidth to to learn something cheaper.

00:14:41:13 - 00:14:48:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But there are cheaper options out there. You can of course you something like iMovie or Movie Maker on your windows and

00:14:48:02 - 00:14:59:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
cap cut actually has a fantastic editing platform. You can do quite a bit with it and you're going to look pretty professional. You can do that, obviously off of your film, but you can also do it off of like, just a

00:14:59:19 - 00:15:00:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
web editor.

00:15:00:25 - 00:15:17:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, I believe that they're, like premium or pro feature fee is not too difficult to, figure out and or not to not not too expensive. Not too high barrier to entry. So if that's something you're interested, go ahead and check out cap cut. All right.

00:15:17:01 - 00:15:23:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Last question I have here from those of you, thank you so much for submitting them via our Patreon community members.

00:15:23:05 - 00:15:40:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Appreciate you guys. Love you guys. Again, if you're interested, check that out down below. Link in the show notes. Question is, if you are consulting me, what order would you start with? Doing something starting from nothing. We have all the in-person, nothing digital. Well, here's what I would do. First of all,

00:15:40:15 - 00:15:43:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
make sure your website is up to date.

00:15:43:06 - 00:16:07:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Second of all, then I would start creating this short form vertical, videos and I would start with three per week. Right. So some sort of recap video, if you can't do a clip of your message, just do a selfie style talking head recap style video of it, right. If you do have like the long form footage of it, drop it into opus clip and try, you know, get a clip spit out.

00:16:07:08 - 00:16:25:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Second video I would do is I would do some sort of educationally based, spirit promoting spiritual practice sort of video. Okay. What I mean by that is like, you can have, a video off your camera, literally any video. One time I filmed a video of a turtle walking across the street in my neighborhood. It can be that simple.

00:16:25:16 - 00:16:41:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can do text on screen. Three things the Bible says about prayer. 1 to 3. Right? That I'll. And you can do that in any editor. You can use it in the, YouTube shorts that are the TikTok editor, the reels editor. You can bring it into something like cap cut and create it, export it and post it all those different places.

00:16:42:02 - 00:17:01:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But start creating those different types of content. And the last one is how to do some sort of fun thing, some sort of social challenge esque thing. Dress seven questions. And if those are too heavy on the edit side, which they are a little bit heavier on the edit side, they don't have to be, but they can be do man on the street, man, get a microphone, buy a cheap one.

00:17:01:14 - 00:17:17:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Again. I got some links down on my studio. Episode link down below. Buy some cheap mics and walk around and interview students in your space. Right? Like if I was doing this next week. All right, let's pretend you're watching this live end of 2024 and you come back in January. I'd walk around with a microphone.

00:17:17:05 - 00:17:18:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You or a student.

00:17:18:12 - 00:17:37:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. Off of any camera? Your camera, their camera doesn't matter. Get those two little USB microphones again, link down below, grab those and then walk around. Be like, hey, what's your New Year's resolution this year? And then ask them or give them a microphone and you can do something even funny with it. Like me and a former resident of mine, Caleb, shout out to Caleb Flywheel, my ETA.

00:17:38:09 - 00:17:45:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We put our little mikes, clipped them on to like, spoons, and then we just held spoons so you can walk around with spoons if you want to, like, have some sort

00:17:45:02 - 00:17:51:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of, like, handle thing to hold. Right. But, you know, like, what's your New Year's resolution? The other person's holding it and they answer and either they have one or they don't.

00:17:52:02 - 00:18:15:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or have you broken your New Year's resolution yet. And you ask them, and if you get like 8 or 10 of those people answering those questions, then you drop those in somewhere, either on your phone, you can edit something like capture or bring them in something even more powerful, like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci resolve. Whatever your editor of Choices and edit that down, post it, keep them less than 60s and you're off to the races

00:18:15:00 - 00:18:16:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
and the eye on the prize.

00:18:16:25 - 00:18:35:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, when I'm starting with you, the eye on the prize is to get long form videos up to YouTube. Okay, you don't have to do two times a day, five days a week like I do. You do you? I do want you to be regular, and I do want you to start getting your long form pieces of content to YouTube.

00:18:35:03 - 00:18:37:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's where I come in, because I can offer you

00:18:37:17 - 00:18:51:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
coaching where I'll teach you how to do it, or my communications done for you, or I'll actually do it for you. You film it, send it to me, I'll edit it. We can talk about price. We'll get to it. Both of those are linked down below in the description.

00:18:51:11 - 00:18:51:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here on

00:18:51:23 - 00:19:10:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
screen is the definitive social media guide for churches and youth ministries in 2025. I love for you to check that video out. If you're watching here on YouTube, just go ahead and tap that screen. But for the rest of you, I hope you had a merry Christmas. If you're watching this live, no matter when you're watching it.

00:19:10:06 - 00:19:21:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Thank you to all my Patreon supporters. Appreciate you guys. It should be having some merch sent your way. Those of you who signed up before December 2nd, don't forget and as always my friends to stay hybrid.

Episode 127: More than a Random Name Generator

Nick Clason — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 04:00:00 -0600

🎧 BONUS WEEKLY PODCAST
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🖥️ SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
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DESCRIPTION
In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, discover how to create truly interactive sermons and programming using the Random Name Generator from Sidekick made by Download Youth Ministry to engage students like never before! We’ll explore practical ways to blend creativity with technology, making your youth ministry sermons more dynamic and memorable. Ideal for leaders aiming to elevate their hybrid ministry approach in their student ministry, this episode offers key strategies to transform your youth ministry programming!

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/127

//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
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CODE: HYBRIDMINISTRY10
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//CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU!
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OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 The Most Personal Element of Sidekick to Date
01:34 #1 Creative Name Generator Idea
04:27 Operating "Pick Me"
06:04 #2 Creative Name Generator Idea
07:28 #3 Creative Name Generator Idea
08:19 Different Sound Effect Options
10:09 #4 Creative Name Generator Idea
11:26 #5 Creative Name Generator Idea

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

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:11:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
As we've been exploring more engaging sermons through your presentations and specifically your presentation software, we're talking about sidekick in the play, this link right

00:00:11:26 - 00:00:16:59
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
here. And this is the fourth and final video, but this feature is the feature that when I saw this

00:00:16:59 - 00:00:23:59
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
feature rolled out at the Orange Conference and I believe it was 2016 when they

00:00:23:59 - 00:00:28:47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
showed it to me, I instantly said, and then sign me up.

00:00:28:51 - 00:00:50:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What does it take? How much does it cost? Actually, I don't care. It doesn't matter. This is what I want. And this is the feature that sidekick still has rolled out to this day, in my personal opinion. It is my necklaces favorite feature, and it is one that I believe that you can and you should be using in your presentations.

00:00:50:28 - 00:01:07:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Whether you're a youth pastor, whether you're a college minister, whether you're an adult pastor, or whether, frankly, you're a senior pastor, it is the random name picker and random name generator. And in this video and in this episode, I want to share five of my favorite ways

00:01:07:23 - 00:01:11:46
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to creatively use the name picker. I'm going to drill deep down

00:01:11:46 - 00:01:16:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
into all of the features of how you can use it and utilize it, and what it has to offer.

00:01:16:57 - 00:01:24:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you're watching here on YouTube, you're going to see a live demo and a live tutorial and a screen share of it. And don't forget, as always, there

00:01:24:01 - 00:01:35:31
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
are chapters down below at the bottom of this video so that you can skip around to the ones that make the most sense to you. Welcome everyone to the Hybrid Ministry Show.

00:01:35:36 - 00:01:47:54
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So way. Number one, that I love to use the random name generator because as you know, when you're at church, you don't know which of your youth group kids are going to show up on any given week. And

00:01:47:54 - 00:02:04:52
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so one of my favorite ways to use it is in our retreats or in our camps or within things that, that have a registration component to it, because, you know, every kid you're taking to camp, you should and you should definitely know that number because you better return with that many kids.

00:02:04:53 - 00:02:20:39
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like if you've ever worried that you lost a kid, a youth camp, and, either way, one of the things I like to do is when we have a big event and listen, what I'm about to explain is one of the things I'm going to start doing on my Patreon show. By the way, if you didn't know, we're launching a Patreon show.

00:02:20:39 - 00:02:45:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching here on screen, you can see the slide. We are going to be offering bonus content, and that bonus content is going to drop once per week. And I'm very simply going to talk through all of the different ways that we are using and utilizing hybrid in our ministry, and I hope that as you sit in and as you listen, it helps you to get the creative juices going a little bit in your own brain and in your own ministry.

00:02:45:03 - 00:03:06:34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as you pursue hybrid, not because it's cool and not because digital and all that stuff is important, but really we're taking our in-person and our digital and we're putting it together, intersecting in most cases, at students cell phones, which gives us an opportunity to impact and influence them beyond the one hour of programing that we have scheduled per week.

00:03:06:34 - 00:03:26:52
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that is what my Patreon is going to do, this bonus content. But when you have an event, if you have some sort of a check in system, which I know we do, I have our, church community builder, CBM, we have a, report that runs for anyone who's checked in within the last 24 hours.

00:03:26:57 - 00:03:29:54
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so what happens then is, basically

00:03:29:54 - 00:03:53:47
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
once an event has started, I can go into that report, I can download into an Excel sheet, so to speak, or like a dot CSV. I can know all the names of the students who are there. I don't have to guess about the kids who I think might be there, who I thought I saw, but I know for a fact they've checked in and then I can put their names into the random name generator, and then I can use that for raffle giveaways, prizes, and all sorts of things.

00:03:53:47 - 00:04:18:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so say that that spits out into an Excel sheet. You're looking here at an Excel sheet, and you can just highlight an entire cell. Copy. Copy that. Go over here to your name picker. Click edit. Click edit. Pick me. Go to your book editor Payson, and boom, just in case you also wanted their numbers as well. And so now we got all of the names in here.

00:04:18:32 - 00:04:42:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And and then when I go ahead and I get ready to roll this thing, you'll notice. Let me get this full screen here. If you're watching, pretend this is your projector, you're going to drag that window over to your projector. And then you are going to click present and you're good to go. And so now here I am, I want to play and I want to run this pick me game.

00:04:42:00 - 00:05:07:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, I'm going to turn it on to random. And we're going to get this thing rolling and I'm gonna see who's going to win. And it's Nikola to pitch the earbud. Believer himself. And so when you're running it right, you can do things like hide last item. So if I don't want to pitch to win, I can turn this on ahead of time so that it doesn't stop on him again, even though it did.

00:05:07:27 - 00:05:27:33
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But now he's gone and now I'm going to get a new winner. Jacob Jalen Williams himself. Right. Here's the beautiful thing. If you don't trust your tech person, you can do this from your phone. You can do this remotely from an iPad. Or you can do this remotely from even a whole different computer. And you don't even have to be on the same network as that computer.

00:05:27:37 - 00:05:28:42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're logged into sidekick

00:05:28:42 - 00:05:44:50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
on your in your tech booth, and if you're logged in to sidekick from your phone or whatever device, you can run it from both. We are all in on sidekick in fact. Link down below if you want to see our setup of how we do it. To jump back and forth between pro presenter and sidekick, we haven't made the shift to be

00:05:44:50 - 00:05:47:41
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
all in with worship because that's a whole different department.

00:05:47:46 - 00:06:02:42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I don't call the shots. If I did, we would be all in on sidekick, but since we're not, we have a video switcher. And if you want to be able to bounce back and forth between the two so that you can have the elements of purpose that you like, but all the interactive features of sidekick that you like, check that out down below.

00:06:02:42 - 00:06:29:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, idea number two, one that I really like is rather than names. We've actually done this before in this presentation, and I'm going to show you how to set it up. I did like a series or a message on labels. And so I actually, what I did was, I think I have it in here. I brought in, like, a label, like a hello, my name is type of label, and I just got it loaded.

00:06:29:40 - 00:06:56:34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And very simply, when it was sitting there on screen and I was teaching, I used that teaching moment sort of as an opportunity to, to to cycle through and filter through some of the different types of labels that we face or that we think we face or that we see or that we feel or that we might even struggle with sometimes, as, you know, people, as teenagers, as followers of Jesus.

00:06:56:39 - 00:07:22:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you don't have to just let this be like a random name picker thing. Like you can also use and utilize this as an opportunity, within your teaching, within your teaching components. And so as you see here on screen, I have the hello, my name is name Tag right here. And then they are just simply filtering through, different types of labels that you or that students might struggle with.

00:07:22:56 - 00:07:37:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's an opportunity then to go ahead and and use that as a part of your teaching point. Now my third favorite way to go ahead and use the random name generator is, to use a thing called a Volun told

00:07:37:08 - 00:07:50:43
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
generator. And we talked about this a little bit in the, we'll, video in the last video about how you can make a definitive or declarative statement, like the person with the tallest socks, that's only one person.

00:07:50:45 - 00:08:10:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So the person with the tallest socks in your room, they come up in place. So if you don't have a set up or if you don't have check in, but you still want to use this kind of Volun told generator sort of thing, you can put generic statements about students, and then you can use that to get people to come on up as contestants for games and stuff like that.

00:08:10:08 - 00:08:29:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And again, it's just a great way to not have to do the who wants to play? And you're like, how did I pick that kid or not? Like the the random name generator is king and the random name generator decides. And what's cool, even in its customization, right, is that you can create different sound effects, right? So like, there is like a thumbs up sound effect.

00:08:29:16 - 00:08:48:58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There is a, kind of shrugging like middle of the road sound effect. And then there's like a party horn sound effect. So if you were playing this and you had the sort of like, like maybe a bad prize or something, you weren't so sure about that you didn't want, this is what the thumbs down sound effect sounds like.

00:08:49:02 - 00:09:06:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That. But, yeah, it's a bummer. No, no one wants is smudging. Like, that's how Thunder fans kind of feel right now anyway. But then you go ahead and you're like that. This guy's kind of mid tier. We're not not really sure if we have an, opinion yet of him or not. Really sure if winning this thing in our youth ministry, we really have an opinion of it.

00:09:06:04 - 00:09:27:42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yet Dugas. Yeah, okay. Whatever. You know, but then, like, you win something great or like it's a grand prize or something that people really actually want. I mean, he's a front runner for MVP. Let's just be honest. He's outpacing Luke does is the Thunder are the number one seed in the West. And they are the juggernaut that everyone should be afraid of.

00:09:27:42 - 00:09:45:45
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's led by this guy. And so you should you should have that sound. Hey give me a like if you're a, Thunder fan and please don't unsubscribe if you, do you happen to be a mavericks fan? Because we are here trying to make this hybrid ministry thing. We're trying to make it helpful to you. In fact, right here on screen.

00:09:45:45 - 00:10:04:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Don't forget Code Hybrid Ministry ten. If you've never used you. I am. Or if you've never signed up for anything with do I am before for 10% off for a year of premium, Premium or Premium Plus? You can check out the pricing link down below. We also offer custom coaching. It's my free strategy guide. Go ahead and scan that QR code, check out our Patreon.

00:10:04:02 - 00:10:25:49
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And hey, while you're here, go ahead and vote on which coffee shop is the best. My fourth idiom that I really like to do is kind of like the kind of like the the name tag one that I showed you a minute ago. So instead of it, I mean, like a teaching point, a lot of times I will create a welcome slide, right?

00:10:25:49 - 00:10:41:58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And these slides, just like all the other ones, they're, they're highly adaptable. So you can put any slides you want. You can, add an image, you can make a color, you can add a video background from something from YouTube. Even so like we've used this video before in

00:10:41:58 - 00:10:48:42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
previous videos here, even on this playlist. And so if you wanted it to be a video one, you could embed this YouTube video right here.

00:10:48:47 - 00:11:09:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or you could add one of these videos from a bank of other videos that you have used before using the past. But whatever the case might be, I'll do this where like, we have like, a leader lunch. And so people have volun, or have RSVP ahead of time. And so I will, put all of their names into the generator and I will say, leader, lunch welcome.

00:11:09:10 - 00:11:27:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With an arrow pointing to where their name is going to be here on People Picker and all the names are just filtering through. And then we may use that as a giveaway sort of feature in the, in the, you know, in the background or whatever, or not. We'll see. But those are sort of all just kind of different ways and different ideas that I like to use the name picker.

00:11:27:14 - 00:11:47:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then of course, number five, I'm going to share on my Patreon page. And don't forget, this is the last time that I'm going to do this. To those of you listening to the regular podcast or on YouTube, but I just, I, I'm so, so stoked and I'm so pumped about our Patreon because it is a dollar a week, $4 a month.

00:11:47:44 - 00:12:05:54
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I think it's less than the cost of a cup of coffee. But I want to get coffee with you. I want to sit down. I want to chat. Youth ministry. I want to chat. Creativity. I want to chat. How to make your programing more engaging? Because Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they want a more custom and personalized approach.

00:12:05:54 - 00:12:33:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I believe that sidekick not only in this beta version, but also in the future. Rolling out has the tools that it takes to do that. I'm challenging myself to use sidekick every single time we're in the room with our students, and I want to encourage you to try and lean into your creativity and do the same. And so I know when I hear a brainstorm that's helpful for me to just listen to someone else and then beg and borrow and steal and tweak and adapt and use different ideas.

00:12:33:14 - 00:12:56:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's why I want my Patreon to be is just a place for you guys to get that weekly sort of bonus content, along with, as you see here, on screen, exclusive merch and exclusive sticker for everyone who signs up before the month of December. December 2nd, they'll be yours. I'll mail it to you. You can help me choose some show and segment topics, and also some shout outs special for those over there on my Patreon page.

00:12:56:08 - 00:13:18:37
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But that number five idea that's over there going to be in this week's Patreon will drop on Monday of this week. So once again, my friends so excited that you here. Thank you for diving in deep with sidekick. The next episode we are going to be hopping into all things Christmas, Christmas parties, holiday planning, and everything that you need to know to round out the year.

00:13:18:37 - 00:13:29:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Amazingly, in your ministry. Finish strong. The Lord is equipped you for what he has you doing. But don't forget and as always my friends, to stay hybrid.

Episode 126: Youth Ministry Christmas Party Idea!

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

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

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

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

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

👇 Grab the resource now: DownloadYouthMinistry.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 125: Unlock the Customizable Wheel for your Programming

Nick Clason — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 04:00:00 -0600

🎧 BONUS WEEKLY PODCAST
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

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

DESCRIPTION
In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, discover how to create truly interactive sermons and programming using Sidekick made by Download Youth Ministry to engage students like never before! We’ll explore practical ways to blend creativity with technology, making your youth ministry sermons more dynamic and memorable. Ideal for leaders aiming to elevate their hybrid ministry approach in their student ministry, this episode offers key strategies to transform your youth ministry.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/125

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

//COLEADER PRICING
CODE: HYBRIDMINISTRY10
https://www.sidekick.tv/pricing

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

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

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

//ERIK W/A 'K'
https://www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips

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

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

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

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

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Random Spinning Wheel
01:39 Co-Leader Discount Code!
03:05 The Power of Creativity
5:00 Wheel Idea #1
08:15 Wheel Idea #2
09:22 Wheel Tech Booth Point of View
11:38 Wheel Idea #3
12:14 Customize your slide background
15:10 Wheel Idea #4

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

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;27;13
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
What if I told you that you could have access to a customizable spinning wheel that is actually woven in and built into the fabric of your presentation software? Not just like from free wheel spinner.com, because, you know, if you're presenting or preaching in church that you want that wheel to come in and you want it to be seamless, you don't want to drag an ugly browser window in across your screen.

00;00;27;16 - 00;00;48;16
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And so what if that presentation ability was available in your PowerPoint, in your profit center, on your church projector screens? Well, what if I told you that it was, you know, download and Youth Ministry has had the customizable spinning wheel available to youth pastors, but it is now available to all

00;00;48;16 - 00;00;53;01
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
people. It is woven into the new beta version of

00;00;53;01 - 00;00;54;03
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
sidekick.

00;00;54;03 - 00;01;10;25
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And in this episode, not only are we going to explore how it's a little bit different than the legacy version of the sidekick, but we're going to look at all of the features. And so if you are watching here on YouTube, first of all, go ahead and give me a like because if you don't know, that incredibly helps us out.

00;01;10;28 - 00;01;30;13
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
But second, I would love it if you, are listening to Hop Over and you can watch a live demo as I not only build the wheel, but I show you all the different features and I want to talk through in this episode for of my most favorite ways to use and integrate the wheel into our programing, into

00;01;30;13 - 00;01;32;25
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
my lessons, into my messages.

00;01;33;02 - 00;01;42;09
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And so much more. Hey everyone! Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everyone, welcome to the Hybrid

00;01;42;09 - 00;02;10;01
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Ministry show. My name is Nicholas and I am a 14 year Youth ministry veteran. And welcome to our playlist where we explore the best features of sidekick. And as you see here on screen, rotating through on my pre-roll announcements for the Hybrid Ministry show, which you can replicate this by simply clicking the link right here at the top of the video to go back and watch some of the more miscellaneous features available here in this playlist.

00;02;10;03 - 00;02;43;04
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
But we are talking about sidekick, and in this particular episode, we're talking about the ways that you can use the wheel. But here's what you might not know is that if you've never jumped into anything dim or Co-Leader, which is our, curriculum software that does unlock access to sidekick, my listeners get an exclusive offer if you use the code hybrid Ministry ten, you'll get 10% off Premium or Premium plus of co-leader curriculum, which, like I said, is how you gain access to sidekick.

00;02;43;11 - 00;03;04;09
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
There is a way to get sidekick ala carte as well. But if you are in youth ministry and you're looking for curriculum, I'm just telling you, Collider is the way to go. You get so much I don't even know how to download. Youth ministry is making money. But again, in addition to that, you get 10% off, if you use my code hybrid ministry ten.

00;03;04;09 - 00;03;25;22
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
So, we're going to get out of these looping announcements, and I want to show you what it looks like to have the customizable spinning wheel. Now here is the preview in the window over here. This little window down here, we're going to pretend, like I said, in the first, video in this playlist, this, sidekick is browser based.

00;03;25;24 - 00;03;42;25
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
So it's going to create a new window. You're going to drag that ugly window onto your projector screen, but then from there you're going to click full screen. It's going to be seamless. Now, if you are still using both sidekick and also pro presenter, go ahead and check the link down below in the show notes for how we have set up.

00;03;42;25 - 00;03;47;04
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Because we are, we're all in on sidekick. And the reason that

00;03;47;04 - 00;04;10;02
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
I'm all in on sidekick is it forces me to be more creative in my programing, and I find that when I'm more creative, our students are more engaged and better engaged. And, I personally feel like that I'm doing a better job communicating and being a youth pastor and leaning in and showing up where students are, which that's one of the whole goals, is one viewer students are.

00;04;10;02 - 00;04;31;16
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And that's what hybrid really affords us. The opportunity to do is to be where our people are. And so, if you didn't know this, we're actually starting a brand new Patreon page here on the Hybrid Ministry show, where I'm going to just rattle off what we did in youth group this week. And as I do, I'll explain all the ways we're using sidekick along with all the other things that we're doing in our youth ministry.

00;04;31;16 - 00;04;50;06
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And so I want you to go ahead and check that out. If you haven't, you can click right here. The, the QR code that you see here on screen. I'll, I'll make that a little bit bigger for you. You can click that or you can simply head to a patreon.com/hybrid ministry and join for only $4 a month.

00;04;50;13 - 00;05;26;20
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
The bonus podcast I'm gonna release is a weekly podcast. So when you do $4 a month, that essentially nets out to $1 per week, which is crazy town. So I would love to invite you into that. But here's one of my favorite ways to use and utilize the wheel the random wheel. So in our student ministry not too long ago, we, used one of my friend Eric with a case games, and I'm not sure I don't think he got this game on to download youth ministry before the Halloween, but man, I loved the concept.

00;05;26;20 - 00;05;47;12
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
It was like a digital, like, sort of escape room sort of thing. And what Eric did, which was just like, so incredible, was like, it was like you work through rooms in your space and you had different contestants kind of do that, right now getting contestants, man, that is one of the most difficult things in youth ministry, right?

00;05;47;12 - 00;06;07;11
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Because you've been a real like, who wants to who wants to be a volunteer, who wants to be a volunteer? And so what we did was we created a wheel that would, basically volunteer certain people. So we had our, groups broken down by grade. And so we had like sixth grade, we had seventh and eighth grade, we had ninth and 10th grade, and then we had 11th and 12th grade.

00;06;07;11 - 00;06;33;02
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
So for total, sixth year, I was the only one that was standalone. And the other, you know, six remaining grades are grouped together seventh and eighth, ninth and 10th, 11th, 12th. You get the idea. But then we said we need the whatever the wheel says person from each of these grades. So again, this is something I would go over on my Patreon page and hopefully it might help you out helping me more creative and thus ultimately more engaging.

00;06;33;06 - 00;06;53;23
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
But what we did was we just added a wheel and we said, all right, I need the sixth grader who's the tallest, I need the seventh grader who's the shortest? I need the ninth 10th grader who has the tallest socks I need the 11th 12th grader has the lowest phone battery percentage. And so if you're watching here on screen, what you do is you simply click edit Slide and right at the top all you got to do is click wheel.

00;06;53;25 - 00;07;15;02
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
You want to add the wheel. And so in pops the wheel settings right here. And so this is where you can adjust the individual items in the wheel. So if you don't want cheese because it's not relevant to what you're doing you can say tallest. And if you want highest battery percentage you say highest battery percentage where's a percent.

00;07;15;02 - 00;07;37;26
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
So there it is. If you want to add another one, you simply click Add Item. Or better yet, you can do bulk add and you can just type them all in. And so you go, tallest socks, reddest hair, biggest mustache, or whatever your criteria are. There they are. You click add three items and boom, they are off and rolling.

00;07;37;26 - 00;07;56;10
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Now once your wheel is on the screen, you notice it's kind of covering my face here if you don't want that. So you can go up to this little corner and just simply shrink it and put it right where you want it, maybe right underneath that finger where I'm pointing. Maybe you want it huge, right? So you can make it even bigger.

00;07;56;14 - 00;08;24;23
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
You can make it even smaller. And, there's all sorts of different ways that you can kind of mess around with and use the wheel, but that's way number one. We kind of like to use the wheel as a, contestant sort of generator. All right. The other thing that I love about the wheel is, or another way, way number two that we use the wheel is we will use it sometimes as a prize wheel.

00;08;24;23 - 00;08;43;29
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
So we have a winner of a game, a standalone winner or a group of winners. And then we let that winner go ahead and, spin the wheel for an opportunity to win. So let's just say that they won pizza. And so here, I've already input my different types of pizza that I want to let them win.

00;08;44;03 - 00;09;07;00
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And so when you go ahead and, get this thing launched, you will see that you can you have a lot of different access, right? You have a lot of different access once you get this thing up and rolling. So we're going to pretend this is our projector screen and your person, oh, your person back in your booth is going to be the one that sees this.

00;09;07;00 - 00;09;30;04
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Or again, don't forget that. Now they have phone integration so you can run it like a remote phone, which is a pretty cool feature. So here we are. We are on our wheel right here. And this is what it looks like for the person in the booth. They'll have this start spin option. And they'll be able to see down here that the next winner is cheese.

00;09;30;11 - 00;09;51;01
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
But if I don't want it to be cheese, it can reroll and it can reroll it randomly. Or you can choose a pre-selected option so you can see all of your options here. And you can say, I don't have Hawaiian pizza, I don't have deep dish, I only have sausage. And so we're going to make them think that they have the opportunity to get sausage.

00;09;51;02 - 00;10;13;06
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
But really they don't. And so we're not doing random. We're going to do pre-selected. The pre-selected winner here is sausage. And now when we spin the wheel you're seeing it. You're hearing it. The winner is sausage right. Like I said I can now clear that. Now let's say I gave away sausage and so I don't want that anymore.

00;10;13;09 - 00;10;33;01
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
This is where I can turn on this hide. Last item. And so now sausage, which was what I give away. Now I don't have it because I gave it to this group. And I need a new prize to give away to the next group. I can't give away sausage twice. It only had it once. If I click hide last item, it will go away and it won't be an option on the wheel anymore.

00;10;33;01 - 00;10;57;16
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
So now let's just simulate that again. So I did in fact go ahead. Giveaway sausage I'm hiding the last item. Consider the last item hidden. And then we're going to clear that it's gone. And now we're like oh it needs to be pepperoni. So here we go. Give a pepperoni to the winning group. Group number two. Congratulations you one pepperoni.

00;10;57;16 - 00;11;17;12
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Now if you're listening here on screen or you it was able to be picked up through my microphone, you will notice that they have different sound effects. So when you do the little, cheery sound effect, that's the one that pepperoni just made you. Little shrug sound effect. That's just a little kind of simple, like click sound, like, and so you can change that.

00;11;17;12 - 00;11;45;19
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Or if it's a negative consequence, you can also do the lose sound. And so cheese now has the lose sound. And so that sounds something like this. Now that no one wants cheese. All right. This is this is the bottom line. Okay. Here is another idea that I have is, we might, in our space, do something where, we have, like, rows.

00;11;45;23 - 00;12;03;14
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
We have 16 tables. So there's four, 4x4, four tables across, four tables down 16 total. So we might do something when we have a passage of Scripture, you know, that we want people to look up. And so then we might use the wheel and say, all right, row one. You're going to look up this. Row two, you're going to look up that.

00;12;03;16 - 00;12;22;06
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And here's what's cool is you saw my picture here. So you can also make your background custom. So right here let's say I want this slide right here to be where I put my wheel. First I got to give it a background right. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to make it an image background.

00;12;22;09 - 00;12;48;13
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
I'm going to upload a file. And I'm going to go navigate to these different verses of this slide that I have already made. And so boom, there's my verse slides. And so now I don't want that. I want the wheel now. And so I can say row one, row two, row three and row four. We're going to add those.

00;12;48;16 - 00;13;13;19
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
We're going to remove these. And now I can put this right here. Again don't forget Hybrid Ministry ten gets you 10% off of Premium or Premium Plus of Collider. But now I can put that right here. And I can say all right row one. You're going to go first. And then very simply right. Like as I am presenting this sucker, got to get down to it so I can show it to you.

00;13;13;19 - 00;13;42;15
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
But as I'm presenting it, I'll say, all right, row one. Here you go. Or not? Row one. Luke one goes to row one, in fact. Right. And once again, I should have selected hide winner because I can't actually have row one. That's a bummer, I missed out. What am I supposed to do? Well, your purpose in in person can actually hop back over here to edit and just very simply, either hide them and now they're going to be off my wheel or delete them and they're off my wheel either way.

00;13;42;18 - 00;14;01;14
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Now if I hide them right, I can add them back on very simply. If, I delete them, I do have to go back in here and I have to type it all back out and do all that stuff, which as you see, is not that difficult. But it it does take a little bit more of an additional step.

00;14;01;14 - 00;14;21;22
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Now here's the other cool thing. You might be thinking like, I don't I don't want like that background. I want like I want a video background. Great. Check this out. I don't want this background anymore. I go back in here to edit slide. I don't want it going to go over here to my slide settings. And instead of it being an image background, I can do a color background.

00;14;21;22 - 00;14;43;08
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
He's my color options right? Those are all the preloaded ones. Or I can say I want a video background. So I'm going to select video and I want it to be a YouTube embedded video, and I want it to be my video. So we're going to copy and paste that link here, paste embed that YouTube video and boom.

00;14;43;10 - 00;15;00;25
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
And I can put the wheel anywhere that I want. Now keep in mind that when it's a background, you saw it right here. Background videos will loop automatically and they do not play sounds. And so you can pull these directly off of the internet. And this is why I believe every single youth ministry should have a strong digital presence also.

00;15;00;25 - 00;15;21;25
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Hey, why you're here, why don't you go ahead and grab my hybrid strategy guide with a little bit of a different name from this episode that I dropped a little bit over a year ago. So that was idea number three. You can give out passages for the we'll idea number four, I'm actually going to share with those of you that are on my Patreon page.

00;15;21;25 - 00;15;44;13
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Now listen, don't forget that it's only about a dollar a week. And anyone who signs up before December 2nd, 2024 will get an exclusive free piece of merch. So you're going to get a piece of merch that's probably worth like $20. That's gonna like, pay for itself in the first five months. And I'm going to share my fourth favorite way that I

00;15;44;13 - 00;15;49;02
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
customize and use the wheel in my different teachings and in my different presentations.

00;15;49;09 - 00;16;06;08
Nick Clason| Hybrid Ministry
Hey, my friends, as always, don't forget if you want to know how to use the name picker that is going to be here in the next episode, if you're watching on YouTube, that'll be right here on screen. Go hop over to Patreon page. But until next time, and as always, my friends stay hybrid.

Episode 124: Truly Interactive Sermons | How I use Sidekick

Nick Clason — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 05:00:00 -0600

🎧 BONUS WEEKLY PODCAST
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

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

DESCRIPTION
In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, discover how to create truly interactive sermons using Sidekick made by Download Youth Ministry to engage students like never before! We’ll explore practical ways to blend creativity with technology, making your youth ministry sermons more dynamic and memorable. Ideal for leaders aiming to elevate their hybrid ministry approach in their student ministry, this episode offers key strategies to transform your youth ministry.

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/124

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

//COLEADER PRICING
CODE: HYBRIDMINISTRY10
https://www.sidekick.tv/pricing

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

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

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

//FINISH THE DRAWING - HELP DERRY BUY PRESENTS!
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/finish-the-drawing/games/icebreakers-8666.html

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

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

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

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

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Phone Voting in Sidekick
01:53 The Creativity Challenge
02:36 BIG Announcement!!
04:06 Voting During Pre-Roll
07:13 #1 Game Style
09:39 #2 Game Style
12:10 #3 Game Style
15:56 Voting During Sermons
17:29 The Wheel

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:28:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Pastor. We all know the struggle that all of us in ministry face with online church and streaming and the tension between will people come and be a part of our church? Or will they just simply listen to us online? I mean, hey, listen, give me a like if anytime in the last week you have listened to another pastor sermon or any podcast of any sort, religion or otherwise, or if you've listened to a worship song on Spotify, Apple Music or on YouTube.

00:00:29:00 - 00:00:51:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You see, the fact is we live now in a digital world where, content and sermons and music and worship music and all those things are available for our consumption at the touch and at the click of a finger. So how can we utilize technology in your ministry to make your programing in your service a little bit more hybrid?

00:00:51:19 - 00:01:11:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, hybrid I talked about this. It's the intersection of your in-person and your digital right. It's not forsaking one for the other, but it's simply finding a way to intersect them and to meld them together in the two. And we're going to look at my favorite feature in sidekick, which I believe makes you as hybrid as it can get in today's world.

00:01:11:13 - 00:01:31:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you are new to this playlist, we have been simply talking in the playlist linked up right here about different features of sidekick, and in the last video I kind of introduced sidekick and I showed some of the miscellaneous features, but there are three kind of core pillars and core, feature principles about sidekick that are just simply fantastic.

00:01:31:15 - 00:01:51:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the first one is the feature of vote. And you can pull your phone out and you can vote via QR codes. So that is what we're going to talk about today and in this video. But don't forget, if you're over here on YouTube that we do have chapters down at the bottom so that you can skip around, jump around to different sections and elements that pertain the most to you.

00:01:51:13 - 00:02:10:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I was talking to a friend of mine at a conference of several years back, and who's leading a workshop, and it was so well done and it was so creative. And frankly, it was pre-COVID, but it was before, and I was thinking like, man, this is more than just him getting up and talking. This is him actually engaging and interacting with his audience and drawing them in.

00:02:10:25 - 00:02:31:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I asked him, like, how do you do it? And he said, honestly, I challenged myself to try and use at least once per message, a feature from sidekick that I couldn't use with something simple like a PowerPoint or Pro presenter presentation software. And in our student ministry we have gone all in on sidekick. And so I want to share that with you in this playlist.

00:02:31:05 - 00:02:52:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But I also want to let you know that launching on December 2nd, I am going to be launching a bonus weekly podcast simply called like what have I Done this week? And talking about all the ways that our youth ministry is trying to go hybrid, utilize digital, utilize YouTube, utilize sidekick. And so that is linked down below. Or you can scan the QR code that you see here on screen.

00:02:52:27 - 00:03:16:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That is going to give you that bonus weekly podcast. But there's also going to be other perks for Patreon members. And the cost, my friends, it's only a dollar per episode per week. And so jump in on that if you find that helpful. If you're looking to, turn the dial up on your creativity, on your hybrid, on your digital, I just want to simply walk you through what we are doing on a week by week basis.

00:03:16:19 - 00:03:39:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as you hear what I'm doing, hopefully that just gives you other creative ideas and listen. I would love if you then would also shoot back what you're doing, because anytime I hear what someone else is doing, it causes my brain and my juices to get going and get creative. But anyone who signs up before December 2nd, which is the official launch of the Patreon show, will get an exclusive free piece of merch.

00:03:39:04 - 00:03:58:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I will mail it to you and so that will be just my token of appreciation. So literally, that piece of merch will pay for itself for like six months worth of you being signed up for the, hybrid, Patreon experience. And so jump on and honestly, take my money. Can't wait to get you guys going on that.

00:03:58:16 - 00:04:18:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this video, I want to talk about the different areas that you can use the voting in side. So you can include the voting slides in your pre-roll. So for example here on screen you'll see I'm going to click present. And we got a full screen window. And boom we're in our pre-roll slides. And these will rotate if you are not with us.

00:04:18:25 - 00:04:35:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Last video is a rotate every few seconds. We set that up ahead of time. You can go check out how to do that there. Rotating here pretty quickly. You can slow those down, but if you wanted to add here, to that, first of all, you got to get out of your presentation window and you got to end your presentation to make your edit.

00:04:35:09 - 00:04:54:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then right here, if I just wanted to be like, all right, let's include a voting thing here. All you got to do is just click this voting option. Boom. And it kind of overtakes the design of the screen. And while you're here, you could use this example. Which super power would you choose? Or you could say, which kind of coffee shop is best?

00:04:54:20 - 00:05:23:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can get people debating on the old Dunkin versus Starbucks versus, main, what else is out there? Whatever, whatever it is, like your local home town hipster coffee vibe. And then over here, it's, the checkmarks on the side. These are indicating correct answers. So if you don't want there to be a correct answer, even though Dunkin in this particular, case is probably the correct answer, there is no correct answer.

00:05:23:27 - 00:05:42:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then over here you can, you can offer this like, hey, do you want to show the QR code? So sometimes people can, scan it ahead of time and just have it on their phone, and their phone becomes like a game remote, or you can leave it being shown here on screen. You can indicate and show the live results.

00:05:42:04 - 00:05:59:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can also reorder the, the votes like, the as the votes are coming in, whichever one's highest, we'll, we'll kind of jump to the top. You can either leave that or not. And then down here in the advanced settings, if you do have a correct answer, this this text here will be displayed on screen about whether it was correct or whether it wasn't.

00:05:59:18 - 00:06:18:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so now if we look back over here at our pre-roll slides, if we get this presentation up and going, we're going to make it a little smaller. So you just pretend that this little, window here is like your, it's your it's your your your screen. Right. It's your, projector screen. You drag this over or whatever.

00:06:18:21 - 00:06:38:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So now it's rotating through. Rotating through. Boom. Here's a poll question. You can engage and hybridize and interact with your audience during your pre-roll session there. So that's one of my favorite ways to use it. I have a poll question of every single week during our pre-roll. The the hack to that is you do got to keep the slides.

00:06:38:11 - 00:06:44:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They can't be going this fast. I make mine a 14 second rotation that gives people enough

00:06:44:07 - 00:06:59:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
time to read the question, realize it, go scan it and vote and maybe get it in. Because once this q QR code is off the screen, voting is closed. And so once it goes to the next slide, they can't vote anymore. So they kind of got to wait for it to rotate back around.

00:06:59:15 - 00:07:22:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Sometimes if I noticed people trying to do it though, what I will do is I will pull my phone up and I will just go back using the the phone remote kind of feature. Right. So that's one way that you can utilize and use it in your ministry. The pre-roll, voting option. You can also use it probably most commonly, probably the ways that we think about the most is with your games.

00:07:22:29 - 00:07:38:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And so, I told you in the last video of our playlist linked right up here, if I haven't already done that. I have already done that. If you're watching here on YouTube, when you buy a game, you can, bring it in. And so we bought this game, finished the drawing in our youth ministry by my friend Derek.

00:07:38:26 - 00:07:55:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Print it. I'll drop the link to that game down below in the show notes. Go buy it, hook his family up, give him some royalties. He needs Christmas presents. But, this is what it looks like when I import it in. And so in this particular game, what you would do is I'll go ahead and show it to you here on screen.

00:07:55:26 - 00:08:17:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What you would do is you would, put one of these slides up. And a student would then have to finish the the drawing of this bus. Okay. So the way that we utilize this in our ministry was we actually probably use random name generator, which is going to be coming up here in one of these future videos.

00:08:17:11 - 00:08:38:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Put some students up on stage. We got four different students. And so then, we gave them this picture. We gave them a minute countdown timer on the screen, and then they drew they finished the drawing. Now, then we used a camera. We just plugged it in via our stage, portal. We use our video switcher and we switch to the camera view.

00:08:38:09 - 00:08:58:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So that up on the screen, everyone could see the finished drawing. So all four contestants were holding their drawing up. And then we said, scan this QR code. And so students would scan the QR code. Once they scanned it, once it was on their phone for good and they could vote. Whoo hoo! One person, one person, two person to person four.

00:08:58:27 - 00:09:28:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Based on that, that was a winner. You can utilize this for anything that has a subjective winner, right? Like, who do you think won this person? This person. You draw something, you build a sculpture you like, who was the loudest. You can vote it right. And once you get that QR code shown on screen and there's another thing you know, it's showing right here, or you click this little button down here in the sidekick window, show QR code and look, it makes it full and big and so everyone can gain access to it, no matter how big or how far away they are from the screen.

00:09:28:15 - 00:09:53:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Sometimes you kind of got to zoom in with your phone and stuff like that. So we use that to then kind of declare a winner. All right. Another game option. I want to show you this one that is, sitting in here if you already, a member or a subscriber of sidekick, which if you're not, let me remind you that for my podcast listeners only, you can try out co-leader, which will be what gives you access to sidekick is a presentation software.

00:09:53:29 - 00:10:19:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you have never signed up for anything on game before by using the code Hybrid Ministry ten, and you can get an access to Premium or Premium Plus of Collider. I will put the link down below at sidekick.tv/pricing for you to compare the differences, but they'll give you either 260 Collider credits versus 520 Collider credits, along with either 25 or 75 sidekick phone voting connections.

00:10:19:13 - 00:10:36:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So go check that out if that's something that you want to do, that's something that you want to learn. But if you sign up and you are a member, then in your completely free section here, I'm going to end this thing so that I can edit again. Right? So you'll notice controls change a little bit, but it's free thing.

00:10:36:18 - 00:10:56:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
There's a game, that Josh Griffin did over at Mariner's called Zombie Apocalypse. So I hit that and, I imported it. And so here's what it is. So this is the instructions given to us by the sidekick team. It says, hey, watch Josh play this game and how he use it. Here's the instructions. Here's his supply list here to do all this thing.

00:10:56:26 - 00:11:16:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But so if we just ran this, this is another way to utilize the voting and play game. Make this small so that we can we can see everything. But. So here we are. We're playing this zombie apocalypse apocalypse game. And, you got the the plot and all these things, and this is like super next level, right?

00:11:16:25 - 00:11:37:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So this question here is which weapon will you choose? You let the students decide if they want a hammer, a lightsaber, a rubber chicken or the impossible shot bow. Okay. And then here it is. Boom. Zombie approach is good news. Live separation and anxiety and will only go to one area at a time. And one big group of survivors should split up to have a better chance of survival.

00:11:37:14 - 00:11:59:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Each one has an either A, the baptismal, the tech booth, the playground, or the welcome booth. And then you let them vote, okay, crowd votes. And then, on one area, it kills the contestants who are there in that area. Then here's some more instructions. And they even incorporated the wheel. And so as you go through this is a a choose your own kind of adventure of a game.

00:11:59:02 - 00:12:17:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's another really fun, really creative way to use and utilize sidekick to your advantage. And then there's one last way that I want to show you. And I'll go ahead I'll get it presented once again. And this is with, another game that's free in the free section, if you sign up again, don't forget Hybrid Ministry ten.

00:12:17:05 - 00:12:32:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's called Where's the ball. And so in this particular game, this is the example of what I was kind of saying earlier about you can use your phone as a remote. And so this game is it got a right and wrong answer to it. Right. So like the the other ones were like more subjective. What do you think.

00:12:32:21 - 00:12:52:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What do you think this one is like? Here's a question. Here's the right answer. And so in this one your question that you must decide is is it a or is it be all right. And like I said in this particular case, you got to get that QR code live so that everyone can scan it on their phones, scans, skin scan, and then their phone becomes a remote.

00:12:52:18 - 00:13:12:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so now the question on their phone, A or B, their phone as they're holding it, it says is it A or is it B they vote I in the booth or your booth person clicks right here, this end voting thing. And then when you click reveal correct answer, it shows the slide with the correct answer. And then it also reveals it on everyone's phones at the same time.

00:13:12:19 - 00:13:28:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. It's pretty cool. Here we go to the next one. This is which of these pickleball, balls is the correct answer? They would vote A, B, C, or D, you'd end the voting, you'd reveal the correct answer. And of course, the answer is a the phone would say correct. If they got it wrong, it would say incorrect or whatever.

00:13:28:26 - 00:13:46:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You said the advanced settings to be ahead of time. And I can show you how that works, because this one is a little bit more tricky to actually set up. You don't just simply click right like in this one right here. If I added a new slide and I wanted them to vote on who's the drawing, I simply click voting and then boom, I right I right to answer like who won?

00:13:46:27 - 00:14:02:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then I go down here and I do, you know, one, two three, four I unchecked the winner and we're off to the races and where's the ball. Like I said it's a little bit more intricate. So let me show you how it works. So you click edit Slide and this is voting right. So I clicked on that, I clicked Edit voting.

00:14:02:19 - 00:14:24:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But if it weren't there I would turn into voting. And right here at the top you got this little toggle switch that says, is this an image based question when it's not now it went away. When I turn it back on, it's this image based question. So like I said, question side answer slide. And so if I remove this you'll see that I can upload the question slide.

00:14:24:05 - 00:14:42:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then I can upload the answer slide. Now if you're just getting this free where's the ball. It's already included in sidekick. Go get it. Go play it. It's super fun. But if you're creating it yourself, you'll have to upload this from somewhere just on your computer, right? And you also upload the answer and then you're going to correct or select which answer is truly correct.

00:14:43:03 - 00:14:58:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then down here in the advanced settings you can either say correct or you can say sorry, or you can flame them like you're an idiot. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that if you want to keep your job, but hey, go for it. It's up to you, right? You can also add right? So here's where you would add or subtract answers.

00:14:58:01 - 00:15:13:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if there's three multiple choice or four multiple choice, or if you need to take one away and make it three again, that's where you do that. And then you just simply click which of the answers is correct. This is one of my favorite ways. We did this one time and again. This is the type of stuff you get on the Patreon.

00:15:14:00 - 00:15:28:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I'll share this idea and maybe you can use it. We did like a pet day. We were celebrating National Kitten Day, and we had people texting via our text groups to this picture of your pet, and then we put pictures of pets on screens. Then we said, who do you think? Whose pet do you think this is?

00:15:28:17 - 00:15:46:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Is it you know Jake's? Is it Brie's? Is it Adam's or is it, Gracie's? And then they would just vote, like, it was a fun way to use our students and to get them and let them be kind of the heroes and the superstars of our day and of our our game. And so that was a fun way.

00:15:46:09 - 00:16:15:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we used this image based question kind of voting option here on sidekick. The last way, of course, that you can use it is very obviously in your messages. And so once again, this is an example of what I'll be going on going on over in our Patreon. But in this particular week, actually tonight I'm preaching on, masks, and I got just a couple of different questions, on that, I'm talking about being judgmental.

00:16:15:22 - 00:16:33:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, in that I'm asking questions like, you know, are you ever judgmental? Yes or no? Scan it and let me know. Another one I'm using, like, hey, so, finish the phrase sticks and stones. What? And then I put a bunch of different ridiculous answers. And of course, the answer's six. And stones may break my bones.

00:16:33:04 - 00:16:48:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But words will never hurt. Give me a like if you knew that. Because, that means you're old, like me, and you're, in your 30s as a youth pastor. Give me a sub. If not, because that means that you're younger and that means that you're actually on YouTube. And so give me subs so that you will see some of these future videos.

00:16:48:02 - 00:17:08:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the point is, previously before sidekick, I would just say raise your hand if you know what this phrase means. Sticks and stones may break my bones, and that's an engagement. But now, in a way, to go hybrid, taking my in-person and my digital and putting at the intersection of my students phones, I say, hey, scan this QR code and finish this phrase.

00:17:08:09 - 00:17:30:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And again, like my friend Anthony said back at that conference, I challenged myself to try and use sidekick in my message as I create at least one time per week. And so voting is a fantastic way to to utilize that and to use that. Now the another really fun custom way that sidekick, has to offer this was just voting.

00:17:30:13 - 00:17:48:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The last video was just some of its miscellaneous features. The next video, which is going to be linked right here on screen. You can see it if you're watching on YouTube. Go ahead and tap that and go check that out. Is the random wheel and how you can customize it and generate it with customized, sounds and punishments and all sorts of different things.

00:17:48:09 - 00:18:06:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So I want to chat through different creative ways. You can use that, perhaps in pre-roll and games, in messages and announcements, all sorts of different ways. I can't wait for you to see that. I hope that this helps you and your youth. Minutes to become more engaging, more interactive. Don't forget that's all at the Patreon is going to be about.

00:18:06:17 - 00:18:10:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But as always, don't forget my friends to stay hybrid.

Episode 123: LIVE Sidekick Demo and Review! Youth Ministry Turned Interactive

Nick Clason — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 05:00:00 -0600

🎧 BONUS WEEKLY PODCAST
https://patreon.com/hybridministry

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

DESCRIPTION
In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, we’re diving into a live demo and review of Sidekick – a powerful tool for youth ministry and interactive programming! See how Sidekick can transform your youth group experience by adding a dynamic, creative edge to your student ministry. Sidekick from Download Youth Ministry is perfect for leaders looking to engage students in fresh ways, this episode is packed with insights to level up your student ministry service!

📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/123

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

//COLEADER PRICING
CODE: HYBRIDMINISTRY10
https://www.sidekick.tv/pricing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 More Engaging Services with Sidekick
02:26 New Patreon Show Starting!
04:08 Feature #1
06:48 Co-Leader Promo Code
08:23 Feature #2
11:39 Feature #3
12:12 Feature #4
13:44 Feature #5
14:07 Feature #6
14:40 Feature #7
15:35 Feature #8

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;04;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Youth pastor. Collegiate minister. Senior pastor. What if I told you

00;00;04;17 - 00;00;12;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that there was a better presentation software out there than pro presenter PowerPoint, or whatever else you use?

00;00;12;28 - 00;00;30;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It sounded too good to be true. Well, listen, it is made by youth pastors and is made for youth pastors. Give me a like if you think you already know what I'm talking about, because I am talking about my favorite presentation software and it's called sidekick.

00;00;30;19 - 00;01;01;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here's why. This is great, regardless of if you're in youth ministry or not, because it is made for interaction and it is made for customization. But there is so much more. And in this video and in this upcoming playlist, I want to share with you what those features are. This video in particular, I'm going to drop my top eight different miscellaneous features because everyone knows that sidekick has things like the voting and the wheel picker and the name picker.

00;01;01;29 - 00;01;23;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this video, I'm going to share the other things that sidekick has to offer besides those obvious kind of milestone landmark, features built in woven into the presentation software. And if you're here on YouTube, as always, don't forget that there are chapters listed down below at the bottom so that you can jump ahead to what matters most to you.

00;01;23;20 - 00;01;50;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's the thing in the context in which I'm currently working, we are all in on sidekick. What we've done is we have two computers now, one for pro presenter and one for sidekick. Because if you know, if you've used sidekick in the new beta version at all, you know that it runs through Google Chrome and in the previous versions, what you could do with running a software like, pro presenters, you'd have pro presenter up and running and then back behind it.

00;01;50;02 - 00;02;19;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You could have the sidekick window and you could just toggle off the display. But now Chrome is actually more powerful than Pro Presenter. Most people I tell that they find that actually incredibly surprising. And so as a result of that, it makes switching between Chrome and Pro Presenter a little bit tricky. And so the way in which we have sort of circumvented or navigated that is we have just built two computers and we have a black magic video switcher where we can go from computer one to computer two.

00;02;19;09 - 00;02;44;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And essentially we use Pro Presenter for just worship and lyrics, and then we use sidekick for every thing else. You know, I'm actually launching here during the course of this playlist, starting officially on December 2nd, a brand new bonus podcast. I'm going to be releasing it one time per week, going to be over on my Patreon page. And listen, Patreon, takes a little bit of a fee.

00;02;45;01 - 00;03;10;21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the reason that I'm doing that is to just, invest back into the podcast. But I am only charging $4 per month. I think it is a small, modest fee. Essentially it is going to break down to $1 per week per additional bonus. Podcast. What I want to do with that podcast, I just simply want to share with you the creative ways that we are running our youth ministry programing and how we're making it hybrid.

00;03;10;21 - 00;03;35;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you want more hybrid information, I would love to share that with you. This podcast and this YouTube video is meant to sort of like give a big broad strokes overview of what Hybrid Ministry is. But on my Patreon page, what I want to do is I just want to share an extra bonus podcast and simply chat through everything that I've done for the week and talk through the ways that we've tried to make it creative and talk through the ways in which we have tried to sort of hybridize our ministry.

00;03;35;24 - 00;04;01;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that podcast is starting December 2nd. And for everyone who signs up during now, if you're watching live through December 2nd, I am going to send and mail you an exclusive free piece of merch. For all who sign up between now and December 2nd. Like I said, and it basically breaks down to $1 a month. So, either scan the QR code that you see here on screen or hit the link down below in the description.

00;04;01;29 - 00;04;25;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But let's dive in to my eight favorite features of sidekick. Let's check it out. So my first favorite feature of sidekick is its co-leader integration. And if you're watching here on screen, you might be surprised to know that you're not looking at sidekick. What you're actually going to look at when we're we're actually going to start is here on co-leader and so on.

00;04;25;02 - 00;04;50;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Co-Leader. What you can do is, if you are a subscriber, a co-leader is a, curriculum roadmaps and, like, I guess almost, not pro presenter. What am I trying to say? Planning center replacement thing for youth pastors and for youth ministries. So here on co-leader, you can explore sort of all the different, series and topics and even, events that they have.

00;04;50;14 - 00;05;16;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Co-Leader has a roadmap series and so sort of like their proposed curriculum. And so you can explore their you're one of roadmaps and then you can also explore their your two here of roadmaps. And but essentially on co-leader what's so cool about it. And I like co-leader it is actually become it's new is only in year two of development but it's actually become my favorite curriculum resource, because it literally does everything for you.

00;05;16;11 - 00;05;33;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you see here on our dashboard, these are series that we have redeemed our credits for. So Co-Leader works on sort of a credit system. And so we've redeemed, this credit series, this credit on this series here called masks. And so, for example, if you're in, session one of masks, you click view session here.

00;05;34;05 - 00;05;54;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you look right off to the side here, sidekick, you can open in sidekick. Boom. Click that little button and it will automatically import your entire sessions. So here's our session flow. They got your graphics and all that stuff. But starting here you got your countdown. You're welcome. Your icebreaker, your game, some songs, videos and then the teaching slides.

00;05;54;29 - 00;06;13;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I want to show you what that looks like over here in sidekick. So if you're here in sidekick you'll see. Let's actually do a, side by side so that you can see them in comparison. Right. So from the top we have, countdown. There's your countdown. You got your, game right there. You got another game.

00;06;13;22 - 00;06;38;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Masked celebrity. And all of this is included in your co-leader subscription. You got your, bumper video for your masks, and then you got your masks. Chameleon is the title of the message. Chameleon teaching slides right there, and you can see how all of that works together. And so by a simple click of the button, your entire youth ministry night is planned.

00;06;38;29 - 00;07;03;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it is absolutely crazy. Now if you're a download Youth Ministry member, the co-leader is slightly different than do you? I am, but if you've never done anything in with download youth ministry before or co-leader, then I want to let my podcast listeners know that exclusively here on this podcast. I'll give you 10% off, of co-leader, so you can use the code Hybrid Ministry ten.

00;07;03;19 - 00;07;26;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what that includes is not only will that give you access to co-leader, but that also sort of will unlock access to this presentation software called sidekick. And so included is sidekick for a year. It allows you to do the one click presentations for everything that's in co-leader. Both year one and year two of the roadmaps, and you can get an access to co-leader premium or Premium Plus.

00;07;26;03 - 00;07;48;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And so premium includes 260 co-leader credits. Like I said, it's kind of built off that credit system. And then you get 25 sidekick phone connections. That's for voting. We'll get to that in a minute. Or the premium class which is Premium Plus, which is 520 co-leader credits and 75 sidekick phone connections. So you can explore the differences between those two plans at this link here.

00;07;48;15 - 00;08;05;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
On screen sidekick TV pricing don't forget, if you've never used or never done anything before with sidekick or with co-leader, then if you're signing up for the first time, Hybrid Ministry ten, I'll give you 10% off. Go ahead and check that out. And so I love that

00;08;05;27 - 00;08;10;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
about sidekick. I love that about, co-leader I love that, but it's integration.

00;08;10;01 - 00;08;10;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So boom.

00;08;10;11 - 00;08;22;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right here. Here's my full like rundown, my full run sheet for everything going on here in this masks series. Now that's my first favorite thing about sidekick the co-leader integration.

00;08;22;28 - 00;08;37;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So my second favorite feature about sidekick is the YouTube video integration. Now, the thing I like about the YouTube video integration is it takes a while in sidekicks to to upload videos.

00;08;37;19 - 00;09;02;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can drag and drop JPEGs easily, but when you go to upload a video, just it takes a minute and it's a little clunky to do, like a video, next video, next video, because you got to kind of do it one by one. So here's how it look like. So if I wanted to put a video on this slide, I'd click Edit Media videos, go browse, go find the video, upload it, wait for it to upload, and then it's it's in its spot as opposed to just a quick and easy drag and drop.

00;09;02;05 - 00;09;23;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, if, I wanted to just embed a YouTube video, that's very simple, and I've actually already done that right here on this one, you'll notice here's one of my YouTube videos embedded. So if I go to present this thing, remember it's browser based. So just very simply,

00;09;24;01 - 00;09;46;10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So just very simply, opens up a new window and you started hearing even the, the, what's it called? The countdown right there. But here's this video that I embedded social media right there into sidekick. I have all this functionality over here. I can pause the video, I can mute the video, I can restart the video.

00;09;46;10 - 00;10;10;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can do all those sort of things. Let me get this smaller so that we can see both of them together. So this is my presentation window that will just go full screen. Right. But very simply, when I'm, when I'm wanting to include a video, I can embed a video. And this is embedded small, but I can also just, you know, very, very simply, very easily embed that video full screen.

00;10;10;05 - 00;10;44;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right, as well. Now, the other thing like that we use in our youth ministry as we go hybrid taking our our in-person and our digital, we teach live messages. But then we also prefilled them for multiple reasons, because we use that as a springboard for our Sunday morning small group content. And so every Sunday morning we play a clip off of one of our message clips, even though the message was delivered live, we play the filmed version, in our room, just like a 2 to 3 minute clip to remind everyone what was said.

00;10;44;02 - 00;11;03;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our our leaders can look at it ahead of time. Our students who missed on Wednesday can also look at it ahead of time on YouTube. It's evergreen content. It's meant to reach students who, might be asking questions about faith, God, whatever the case might be. And so we do that. And if you're interested in exploring more about what that might look like, link down.

00;11;03;11 - 00;11;38;27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Below is a link to some custom coaching. I would love to help kind of level that game up for you, or even get you started from scratch if that's something that you're interested in. But it has been a hugely beneficial piece to us and our student ministry, having the ability to just simply embed our YouTube videos. And so for things like countdowns or for things that are like bigger files, I will actually upload those to YouTube, host them there, put them on just like a private unlisted link, and then embed that video into my sidekick presentation, as opposed to have to upload it every single time.

00;11;39;00 - 00;11;57;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now here's the other thing I love about sidekick. It's easy to build. So let me show you very quickly. Like, while, you know, while the videos might be a little more tricky to, to pull in or builder upload, they're easy to do. They're just a little bit time consuming. That's why it's easy to just drop a YouTube video in there.

00;11;57;26 - 00;12;09;26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. But if I just want to like, add one of these JPEGs in here, all I gotta do is drag it and drop it and boom, it's uploaded and is ready to go. There it is. Okay, super simple, super easy to

00;12;09;26 - 00;12;17;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
build. I love things like, these looping announcements. So right here, here's a bunch of different looping announcements.

00;12;17;19 - 00;12;39;04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, don't forget that the, here's the here's the countdown video again. But, you know, as always, like, don't forget Hybrid Ministry ten. Don't forget about that. That's going to be used to your advantage. If you want to check out Collider, you want to check out sidekick. Don't forget we got custom social media coaching. Scan the QR code that you see here on screen here.

00;12;39;04 - 00;12;58;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'll make it bigger so you can go and check out my completely free e-book about how to go hybrid. Or hey, don't forget about our Patreon. We got that going on $4 a month exclusive free merch along with all these other things that you see here. Listed out exclusive sticker help to show and segment topics, super chats and shout outs.

00;12;58;09 - 00;13;22;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right? But you can turn this right here. You can turn these announcements to be looping announcements. We use those every single week in our ministry. So you'll see right over here. If you're watching here on screen, you see this little, loop icon. That means that this, this set of announcements in this little, pocket of, of slides here is set to, rotate.

00;13;22;05 - 00;13;41;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This one right here is not. So let me show you how you do it. Click this little gear icon. You click loop slides. You say how long you want the slides to loop for seven seconds or 10s or however long you want it to. And then you simply click close and then boom. When you click present, those will then be on a looper, which is a fantastic resource.

00;13;41;14 - 00;14;03;16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We use that every single week in our student ministry. I also want to let you know just about a couple of other things that are awesome. You have the, free option up here. So if you're co-leader, sidekick, person, these are all free different resources that you can get just like and quickly and simply, you got countdowns and games and videos and all sorts of things.

00;14;03;18 - 00;14;21;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can embed or import any of these into your presentation. The other thing that's really cool is when you buy something on demand, look, I've bought these things before, they will automatically upload them. So as I was saying, kind of the video thing was a little clunky to upload and maybe you don't want to upload every single one of these to a YouTube playlist and then embed those via YouTube.

00;14;22;00 - 00;14;55;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
No sweat. No problem. Check it out. You can very simply buy something on gram and then boom, it'll be there in just a second and then you can quickly import it. Just like I did down here with this, finish the drawing game back to school. And there it is. Boom. Imported. All right, and then the other thing, man, the other thing that is so cool about, sidekick is that the you can control it from your phone simply by logging into app that sidekick.tv on your mobile device, and you can control it from anywhere in the room, including teaching.

00;14;55;24 - 00;15;19;28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can control it from any other device, including like our, sound booth, computer, maybe running sidekick. I can go into my office, and I can control sidekick from my office. And so my office actually sits where I can see in through some glass doors into our auditorium. And so if it's on the wrong side or whatever, I can pull open on my, on my laptop home from the app, that sidekick, that TV type in and change it.

00;15;20;04 - 00;15;45;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I've had other like staff members and volunteers to be like, are you are you controlling that right now? And that part is so stinking cool. The last thing the eighth and final piece about sidekick that I love is the voting. The voting option is the the single greatest advent. This is what makes this presentation and software so unique and so customizable.

00;15;45;21 - 00;16;13;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's what we're going to talk about. Additional creative ways to use it in your games, in your countdowns, in your teaching, in all sorts of different ways to deploy and use the voting feature in sidekick. You can't do this on any other presentation software. That video is going to be linked right here on screen. Go check out our Patreon as we'll talk about multiple creative ways to deploy voting and to deploy sidekick, and simply what I am doing to lean in and be more hybrid.

00;16;13;19 - 00;16;20;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But check that video out on screen. And don't forget, and as always, my friends, to stay hybrid.

Episode 122: Why Your Youth Ministry Follow-Up Isn't Working

Nick Clason — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 07:00:00 -0600

THE ULTIMATE GUEST FOLLOW UP BOX
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry/shop/ultimate-first-time-guest-box-579557?source=storefront

DESCRIPTION
New Visitor to your Youth Group?
Yay!
Now what? How do you follow-up in a way that doesn't feel weird or creepy?
Good question! Let's explore it together!

SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/122

//THE ULTIMATE GUEST FOLLOW UP BOX
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry/shop/ultimate-first-time-guest-box-579557?source=storefront

//OUR WELCOME VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neb34eYasCY

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

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

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

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Better First Time Guest Followup
01:31 Guest Follow-Up Gone Hybrid
02:42 Where the Idea Began
05:08 Mailing Boxes Begins!
06:47 The Ultimate Welcome Box

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you have a

00:00:01:00 - 00:00:03:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
brand new student or

00:00:03:05 - 00:00:04:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
person to your church.

00:00:04:20 - 00:00:05:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Hooray!

00:00:05:01 - 00:00:06:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Congratulations! That's

00:00:06:08 - 00:00:07:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
so exciting.

00:00:08:00 - 00:00:09:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now how do

00:00:09:24 - 00:00:14:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
we make sure that they return well, without seeming

00:00:14:29 - 00:00:20:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
weird or creepy or old and out of touch?

00:00:20:06 - 00:00:35:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So here's the thing. We all want our students to attend our church. We want them also to feel comfortable and then hopefully ultimately find a home at our church or in our group or with our student ministry.

00:00:35:23 - 00:01:01:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so a visitor is great, but a returning guest even better. See in this podcast, in this episode, what I want to do is I'm going to share with you our step by step guest follow up process and the physical and in-person product that we are using to turn our process hybrid. And I want to give you this box artwork.

00:01:01:17 - 00:01:02:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So go ahead and you

00:01:02:17 - 00:01:08:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
can scrub ahead. You can click the link down below in the description or go to I start talking about the box design

00:01:08:21 - 00:01:09:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
in

00:01:09:02 - 00:01:17:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this YouTube playlist, and you can go ahead and grab that link from us and go check it out. If you're following along here on YouTube, just a reminder there are chapters

00:01:17:14 - 00:01:17:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
down

00:01:17:27 - 00:01:22:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
along at the bottom so that you can skip straight ahead to the parts of the video that make the most sense to you.

00:01:22:25 - 00:01:28:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But just as a reminder, hybrid is taking your in-person moment and your digital and finding a way to

00:01:28:10 - 00:01:31:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
intersect them together. So my

00:01:31:18 - 00:01:37:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
guess is give me a like, if you are the type of person who, when you have a student, you send them

00:01:37:00 - 00:01:37:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a

00:01:37:10 - 00:01:40:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
postcard or go ahead and give me a

00:01:40:06 - 00:01:43:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
subscribe, if maybe not just a postcard, but

00:01:43:09 - 00:01:45:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you're also sending a text message, right?

00:01:45:14 - 00:02:05:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So early on I would I would send postcards. That was and I still do send postcards as, the way that I was kind of trained and I even like as a youth group student received postcards and, and I still do believe in the power of the personal touch. And I, I think that mail, does actually play an important role in youth ministry.

00:02:05:05 - 00:02:25:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think students don't receive mail very often. So I think it's helpful and beneficial for them to get it. Text messages. I do also believe they're important, especially as we talk about hybrid and the intersection of that hybrid being where, it often lands in the hands and in the palms of a student's cell phone. But I don't know about you, but I send a postcard, and it's like

00:02:27:07 - 00:02:28:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
where I send a text.

00:02:28:18 - 00:02:40:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And one time, literally, I got I sent a text from my personal cell phone number, and I got the word stop like, no, no, this was not an automated text like, this is a human being, but okay.

00:02:40:04 - 00:02:47:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Got it. I'll stop. So enter Covid when Covid hit. For those of you watching

00:02:47:19 - 00:02:50:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Linked Up, here is our 100th episode

00:02:50:05 - 00:03:07:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
where I did a recap about where this all sort of hybrid thing started, but we created this full scale and full length digital expression of youth ministry like a full, almost like YouTube variety show, Think like Jimmy Fallon, but youth ministry and YouTube.

00:03:07:26 - 00:03:10:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so our Covid experience was so

00:03:10:22 - 00:03:11:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of our show. And so therefore we would drop a rubber duck and a postcard, but we would do a physical door drop at their, house and at their, their door. And so, I would then get students, or even parents come talk to me on the weekends and be like, thank you.

00:03:44:00 - 00:04:00:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
our show. And so therefore we would drop a rubber duck and a postcard, but we would do a physical door drop at their, house and at their, their door. And so, I would then get students, or even parents come talk to me on the weekends and be like, thank you.

00:04:00:14 - 00:04:31:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So much. I mean, long gone now were the days of the, unanswered texts or the postcards sent into a black hole. Like, now I'm getting students and parents who are actually acknowledging our efforts and acknowledging us, helping roll out the red carpet to help make them feel welcome. It was a great response, but unfortunately, due to like where I lived and how regionally drawn our churches our church was and how far students drove to to come and attend our campus, and the fact that they could do it online.

00:04:31:26 - 00:04:32:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Us they didn't have to

00:04:32:18 - 00:04:52:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
get in the car and come drive a certain distance to our church. It took me a whole day like I remember one Thursday. So our youth night was Wednesday, one Thursday I spent like 9 to 5 in the car just doing these, these door drops. And so, I was just, you know, I was like, I guess that's part of the job, right?

00:04:52:01 - 00:05:13:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I was talking to my boss and I was like, hey, like, I spent my whole Thursday driving around new, so great. And I saw him all the great things. And he's like, you spent your whole day driving. I was like, we can on. Yeah. And he's like, oh, let's, let's, let's change that. And so, what we started doing as opposed to like the physical, me getting in my car, taking it and putting it on their doorstep.

00:05:13:24 - 00:05:33:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We started, taking the same concept, getting it to their hands. But instead of me doing it, we started paying the post office to do it as if there were some sort of service that could take something from point A to point B, and that is woven all throughout the fabric of our country being it's the post office.

00:05:33:14 - 00:05:56:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we started shipping things and it was expensive. Don't get me wrong, we created like a branded box, and now it's like we had to include a little bit more than just a duck in a postcard, so that the box didn't seem boring and empty. But we started shipping it. And so, that that strategy, we kind of laid that over and carried that over, here where I work now.

00:05:56:04 - 00:06:00:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's I started for the first probably like two years of my, my tenure here at this church

00:06:00:29 - 00:06:17:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
with text message, follow up for first time guess. And I can count on one finger, the amount of times I got a response. And that response was in those two years, the word stop. And so I said, hey, listen, maybe I'm just too old for this.

00:06:17:20 - 00:06:37:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I'm in my mid 30s and maybe students are like, I that's weird to text the guy in the in his 30s, or maybe text messages to students who they don't have the contact info from, especially from a phone number that it's not local. I live in DFW, Dallas-Fort worth, Texas. My phone number is from Dayton, Ohio. Like there is a massive difference in those two area codes.

00:06:37:01 - 00:06:52:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so they see someone down here with an 807 area code seeing a nine, three seven area code. They don't know what to do with it. So they ghosted as they do. And so I suggest and I propose what if we bring back the boxes. And so what I want to do is I want to share with you this right here.

00:06:52:14 - 00:07:10:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is our welcome box. It's branded. It's custom for us. And so if you look on all the sides, it's got a little, it's great to meet you. It's got, you know, yay! You're here. And then the top here, says welcome, along with a return address and a spot for us to put their address.

00:07:10:15 - 00:07:30:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then on the back, it's got our social handles. And what I want to do is I want to go through step by step, item by item, and, boxes here with you. And so, one of the things that we do is every single, every single semester, but three times a year, we do like a four, we do a winter, and then we do a summer calendar.

00:07:30:04 - 00:07:50:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what we do is we make our calendars into magnets. And so you look here, this is a magnet. It's about eight inches long. And so, truth be told, this box right here is about eight inches, and it's eight inches because the magnet is eight inches. I made the decision to make the box the same size as the magnet.

00:07:50:28 - 00:08:11:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so then I made sure that everything from the size of the magnet on down would be able to fit into the box. So, we put the magnet in there. The magnet has all of our events. And you'll also notice here's an opportunity to go hybrid. This right here is just a link to subscribe to the IX or the calendar type things.

00:08:11:14 - 00:08:29:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's a calendar, extension you can get it from, like creating, a Google calendar, a calendar, a Google calendar calendar. And then you can share that out. And so that's what we did. And so students can add this and subscribe to their calendar. We haven't gotten as many of those from students, but I know we've gotten some scans from parents.

00:08:29:13 - 00:08:48:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And also we give specific and particular leader magnet. And so our leaders also can go ahead and scan that. And so that is our magnet. We also have this sticker here, and these frankly, they're just laying around. We got these for free. So these didn't really cost the anything. So so far I want to point out these.

00:08:48:07 - 00:09:08:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We already print like we already pay for these for our students. And these are already laying around. So so far we're $0 into the box. Don't worry. It gets more expensive. This right here is just a little, promo, a nod to our social media. And so down the road, we will send them this postcard that simply says, life can be hard.

00:09:08:15 - 00:09:27:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You don't have to do it alone. This is a QR code to our link tree. And then here's just a little preview of our churches, YouTube handle right there. And, probably our most popular video, which is what is anxiety? What do I do about it if I have it? And we'll just, God have to say about anxiety.

00:09:27:16 - 00:09:44:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we will send this out a couple weeks after we send the box out. This is, this is a separate pieces doesn't go in the box that sent later. This is an additional kind of piece of merch. And again, once again, we have just some stuff kind of laying around that we inherited from the old regime.

00:09:44:19 - 00:10:07:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we try to, like, get rid of it. The little guest box checklist that we have this, and like an extra piece of merch from our merch cabinet. So here's a piece of merch from our merch cabinet. Right here. This one's kind of unique. Okay, we have a lanyard. And the reason that we have a lanyard branded and all the things is that right here, we do, we do pins right?

00:10:07:29 - 00:10:29:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Kind of like, think like Disney pin trading. So we'll create pins. And this right here is our little mascot guy. We call him Pugsley the platypus, because a baby platypus is a puggle. So one of our sixth graders one year recommended that we name them Pugsley. And so thus we did. And so we have this lanyard. And I actually have a lanyard for, like, my, staff nametag lanyard.

00:10:29:22 - 00:10:51:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this is full of pins. So like summer camp, Water wars, the Back to School bash, Space Jam night, like any, any event that we deem pin worthy. So coming up, we'll have our Christmas at the movies event. We'll. We've done costume parties. Any of those, they get designed. We just found a dude on Fiverr. He designed these for us.

00:10:51:01 - 00:11:12:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we send these, after sticker mule and sticker mule creates the pins. And so then we stick this pin. This is the, like, og original. Pugsley pin. It's just a traditional guy. He's just wearing, like, our logo on his t shirt there. And, we put the original pin on the lanyard for the students, and then, right here, this has three for free.

00:11:12:29 - 00:11:32:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And this is a, redeemable coupon at our student ministry cafe. They can turn this in and get three things for free. And then, we have these life books and these life books. We've gotten them, from the Gideons, the the Bible translator and the Bible, providers. And so you can actually get these for free.

00:11:32:23 - 00:11:51:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's just it's like the book of John with like some notes, and it's designed well and graphically. And so you've probably seen these before, and truth be told, I like these. I also like the life and Six words book, that comes from, dare to share. But these we had like three cases of these again from the old regime.

00:11:51:19 - 00:12:07:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we're like, let's go ahead and give these away. When these run out, we may reorder these. We may do a different sort of devotional, but but this is like the one sort of like devotional, sort of like spiritual peace. And then that's now the emptiness of the box and say, look down at the box there and you'll see, it's got this word right here.

00:12:07:26 - 00:12:24:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's got some copy and it simply says, hey there, we're so glad you joined us. Meet Pugsley, our platypus mascot, voted on and named by our students. We love it when students invest in student ministry. So in this box, you will find everything that you need to get started. And then it's a numbered list. You'll see one, two, three, four.

00:12:24:23 - 00:12:42:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Number one. This lanyard is a great spot to hold pins. Number two, we started you with your first one and there's more to come at our Pin events and milestones throughout the year. Number three, this life book is a great place to find out about what Jesus is all about. Number four, some other random stuff because we wanted you to know how glad we are that you joined us.

00:12:42:09 - 00:12:57:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We can't wait to get to know you. And then the very last piece of it, my favorite piece of it, the piece that I think makes it hybrid, is right. When you open the box, you see this QR code here and it just says welcome video, scan me. And so we'll have students who are new the open this up

00:12:57:25 - 00:13:01:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
theoretically on their porch, on their patio, wherever they will scan it.

00:13:01:26 - 00:13:24:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we'll take them to a video right here. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see a preview of it, but linked right here, linked below is what I want to do is I want to offer you, the art for this box if you want to start creating your own. I'll also, give you like, a detailed tutorial, like where I ordered it from, as well as the copy for the welcome video.

00:13:24:02 - 00:13:49:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can feel free to film that, throw that on a teleprompter, memorize it however you want to film it, and you can start creating better welcome and better guest returns for your youth ministry and for your student ministry. And once again, here's the reason that I like this is because this, gets them connected to us. This at a very minimum, one of the sections on this video right here says, we're so glad that you came.

00:13:49:29 - 00:14:10:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And also welcome to our YouTube channel. And if you've been around this podcast or this YouTube playlist, any link or a YouTube channel, any length of time you know that 95% of teenagers are claiming to be and be active on YouTube. And so therefore, I think we as youth ministries should make that a priority. We and our student ministry have made it a priority.

00:14:10:21 - 00:14:27:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, I, I think that that's a fantastic way to expose, in a sort of like, non-threatening way, expose your students to your channel, then maybe next time to log in to the YouTube account. One of our video shows up because they've already watched one. Or maybe they like that video. Maybe they subscribe to that video.

00:14:27:23 - 00:14:52:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now we're in their subscriptions with all of our teachings and all of those types of things, which, by the way, I can explain and show to you how to start posting your teachings to YouTube so that they live beyond your Sunday or Wednesday services. That video is going to be linked right here on screen, and I can't wait for you to take a look at that, because we're trying to make digital discipleship here at the Hybrid Ministry Podcast easy, possible and accessible.

00:14:52:04 - 00:14:55:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So as always, 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
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Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

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🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
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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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--------------
🕰️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💥

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

🔥 [FREE] Hybrid Ministry Strategy Guide🔥

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

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

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
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?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

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

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

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

--------------
🕰️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 089: ⚠️ Sharing your Youth Room with other Church Ministries

Nick Clason — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 04:00:00 -0500

⚡ [FREE] Hybrid Reach More Students Strategy Guide⚡

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

======================================
DESCRIPTION
🗑️ Have you ever walked into your youth room after another church ministry had an event in there?
Was it clean?

Probably not.

🫧 Was it put back how you preferred it to be?
Probably, also, not.

⚠️ But you don’t have the authority to tell people not to use it.
How do you share a space well?
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/089

//YOUTUBE VIDEO

SHARING SPACE
USE PORTABLE THINGS

//20 FOOT INFLATABLE GAGA BALL PIT
https://walmrt.us/3I2TZy7

//15 FOOT INFLATABLE GAGA BALL PIT
https://walmrt.us/3T7h5tS

//CASTLE SQUARES
https://castlesports.com/products/9-square-castlesquares

//RETRACTABLE WALLS
https://walmrt.us/3wkTYD9

LETTING OTHERS BORROW YOUR SPACE
//CLEANUP MANUAL
https://docs.google.com/document/d/0B3QjZyq-R_p5ZHZFTDhGV2IxZU0/edit?resourcekey=0-7FDtkR7NDnODgipiMQ7SLw

CONSIDER GOING HYBRID!

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

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

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

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
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?"
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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Sharing Youth Rooms with Outside Groups
01:26 Three Hacks to Using Shared Church Space
07:08 3 Hacks to Letting Others Borrow Your Space
10:30 1 Idea that doesn't need space!

TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:13
Nick Clason
Youth Pastor, have you ever walked back into your youth room after a church ministry or just an outside group? Use your space? Was it clean? Probably not. If this has ever happened to you, if you're watching on YouTube, give us a like and well, was your room put back to the way that you preferred it to be? Probably also, no.

00:00:25:15 - 00:00:45:30
Nick Clason
So if you've ever had to pick up after a messy group, then give me a subscribe. And if you don't have the authority to tell people how to use you youth group or not, and if you've ever been put in this position, well then turn the bell on, because we're right now in a playlist called Youth Pastor Problems.

00:00:46:00 - 00:01:09:08
Nick Clason
So how do you share your space well? We're going to give you three hacks for how you as a youth pastor can share a space that is a shared space in your church. It's not your youth room. It is the church's room, and the youth just use it. We're also then going to give three hacks for when you do have a youth room that you actually have to share your space with or allow guest groups to come on in.

00:01:09:08 - 00:01:39:13
Nick Clason
What are some three hacks to make sure that you don't come into a wild mess disaster the next time? And then I'm going to give you one final idea and one final hack that actually negates the need for space altogether. Welcome to the hybrid ministry show. Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the hybrid ministry show. My name is Nick Clason and I've been a youth pastor for 13 years in full time, part time and vocational ministry all together.

00:01:39:13 - 00:01:58:03
Nick Clason
And early on, one of the churches I worked in, we were given a place to meet is our very own. It was disconnected from the building. It was actually attached to the maintenance garage, and so we called it the shed. What teenager doesn't want to be meeting in a place called the Shed? But eventually we outgrew that space.

00:01:58:03 - 00:02:20:10
Nick Clason
And so when I started we had just a handful of kids. And then towards the middle of my tenure there, we were running a good 30, 40, 50 something kids, and they just couldn't cram into this small shed anymore. And so we actually had to start using the church's main auditorium, the main sanctuary area, and we had to set up in there every single Wednesday night and tear it down.

00:02:20:12 - 00:02:37:15
Nick Clason
But the sanctuary was too big for us. And so we sort of had to pivot and adapt and we had to make this thing work for us in a way right there. Like it wasn't optimized to work for, it was optimized for a Sunday morning main church service. And now we, the youth, are coming in and were using it.

00:02:37:15 - 00:02:55:17
Nick Clason
So I have three hacks for what to do. If you are borrowing or sharing a space within the church that's also being used. But other places in the church hack number one is set up as early as you can. In fact, linked right here at the very top of my video is my full proof 100% completely free time management technique.

00:02:55:23 - 00:03:10:17
Nick Clason
Go ahead and take a look at that if that's something you're interested or navigating. But if you manage your time in such a way that like let's say you meet on Wednesday night, Wednesday morning, this is what I would do, I would come on in and I would set the room up first thing 9 a.m. I work for a little bit.

00:03:10:17 - 00:03:33:06
Nick Clason
And then honestly, I would go home and I would take a break a gap in the middle of the day from like lunchtime until about 330 or 4:00 in the afternoon before I would come back and start to get the final touches ready for youth. But if I had set the room up early and if I did it first thing in the morning, then I was never running out of time to really get the room all the way set up.

00:03:33:06 - 00:03:57:00
Nick Clason
If it was taking me longer than expected or if I was adding another element into it, like I would know that because I was working on it first thing in the morning. The second idea that I have for you is use portable things linked down below in description are some links to a few different things, like a portable Gaga pit that you can inflate and deflate.

00:03:57:00 - 00:04:17:26
Nick Clason
And so if you're using a space that you can't keep it set up all week long, this is perfect for you. And if even if you are using a space that you can that you do set up and tear down, this is also a really great place number, really great thing. Number two is a portable nine square and it's not like super duper portable, but it's called Castle Squares.

00:04:17:28 - 00:04:41:20
Nick Clason
And so instead of having the downspouts in every single spot, you just have the four kind of the base four that go up and then across you just have some straps. You can get it set up in under 10 minutes and torn down and even less time links to both of those things down below in description, or if you're in a podcast, catch your head to the show notes HybridMinistry.xyz/089

00:04:41:28 - 00:05:01:17
Nick Clason
Another thing that I did in my church where I was borrowing the sanctuary was we had those portable retractable accordion walls. I did put a few portable wall descriptions down below. They're not exactly the same thing, but they could work in your space, just check them out. And then we bought a lot of banners and so we would use a vinyl banners.

00:05:01:17 - 00:05:25:24
Nick Clason
I'm pretty sure we just used them off of like Vistaprint or something like that. But we would hang those with just like thumbtacks into those portable walls. And they had like our high school logo and our middle school logo and our student ministry logo and just some like other phrases and things that we would use. And so we would line the sanctuary because it had three seating sections, so we'd line the two aisles with those walls.

00:05:25:24 - 00:05:42:30
Nick Clason
So we would we would block off the seating in the wing, so it would forced everyone into the middle. And then those walls we put some of like our logos and our graphics and stuff like that to sort of liven the space up and just make it feel a little bit more youth ministry specific hack number three.

00:05:42:30 - 00:06:10:24
Nick Clason
So one was set up early. Two is use portable things. Three is be respectful full, right? Like I have this picture right here if you're watching on YouTube, a bunch of Nerf guns in a French press coffee maker. And the reason for that along with the rubber duck is that all of these things sort of encapsulate a church that I used to work at and I worked at this church and the Duck was our mascot, and a friend gave me this coffee pot.

00:06:10:24 - 00:06:32:26
Nick Clason
But the reason for the Nerf guns was because every single Thursday morning when I would come back into my office after youth night had happened the night before, on Wednesday night was a handful of Nerf darts laying on my desk because one of the junior high boys groups would meet in the lobby and they would do their discussion for about seven and a half minutes.

00:06:32:29 - 00:06:57:04
Nick Clason
And then as soon as the discussion was over, they would play Nerf and the facilities people would always find like anywhere from 3 to 8 Nerf darts. And so any given week I'd walk into my office and boom, on my desk. Right were just a handful of Nerf guns, be respectful, not gun darts. Be respectful, clean up as best as you can.

00:06:57:04 - 00:07:22:03
Nick Clason
In my defense, I was trying to clean up, but I just wasn't seeing them and make sure that the space that you were using looks as good or better. I know it's cliche then the way that you got it when you got there. So what do you do if you are letting others borrow your space? Let's say you have your very own dedicated youth room space, but you're letting other groups, other ministries come in and borrow it.

00:07:22:04 - 00:07:50:19
Nick Clason
Well, one space that once we outgrew even the sanctuary, we actually bought a small Baptist church on the other side of the road. So we had to different buildings and the church across the road. The difference in their like main auditorium, main meeting space, was that they had chairs so we could take the chairs down and get that whole space completely wide open where in our main building the the pews were bolted down to the floor.

00:07:50:27 - 00:08:11:19
Nick Clason
So all that meant was that our area was incredibly desirable, so people wanted to use it. And so what I actually did was I created just like a manual. You'll see it right here linked on screen. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening to the podcast, hit the link on the YouTube description there in the description of the podcast and go check this part out.

00:08:11:19 - 00:08:34:25
Nick Clason
But it was basically a how to step by step with photos to replace and put back the room the way that it needed to be. So that it was ready for us when we got back together. You see, what I have noticed in most of my time in ministry is that people that don't set the room back up, they're not doing it because they're frustrated or they're mad at you.

00:08:34:25 - 00:08:51:24
Nick Clason
They're just they're just putting it back how they think. Because people guest groups often come into your space and they immediately start making it ready for their thing or their event or their birthday party. And then when it's time to clean up, they're like, shoot, where was this basket? and Oh shoot. How did it look over there in that corner?

00:08:51:24 - 00:09:09:11
Nick Clason
Because they don't remember, because they're so focused on their thing, and rightfully so. Like, I'm not I'm not angry at them for doing that. Right. But what the manual does is it tells them exactly, this is how I want it set up. This is how it was when you came in or this is how it should have been set up.

00:09:09:14 - 00:09:34:25
Nick Clason
And so when there's a group, they have the exact right replica for how to put it back together. The problem is, if you've changed any of your minds since you've made that manual, it's going back the way the manual is, right, even if you've adjusted some stuff. And so if you do make changes, if you do like, you know, move the ping pong table or the foosball table, make sure you update that also in the manual that you hand off to guest groups.

00:09:34:26 - 00:09:57:28
Nick Clason
Number two is have a clear cut cleaning policies and or potential rental fees. One of the tricky things about sharing space, especially in church, is that you are going to need to have custodial support for said event for said space when you give it away, especially for groups coming in on a Saturday and the custodian had already planned and had it cleaned.

00:09:57:30 - 00:10:20:21
Nick Clason
And so you're going to need to figure out like who is paying for it. The custodian is the guest you're going to pay for and what is that going rate going to be? And the third and final hack for letting others use your space is be respectful and be understanding back. Right. Just like I said, they're not thinking about your space and that, but they're also probably not doing it intentionally.

00:10:20:24 - 00:10:43:05
Nick Clason
If they are being disrespectful, then that may be time to have a conversation. But in most cases they're just doing their best. And so also try to have a understanding of grace and respectfulness for them. What is an idea that you might never need to use space ever again? Well, that idea, of course, is go hybrid and listen, I'm not saying to completely abandon your in-person meetings.

00:10:43:05 - 00:11:10:25
Nick Clason
In fact, that would go completely against the hybrid strategy, because hybrid is melding together of your digital presence in your in-person presence and making it one in the same, but linked right here on the screen and down in the description or wherever you're getting this or hybridministry.xyz/089 is my 100% completely free strategy Guide it is my e-book on how I build out a full fledged digital strategy.

00:11:10:30 - 00:11:47:08
Nick Clason
It's mostly focusing on a done for use social media strategy, but it's anchored by the long form teaching video, which takes place and is posted weekly every time we teach pre filmed messages on YouTube direct to camera, I tell you and explain how to do all of it in this e-book. And so I would love to encourage you to grab it, take a look and try at least implementing some pieces of it, because what it will do is it will allow your youth ministry to to not be tied and not be tethered to a physical location.

00:11:47:08 - 00:12:13:00
Nick Clason
And it won't be tied or tethered to events and attendance. Only you will be able to start reaching students with the hope and with the message of the Gospel far beyond just your in-person events and far beyond just your in-person physical locations and gatherings. In fact, my entire strategy in this episode links right here on the screen for how to go hybrid, how to implement it, what to do is right here.

00:12:13:00 - 00:12:20:29
Nick Clason
I would love to encourage you to take a look at that. Give us a subscribe. And don't forget and as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 088: 🔥Youth Ministry Planning: Weekend Service vs. Midweek Program

Nick Clason — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 04:00:00 -0500

⚡ [FREE] How to Film Messages⚡

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

======================================
DESCRIPTION
🤔 What is the best day to meet with our youth group students
🖐️I’m ranking my top 5 curriculum resources
⚙️Finally, I’m going to share my top 3 interactive, and creative programming hacks
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/088

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/TTQXsananwI

BEST TIME TO MEET?
//SPORTS & EXTRA CURRICULARS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/087

TEACHING
//STUDENTS WANT OWNERSHIP & BELONGING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqOPjD5hN-g

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

//OPUS.PRO
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

1) CO-LEADER
https://www.coleader.co/pricing

2) YM360
https://youthministry360.com/collections/sermon-series

3) GROW CURRICULUM
https://growcurriculum.org/

4) XP3
https://store.thinkorange.com/collections/xp3-license-category

5) DYM LIBRARY
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com

//MEMBERSHIP PRICING
https://www.dymmembership.com/pricing

3 PROGRAMMING HACKS
//USE SIDEKICK FOR INTERACTION!
https://www.sidekick.tv/

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

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

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
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?"
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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Programming Your Youth Service
00:54 The Pros and Cons of different Youth Group Meeting Days and Times
05:04 Three Questions to Ask when deciding when to meet for Youth Group
07:51 The Top 5 Youth Ministry Curriculum Resource Sites
13:44 3 Creative Youth Group Programming Hacks

TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;20;40
Nick Clason
Last summer I had a leader say I thought that was a stupid idea. However, I later realized how genius it really was. What was it? I want you to stick around to the end, because this is actually one of my favorite youth group programing hacks. In addition to that, we're going to be talking about selecting the optimal youth.

00;00;20;40 - 00;00;44;48
Nick Clason
Time for you, your church and your youth group is at Wednesday night. Is it Sunday Night? Is it Sunday morning? Subscribe. If it's Wednesday night for you. Like if it's Sunday night and hey, hit the bell. If you have to be at your church on Sunday morning, I think that pretty much covers all of us. I also want to rank my top five five youth group curriculum providers and resources links down below in the show notes.

00;00;44;50 - 00;01;10;49
Nick Clason
And finally, I'm going to share with you my three favorite creative and potentially hybrid creative programing hacks. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show and the best time to meet. Like I remember when I started as a youth pastor, I was working at a church and I was inheriting a youth ministry that was run by volunteers. And so high school was on Tuesday night, middle school was on Wednesday night.

00;01;10;49 - 00;01;31;23
Nick Clason
And I met with my pastor early on, like my very first week on the job. And he told me, he said, Hey, listen, you can do whatever you want, which is an absolute dream for a youth pastor. But as a young youth pastor, the decision was actually agonizing. Do I meet Wednesday night? Do I keep meeting Tuesday night, which is when the high school are meeting?

00;01;31;23 - 00;01;53;35
Nick Clason
Do I switch to like a Sunday night vibe? And so Wednesday night, Sunday night, Sunday morning, like and I did have a Sunday morning component and so like you have to, you know, kind of navigate and know like what is going on within your church. But I had an advantage at that church because the youth ministry pretty much ran the place during midweek.

00;01;53;49 - 00;02;21;05
Nick Clason
There was no midweek kids, kids ministry programing. Kids ministry did AWANA on Sunday night at like 4:15 or something. And it was kind of an odd time, which I did end up way down the road years later, jump into Sunday night. But early on I made a decision to just stick with Wednesday. So let's chat through the pros and cons of Wednesday night, Sunday night and Sunday morning, and then maybe another day of the week in there for you.

00;02;21;10 - 00;02;42;41
Nick Clason
But the pro of of Wednesday night to me is probably your most traditional youth night. It's been a lot of churches, a lot of youth groups have done for years. And like down here where I live in DFW, Dallas, Fort Worth area a lot of churches do. Wednesday night and I came from Chicago. Not many churches did did Wednesday night.

00;02;42;41 - 00;03;03;20
Nick Clason
And that's just kind of a cultural thing, right? But the pro to me is it's like a midweek kind of jolt of energy, a mid-week connection point from if you're typically meeting on Sunday morning, you get back together in the middle of the week. That's helpful. The con of it, however, and we talked about it here in the last video, is youth sports and extracurricular activities.

00;03;03;20 - 00;03;31;44
Nick Clason
People are just getting busy. And so it makes attendance and it makes the accessibility, I believe, of a Wednesday night trickier, Sunday Night, however, the pro, I would say is probably one of the most unscheduled night for teens. Like more and more extracurricular activities, more and more sports are invading Sunday night, but it is probably the most free night that your teens have when you're looking at it from a vantage point of the majority of the availability.

00;03;31;49 - 00;03;50;55
Nick Clason
The kind of it, however, is not only for you, but for you and your teens and your leaders. It makes for a long day. You were at church Sunday morning and you've got a little gap in the middle and then you have to come back. And that returning to church like that's that is always a hard hurdle to jump I’ve found.

00;03;50;59 - 00;04;09;17
Nick Clason
If you have a kid who's not regularly planning on being at church, you say, hey, come back tonight, do like I got homework and all the things and families kind of have Sunday dinners. And so Sunday nights do tend to kind of make for a long day and then in a lot of our cases, we all have to be at church on Sunday morning.

00;04;09;22 - 00;04;35;00
Nick Clason
Some of us do our youth service on Sunday morning. Some of us have more of like a Sunday school kind of curriculum, them that we have to adhere to or carry out. The pro of Sunday morning is it's probably the easiest to gather crowd. You're going to have your most captive audience. In fact, in a video that I talked about, the decline of church attendance, most teens are attending church because they're coming with their parents.

00;04;35;00 - 00;04;52;19
Nick Clason
And so if their parents are coming to church, they're coming to church. And so Sunday morning is a great time for that to happen. The con of it is, while it may be the most captive audience, you may have the most amount of people the teenagers tend to be and feel and the environment just feels a little more tame.

00;04;52;19 - 00;05;18;29
Nick Clason
It's not a youth ministry. It's more like we are a ministry of the overall church here on a Sunday morning. But when you're making these decisions, okay, because in my case, I was talking about when I started that job, I really could decide whatever I wanted. But in a lot of cases, you don't have that that luxury. And the reason might be because you're coming into a more established church, you're coming into a more established youth group.

00;05;18;29 - 00;05;43;15
Nick Clason
And so the other like three questions to ask in this setting are, number one, what is expected of you? For example, are you even allowed to not have Sunday morning as an option? Like what is the expectation of your church and do you have the freedom to pull certain programs, pull certain time slots that you meet? So you need to make sure you know that before you make a decision and get yourself potentially in trouble.

00;05;43;20 - 00;06;13;35
Nick Clason
Question number two is what's the rest of your church doing? For example, I went to a church and and my pastor told me that this is different. I had the the freedom to make this decision. I did not have to meet on Wednesday night and I made that decision. However, once programing started in the fall, I realized that I had made a pretty big mistake because the entire church, adults, kids, preschool, everyone came back to church on Wednesday night and the only group not there, the only group not meeting ended up being middle schoolers.

00;06;13;35 - 00;06;34;06
Nick Clason
And so I had parents of middle schoolers really, really upset because they felt like their kid was not being cared for and that their kid didn't matter. In the life cycle of the church. So what is the rest of your church doing? You need to weigh that out. And if the whole church coming together for midweek, then you probably should have something there for the youth as well.

00;06;34;06 - 00;06;55;37
Nick Clason
And the third question is where do you have natural momentum? Like I said, the church, I made a decision between Wednesday night and Tuesday night and all that. I ended up landing on Wednesday night, but then years later I switched over to Sunday night and I split apart middle school and I split apart high school. And when I did that, I pulled away a little bit of momentum as well.

00;06;55;38 - 00;07;20;44
Nick Clason
Middle school was fine because it stayed on the night that it was on Wednesday night. But high school struggled because we tried to move on the Sunday night to become more adaptable to their schedules. However, at that church I was in, my students had become used to a certain rhythm and so moving, making that decision that made them have to adjust their schedule and adjust the way that they attached and that they connected to our church.

00;07;20;48 - 00;07;46;22
Nick Clason
And here's thing none of that matters, right? In your youth ministry. If you don't have students who feel connected and don't feel like they have a piece of ownership in helping growing your youth ministry into a vibrant community, which we talked about in a previous video, how to actually teach well, course you need those two components before your teaching is really going to matter.

00;07;46;22 - 00;08;08;55
Nick Clason
So let's talk about the five best curriculum resource sites, which we talked about. Students want to feel a sense of ownership and they want to feel a sense of belonging. And those two things need to exist in your youth ministry before your teaching is really going to start to matter. Wherever teaching and youth ministry, they're not going anywhere.

00;08;08;55 - 00;08;33;15
Nick Clason
It's part of what we do in youth ministry. And the fact is, you work too hard to let your messages die on your hard drive after you've delivered it to a full or maybe even potentially full or half full or less full or not as full as you'd like. Room of teenagers. And so that's why I recommend linked right here down below in description, my completely free hybrid strategy.

00;08;33;15 - 00;08;53;22
Nick Clason
If you're a youth pastor, you need to start posting your entire full length messages to YouTube. And I hear you're thinking like, I don't have livestreaming capabilities. I don't have livestreaming equipment. Hey, listen, most youth ministries don't. I certainly don't. But what we do is we actually do a YouTube video, sit down direct to camera. Honestly, very similar to what you're probably watching here.

00;08;53;27 - 00;09;14;23
Nick Clason
You can watch it on a phone, a tablet, TV, a computer, whatever it is, but you post a full length video to YouTube, you get it down to 10 to 15 minutes in length, post it. You can do some basic after editing if you like. If not, just post it on up there. But then what that does is it also helps give you an anchor for your social media curriculum.

00;09;14;33 - 00;09;33;43
Nick Clason
And so the message doesn't have to just die on a Wednesday night, on a Sunday night, on a Thursday night, whatever night of the week is your youth night, but it can live on in perpetuity. And as you teach certain series, you know how it is when it's like a students like I have a question about a particular topic and you just wrapped up a series, but they weren't there.

00;09;33;48 - 00;09;51;04
Nick Clason
Now guess what? You can share them that link and be like, Hey, I actually just talked about I'd love for you to take a watch and then let's get back together and let's, let's chat about it. But that, that bedrock of that YouTube video that can that sort of establishes the framework for all your social media throughout the week.

00;09;51;04 - 00;10;12;20
Nick Clason
You can post fun content and you can also post teaching clips now because you have a fully filmed wide screen based video that you can then clip up. You can use a service like Opus AI or Opus.Pro link down below. Description Check that out if that’s something you want AI will clip up your messages for you and do all the editing.

00;10;12;20 - 00;10;35;33
Nick Clason
And it looks masterful. It looks it looks great. But let's talk about my five favorite curriculum resources. You may be creating your own curriculum as a youth pastor, but you don't have to. And if you don't have time for you don't want to do it, this these five resources will all save you tons of time. But they may not save you tons of money because they each have a different price tag attached to them.

00;10;35;38 - 00;10;58;37
Nick Clason
So my number one favorite resource curriculum provider right now is coleader.co. That is from Download Youth Ministry and they have three sort of different tiers of billing. You can get a free version where they'll just give you access to it and you'll get 40 free credits to begin and to explore. The good thing about coleader is it plans your whole program.

00;10;58;37 - 00;11;29;41
Nick Clason
It doesn't just give you a teaching script. Then they're premium version. It's about $249 a year billed annually, which breaks down to about $10 a week, again, including all of your programing and messages and songs and small group questions that gives you about 26 or so weeks of programing. So maybe this would be good if if you're doing like school year Wednesday night from like September through May, but you're not meeting in the summer and you have a lot of like gaps and Christmas parties and Thanksgivings off and stuff like that.

00;11;29;46 - 00;11;49;45
Nick Clason
And maybe you do actually teach some of your own content and you sort of supplement in there, but you need something to pull from when you're in a pinch. And then premium plus is about $399 a year. Billed annually breaks down to about $8 or so per week. And premium plus also gives you access to the new sidekick Beta, which is amazing.

00;11;49;56 - 00;12;10;39
Nick Clason
My number two on the list is the YM 360 sermon library is just a website which has kind of like an ala carte vibe. Where you go, you can grab different lessons three and four week series that have been taught by and taught by different youth. Pastors usually break it down to about $35 per series. So check that out.

00;12;10;39 - 00;12;38;33
Nick Clason
Link down below in the description. My third favorite one is the Grow curriculum. And it is. It looks great this week. It is modern. Have full disclosure. I've never used it. Mostly price tag reasons. And in most churches that I’ve been at, we've had some other provider already. But I love the what they guys what the guys over at stuff you can use do what they stand for and so you can check that out link down below in the description.

00;12;38;33 - 00;13;08;22
Nick Clason
My fourth is XP3, orange. It is probably the Cadillac of all youth ministry curriculums is also probably the most expensive on their website. Their annual license for it is anywhere from $449 a year all the way up to 2700 per year. And that's going to be based on your average youth group size. And then number five, my fifth resource is honestly just DYM library, similar to the YM360 model.

00;13;08;33 - 00;13;27;23
Nick Clason
You can just go get a DYM membership. They've started at $12 a month, gold at $26.99 a month, and then gold plus at $40 a month. Gold plus gives you sidekick phone connections so you can scan the code on screen. Do live poll voting. One of my favorite hybrid ways to do youth ministry these days. But you can just hop on there.

00;13;27;28 - 00;13;49;10
Nick Clason
They also gives you store credit when you have the membership. So whether you have a membership or not, you can ahead of time and you can find series there typically for anywhere from $5 to $12 per series for anywhere from like 3 to 4 week teaching series. So now here we are. What is my favorite youth group programing hack?

00;13;49;15 - 00;14;05;24
Nick Clason
Well, number one link the times that you meet by purpose, right? In a lot of cases, you may not be making a decision for youth ministry. You have like one singular time to me. Is it Wednesday? Is it Sunday? Right. Like you may already have to meet Sunday morning and then you're having to figure out when else to meet.

00;14;05;28 - 00;14;24;59
Nick Clason
And so instead of having to channel like supply curriculum for each and every one of those things, what we do in our current setting, I'll just tell you is Sunday morning is connect groups. And that's for the entire church adults, kids, students, everyone. And when I got here, we were like supplying curriculum for connect groups. And then on Wednesday nights we taught out of a different curriculum.

00;14;25;13 - 00;14;50;10
Nick Clason
And so on Wednesday nights now we teach a message and then on Sunday morning they discuss the message. We have more students on Sunday morning and a lot of our students on Sunday morning don't attend back over here on Wednesday night. So because we pre film our curriculum, we will play a little clip, a teaser, also a reminder for those students who did actually come on Wednesday night to help the Sunday morning people be able to have the discussion.

00;14;50;15 - 00;15;11;12
Nick Clason
All of our leaders are able to then watch the videos in full to be able to teach the lesson. If they didn't make it on Wednesday night and you're able to have that discussion. But also, if you did come Wednesday Night, it doesn't feel like a retread or a repeat. I can't remember who said this, but I remember someone someone saying at a a conference is something like think about all the times you meet.

00;15;11;12 - 00;15;37;35
Nick Clason
If you have especially in student ministry of like main church service, you have youth Sunday morning and then you have youth Wednesday Night. And if every-- if a student comes every single week, 52 different times per year, then that is 52 times that they are taught a sermon and challenged to make an adjustment in their life and change. That is another 52 times when they come to the Youth night that they are taught a sermon and challenged 52 different times to change.

00;15;37;40 - 00;16;06;52
Nick Clason
And then the third time they come to the youth other thing and they are challenged 52 different times per year and preach a sermon with some content and challenged to change their life. I don't do math on the fly very well, but that's like well over 150 times that they're supposed to do something different with their life. And just think that when you tie these to Wednesday night, Sunday morning, whatever your thing is, when you tie them together with purpose, if you have to have both meeting slots, that helps you, right?

00;16;06;52 - 00;16;33;58
Nick Clason
Streamline your teaching. But that's also helpful to the students. It's not a laziness thing, right? In my opinion. It's not like you're just trying to get out of doing more. It's stewarding your budget, but it's also helping like most like disciple your students. Because then when your teaching is in alignment, everything can be in alignment. Your social media for that week, whatever you taught on Wednesday, that's the topic on your your social media, that's a topic on all of your digital hybrid resources.

00;16;34;03 - 00;16;55;42
Nick Clason
Right? Number two, my favorite hack is interactive teaching. Let me just share with you right here on screen tonight. I am teaching live in the room at my church and we are in a series called How to use the Bible. And in that we have been giving them like, you know, reasons for why the Bible is reliable, reasons for why we can know that we can trust the Bible.

00;16;55;47 - 00;17;19;41
Nick Clason
But then we're also like helping share them, like actual hands on tactical, like guides on how to use the Bible. But tonight I'm talking about filtering God's Word or filtering culture through the lens of God's Word in everything that we do. So what I am doing tonight is I'm starting out with a Pawn Stars video clip talking about someone who brought in a fake Babe Ruth baseball card.

00;17;19;46 - 00;17;36;13
Nick Clason
And then from there, I'm telling them the hook straight away. I'm like, Are you a Biblical Christian or are you a Cultural Christian? And then we have tables in our space. And so I'm letting them talk about the difference between a Biblical Christian and a Cultural Christian. And how can you tell me give them a few minutes to chat that out.

00;17;36;18 - 00;17;59;10
Nick Clason
Then I'm going to have a poll on the screen with Sidekick. We're asking them this question that says, Do we agree or disagree? Do we? Do we view everything in our life through a filter? Right? And then I'm going to give them three filters I view my life through Dad filter, Colts Fan filter, coffee filter, Shout out to coffee.

00;17;59;10 - 00;18;23;51
Nick Clason
My brand new Valentine's gift, the Moca-master coffee maker first cup out of it this morning. Delicious. Ten out of ten would recommend. Then from there I am going to show them a picture of like a one of my kids watches for Christmas that they got. And talk about how scientists say that the same process that happens when you learn a new language is also what's happening when we're spending time on our screens.

00;18;23;56 - 00;18;55;17
Nick Clason
And then I'm going to give them the definition of a cultural Christian versus a biblical Christian. And then I'm going to build a poll asking them what their favorite drink is like caramel macchiato, coffee, chocolate, milk, and they're going to have a chance to vote on that. All the while, all of my notes are in a thing that we call digital notes, and we use the YouVersion Live events plan that is a completely free tool that you can use, but your church can set up live events and so kids can have their phones and they can be following along with the scriptures and taking notes.

00;18;55;17 - 00;19;19;03
Nick Clason
But then we're going to take them to Daniel. Chapter one. I got one more poll in there from Sidekick. I got another turn n talk. I got a map of where they go from Babylon to to from from Jerusalem to Babylon. Let's see, then I got some reasons why you oppose the food in Daniel Chapter one. I say what scholars think the age of this Daniel was, which is 11 to 17.

00;19;19;03 - 00;19;37;09
Nick Clason
And so my question is, how does a teenage boy end up in a foreign land? His parents are likely killed and he's opposing the king. How do you think he did that? How does he have enough wisdom to know what to do and what to oppose? And then I'm going to bring a coffee pot on stage and talk about how what we put in the pod there is what we filter.

00;19;37;09 - 00;19;57;18
Nick Clason
What spits out right, is a true form of of Christianity or it's not. But the Bible has to be the filter through which we do that. But the only way that matters if we truly have a desire to follow Jesus. Now, I don't like my whole reason for sharing All that is simply just for you to see all the different like I have sent them off to, to take questions.

00;19;57;18 - 00;20;26;54
Nick Clason
And then we have digital notes for them to follow along with. And we have polls on the screen and then we have a break in between. My first part of my teaching and my last part of my teaching, which is my third hack, and that's the one the leader said. I thought that was the most stupid idea because what I would do at summer camp last year is I teach for a little bit, share a little story in opening illustration, and then I would open it to a question and then I'd send them off in their small groups right there in that space in audio auditorium style seating at camp and say, Find your small

00;20;26;54 - 00;20;44;26
Nick Clason
group and your small group leader and answer these two questions and it would break for 10 minutes. And he said, I thought we were going to lose them. Like I thought like, man, that's dumb. Like, we are going to lose. These kids are going to go crazy. But what it actually did was it helped us have longer sessions and deeper teaching because we gave a break.

00;20;44;37 - 00;21;05;56
Nick Clason
I wasn't just sitting and teaching for 20 straight minutes, 30 straight minutes, 40 heaven forbid, straight minutes, because I gave them a break and I let them contribute to the conversation, which is what Gen Z is looking to do. Right? And so that one of the challenges to good creative teaching, because like I said, we use tables in our space most Wednesday Nights.

00;21;06;00 - 00;21;30;02
Nick Clason
It's one of the challenges to that right is navigating shared space, shared space in youth ministries, which is actually the next video it's going to be linked to right here on the screen. It’s a huge challenge and a problem facing youth pastors. How do you navigate it? What are best practices linked right here? Take a look at that, because we're here to try and make digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible.

00;21;30;02 - 00;21;32;26
Nick Clason
So as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 087: ✌️The Two Biggest Enemies to Youth Groups

Nick Clason — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:00:00 -0600

⚡ [FREE] Hybrid Strategy Guide⚡

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

======================================
DESCRIPTION
🏅Travel Sports and Youth Group. They have been the bain of youth pastor’s existence for years.
🗓️What if they don’t have to be the enemy?
🥱What about Youth Group Kids who exhibit complacency?
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/087

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/HV6V1GbWEvU

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

YOUR MESSAGES ARE BORING
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqOPjD5hN-g&t=8s

STOP IGNORING SOCIAL MEDIA
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slB0Rmf_X0c&t=390s

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

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

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

🎅 "The Ultimate (and FREE!) Christmas Party Gude"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/christmas-party-run-sheet
PRACTICAL YM TIPS: https://www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips

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

😨 "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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 The Two Biggest Enemies to your Youth Ministry
01:46 Extra Curriculuars are Killing my Attendance
05:15 Complancey is also killing my youth group
08:04 The Suprising Solution to Youth Sports and Complacency in your Youth Group

TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;32;17
Nick Clason
The two biggest enemies in youth ministry are extracurricular activities and the complacent attitude of your students. Tell me if you've heard this before. Tuesday night is karate so that kid can't come on Tuesdays. If that's when you had youth group and then Wednesday nights is when you have show choir. Thursday night, that same kid also has karate. And of course, you can't do Friday night because that's when the football games are like if you've been in that position.

00;00;32;22 - 00;00;53;10
Nick Clason
Give me a subscribe. If you've had to navigate when you meet for youth night and turn the bell on for good measure because we're starting a brand new playlist exploring all the different issues of youth ministry, and one of them is scheduling. Like how do you schedule around students and their extracurricular activities? What in the world should we meet?

00;00;53;15 - 00;01;17;43
Nick Clason
They're so busy and it almost makes it feel like extracurricular travel, sports, school sports are the enemy. And here’s the fact even when they do show up in the room, you might be so boring that they're not really willing to make your thing a priority. In fact, we have a video right here where we explore all of that and how you can make your youth ministry one of belonging and purpose and serving.

00;01;17;50 - 00;01;43;18
Nick Clason
But I just had a student the other day say, Hey, listen, I just got so much going on. Sometimes student ministry, it just it doesn't make the cut. And unashamedly that was a text that they sent. And so if the two biggest enemies are travel sports and complacency, I want to challenge you to stick around to the very end of this video because I have a solution for each of those two things extracurriculars and complacency.

00;01;43;33 - 00;02;11;00
Nick Clason
Welcome to the High Road Ministry show The Year was 2012 brand new youth Pastor right here. And there were literally three students in my student ministry starting out, one by the name of Brandon, who didn't last very long, one by the name of Megan and then one by the name of Sabrina and Megan and all her friends. And she brought a lot of her friends to youth group.

00;02;11;00 - 00;02;31;58
Nick Clason
So this kind of mattered because she could bring two or three or four different friends with her to youth group. They had show choir and met every single Wednesday night. And so that made Wednesday nights a really tricky night to do youth ministry. But Brandon, the only other boy in the youth ministry, had Tuesday night and Thursday night karate.

00;02;32;03 - 00;02;58;34
Nick Clason
And then of course, Friday nights are like the football game. Like for most towns USA, that's when the high school team is playing its football game. So that really left us with Monday night as an option, which for I can't remember why, but for whatever reason it really wasn't an option. And so I had no idea like what am I supposed to do in to, to make matters worse, I had three kids, so if I choose Wednesday, I lose Megan and all her friends.

00;02;58;34 - 00;03;21;41
Nick Clason
If I choose to, their Thursday, I lose Brandon over to karate. And then the group of three, that's 33% of my students. So like, when am I supposed to plan to do this? I had another student one year who missed summer camp due to a baseball tournament. And then I remember he came up to me after we got back.

00;03;21;41 - 00;03;41;49
Nick Clason
His brother went and all his friends went and so he was at the recap of camp and we shared the recap video and all the students had all their energy and and his tournament had gotten rained out while we were gone. And he came up to me and he said, Next year I'm going to camp no matter what you see.

00;03;41;49 - 00;04;08;43
Nick Clason
Here's what happens once you create some sort of an environment where a student actually wants to be a part and actually wants to belong, it can be a game changer. But the fact of the matter is, especially when you're just getting started out, what do you do when they don't even know you in their thing, their show choir, their karate, their baseball, their basketball, their football, their you fill in the blank, whatever it is.

00;04;08;48 - 00;04;31;46
Nick Clason
What happens when that thing is actually providing more of a place of belonging and more of a place of community than your church? It makes it difficult and honestly, you want to compete with it. You want it to be you want church, you want youth group to be providing more of a place of belonging, more of a place of community.

00;04;31;51 - 00;04;55;39
Nick Clason
But in the life of that student, let's be honest, it really isn't. It's not really providing a place of belonging more than their sport. And so one of the challenges is you are trying to compete with something that is like family to them and you want them to come to something that's already a probably not feeling a little bit like family to them.

00;04;55;44 - 00;05;22;28
Nick Clason
And then B is adding another thing onto their already busy plate of calendaring and activities and things that they have to be committed to doing. And so what do we do about youth sports? Listen, I got an idea. Just hang on. What do you do about complacency? Like you've been there, right, where you have kids, Church kids, non church kids, whatever the case might be.

00;05;22;28 - 00;05;41;52
Nick Clason
And they really like they don't want to be there like you. Like the archetype of student I'm thinking of is the junior in high school comes to youth group hood on air pods in back row. They're just not interested. Like you get up, you got a game, They don't care about the game. You get up, you got a cute video.

00;05;41;52 - 00;06;01;46
Nick Clason
They don't care about the cute video. You see them saying like, how do you reach that kid? And in most cases, that kid is his heart's definitely not in to youth group. And there's a lot of factors for that, one of which might be his level or feeling of belonging. And it doesn't have to just be a him.

00;06;01;46 - 00;06;25;02
Nick Clason
It could be her, right? But we're we're using a certain archetype, and so we'll just keep using that junior boy student with the AirPods in as an example. But nothing's changing. Like just because you have a game, just because you have a cool message, just because you have clever announcements, none of those things are reaching them because he's complacent.

00;06;25;02 - 00;06;55;47
Nick Clason
He's he's not or she's not into whatever you have doing. They're honestly they're being forced to be at church. And here's the thing. That is a really tough pill for us to swallow. Sometimes as youth pastors, is students physical attendance in the room Does not equal an our authentic heart level buy in of what's going on, not only in youth group, but frankly, in faith as it pertains to their relationship with God.

00;06;55;52 - 00;07;17;22
Nick Clason
Because you don't want to just go after their physical attendance, you know what I'm saying? Their physical attendance is not the goal, only their heart being bought into it. Their heart being bought into it is the goal. And so you might be asking, Well, how do I chaste their heart? That's a great question. And in a lot of cases you don't.

00;07;17;27 - 00;07;45;09
Nick Clason
That's the Holy Spirit's role in their life. So you can pray for them and you can try to program creatively in such a way that that they find that and you can try to develop a type of community that's authentic and real and raw that most Gen Z, most Gen Alpha students are actually looking for and that community can take root and that student's life so that they belong to their group before they really truly start to exhibit elements of belief.

00;07;45;14 - 00;08;13;59
Nick Clason
But you can't change their heart. You know that that's the Holy Spirit shop. But just like travel sports and now with an attitude of complacency or just a bad attitude in general, I do have two ideas that I think can change the game in both of those arenas, and we're going to hit that in the next section. So my idea for travel sports and my idea for a complacent attitude is actually one in the same.

00;08;14;04 - 00;08;45;58
Nick Clason
And the idea, of course, is to try to go hybrid. Now, listen, you're like, dude, you're the hybrid ministry podcast. Of course you're thinking that. And yeah, I am. But I have detailed an outline for you in my 100% completely free e-book. It's basically my Nick Clason and the church I'm at now Strategy Guide for Social Media. And it's twofold and the two fold, they actually hit both of the things that we're trying to talk about.

00;08;45;58 - 00;09;12;05
Nick Clason
So the first fold of it is pre film your talks in what pre filming your talks does not only gives you some practice and some opportunity to kind of get ahead of your calendar so that you're not giving up live whenever you're preaching on a Wednesday or Sunday night and looking at your notes for the first time, you've had an opportunity to do it, to deliver it direct to camera, very much like I'm doing right here in this setting, but too, especially for the busy kids.

00;09;12;10 - 00;09;34;24
Nick Clason
It allows them, if they're truly interested in church, to to to consume the message that you've given to them. I know in my show choir example and karate example from the beginning that Brandon I don't really know because he didn't last very long. His family left the church not too long later. But Megan, like her and her family, like they were committed.

00;09;34;29 - 00;09;59;26
Nick Clason
And if I couldn't have offered youth group for them, I know that she would have at least went back and watched the messages because that was something that she was interested in. And so a hybrid approach can actually help the busy kids who can't make it on a Sunday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday, on a Tuesday, on a whatever day of the week, you end up deciding they can still listen to the message and word of God directly from you, from your mouth, from their youth pastor.

00;09;59;31 - 00;10;35;38
Nick Clason
And you can pre film those messages and post those to YouTube. Now you might be thinking like, Yeah, but, but that doesn't really do much for me, especially by way of the kid who's complacent and doesn't really want anything to do with it. And you know, where I would say with that is the other approach to that is when you pre film your messages, it not only gives you some short form message based clipped content that you can post and use and sprinkle in an all throughout your social media, but it also can let you kind of do another set of social media, which is add more of an element of fun.

00;10;35;43 - 00;10;59;21
Nick Clason
And when you add more of an element of fun, you can go after that student's heart and again, still, that's the Holy Spirit's job. But what if the reason that they're not interested is just because you youth ministry is boring? And so one of the things that we'll do in our student ministry is we’ll film some fun, quirky, silly, entertainment based content as a staff, as a student ministry team.

00;10;59;25 - 00;11;24;40
Nick Clason
But then other times we will challenge ourselves to do some sort of social media challenge where we'll will invite students to be on camera with us. And so that will give them an opportunity to engage and interact. And then when we've invited them onto camera with us, they'll have an opportunity. Now to see themselves later on social media throughout the week.

00;11;24;45 - 00;11;47;00
Nick Clason
And so you can take your long form message content and that can solve the the problem for travel sports. And then you can clip those up into shorts and push people who discover them to watch a YouTube video. And then you can also film some silly content to be discovered by your algorithm and to to engage with the complacent student, the junior with the hood on in the back of the room.

00;11;47;05 - 00;12;14;20
Nick Clason
And you can even films from that content with him and post it. And if you take my strategy fully laid out right here on screen, link down below in the show notes, I will detail for you all of how to do that. And I hope that if you go hybrid, it helps of your extracurricular activities and it also helps of your student ministry, complacency, activities and actually, I have detailed for you the entire strategy in the video that's linked right here on the screen.

00;12;14;25 - 00;12;32;31
Nick Clason
So go ahead, take a look at that. Stop posting announcements to social media. Be better, level it up. You can do it because we're trying to make digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So, as always, don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 086: 😨 Reaction: Carey Nieuwhof’s 2024 Church Trends

Nick Clason — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:00:00 -0600

⚡ [FREE] Hybrid Strategy Guide⚡

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

2024 Youth Ministry [on-demand] Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

Carey's 2024 Church Trends Article
https://careynieuwhof.com/future-church-trends/
======================================
DESCRIPTION
🔥 Carey Niuwhof has recently been dropping some hot takes on the future of the church.
👓 In this episode, Nick reacts from a Hybrid Ministry and Youth Ministry perspective!
🎱 Number 8 is crazy!

Carey's 2024 Church Trends Article
https://careynieuwhof.com/future-church-trends/
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/086

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/KptS3NoiC6c

//2024 CHURCH TRENDS ARTICLE
https://careynieuwhof.com/future-church-trends/

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

STOP IGNORING SOCIAL MEDIA
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slB0Rmf_X0c&t=390s

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

HYBRID STRATEGY EXPLAINED
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxepdu4iiM

STOP DOING THIS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slB0Rmf_X0c&t=390s

BETTER CHURCH ANNOUNCEMENTS

//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzhYluEKZ_I&list=PLngXlSr64YaKYLaGvuPA5pBYfJflXm0-A&index=43

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

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

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

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

😨 "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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Carey Nieuwhof's 2024 Church Trends Article
00:41 The Boomer Decline is a BIG Deal
04:48 Gen Z is Spiritually Open
06:27 Lean Further into Hybrid, Like Taylor Swift?
08:03 Don't Give up with Online Church Ministry!
09:14 The Weekend Sermon is less important
10:49 Content Curation Matters!
12:00 Volunteerism isn't going to get better
13:30 Pastoral Burnout is on the decline!

--------------
✍️TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:25
Nick Clason
The future of the church, the Capital C church. Not just my church, not just your church. It's going to look very different in 2024. And frankly, beyond because of Generation Z and now Generation Alpha, both waving up Z into the adult ministry conversation Alpha into the youth ministry conversation. It makes me wonder if the future is already here.

00:00:23:27 - 00:00:45:20
Nick Clason
I think it might be Carey Nieuwhof has been spittin’ an absolute fire recently talking about church trends. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to take his article Church Trends from 2024 things You Need to Know. Link down below on description and talk about it. And so let's jump in. Waste no time. Trend number one is that the Boomer church will decline and eventually disappear.

00:00:45:21 - 00:01:11:20
Nick Clason
This is just basic human psychology. You know, you get it right. But he said this. He said, Since 2020, the boomers have become the least likely demographic to return to church. That's out of post-COVID, 22% of them saying and saying that they've stopped attending church, get this entirely. Meanwhile, only 16% of millennials have stopped attending. So that's the smallest of the demographics and I love if you would, give me a subscribe.

00:01:11:21 - 00:01:29:13
Nick Clason
If you're a millennial, like if you're a Gen Xer and hey, hit the bill no matter what age demographic you are, because we are going to be dropping all kinds of new stuff. I got a new playlist already in the hopper. We just wrapped up the 2024 Youth Ministry on-demand Masterclass and now I got one coming at you next week excited for it!

00:01:29:13 - 00:01:56:26
Nick Clason
And if you're on YouTube, you get it early, you get it on Wednesday instead of Thursday in the regular podcast feed. But Nieuwhof goes on to say that 54% of millennials actually attended primarily in-person. 65% of boomers say that they only attend in-person. And so that is a that's going to be key coming down the pike here in a minute as we look at this trend's article about the difference between the hybrid space in the in-person space.

00:01:56:27 - 00:02:17:25
Nick Clason
Right. Unlike boomers, millennials, they they don't just track with church while they're in the building. Millennials and Xers, honestly, are quite comfortable with the idea of hybrid church. This is Nieuwhof’s blog. And guess what? He has no idea that this podcast exists. But the fact of the matter is he sees it just like I feel like I have been seeing.

00:02:17:25 - 00:02:37:10
Nick Clason
And I'm not trying to be like I'm as smart as Carey Nieuwhof by no means at all. But the dude is is calling it right? He says. So boomers for the most part, they've not embraced hybrid church. If you watching on YouTube if not, go ahead to hybridministry.xyz/086 for the show notes. But this graph is going to be on screen.

00:02:37:10 - 00:03:04:15
Nick Clason
Just click the YouTube link. If you do go to your podcast catcher and scrub forward to this part in the episode, but says since the COVID 19 pandemic, which of the following most accurately describes your church attendance either online or in-person? This is the percentage of Christians who are attending church pre COVID 19. And so you'll see that like the highest gap right there have stopped attending is actually boomers, which is what most of our churches were built for.

00:03:04:18 - 00:03:34:16
Nick Clason
And a large, large majority of of millennials you'll see and Xers have been attending the same church that they attended pre COVID. And so there are three kind of main areas of impact with this point. The first one is attendance. Right? And one idea that I have in light of that is stop ignoring social media. Our attendance is going to take on a different kind of approach.

00:03:34:18 - 00:04:00:02
Nick Clason
Millennials and Xers and Gen Z are going to attend church less and less frequently. It doesn't mean they're less committed to your church. It just means they're less committed to being there on a week to week basis. We live in a different world. And so if you as a youth pastor in particular are ignoring social media or only using social media as an avenue or an outlet to post announcements, you're missing out on an incredible opportunity.

00:04:00:07 - 00:04:30:00
Nick Clason
I think about it in my own space. I have teenagers who have weekend soccer tournaments and baseball tournaments and things that keep them out on the weekend. It doesn't mean that they're not committed or that they're less committed to our church. It just simply means that they have other obligations. And I know I've worked at churches and on church staff that say they're not as committed, but if we go hybrid and if we find a way to meet them where they are, which is really what this is all about, they can still consume the things of God.

00:04:30:00 - 00:04:50:13
Nick Clason
They can still follow him, they can still be connected and attached to our church. You look at this graph here on the screen, Weekly Church attendance by generation millennials are actually the highest out of the pandemic, post-COVID. So attendance is area number one that this is going to impact. It's also going to impact volunteering and thirdly, it's going to impact giving.

00:04:50:18 - 00:05:17:17
Nick Clason
Carey Nieuwhof goes on to say that open pastors will actually be more well-positioned to reach an open generation. Speaking of and talking about Generation Z, Gen Z, statistically speaking, is actually the most spiritually open generation that we've ever actually seen in our history. Right. And if you check out the YouTube, the YouTube feed here, you'll see that the spiritual journey of Gen Z, you'll see that they're open.

00:05:17:23 - 00:05:42:09
Nick Clason
They're much more open to things of God and faith. They believe that there's supernatural or spiritual side to life, 61% compared to 51% of all adults. They've gone through a prolonged they've gone through a prolonged period of time where they've significantly doubted their faith. 65% to 49%, 56% say my experiences have led me to deconstruct or take apart my faith of my youth 56% versus 47%.

00:05:42:09 - 00:06:04:18
Nick Clason
I'm disillusioned by my experience in the Christian church 48 to 43%. But I love this line that he has in the blog he says, “A spiritually open generation is a reachable generation. So what are you doing to reach this generation? This this generation is laying the groundwork for Gen Alpha, which is right behind them, youth pastors, Gen Alpha, they're in your youth ministry right now.

00:06:04:18 - 00:06:27:03
Nick Clason
The oldest ones of them are are some of the youngest kids in your youth ministry. So like I said, youth pastors go hybrid. Check out my e-book link down description. I'll give you a step by step guide to not only posting on social media, but then also posting your YouTube messages and using that as your bedrock so that everything builds on top of that, which is actually why this next trend.

00:06:27:04 - 00:06:48:09
Nick Clason
Right. I obviously believe this next trend is completely spot on because it says this the line between digital and in-person will blur even more. And he says, take a note from Taylor Swift yet check this out. Is it Taylor Swift is actually a prime example of this. In particular, she's modeling how to have a strong digital presence and drive an intense in-person demand.

00:06:48:12 - 00:07:16:13
Nick Clason
Her midnight album released in October of 2022. You can see this graph on the screen. It's absolutely crazy. You will not believe what you're seeing It says. And not only broke streaming records on Spotify, but it simultaneously locked up every position on the Billboard Top ten, and they sold 500,000 physical vinyl albums in a single week, often times there's an argument against a hybrid strategy in favor of the in-person experience, like they can't go together.

00:07:16:13 - 00:07:46:21
Nick Clason
And and that's the thing that is actually the hybrid. I'm like, no, that's that's not just digital. That's both that's online and that's in-person and that's putting them together. And pastors look at the graph. Her in-person ticket sales skyrocketed and went through the roof. So if you can capture the magic of a digital and strong online presence, you can actually bring that into fruition in your in-person experience.

00:07:46:27 - 00:08:08:28
Nick Clason
And on the converse of that or the inverse of one of those two, the flip side of that, let's go with that. The flip side of that is that once people are attached, you're connected to your church. You can continue to show up in their life throughout the rest of the week, giving them discipleship resources, Bible study tools and things that will help them grow in their faith and nurture their walk with God.

00:08:09:00 - 00:08:35:17
Nick Clason
Number four Nieuwhof says that churches that embrace online ministry will start seeing results. You may be out there and being like I've been trying to do. I'm not seeing the results. I'm getting frustrated, I'm getting tired. But like I said, we can help, right? I get it. The resources aren't there and and they're likely there for the rest of the church that they're not there, especially for youth ministries, which is why I down in the description below, I have YouTube gear for under $100.

00:08:35:23 - 00:08:58:03
Nick Clason
And this video right here will detail an outline, all of it and how you can use it and make it happen. But Kerry said that according to Lifeway Research, before the pandemic, only 27% of churches offered any live streaming. That's essentially one out of four. However, since that live streaming of services and now post pandemic, 92% of churches now live stream their services.

00:08:58:03 - 00:09:18:21
Nick Clason
And so as the world has reopened, the surprising things and number of those churches that were up at the 92%, they've actually throttled back their online services, hoping to to drive in-person attendance as if they're competing with one another. And so not only is that a bad strategy and you have said he says it's also incredibly shortsighted. Stick with it.

00:09:18:22 - 00:09:44:27
Nick Clason
You're going to see the results. Number five, he says the purpose of the weekend sermon will shift from being an attraction to an anchor. Listen, stop doing this on social media, which is linked down in the description part of the 2024 Youth Ministry OnDemand Masterclass playlist. I just wrapped up last week in the last video. But but stop doing these things right.

00:09:44:29 - 00:10:06:19
Nick Clason
Stop saying on social media. Join us for our new series on Sunday at nine and 11. Don't miss last Sunday's message available online on demand. I can't wait to share your brand new message with you. That's what Nieuwhof is saying that's not attraction A lot of times we as pastors and listen, I get it, Pastor, like you've spent time on this sermon.

00:10:06:20 - 00:10:25:10
Nick Clason
You care about these people and you care and you want them to hear what you have to say. But that's a very on onto me or I'm sorry, that's a very cable TV strategy. That's a very like, hey, you can only hear this thing at nine and 11. And the fact is that we don't live in a cable TV society anymore.

00:10:25:10 - 00:10:54:09
Nick Clason
You probably even watch cable TV anymore. The only appointment television that I even have anymore is like live sports. Otherwise everything else is streaming. And so I think it's much better start thinking about the real reasons why people come to church, because there are still reasons why people come to church and come to in-person church. Things like community, things like kids and student ministry, things like connection and an experience that doesn't always translate to online.

00:10:54:09 - 00:11:24:19
Nick Clason
This all from Nieuwhof’s blog Number six. He says content curation will now start to matter as much as content creation. He said the push to online and the changing place of sermons in today's world can leave pastors feeling an unsustainable pressure to produce a nonstop flow of spiritual content. And so, as more and more passages are discovering every year, it's almost impossible to produce top tier messages week to week to compete with some of the best that is out and available on the Internet.

00:11:24:22 - 00:11:42:02
Nick Clason
It's not any pressure, right? This was not a pressure from any previous generations. The things that pastors dealt with honestly can feel like an unsustainable pressure. And so one of the things he says is, he says, flip it from content creation to consider curating like how can you gather some of the best sources and then help point and show your people?

00:11:42:02 - 00:11:59:28
Nick Clason
I mean, even I'm thinking about this weekend, we're doing a a workshop for some of our teenagers on how to study the Bible. And if they get on Google, they can find all kinds of different resources. But how do they know if they're reputable or not? Right? So we give them a list. Here are five resources that we know that we trust and that we say, Hey, you can use, right?

00:12:00:05 - 00:12:25:26
Nick Clason
That's a great example of a way that you can curate the entire World Wide Web and then package it and bring it to your people. Number seven, not to depress anyone Nieuwhof says the volunteer crisis will move from acute to chronic. He had three reasons for it. Number one, first, the return to church meant different people returned to church and much slower than I think we all expected.

00:12:25:29 - 00:12:45:19
Nick Clason
Number two, more significantly, as trend number one outlined at the beginning of the article, boomers are aging out and are the least likely group to return to church. This makes the volunteer backbone of most churches, a nonprofit organizations less robust than it used to be. And that's only going to get more challenging, especially as boomers continue to age and ultimately age out.

00:12:45:22 - 00:13:08:11
Nick Clason
And third, and finally, the next generation, primarily millennials and Generation Z, they attend church less and left less often, like I said earlier, making it less frequent thing, meaning they have more options on the weekends so it gets harder for them to commit. So we need to be thinking about as pastors, not only like understanding and realizing there is a volunteer crisis and there is a volunteer problem.

00:13:08:13 - 00:13:31:14
Nick Clason
How can you shift? We actually talked about it in a video linked down blown description, but we've actually talked about how can you shift your volunteer pitch from we need you to we want to come alongside and support you. We want you to to flourish here. We want to watch you experience incredible depth and purpose and live a life on mission.

00:13:31:14 - 00:13:54:26
Nick Clason
And we believe as a church, we can help facilitate that for you. It's really not that big of a shift. Number eight Pastoral. Pastoral burnout will stabilize as pastors embrace their new church. Listen, if you're a pastor here on this podcast, this is good news because you've seen that over the last several years, pastors have had a high risk for burnout.

00:13:54:26 - 00:14:22:10
Nick Clason
But there's hope. You're doing a great job. And as this graph highlights, it's starting to stabilize. It's starting to normalize. The newness of all the things from 2020 and beyond is starting to kind of chill out. And there's hope. You're you can do it right there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You know, one of the keys that I have personally found in stabilizing my burnout and making me feel more enticed about continuing on in my job is increasing my time management load, which is actually linked right here on the screen.

00:14:22:10 - 00:14:41:19
Nick Clason
If you want to check that video, go ahead and do that. But we're so glad that you checked out this this podcast and this episode. Thank you, Carrie, for this amazing article. It is spot on because I believe that we need to make digital discipleship not only easy but possible and inaccessible. And so, as always, don't forget stay hybrid.

Episode 084: 🤝 Recruiting (and Retaining) The Best Volunteers

Nick Clason — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 04:00:00 -0600

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======================================
DESCRIPTION
🛟 The life-line of all good student ministry is adult volunteer leaders.
🤷 So much so, Are we even needed? Eventually, hopefully not!
🇷Let’s dive into the 3 “R’s” of volunteers
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/084

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8HNzfZoiX0

//UNLEASHING VOLUNTEERS DEEP DIVE
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/084

1) RECRUITING
//FULL PROOF EMAIL
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/recruiting-email

2) ROLES
//LEAD SMALL
https://www.amazon.com/Lead-Small-Ideas-Every-Leader/dp/0985411627

3) RETENTION
//TIME MANAGEMENT
https://youtu.be/xlS1kWcQBS8?si=kxHfp9_oeF8Wes
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/077

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

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TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 The Life Line for all Youth Pastors
01:02 Finding the Best Volunteers
04:48 Full Proof Recruiting Email
10:06 Not Everybody is a Small Group Leader
14:01 Never Recruit Again with Good Retention

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

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:22
Nick Clason
If you've been in youth ministry for any length of time, then you know that the lifeline for any good youth ministry is a Dole volunteer. Leaders, Right. Like so much So you might even ask the question, am I even needed? I mean, eventually, Hopefully. No, because you've raised these leaders up in such a way that they're competent and can do the job without you.

00:00:24:24 - 00:00:46:01
Nick Clason
We've talked deeply in the last episode about the philosophy and the reasons behind having good volunteer youth leaders. It's our last video to enjoy the top of the screen. But in this video, we're going to round out and I'm going to give you the three R's of volunteers recruitment. And I have a full proof email, so stick around to see that the roles that you can enlist them into.

00:00:46:01 - 00:01:06:26
Nick Clason
And finally, stick around all the way to the very end of the video because the third and final R is retention. And if you lay out a good foundation and if you actually stick to the plan with retention, you won't ever have to be recruiting again. Sound too good to be true? Let's check it out. So the first R in volunteerism is recruitment.

00:01:06:27 - 00:01:29:26
Nick Clason
Always be recruiting. Now you might be thinking to yourself, Well, where in the world do I even find them coming below the best places to find volunteers in your church? I mean, just think about the places that you frequent. Maybe it's your or your wife's or your families or your children's Sunday school classes. So perhaps you have a kid.

00:01:29:26 - 00:02:00:11
Nick Clason
They have a Sunday school class, another kids parents in that Sunday school class, maybe a small group that you're in or that you lead. As you get to do life with people, you'll notice more about them and you'll be looking for certain qualities or attributes. I mean, one of the best things that you need to do is you need to realize that anyone can do youth ministry, but you're probably not going to find people who come to you and say, I am so super passionate about youth ministry and they look the part and they're cool and they have piercings and they have tattoos.

00:02:00:11 - 00:02:29:07
Nick Clason
Like you'll get one or two of those. But like you also have to be willing to recruit the moms. You have to be willing to recruit the over 55 year old, almost retired men. You have to be willing to recruit like the homeschool dad, like the people that don't exactly look the part. But if they love Jesus and if they can tolerate teenagers, then they're in a good spot to be a youth volunteer and just ask.

00:02:29:08 - 00:02:50:06
Nick Clason
I remember I was coaching one of my kids flag football teams and while I was coaching the team, it was still a church. I was coaching the team, one of the moms on the team. She we had two coaches in there on the field and she kept making her way over to the sidelines and she's like, I just love helping out and being around the kids.

00:02:50:07 - 00:03:07:23
Nick Clason
Is it okay if I do this? Like she wasn't officially a coach? None of that stuff. And so we were like, Yeah, that's great because the kids are just while an hour over there on the sidelines. We needed all the help that we could get. And so her being on the sidelines immediately, like trigger my brain, I was like, I'm going to ask her.

00:03:07:24 - 00:03:28:25
Nick Clason
And so one day I had a leader drop off like a leader call me and say, Hey, I can't do it anymore. I was dropping my son off at preschool, and this mom also is dropping her kids off at the same preschool through the church, which I had never seen her do that before. And immediately in my brain, I felt the Holy Spirit say, Ask her.

00:03:28:27 - 00:03:51:07
Nick Clason
And I had to do the digging because I had to like I didn't know her name right. So I knew the kids names from the fly football team. So I found the kids in our church, you know, database. And then I found her as the mom, and then I just shot her an email. And I'm gonna share with you that imagery just so you might be thinking, okay, I think think through all the different pools that you have and I get it.

00:03:51:07 - 00:04:11:19
Nick Clason
You might be like, I don't I don't have any like at that point, start asking like, ask other other people that, you know, who do you know, who can I ask Who's in your small group? Who's who's someone who's just friendly? Right. And one of the things I like to do is I'm like, they may not have the soft youth ministry skills yet, but if they have a teachable spirit, we can level them up in youth ministry.

00:04:11:19 - 00:04:31:06
Nick Clason
And we're going to talk about in the third and final hour on retention. But how do you ask a volunteer leader? Right. So I have this this email that I've drafted. I am going to share it with you. If you're watching on YouTube, it's going to be linked right here on the screen if you're watching on YouTube, but you're dropping these now on Wednesday morning so you can listen to them on your way into the office.

00:04:31:06 - 00:04:58:08
Nick Clason
You can listen to them while you're setting up for youth ministry. If you're listening via the podcast feed, we're going to continue to drop them on Thursday morning. So you get a little bit of a bonus day if you're watching, subscribing and consuming these via YouTube. So for free, check us out there at YouTube.com slash clay cynic or just search hybrid ministry in the YouTube search bar but the leader recruitment email goes like this dear fill in their name.

00:04:58:10 - 00:05:18:05
Nick Clason
I think that you could be uniquely positioned to be a great volunteer in our student ministry. Now before you laugh, archive this email and just think that I'm full of hot air. Take a minute to think about this. Did you know that two thirds of adult Christians have made a decision to follow Jesus before the age of 18?

00:05:18:08 - 00:05:39:25
Nick Clason
This statistic alone is the reason why I do what I do and investing in the next generation. However, while you may not feel equipped, qualified or ready, I'd like to point out that God uses people like that. The underequipped, the under-qualified, and the not ready to further His kingdom every day. All throughout the pages of Scripture, Moses was a murderer.

00:05:39:28 - 00:06:09:16
Nick Clason
Jonah ran the other way. Peter was uneducated and Paul was a self-righteous bigot. Now, here's what I consider a qualification for student ministry. Love Jesus. And like teenagers, Borrow that from my friend Doug Fields. If you can check these two boxes off, then I think you have what it takes to join our team. I love to sit over a cup of coffee and discuss this idea with you a little bit more in depth, and maybe we could grab a quick phone call to chat about it.

00:06:09:19 - 00:06:35:09
Nick Clason
Give me a call or shoot me text if you'd like to do that. Signed your name. That email alone has drummed up a lot of interest in recruiting new volunteers. And when I was working at a large multisite megachurch in Chicago, I needed to do a lot of kind of cold call style emails, so I'd get names of people I'd never heard of, never met, and I would send them that email to at least sparked conversation and in a lot of cases I would get responses, but not always.

00:06:35:09 - 00:06:54:02
Nick Clason
And so if I didn't get a response out of reach back out via text or call just a couple of weeks later and say, Hey, I sent you an email, I'm just curious if you've given that email any more thought. So I love the line in that email. Two thirds of Christians have made a decision to follow Jesus before the age of 18.

00:06:54:03 - 00:07:13:03
Nick Clason
If you knew that you owe me a subscribe, and if you did it then then hit me like, right. Because what we're doing, like I says, we're dropping this this video one day before the podcast drops. All right. So that statistic alone is why I do what I do. The final thing after how to ask him is how do you onboard them right.

00:07:13:06 - 00:07:33:10
Nick Clason
So once this preliminary conversation has taken place, it's conversation number one. You're going to have to kind of streams of volunteer in intake, right? You may be thinking I need to recruit. And if that's the case, then by all means do it. But in some other cases you may get names to like a volunteer interest form or someone telling you, Hey, you should talk to John.

00:07:33:11 - 00:07:57:26
Nick Clason
Okay. So in that case, if someone else is giving you a name or if they're filling out a form on your website, you need to have a preliminary conversation with them. You need to sit down and find a way to to to kind of vet them just a little bit, not thoroughly and not like FBI style, but just a little bit of like get to know them, get to know their story and discover their reason for why they want to do youth ministry.

00:07:57:27 - 00:08:19:05
Nick Clason
Because while you may be excited about just a random name coming into you from the website, you also have to make sure that you're not enlisting somebody who might be an abuser or a pedophile or some weirdo because as we said earlier, people are just not naturally drawn to being a youth leader volunteer. So someone does say that they are just out of the clear blue sky.

00:08:19:07 - 00:08:43:06
Nick Clason
Just do a tiny little bit of homework. So once that first conversation, that first screening conversation is done, then you need to enter them into whatever your church's safety screening process is. After they've gone through their safety screening process, whether that be a background check, taking some sexual abuse awareness classes or somewhere in between the two of those, you need to find a time to enlist them for a first serve.

00:08:43:07 - 00:09:05:14
Nick Clason
Now, the way that we sort of do it is like we have our background check and that lets them get in the room for a first serve because sometimes some of that additional sexual abuse awareness training is a lot. And so we get them in the room shadowed with someone who's already cleared and screened, but they can get a feel for youth ministry also to kind of just like strike while the iron is hot.

00:09:05:14 - 00:09:21:07
Nick Clason
You don't want that lead to go cold, so you don't want someone who says they're interested and then you not give them an opportunity to come serve. So give them a first serve. Once that first serve is over, have a clearing clarifying conversation with them. I typically like to do it the same day or the same night of their first serve.

00:09:21:13 - 00:09:44:22
Nick Clason
Hey, would you think what do you think in killing begin to kind of pursue this in this direction unless they give you some sort of like big red flag of like, I don't know, man, that's really was Wow. That really wasn't for me. I would try to find a way to start enlisting them that night, make sure that they are finishing up any of their remaining screenings before you make them an official part of your team.

00:09:44:24 - 00:10:07:28
Nick Clason
But then once they have done all those things, once they've done that first serve and they've had that clarifying conversation, get them into an on board situation and do it as quickly as you can see. I think a lot of times we say we want volunteers, but then we're too busy to actually engage with them in meaningfully bring them along so that they feel loved, valued, cared for and that their time is not being wasted.

00:10:08:01 - 00:10:31:17
Nick Clason
So let's move on. Now that we've talked about recruiting, what are the roles that you're recruiting them into? All right. So rule number one is this small group leader. We talked about it at length in the last video, but the lead small book written by the folks down at Orange is, I believe, one of the best pictures of what it means to simply be a small group leader.

00:10:31:17 - 00:10:48:28
Nick Clason
It is clear. It is concise. Any one of us could have written it, but we didn't. And so they get the credit for it because they did the work. But it is a great manual for what a small group leader is pouring into and investing into the lives of just a few students that God has entrusted into their care.

00:10:49:00 - 00:11:11:13
Nick Clason
I think a lot of times when we think small group leader or when we think youth ministry leader, we think they need to be leading a small group. And when you think through the wide swath of different volunteers that you might need, you might not need every single person that says they're interested to become a volunteer small group leader.

00:11:11:13 - 00:11:41:17
Nick Clason
If you think homeschool mom, if you think 55 and older guy, like there might be some other roles in your youth ministry. In fact, we in our studio miss you. We like to use these other roles as a little bit of a feeling out time for both of us, so we get to enlist them into another role that's not directly in the spiritual care and direction of a student, but one that we get to see them, see their faithfulness if they're actually coming to the job.

00:11:41:20 - 00:11:57:12
Nick Clason
And then we also get to know them, because if they're not in some sort of volunteer small group moment, and if you're also not in some sort of volunteer small group moment, you can have a conversation with them. I remember there is a a leader at church I worked at and she was enlisted as one of our safety people.

00:11:57:12 - 00:12:25:02
Nick Clason
She was a police officer and she was a safety person and she was in the back of the room as she was kind of doing her thing. This wasn't on any of our sort of radars with it, but she was doing her thing. She actually came up. She's like, Hey, could I do that? Like instead of safety? And you see how like just being a part of the hospitality team in some way, shape or form being part of it, it initiated her thought process to kind of like say that might be something that I am also interested.

00:12:25:02 - 00:12:45:08
Nick Clason
So some of the roles that we use hospitality, so that's getting things set up, that's greeters at check in, that's saying hey to students, first time students, help them fill out gas cards, all that type of stuff. There's safety. Like I mentioned, and you may have a plan for that from like a hiring in an officer type of thing.

00:12:45:08 - 00:13:03:22
Nick Clason
Or if not, if you're too small of a church, then you need to hire a couple, maybe volunteers, to sort of oversee it, keep eyes on dark spaces in the church, you know, keep an eye on bathrooms. Just make sure that there are an additional set of eyes on everything, because you know that as programing it's going. You got a lot on your mind, a lot on your plate.

00:13:03:24 - 00:13:20:24
Nick Clason
And so some of the last things on your mind is checking to make sure that back in that back closet there aren't two kids making out in this is safety person to do that that will help you know give you an additional like set of eyes so that you can see and know what's going on without seeing and knowing every single thing that's going on.

00:13:20:26 - 00:13:45:14
Nick Clason
You may have a cafe I don't love like cafes from like the selling standpoint, having to source food, but I do love having a cafe because it gives it gives leaders an actual meaningful task to do that. We can place them in in sort of like a first step kind of role before we move them. If I if I don't know this person at all before we move them into a small group leader type role.

00:13:45:17 - 00:14:14:17
Nick Clason
And then, you know, depending on your set in your format, I was in a church that did decentralized host homes. And so we had groups meeting all throughout the city and all sorts of different houses. Your host home volunteers are a great pool of people and a great place. You can send some people so they may not be ready yet to be small group leader every single week, but they may be willing to create a warm, welcoming, inviting kind of atmosphere in a host home situation.

00:14:14:19 - 00:14:42:07
Nick Clason
The third and final or in our list is retention. So retention is how do you keep these volunteers now that you have them? So the first thing that you need to be doing is you need to be checking in with your volunteers frequently. Now, I hear you might be thinking, I don't have very much time. Listen, as a part of this 2024 on Main Masterclass, the very first video was how to manage your time and how to get more stuff done.

00:14:42:12 - 00:15:11:24
Nick Clason
I would recommend that you take a look at that because when you implement some of those processes, you will find that you have more time than you think you do. And once you realize that you can start budgeting for and scheduling conversations, relationships, lunches, coffee appointments with some of your leaders, and it's important to do that because you just have an opportunity to sit down, have a conversation with leaders, get to know them, and let them know that like you're there and they have a place that they can turn to.

00:15:11:25 - 00:15:41:08
Nick Clason
Now, if you have 50, 7500 volunteers, then that's too much for you and that's where you need to probably implement some sort of coaching structure, some sort of additional layer where there's another person kind of put in that place to help be that for you. Again, similar to the safety team, somebody who can just be an additional hand, additional shepherd, additional person to help you care for the leaders in your student ministry.

00:15:41:10 - 00:16:04:00
Nick Clason
What about relationships? Like how are you building your relationship, your rapport with these leaders, Hang out with them in a casual environment. It doesn't always have to be a formalized like meeting sit down with an agenda and three points to get through. Just who are you hanging out with your leaders? If you're hanging out with your leaders, I told you my last video about a guy named Steve that I enlisted.

00:16:04:02 - 00:16:24:03
Nick Clason
I enlisted him to be a seventh grade boy, Smoggy Peter, which in that church, seventh grade was the earliest the youngest age that we had for our students. He still to this day, they are now seniors. He still to this day is a small group leader for them. But I haven't been in that space since like eighth grade of those kids year.

00:16:24:03 - 00:16:44:06
Nick Clason
So. So he stayed all through high school all throughout COVID. Mind you all after my relationship with him left. But because I built a rapport with him, he stuck for that. And then he got hooked and he stuck and he stayed. Finally, think about appreciation. Do you leaders know that you care about them? Do you give them moments?

00:16:44:08 - 00:17:01:29
Nick Clason
Do you give them tokens of appreciation? Does it have to be a big budget buster? But I remember I talked to a youth leader one time who she said all she was doing was just a pristine, like just the mess out of her volunteers. And she asked one of her volunteers one time like, Do you feel appreciated or why?

00:17:01:29 - 00:17:24:27
Nick Clason
Why do people like serving in students? And one of their volunteers said, You'd be crazy not to because he was basically saying, You appreciate us so often and so much like anyone who does this job just feels like a million bucks. Okay. The fourth thing under tension is develop them well, which is actually the final video link in the 2024 youth ministry.

00:17:24:27 - 00:17:42:21
Nick Clason
OnDemand Masterclass is linked right here on the screen. So go ahead and check that out because you want to develop them so that you retain them. We're working to make digital discipleship in youth ministry, in in church ministry, easy possible and accessible. So as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 083: ❤️ Youth Ministry Volunteers Unleashed

Nick Clason — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 04:00:00 -0600

⚡ FULL HYBRID MINISTRY STRATEGY⚡

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

2024 Youth Ministry [on-demand] Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

[FREE] My Best Youth Ministry Games
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/9-best-dym-products
======================================
DESCRIPTION
🤫 The Secret Sauce in Youth Ministry, might surprise you, is Volunteers

🩹 You only have a certain capacity as one individual person.
Volunteers not only help level up your care in your youth ministry.
But also, they can be the best source of friendship and camaraderie

⏫ How do we level up our volunteers to unleash them?

🔗 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/083

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/7ytA0V0MdeA

1) PASTORAL CARE
//LEAD SMALL
https://www.amazon.com/Lead-Small-Ideas-Every-Leader/dp/0985411627

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

2) CAMARADERIE
//DARE2SHARE
https://www.dare2share.org

3) INTERSECTED FAITH STORIES
//GROWING YOUNG

https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Young-Essential-Strategies-Discover/dp/0801019257/ref=sr_1_1?crid=338IYV0RBLJFS&keywords=growing+young&qid=1705628888&s=books&sprefix=growing+young%2Cstripbooks%2C153&sr=1-1

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

🆓 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

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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

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

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-03:41 We would all be sunk without our Youth Ministry Volunteers
03:41-06:42 Caring for youth beyond your capacity
06:42-09:13 How to find friends as a youth pastor
09:13-11:05 Students need more than you

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

00;00;00;05 - 00;00;19;09
Nick Clason
So early on in in Youth Minister, you've probably been there. I was running a high school and a middle school ministry separate, but I was the only guy. And so the way I actually did it, which I don't necessarily recommend this as a strategy anymore, and I can tell you why in future videos. But I had youth ministry, I had middle school ministry in high school ministry, staggered.

00;00;19;09 - 00;00;41;44
Nick Clason
So one started at six or six. One started at seven or seven. Thought I was really, really cute for coming up with that idea. But no other people have come up with that idea before. Anyway, in my middle school ministry. I had a middle school ministry of girls, like only girls had about eight or six middle school girls on a regular basis and we had no boys.

00;00;41;44 - 00;01;04;00
Nick Clason
In fact, it was a pretty big issue, big enough that there were families leaving the church over it. That being said, I had literally only been there for about four months. And so one family left the church days after I accepted the job and my senior pastor was like, Bro, that's the whole reason why we're hiring this guy to like, help get more people here, get more, you know, boys here for your your son.

00;01;04;01 - 00;01;25;57
Nick Clason
And so anyway, I had missed school ministry and I was playing Leader Roulette. And I'll tell you what, leader Roula, it is I only had middle I only had girl leaders enlisted to serve in my middle school ministry. No boy leaders because I had no boy students. And so in my brain I was like, I'll get to that problem when it happens.

00;01;25;57 - 00;01;48;58
Nick Clason
And so there I was in the lobby welcoming middle school students. And I should also say that I had like 90 minutes of programing. So say, you know, 30 minutes or so of games, 30 minutes of teaching, and then 30 minutes of smart, that last 30 minutes was the overlapping part. So I sent middle schoolers off to their small group for the 30 minutes and the high schoolers sort of right at that time.

00;01;48;58 - 00;02;13;16
Nick Clason
So I was I was unavailable to ever step in as some sort of small group. So anyway, middle school ministry is starting somewhere around 606 or so. I can't say for certain the exact moment. And in walks a boy in my face. I'm like, dang, we got trouble. Now the good news was I did have some high school boys.

00;02;13;21 - 00;02;35;31
Nick Clason
And so then thus I did have high school boy volunteers. And so one of my high school boy volunteers, his name was Aaron Coons. Shout out to Aaron Koontz, Beavercreek, Ohio, AC for short. I call them up was like, dude. And no, you don't need to be here till seven, but can you pop in a few minutes early and can you help run and cover this middle school boy?

00;02;35;31 - 00;03;03;29
Nick Clason
Small group that I was now going to figure out how to staff it. Right now I had a boy. Now I needed boy, small group leaders. And so in this video today, what we are going to talk about is the why of volunteers in youth ministry. And in fact, I actually was going to make this one video. I was going to talk about the why of youth ministry volunteers, the recruiting of youth ministry volunteers and the training of youth minister volunteers.

00;03;03;29 - 00;03;22;55
Nick Clason
And as I sort of scripting it out, I realized this is a long video. So as a part of the 2024 Masterclass, I know I said in the last year, this is going to be the last one, but it's not. We are going to extend this one and break it apart into three different videos. So very a video series inside another video series.

00;03;23;00 - 00;03;42;02
Nick Clason
That's why you should subscribe. Because in this video we're talking about the why of youth ministry volunteers and in future videos, we're going to be talking about how to recruit. And then we're also going to be talking about training. All of this is a part of the free on demand training for youth ministry. Master Class. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show.

00;03;42;07 - 00;04;00;21
Nick Clason
So, everyone, welcome to the Hybrid ministry show. I am Nic Clason Just like I was saying, I've been in youth ministry. The story I shared in the intro was about, I think 13, 12, 13 years ago. Now, at this point, no boys, no boy, small group leaders. And so from that point, I have learned quite a few things about youth ministry.

00;04;00;21 - 00;04;26;15
Nick Clason
I've learned quite a few things about youth ministry volunteers. And one of the key things for youth ministry in youth ministry volunteers is the need for volunteers to help scale up in pastoral care. In fact, we have a video that's linked right here at the top of this screen where we talked about ways to use hybrid ministry to enhance the pastoral care in the shepherding in your youth ministry and in your student ministry.

00;04;26;15 - 00;04;46;30
Nick Clason
And so I'm not going to get too deep into that and tools and tips and tricks on how to equip your volunteers to reach out to your students and to care for your students. But you should check that out. There's some that you're interested in. However, one of the key things not to sound too corporate, not to sound to business, is that you need youth ministry leaders to help scale up the care.

00;04;46;30 - 00;05;11;34
Nick Clason
I mean, the reality of the fact is that you, as an individual, a singular one person, youth ministry, one man band, you only have so much capacity and maybe you're a super relational person. And so your capacity may be higher than someone who's not quite as relational as you. But at the end of the day, you realize that like once you scale past 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, I don't know, definitely 80.

00;05;11;34 - 00;05;32;22
Nick Clason
You're not going to be able to know every single student's name, every single student story, every single student's things going on. Their families are not going to be able to attend every single student's games and every single student's extracurricular types of things. And so that is why youth ministry is so important, is because your your volunteers help spread out that care.

00;05;32;22 - 00;05;55;21
Nick Clason
I mean, that's really that's the crux, the thesis is the basis for the entire book written by Orange Lead Small, one of my all time favorite resources. If you haven't checked it out, link down below in the show notes. But it is a youth ministry volunteer's job description and I actually used it in a lot of cases to help onboard some of my leaders and say, Read this and if this lights a fire within you, then let's keep talking.

00;05;55;21 - 00;06;18;03
Nick Clason
And that'll be kind of the preliminary starting foundation for a lot of my discussions. So it helps expand our reach. Speaking of expanding regional, I think all of us realize and see the need for social media. Well, what I've done for use, I've actually led a completely free digital strategy. I call it my hybrid ministry done for you one month posting strategy.

00;06;18;03 - 00;06;42;05
Nick Clason
It's linked right here down below. Very first link in the top of this video, I want you to check out my completely free e-book and not only can you become the face of your youth ministry, social media, not only can you get students as a main primary face of your youth, missed your social media, but you can now also, as a part of this video, enlist your volunteers to be a part of your youth ministry and especially what they're doing on social media.

00;06;42;14 - 00;07;09;23
Nick Clason
But reason number two, beyond scaling up pastoral care so that you can kind of spread out the need and the desire and knowing of students, there's just a camaraderie that comes with people locking arms and going together. I remember my students, we would take them to a thing called Dare to Share. You've maybe heard of it before, and at one point in the Dear Teacher conference, what they're doing it actually said, now there's a dude, Ayrshire Live, and so you kind of host it as like a livestream event.

00;07;09;23 - 00;07;23;52
Nick Clason
But back in the day they would go city to city and so we would kind of chase whatever city they're in. Sometimes they're in Dayton, Ohio, sometimes they're in Columbus, Ohio. I think maybe one time there in Cincinnati, Ohio. But nonetheless, we would kind of go to the conference. They'd have the worship and the speakers and all the things.

00;07;23;52 - 00;07;42;04
Nick Clason
But at one point they'd send youth ministries all throughout the city of wherever the hosting of the event was happening. And they would say, go door to door, collect cans, pass out lightbulbs, whatever the case may be, but share the gospel with people and my students. I remember they'd always be so nervous and freaked out. I mean, come on, wouldn't you?

00;07;42;09 - 00;08;09;23
Nick Clason
And but but one of the things that was so helpful but it was would help kind of break down the barrier and the entry level of starting a gospel conversation. But I remember the atmosphere and the attitude once we arrived back in the conference room, everyone in that place, they were hype. They were so pumped up because they had gone out and they actually I remember one time in one of the things they equated it to, like being on a military mission.

00;08;09;27 - 00;08;30;02
Nick Clason
You have this unbreakable bond because you've been on a mission together. And I think in a lot of ways that's what a youth ministry volunteer team can be. You as you pastor, you have a mission to help reach students and share the gospel and help point them to Jesus. But then you also have leaders who are who are adopting that same mindset and strategy, and maybe they're not there yet.

00;08;30;06 - 00;08;51;03
Nick Clason
You're helping kind of bring them along or level them up into that. And once you can have that unbreakable bond, you realize that even after a bad night of youth ministry, you guys are still there together, that you're still around some other people who are a like minded on the same page and beyond just that, beyond just like the camaraderie, you have the opportunity to make real friends with these people.

00;08;51;18 - 00;09;13;00
Nick Clason
I remember I worked at a church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and one of my volunteers became one of my best friends, and we met every single Tuesday morning. We met to recite Bible verses together to kind of keep each other accountable. And still to this day, even now, at that point, something like five, six, seven years ago, we'll call each other every once in a while and we'll just kind of keep up with each other's lives.

00;09;13;13 - 00;09;31;42
Nick Clason
The third reason why you need volunteers in your youth ministry is simply because of the fact that students need more than you to speak into their life and into their faith story. In fact, it takes five people in the book Growing Young by Care, Power, Power. She talked about the importance and that's going to be Campbell on the show notes or wherever your podcast catch.

00;09;31;42 - 00;09;59;34
Nick Clason
You can you can check it out in the link in the description or a hybridministry.xyz/083 beyond just three of transcripts. But Kara Powell said that we need five people. Students need five people in their lives. If they have five people speaking into their lives of their faith beyond just mom and dad. But but smart leaders and youth pastors and maybe even like adults that they serve in the nursery with the they rub shoulders with and they see on a regular ongoing basis.

00;09;59;34 - 00;10;21;00
Nick Clason
You need leaders in your life because you are not going to be the only primary person speaking into students lives. And if you are, that's going to leave them with a less lustful, less less robust faith. They need other voices speaking into it so you can be a voice in their smug habit. It can be a voice and maybe their small group co-leader can be a voice.

00;10;21;00 - 00;10;39;39
Nick Clason
And maybe some are on the serving team that's overseeing the greeters, which they're they're a member of serving on the youth ministry team or whatever the case might be. But fill it in. So there's five people. Five people seems to be the kind of key marker and not wasn't I get it? You might be sitting there thinking, I don't have five people I know it can be difficult.

00;10;39;39 - 00;11;01;32
Nick Clason
And that's why we're talking on the next video about how to recruit the best youth ministry volunteers, where to get them, where to find them, how to do it that is linked right here on the video. So don't forget, in this podcast we are making digital discipleship easy, possible, accessible in this particular video through the ministry of our small group leaders.

00;11;01;32 - 00;11;05;42
Nick Clason
So don't forget and as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 081: 😲 Your Youth Sermons Don’t Matter

Nick Clason — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0600

⚡ Youth Ministry [On-Demand] Masterclass ⚡

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

[FREE] 2024 Social Media Strategy
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
======================================
DESCRIPTION
👎 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?

🤯In this vide we are going to share the surprising things that need to be in place, for your teaching to be effective! And GOOD NEWS: None of them have anything to do with your actual teaching! This is part 5 of the 2024 Youth Ministry [on-demand] Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/081

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/gqOPjD5hN-g

//7 CHECKPOINTS
https://www.christianbook.com/the-seven-checkpoints-for-student-leaders/andy-stanley/9781439189337/pd/189337?utm_source=google&kw=161716281504&mt=&dv=c&event=PPCSRC&p=1186432&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkKqsBhC3ARIsAEEjuJhcSbVs_Wbqnq8WgKR-HbmYbSVDHHSUTO1p-Np1urnuM_Yt6U5dstMaAjwvEALw_wcB

//ATTENDANCE CONUNDRUM
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/22/more-houses-of-worship-are-returning-to-normal-operations-but-in-person-attendance-is-unchanged-since-fall/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rel%20-%2022-03-22%20worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0d3j0000112o9deae

//HYBRID MINISTRY E-BOOK
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

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

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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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️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

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

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.

Episode 080: 🛑 Stop Posting Church Announcements on Social Media

Nick Clason — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0600

⚡ [FREE] Crush Social Media This New Year ⚡

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

2024 [FREE] Youth Ministry Masterclass on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

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

DESCRIPTION
😫 Are you tired of seeing church announcements flood your social media feeds? It's time to rethink this strategy and take a closer look at the potential hazards it poses.

📹In this video, we delve deep into the reasons why posting church announcements on social media might not be the wisest choice.

👍But, don’t worry! We’ll show you exactly what to do! And how to not lose your life to it! Especially if you follow our time management tips, which is a part of the 2024 Youth Ministry [on-demand] Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/080

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/slB0Rmf_X0c

PURPOSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
//OPUS.PRO [1 CLICK VIRAL SHORTS SOLUTION]
https://youtu.be/TiW4ooQpAvo?si=W_4pCZZbZmUnzsB9

//METRICOOL
https://metricool.com/

POST YOUR MESSAGES ON YOUTUBE
//[FREE] E-BOOK
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

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

//YOUVERSION LIVE EVENTS
https://my.bible.com/events

TAKE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE NEXT LEVEL
//OPUS.PRO [1 CLICK VIRAL SHORTS SOLUTION]
https://youtu.be/TiW4ooQpAvo?si=W_4pCZZbZmUnzsB9

//SONLIFE
https://www.sonlife.com/

//[FREE] E-BOOK
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

IDEA #2: TELEPATHY
//ADOBE PREMIERE PRESETS
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis

IDEA #3: RANK 'EM
//DYM RANK 'EM RESOURCES
Christmas: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em%3A-christmas-edition/christmas-games-9126.html
Fall: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em---fall-edition/holiday-or-seasonal/fall-8962.html

IDEA #6: EMOJI PHRASEOLOGY
//MY FAVORITE 9 DYM PRODUCTS
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

IDEA #8: SPIRITUAL PRACTICE VIDEOS
//SPIRITUAL PRACTICE VIDEOS
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/spiritual-practice-videos/social-media/instagram-8804.html

WHAT TO DO ABOUT FACEBOOK?
//CANVA PRO FOR [FREE!]
https://youtu.be/g0FQWvKjP_E?si=D6jJLxEdkEy9z0FV

WHAT TO DO ABOUT INSTAGRAM?
//BUDGET GRAPHIC DESIGN EDITORS
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

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

😨 "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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:06 Stop Doing this on Social Media
01:06-04:14 What is the purpose of social media?
04:14-07:04 Post Your Messages to YouTube
07:04-11:42 Taking your social media to the next level
11:42-12:12 Idea #1: Drafts
12:12-13:45 Idea #2: Telepathy
13:45-14:04 Idea #3: Blind Rankings
14:04-14:20 Idea #4: Know it or Nah
14:20-14:33 Idea #5: Staff Videos
14:33-15:39 Idea #6: Emoji Phraseology
15:39-15:44 Idea #7: Sermon Clips
15:44-16:35 Idea #8: Spiritual Practice
16:35-16:46 Where to Post all these videos?
16:46-17:34 What to do about Facebook?
17:34-19:27 What to do about Instagram?

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Summer camp, fall retreat D. Now your next outreach experience, the reality is there are always things to do. You're always trying to get students to come to you. You're always trying to get people to fill and populate your next church events. So naturally, what do we do? Well, we need to put it on the church website. We need to make sure that it gets listed in the church bulletin. We need to add it to the pre-roll before the service and post it to social media. Stop it. No, seriously, stop it. Stop posting your announcements to social media. Don't do it. Don't do it. We're tempted always to post our announcements to social media because we think it's another outlet, another strategy, another place to inform people. But the reality is nobody wants that on their social media feeds. I hear you. You're like, yeah, but what else should I do? Nobody listens, dude. I get it. Okay, but let's look at it. What should we be doing on social media?

Nick Clason (01:07):
So stop posting your announcements on social media. I saw this reel the other day about this guy talking about the Red Bull social media experience, and he said, red Bull is crushing it. He said, what are the local pizzerias and restaurants in your town doing? People are not getting on social media and thinking like, man, I wonder what's on the menu today. Because if you look at a pizzeria on social media, you know that they're going to be posting or you know that they're going to be serving pizza. That's just a part of the experience. And so he said, what Red Bull's doing on social media, we know that Red Bull serves Red Bull energy drinks, but what their primary goal on social media is entertainment. So that's why people get on social media. They get on social media to be entertained. Can we as a church adopt some of those strategies not forever and forsaking some of the spiritual components that can come about on social media, but can we do that on social media?

Nick Clason (02:08):
And the fact is, yeah, actually social media has ushered in a new era with the discovery platforms, with short form video based and videos are still king. And you know what you can do? You can actually take clips and snippets of your message and use this strategy right here. It's linked at the top of the video and this completely free tool Opus Pro. Check out in that video link in this description, link in that video description. But the fact of the matter is you can use tools out there. You can use AI to help you and aid you if you're not a great video editor, if you don't know how to clip things up on social. But the fact is, you might even be thinking, well, what am I supposed to do? How can I post things there? There's a lot of services out there to post things on the feed.

Nick Clason (02:52):
So you may be scheduling your lock-in post. You may be scheduling your church announcement post. You may be scheduling your summer camp. Stop doing those things. You can create videos, you can create moments of entertainment, and you can use a posting service if you want. Linked Below is my experience with a posting service called Metrical. That's probably who I would recommend. I do still like to just post everything I do live. I find that the algorithms prefer that and that things just perform better from a views and metrics standpoint. But if you don't have time for that and you're like, there's no way I could do that, then check out Metrical. It's completely free for most up to a certain number of posts and it's worth it. But you never want to get on a feed. Think about your own habits. You never just want to get on a feed that's just littered with, come to this event, come to this event, come to this event, come to this.

Nick Clason (03:47):
That's boring. And you know what? Your social media probably reflects that. If all you're doing is posting announcements, you're probably only getting a single digit number of likes because the reality is that's not what people are looking for when they get on social media. And so I know you got a lot to announce, you got a lot to get out there, but social media is not the place. So what should we be doing? Well, let's check that out. So churches, youth pastors, regardless of where you are in this on the org chart at your church, what should you be doing? Well, number one, start posting long form to YouTube. And now when I say that if you have live streaming capabilities in your room and you don't have time to sit down direct to camera, then go ahead and post your live streams to YouTube.

Nick Clason (04:38):
But if you don't, I don't. I'm a youth pastor and we are in our very own room, our very own space, and our room is not outfitted for live streaming capabilities. So we actually sit down very similar to what I'm doing here direct to camera. I have a teleprompter and I do deliver a message there. Now, that entire strategy is laid out completely for you, for free right here in my 100% completely free ebook. But that is the baseline. That's the basis for all my social media, everything else sort of branches off of there. So all of our messages that we produce and that we perform, everything that we produce in the room, we also then go ahead and do it directly on YouTube. So pre film your messages, it gives you two strategic advantages. Number one, if you don't have live streaming capability, it gives you a way to film it that is good, helpful, beneficial, looks good, direct to camera.

Nick Clason (05:32):
You can do most of that for under a hundred dollars. That's also linked below in the show notes with just a cell phone camera and a few little pieces of gear. But then from there, what you can do is you can take those messages, post them to YouTube. You also get an opportunity to practice your message. So then when you are standing up live in the room in front of a bunch of students, it's not the first time that you're looking at that material. You have done it before. You have delivered it before, once you've pre-filed, done direct to camera. The one thing that I love about that is in YouTube, they have a description thing, just like me, a lot of things down to the description in this video. Also over at hybridministry.xyz/080 But you can do the same kind of concept.

Nick Clason (06:16):
You can paste a next steps form. And so for every single one of your messages, you can push students towards a next steps form. We like to use the you version events, live events for in the room. Students can follow along, take notes, read scripture, but we also post the link to that in every single video. So if they're watching on a laptop, then they can sit down, they can scroll through that on their phone, they can take notes, they can engage with the Bible on their phone right in front of them. So you can link certain things. And then by the way, hey, if you are announcing summer camp, you can be like, Hey, summer camp registration link in the description. You don't have to make it some static boring graphic post. You can actually weave it into the rest of your strategy. But then dovetailing off of your long form YouTube videos is this next piece that you definitely don't want to miss.

Nick Clason (07:05):
So after YouTube video, the next thing I recommend that you do is that you post shorts, reels, tiktoks to your feeds. And the good news is all four of the major platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook if you want to, it's really easy to link with your Instagram and TikTok are all asking for similar content. So what you can do now on social media for the first time in a lot of years is you can create one piece of content for one platform, but you can spread it across all fours. You can post the same thing to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Facebook Ourto for example, I posted these this week. This week, a couple weeks leading up to Christmas when I'm filming this. You're going to get this in the new year, but we do thing, and I'm going to detail, it's actually detailed right here.

Nick Clason (07:53):
I'll completely free my ebook, but we're going to go through nine ideas that you can do to start doing entertainment based things on your social medias and stop just posting announcements. One of the things we do are drafts stole this, saw this on someone's TikTok somewhere. So we were doing drafting Christmas movies across all four platforms. We had on TikTok, we had 383 views. We had on YouTube, 280 views we had on Instagram, 214 views. And then on Facebook we had 175 views, which totaled 1052 views across all four platforms. Those aren't great numbers by the way either. That's just very standard. I picked the second most recent post that I posted just to give you a good example of a real time strategy idea. I'm not trying to highlight my best one or anything like that, right? But here's the question. Would you like for your content to get in front of a thousand people probably, right?

Nick Clason (08:46):
And that wasn't great. We've had posts that have hit 13,000 on Instagram, 27,001 time we did a football draft. So we've had way, way bigger success. But then that was a entertainment based one. Also in the same week, we've posted a spiritual based one that one did not do as well. And this is actually an underperformer in my opinion. And we've had ones that do similar to the draft response in around those numbers on all the four platforms. But we had on TikTok, we had 224 views. We had 211 on Instagram, we had only 15 on Facebook, which is pretty low. And then 1 42 on YouTube, which is also relatively low, but still that total to 592. I know for me that feels low, but we don't have 592 students or people come to our youth ministry program. So we post fun content. We also post spiritual content, and then that's anchored underneath the baseline by our long form YouTube video.

Nick Clason (09:48):
And what's crazy is that Opus Pro, the message clip that came through Opus Pro. And so you'll notice there's a little overlay that says, watch the full video on Cross Creek students YouTube channel that is just a preset that I made. And every single one of our videos spits out with that little watermark. I can change it, I can customize, I can do. The stats aren't crazy, but you should subscribe because this is actually part of the 2024 Youth Pastor Masterclass. We're right dead in the middle. If you subscribe and if you hit the bell, you'll get notified when the next video drops. But I like to think about it like this or I want, but I like to think of it like my neighbor. I want to share the gospel with my neighbor. I want to tell them about Jesus. But every single time I have a conversation with my neighbor, I'm not sitting down and telling them about Jesus.

Nick Clason (10:34):
I'm working the relationship. I'm having a conversation. I grew up in church. I grew up in a ministry called Sun Life, and they have a thing called spiritual, CPR, cultivate, plant Reap. And really the cultivate stage is just build the friendship. Plant is like sprinkle in seeds of spiritual conversations in the gospel and then reap is like present the gospel and ask them for a decision to follow Jesus. Yes or no. And a lot of times on social media, we take the approach of reap, ask them for a spiritual decision, ask them to respond to the gospel, yes or no every single time as opposed to trying to cultivate our audience as opposed to trying to plant little seeds of curiosity, spiritual moments, things like that. So here are ideas, things that I do in my own personal context. It's all outlined here. Am I completely free?

Nick Clason (11:23):
Ebook? You should definitely check it out if you haven't yet. But it will help you take your social media from being boring and dumb and announcement based to entertainment based and personality driven. Not just your personality, but students, other volunteer leaders, other staff that you might have. So these are things that we do. We do a thing called a draft, and that's what you just saw the results from. But two people sit down and then they just draft things under a certain category. We've done Christmas movies, we've done potatoes, we've done burger places, we've done Christmas songs, we've done Thanksgiving food, we've done Halloween Candy, we've done Avengers, we've done Blue Characters. Literally anything you can think of. One person next person, one person next person. The only caveat is you can pick anything you want, but if it's already been taken, it's kind of off the board.

Nick Clason (12:12):
The next thing we do is a fun little game called Telepathy or Wavelength or nsync or just guess the number. And two people sit down and one person's thinking of a number, the other person's asking them certain categories, and then the person that has the number in their brain, they're telling the other person their answers from that category based on their number. So for example, if I'm thinking of the number one and you ask me for a day of the week, I'm going to say Monday. And then if you say food, I'm going to say Tomatoes. Okay? And so then at the end of it, you ask four things, four different things. So day of the week, food, movie, Avenger, and then you give 'em all. And then at the end, the other person, I was asking the categories, they say, are you thinking number one?

Nick Clason (12:57):
And if they got it right, they got it right. If they got it wrong, they got it wrong. The one thing I love about this game is we intro it like this. Hey, we're playing this game. The number's going to be right here on the screen. The number pops in on the screen. You can edit that in an editor like Adobe Premier Pro, I got completely free presets. Link down below if you want some of those that will do animations like this and like that, and rotate in, rotate out all those things, all the things you just saw on the screen. If you're not watching on YouTube, all those things are in the link in the description. Go grab the free presets. But if not, you can do that on your phone in a phone editor like TikTok or Cap Cut. But you can say, Hey, the number's on the screen, close your eyes if you don't play along.

Nick Clason (13:37):
Alright, here we go. And then that person can open their eyes and they can watch and they can actually try to guess the number. So it's actually engaging the person on the other side of the phone. I like to do blind rankings. TikTok has a blind ranking filter, so you can blind rank all kinds of things. Disney movies, Disney characters, and a blind rank is just you're ranking them in a one through 10 or one through five order without knowing what's coming next. I also have some examples of that on Download Youth Ministry, a link to that in just a second. I like to do these things called Know it or Nah, so you've probably heard it where they play a little five second clip of a song on TikTok. Just find those audios on TikTok. And then you choose one side of the room.

Nick Clason (14:14):
So I'll get four or five people if they know it, they go to this side. If they don't, they go to that side. We'll do staff video. So we'll have our staff participate in certain things we were just giving away for our Christmas party. Craig Cash, our senior pastor's name is Craig. We were giving away Craig Cash, and so we did the Craig Cash Olympics, we did all kinds of Christmas type things. One of my favorites is a game I have on DYM called Emoji Phrase theology. People just trying to guess the emoji phrase. And I'll just sit down or have a student sit down or a leader sit down or walk around and quiz students, Hey, what's this emoji phrase saying? What's this camp emoji phrase saying, what's this Christmas emoji phrase saying? Was this back to school emoji phrase saying, and I'll clip those in.

Nick Clason (14:54):
So I take a game that's already created, and instead of just doing the kind of static standard screen-based graphics, we customize it to our own space. Link down below are my favorite nine DYM products that I have. Several of them are hybrid based. Several of them don't just focus on the screen only or digital, but it's a melding together of the two. And you can take that next layer to the next level, right? Like my emoji phrase, theology. There's a social media component, but you can take it to the next level and customize it with a host, asking people the answers to those questions. And just some simple video editing on the backside, whether that be in a software like Adobe Premiere Pro, or you can do it on TikTok or in Canva, or not Canva, but Cap Cut. I always get Canva and Cap cut mixed up.

Nick Clason (15:40):
You can use the video clips out of Opus Pro like I was talking about. I got some spiritual practice videos on Download Youth Ministry. One of my favorites is someone's scrolling through TikTok and you just point to the screen right here and it says, stay or scroll, read the Bible with me. Point, point, point, point, point, point, point. Wait a second. And you say, all right, thanks for staying. Let's read the Bible together. And you read a passage of scripture right there on social media. That's all you do. It's super basic, super simple, but it has a great response because what you're doing then is you're cultivating that relationship. You may get those people with the draft or the instinct telepathy game or the blind ranking or the know it or not back and forth, and then you're like, Hey, let's do some spiritual stuff together.

Nick Clason (16:19):
Let's memorize scripture. Let's read the Bible, let's do a prayer. All those types of things. And you can do a lot of that stuff, especially with the bedrock of your messages. Long form video, you can do a lot of that stuff on Opus Pro. Saves you hours. It saves me hours every single week. So continuing on our strategy, you can post all those types of videos to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Facebook. But what about Facebook groups? Well, let's check it out. You should definitely have Facebook groups. You should have a Facebook page also because a Facebook page is where those things dump into, but then have a group associated with that. If you're a youth pastor, my only strategy that I recommend on Facebook is a Facebook parents group. That's mostly where they are. You can post things like car ride questions, and you can use Canva Pro.

Nick Clason (17:06):
It's completely free for churches. It's also linked below. We did an entire video on it, so you can go check that out in the description, but you can just create square graphics for your parents to talk about stuff with their students on the way home. And that's just a great discipleship strategy. If you're a church communications person, you should probably have a little bit more active Facebook group. But for a youth pastor, most students aren't on Facebook, but most parents are. And so that's where the strategy comes in. It's for the parents. Lastly, on Instagram, you got the feed. You also got stories on stories. The ultimate goal, I would say, is to engage with your people. So repost things if they tag you for sure. You can also post engagement style questions. What's your favorite Christmas movie? What's the best Halloween candy? What's your New Year's resolution?

Nick Clason (17:53):
What's one thing you're going to be doing this weekend using only emojis? Tell us what you did this last week. Stuff like that. Engage with your audience. A lot of times, I'll take a reel that I post, so I don't post every single one of those reels to the feed, though that option has recently turned off, so I have to post it, then go back later and take it off the profile grid. I'm sure there's a setting I'm missing, but nonetheless, I'll sometimes then share the reels that didn't also get shared to the feed into a story, and that's just a way to do engagement. And then I may throw a question sticker like a slider bar or a question or a quiz sticker or something like that. Just engagement. That's my goal in stories. And then on the main feed, just post photos of your people and post recap photos from a Wednesday night, from a Sunday morning, from a Sunday night.

Nick Clason (18:36):
Brady Sheer is doing these carousel based education, entertainment based carousel posts where ask the question and he answers it. They are money, and I think that they are here to stay, and you don't need a lot of graphical work to do some of those things. You can do something simple and easy and basic like that simply on Canva. Or even simply maybe in the Instagram stories editor, we have a complete playlist where we look at budget graphic editors, if that's something you're interested in. It's also linked below. But finally, speaking of education, that's one of the main ways that we help disciple and teach our students about Jesus and help them take meaningful next steps towards him, which is the next video in this 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass video linked right here on the screen. We'll talk to you next time as we're making discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 079: 🤷 Youth Pastor: Event Coordinators? or Disciple-Makers?

Nick Clason — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0600

⚡ [FREE] Crush Social Media This New Year ⚡

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

2024 [FREE] Youth Ministry Masterclass on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

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

DESCRIPTION
📈 How do we get more people to show up to our events?
How do we grow our group?
How do we attract and retain teens?

57% of American Church Goers, according to Pew Research, don’t even attend church once a month!!

👌In this episode we’re going to explore 3 key shifts in our thinking
⚙️And I have the ultimate tool to accessing and resourcing people/students in the digital age.

Subscribe to our channel and don't miss any more videos from the 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass FREE on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

========================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/079

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/EzhYluEKZ_I

SHIFT #1 FROM PRODUCTION TO ACCESS
//PEW RESEARCH ARTICLES ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/22/more-houses-of-worship-are-returning-to-normal-operations-but-in-person-attendance-is-unchanged-since-fall/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rel%20-%2022-03-22%20worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0d3j0000112o9deae

//TERRY PARKMAN
https://www.terryparkman.com/

//GEN ALPHA DATA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHpeDaLS3oo

//PRO CHURCH TOOLS
https://prochurchtools.com/

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

SHIFT #2 FROM PERFORMANCE TO ENGAGEMENT

//EVERY YOUTH MINISTRY NEEDS A GOOD DIGITAL PRESENCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxepdu4iiM

SHIFT #3 FROM QUANTITY TO COMMUNITY

//THE QUESTIONS OF BELONGING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHpeDaLS3oo

//WORLD'S GREATEST DONUT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ryhkIRyDb4

//MASTER YOUR TIME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlS1kWcQBS8

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

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

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

😨 "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

//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

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

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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:21 Event Coordinator? Or Disciple-Maker?
01:21-07:18 SHIFT #1 from PRODUCTION to ACCESS
07:18-09:20 SHIFT #2 from PERFORMANCE to ENGAGEMENT
09:20-16:14 SHIFT #3 from QUANTITY to COMMUNITY

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Youth pastors. How do we get more people to show up to our events? How do we grow the size of our youth groups? How do we attract and retain teenagers? See, all these questions are common questions. They're things that we're all facing at least at some level. And regardless of if you think that the attendance debate matters or not, we talked about it in our very last video linked up here in our playlist, in our youth ministry 2024 masterclass that we are going through completely free all here online on YouTube. Love to have you subscribe, check it out, and make sure you don't miss another one. We talked about the church attendance conundrum because 54% of American Christians are not attending church according to Pew Research at least one time per month. So in this episode, I want to talk to you about three key shifts that are going to help us reach the next generation as we explore this question.

Nick Clason (00:50):
Are we in the event making business or are we in the disciple making business? And I also have the ultimate tool that I believe can help you become more accessible in resourcing both your people and your students in this new found digital age. Like I said, we'd love to have you subscribe, like leave a comment, leave a rating, leave a review. All of those things help us get found and make sure that you can get the very next episode as soon as it drops episode 80 in our 2024 Youth Ministry masterclass. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, everyone, my name's Nick Clason. I'm a youth pastor in DFW Dallas Fort Worth. Been in youth ministry now being January of 2024. Mark's my 13th year in youth ministry and I've most recently went to a conference with the Gen Z guru himself. Terry Parkman. If you don't know Terry, he's amazing, but he talked about some of these shifts, so I just want to kind of elaborate on them and kick some of them around a little bit more.

Nick Clason (01:46):
But he talked about the difference that Generation Z and now subsequently generation Alpha, who if you didn't see in our last episode, we classified them being born somewhere between 2010 and 2018, probably more than 2012 rage, which is what Pew research kind of settles on as the origin date of generation alpha. Nonetheless, Terry Parkman specifically talking about Gen Z, talks about the shift in thinking from Gen Z who thinks more in a digital age, digital mindset versus all of US millennials and older Gen x boomers and so on and so forth, who are more raised in a industrial aged way of thinking and industrial age way frankly of living. And so what the first shift that is important that he talks about is we need to shift from an industrial minded way of production, which is an industrial value to one of access. The way that we talk about it is just simply build access points onto your ministry, so an industrial way of thinking and the production value production kind of mindset.

Nick Clason (02:54):
Think about seeker style churches back in the early nineties or early two thousands where you may open with a secular song, one that's familiar, one that's relatable. You may try to go for relevant lighting, you may really try to put the entire screws down on the production, the value of how important production is, and that a really well-produced thing will draw out consumers, it's almost like the mentality if we build it, they will come. It also comes down to simply how much can we produce the amount of production value that we can add? The more production value that we can add, the better, the greater, the higher the number, the more that we can produce, the more that we can attract. That's an industrial way of thinking. Meanwhile, a digital way of thinking, they don't necessarily Gen Z Gen and Alpha and the generations that are coming on behind, they don't necessarily want those things.

Nick Clason (03:49):
They're looking more for access. They're wondering, do I fit here? Can I gain access to this place and how can I let my gifts be utilized and flourish and shine here? Honestly, one of my number one pet peeves in churches is when we from a volunteer aspect say things like, we need you to do our job. That is not enticing in any way, shape, or form, and it's especially not enticing to the next generation. What I think they otherwise might more importantly, more interestingly want to hear is, Hey, we want you to shine here and how can we partner with you to make a difference in this world? It goes from US centric to them centric, and I get it. I'm hearing you scream on the other side, but that's not what a disciple of Jesus does. Correct. However, how are we ever going to be relevant and make any sort of inroads with the next generation?

Nick Clason (04:46):
If the way in which we posture ourselves is fundamentally and vehemently different than them, are we asking them to acquiesce to us as opposed to us finding ways that it's not that big of a deal to make a subtle shift? Because in the same way, we can still ask Gen Z and Gen Alpha to serve, we are just making it them centric instead of US centric. And again, you might be screaming that they shouldn't be them centric, but isn't it just as Unbiblical and Christlike for us to be US centric, organization centric, pastor centric in the land of access points. Our church right now, honestly, probably right now as I'm recording this on a random night in December, we have these things, these events, and they're amazing and they get talked about and they get promoted and they're all over social, and someone asked me how do I sign up for it and do you know what?

Nick Clason (05:37):
I said? I work there at the church, I don't actually have anything to do with it, and obviously I'm not there right now. I said, I have no idea. We have these events. There's sort of this lore about them, but how to actually access it. It's confusing, and I frankly haven't tried, so that's probably on me, but point of it is, is your church accessible? How easy to navigate is your website. I love what Brady Sheer and all of them at Pro Church Tools up in Canada say all the time and say, make your website, be a one stop shop. Don't for one thing, go sign up via the bulletin for the other thing. Send an email for the third thing, head to the website and for the fourth thing, find someone in the lobby. You never know what to do, where to go, and so only the most loyal and only the person with the most headstrong sort of stubbornness is going to ever actually find anything out.

Nick Clason (06:29):
Anybody else who comes upon any sort of roadblock or opposition, all of a sudden it's just really easy for them to crumble. And here's the fact, I don't believe I have all the answers, but one of the ways in which we are trying to create more access points in our ministry is through our digital strategy, which I have completely laid out in my 100% completely free ebook free for you. Grab the link, go download it. All I need is your name. All I need is your email and that's it. It's yours to use. It's my strategy that I've used to grow YouTube channel in a year from zero subscribers all the way up to almost 400 subscribers. It might be even past 400 by the time that this video actually drops, it's completely laid out. It's basically my social media masterclass and guess what I gave it and I'm giving it to you for free, and I would love to encourage you to just grab it, try it, implement it, and check it all out.

Nick Clason (07:18):
Shift number two is we need to shift from performance based and industrial way of thinking to more engagement based. So if you think about an industrial way of thinking where performance is king, think about the best, the prettiest, the nicest, the smelliest people on stage with a good swath of diversity and all those things, or just even in youth ministry, we've all sort of had the basis of like, let's just have some fun, and if the kids have fun, then they'll definitely want to come back. If we perform really well for them and we don't screw up, then they'll be like, man, that place was so good. I just want to come back. That's an industrial way of thinking, and here's the problem. If you are a youth pastor and you're my age or you're a millennial, that's the way that you think because that's the way and that's the age in which you were raised in.

Nick Clason (08:03):
To think that that's what is valued, but the next generation that's more in a digital age, they're not worried about performance. They want to know, am I able to engage with this? When it's all about performance, think about a conveyor belt and a factory. The way that that goes is if there's a certain part in the conveyor belt that's causing a backup, what do we do? We just stick another person in there. We don't care what that person does, who that person is, what that person can do for us or our organization. We just want to know, can that person keep the conveyor belt from stopping? Can that person keep the performance going? But a digital way of thinking, a digital shift when you go from performance to more engagement based thinking is you're wondering, Hey, how can we create good content that students want to engage with?

Nick Clason (08:48):
Which is why I link right down below or right up here on the screen, whichever one, I'm not sure if I've used my card yet or not in this video, but every youth ministry needs a good digital presence. It's my full YouTube strategy. It's my full social media strategy. It's the one that's tied to my ebook. It's the video explaining the ebook if you want to go check that out. Again, I don't have all the answers. It's just my way to sort of attempt to try and engage more with our students who are different, who are digital thinkers, who are Gen Z and coming quick behind them, generation alpha. The third shift is we need to switch from a value of quantity to a value of community, an industrial way of thinking. We are entirely built in most churches for quantity. Think about it. If you have a church with auditorium style seating, the goal of that room is to get the most amount of quantity of people in to listen to one captivating speaker, wax eloquent for a week, and listen, honestly, no shade thrown.

Nick Clason (09:48):
Most pastors, you're really good at your job, you're good at crafting sermons and you're good at delivering sermons, but the fact of the matter is, while you may be awesome at it, that's just not what's as highly valued in our world, especially in the world of digital. With audio, podcasts, YouTube podcast, people can listen to audio books, sermons. They can listen to the best preachers in the entire world. Again, no offense to you at the drop of a hat, instantly binging them, never actually running out of content. That's how accessible all of this stuff is, and so when people come to church, they don't want to just be another number kind of filtered into the auditorium to look at the back of someone's seat. That's why I believe link down below in the show notes. In this episode, we talked about why churches are dying.

Nick Clason (10:32):
I think churches are not adapting to the new issues and the new way of thinking that this next generation is so adamant about, and again, that generation, this next generation, this digital way of generation, they're not looking for a room to come and consume some more content. They're looking for community. And so if our rooms are built for quantity, thus they're not then built at least optimally for community. I mean, I know I worked at a church one time that we had Longwood ews and they were bolted to the ground. We couldn't do anything about those things, and even if they weren't bolted to the ground, they were heavy as sin. Man, I could not lift one of those things because once we finally did try to lift them, I was like, dang, who got these in here? It's like a five man job. The goal was get these things in here, never to be moved again.

Nick Clason (11:22):
This room is for one purpose and one purpose only, and the purpose that most younger people are looking for is not that. A dangerous way I believe of thinking is that we often value a Christian culture more than the Christ of the culture, and so therefore, I believe that what we're trying to do is we're trying to force people into a way of thinking, and when community trump's performance, we actually get a messy, authentic, real interaction with other believers who love Jesus and are trying to pursue and follow him. And so in a digital way of thinking, I think people who value community are looking for asking questions like, where do I belong? And are these people at my church? Are they my people? The students, they're asking those questions and they may, like we said in our last video and this masterclass in video two, this is not video three, they may be asking, are these people my people?

Nick Clason (12:15):
And they may be coming to your youth ministry, and just because they're there doesn't necessarily mean that they're engaging in religious practice. And it also doesn't necessarily mean that they're there because they want to be, because almost 50% of no, it's 65% of students come to church with at least one parent. That's where they're coming to church. They're not coming to church. They love God. They're not coming to church. They love you. They're not coming to church. They love your youth ministry. They're coming to church. They're coming to church with their parents, but if they can find a real captivating community that they can't say no to, they're not going anywhere. So it's not about what you produce, it's about the community that's available to them. We live now with the very first global generation. Students spend on average, shockingly five to eight hours on their phones screens per day.

Nick Clason (13:06):
The church world was built for consumers, and what's happening now is in that generation what's being internalized, they want to find a place to externalize it. And so one of the ideas that I have, again, I don't have all the answers, I don't know if this is a good idea or not. We did it in our space. It seemed to work well. It's a hybrid event. It's called the World's Greatest Donut, completely free event guide right here. You can click it, and it's just an opportunity to engage with students beyond your program times because I think a lot of times what we try to do is we try to get as many people, as much quantity into a room and call that success. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to expand the relationship beyond just the one time per week, and that's what this event is all built on.

Nick Clason (13:46):
It's a one-time event for an in-person event, however it lives on for an entire month. Not only live in the room, but it also lives live on your social media. That's the in-person versus the digital creating a hybrid moment together. Hey, the ultimate tool that I teased at the beginning of this video is, and I've already said it, it's my ebook. It's my full digital strategy. The fact is I don't have it all together, but the way in which you can utilize that is you have to become a master of your time, which is a video that's linked right here on the screen. It was a couple of videos ago, and the next video in this playlist is how to implement a good social media strategy where you're not simply just posting announcements. Click either one of those and we would love to see you on the other side. And as always, my friends stay hybrid.

Episode 078: 📈 Youth Group Growth: Reaching Gen Z & Gen Alpha

Nick Clason — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 04:00:00 -0600

⚡ [FREE] Social Media Mastery Awaits! Get Your Hands on Our Free One-Month Ebook ⚡

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

2024 [FREE] Youth Ministry Masterclass on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg

Try Sidekick Beta!!
https://app.sidekick.tv/auth/create?code=NickClason

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

DESCRIPTION
📈 Youth Ministry Growth and Attendance

🔢 Do number really matter?

😤 It’s an agonizing pursuit that all of us as youth pastors and leaders are constantly feel the tension.

Whether we buy into the debate or not, pressure is real.

Maybe pressure from your senior pastor
Maybe pressure from other parents
Maybe even pressure from yourself

And furthermore, according to Pew Research, one in five church goeers in 2022 participated in virtual church once a month.
However, 57% did not attend in person or watch online per month.
Not just anyone in general.. But Americans who TYPICALLY attend services.

How do we reach Generation Z or Generation Alpha students?
Especially in light of this new reality?

Subscribe to our channel and don't miss any more videos from the 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass FREE on YouTube

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

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

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

😨 "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

//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

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

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

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/078

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/BHpeDaLS3oo

//PEW RESEARCH ARTICLES ON CHURCH ATTENDANCE
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/22/more-houses-of-worship-are-returning-to-normal-operations-but-in-person-attendance-is-unchanged-since-fall/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rel%20-%2022-03-22%20worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0d3j0000112o9deae

//DATA ON GEN ALPHA
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/generation-alpha-guide

//DR. ELMORE'S BOOK
https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Unfiltered-Challenges-Anxious-Population-ebook/dp/B07YQ9XT8N/ref=sr_1_2?hvadid=580669290679&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9027211&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8887138684661202423&hvtargid=kwd-831658052586&hydadcr=24309_13537702&keywords=gen+z+unfiltered&qid=1701783263&sr=8-2

//TEEN CHURCH ATTENDANCE PATTERNS
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/09/10/u-s-teens-take-after-their-parents-religiously-attend-services-together-and-enjoy-family-rituals/

//TEENS AND THEIR PARENTS
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/09/10/10-key-findings-about-the-religious-lives-of-u-s-teens-and-their-parents/

//4 CHAIR DISCIPLING
https://www.amazon.com/Chair-Discipling-What-Jesus-Calls/dp/0802418813/ref=asc_df_0802418813/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=266167140404&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13879828523234723627&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027211&hvtargid=pla-557460291481&psc=1&mcid=c72abb3a6997315793653dc9cbd8d965&gclid=CjwKCAiApuCrBhAuEiwA8VJ6Jry6x6cwpQRcpt1hnTOOVAIdS6r9rmBPSQleT8QwxqgYzqAeu6RyuBoCFo4QAvD_BwE

//GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT FOR A HYBRID STRATEGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlS1kWcQBS8

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-02:05 Do numbers matter?
02:05-05:30 Who are Generation Z and Generation Alpha?
05:30-07:13 Attendance Finding 1: Teens share religion with parents
07:13-10:48 Attendance Finding 2: Teens go to service, but don't engage in religious practices
10:48-16:22 Attendance Finding 3: Teens attend church with one or both of their parents

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Youth ministry growth in attendance in the age old Questions do numbers really matter? Here's what I know. I was one time called by a church that said, Hey, just a couple weeks ago in our church of multiple thousands, we've had only eight students show up. So whether you buy into the debate or not, the pressure is always there. Maybe pressure from your senior pastor, maybe pressure from youth parents, maybe even internal pressure that you just put on yourself. And what's even crazier is according to Pew Research, one in five, churchgoers back in 2022, participated in a virtual church service at least one time, which is a good thing. I mean, heck, we're in the hybrid ministry podcast, you know what I'm saying? However, 57% did not attend church in person or watch online during the course of at least one month, which means greater than 50%, not just of anyone in general of churchgoers are not typically attending church services.

Nick Clason (01:05):
So how in the world with that as the framework for church attendance and the way that youth ministry attendance is going, how in the world do we even reach Gen Z and Gen Alpha students, especially in light of this brand new reality? We're going to be sharing in this episode three key findings about teens and their attendance trends. And furthermore, I'm going to share with you one way that I as a youth pastor am shifting my thinking and maybe you can also shift your thinking about reaching this next generation. And finally, I have a bonus tip that I think is going to actually be the number one game changer in this entire conversation. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. You're in youth ministry, or if you're just a church leader and you're at least overseeing at some level some capacity, generation Z generation alpha, it's important because we're talking about youth group attendance and it's important to understand who we're actually talking about.

Nick Clason (02:01):
So Generation Z and Generation Alpha are kind of the two generations in play in this conversation. In fact, I have a video linked at the top of the screen. Go ahead and check it out where we did a deep dive into Generation Alpha and started to explore them. And quite frankly, it's one of the only videos I know that's out there about Generation Alpha. The data is still really new and still really young because the fact of the matter is that according to exploding topics.com link in the description, if you're watching on YouTube, you might be able to see some of these things online. If you're not watching on YouTube, you should definitely check that out. But Gen Alpha is made up of people born between 2010 and 2025. Wait, what? 2025? Yeah, you heard that, right? They're not even born yet. Okay. And so the fact of the matter is that that data actually is in opposition to some other experts such as Tim Elmore, who by the way, I have a chart right here on screen.

Nick Clason (02:53):
Again, if you're not watching on YouTube, go grab it or link in the show notes. It's from his book, generation Z Unfiltered, the Nine Hidden Challenges of Facing the Most Anxious Population of All Time. This chart is absolute goal, but you'll notice that he draws the line for the end of generation Z at 2018. So we have exploding topics at 2010. We have Tim Elmore at 2018, all of that to be said, Elmore's book is a little bit dated, and so I think that more research and just time we've honed in a little bit and gotten a little bit closer. And so while this chart is gold, you should definitely look at it and inspect it and learn a little bit more. Elmore doesn't talk about Gen Alpha. They're not on his radar yet when he wrote the book. And so according to this chart, pew research draws the line for Gen Alpha at 2012.

Nick Clason (03:40):
But again, the reason why any of this matters, not to bog you down with dates and things like that is that if you're a youth pastor or if you're in church leadership, what you need to understand is that the conversation we're having is like, do we take Elmore's date or do we take Pew Research's Day or do we take exploding topics day? Whatever it is, the reason this matters is because this is a difference between is that kid in kid's ministry or is that kid in youth ministry? And if we're talking about youth group numbers and youth group attendance, we need to understand Gen Alpha, but we also need to understand Gen Z. The kicker on this is that Gen Z, really the youngest Gen Z that we have is going to be freshmen, sophomores in high school, and now after that they're waving on up, they're in college already and they are entering the workforce.

Nick Clason (04:23):
So if you are not a youth pastor, but just like a regular pastor listening, no longer is Gen Z, something that the youth pastor needs to try and understand and uncover this matters for you. This is important for you as a pastor. And so if you've gotten value so far out of this video, I would love to encourage you to like and subscribe and hit the notification bell because we're actually in the middle of a series right now, the 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass, this is section number two in that class. The rest of them are going to be dropped in the playlist that's linked down below in the description. So if you have not seen every single video, go back and check out video number one. We talked about time management, but without any further ado here, let's dive into the three key findings about Generation Z, generation alpha and church attendance in youth ministry moving forward in 2024 and frankly beyond.

Nick Clason (05:12):
All right, so the three key findings that are really important to understand about Generation Z and Gen Alpha is a lot of this data pulled from Pew research articles pulled and included in the description, whether you're in a podcast catcher or on YouTube, if you are not watching on YouTube, you will notice that some charts and graphs and stuff like that are going to show up on screen here on YouTube. If you're not watching, you're just listening, you can go grab the link in the show notes at http://www.hybridministry.xyz, and this is episode 78, so slash 0 7 8. But the first key finding that I want to share with you is this is that most teens share the same religious affiliation as their parents, meaning this, your attendance as a youth pastor, youth ministry leader is highly derived from the adult attendance in your church.

Nick Clason (06:00):
You've probably heard this before, but that's why it's important that we don't have silos. It's just as important for you as a youth pastor to lean in to what is going on in the rest of your church. You can't neglect it, you can't forsake it, and you can't take on a posture of arrogance that what you're doing is better than the rest of the church. Even if you low key think that the fact of the matter is that your youth ministry attendance is highly, highly tied to your adult attendance. So if your church is growing, odds are your youth ministry is growing, and if your church is struggling, odds are your youth ministry might be struggling. The biggest dropoff that you'll notice in this graph here and in this research from Pew is that the biggest dropoff from parents who attend church to teenagers who attend church happens in mainline denominations where the highest proportion is in evangelical churches.

Nick Clason (06:53):
Key finding. Number two, teens are just as likely as their parents to say that they go to services, but when it comes to more personal forms of religious expression, teens actually appear to be less devout and less religious. I have a stat I want to share with you from my own context, my own anecdotal experience in our church, cross Creek Church located in Colleyville, Texas, we have four parts to a four-part discipleship pathway. So we have explore, which is people who are far from God looking for God or maybe seeking God connect. And so once they've made a decision, cross the line, faith, connect with Jesus, connect with this church, connect with community, grow, grow in your faith, get closer to God, learn to walk with God, learn to invest in a few, learn to multiply. And then finally, the fourth one is a multiplier.

Nick Clason (07:38):
Someone who is not only making disciples, but making disciples who makes disciples. So we're very christocentric, disciple making, Bible-based church, all that to be said, we explained all of that one day on a Sunday morning to our students and we asked them to self-identify where they would put themselves in the pathway, explore, connect, grow, multiply. We used kind of pulled from one of my favorite books, link in the show notes, Dan Bader's book four chair discipling. So we used four different chairs to illustrate the sections of the pathway. The explorer phase was illustrated by a camping chair because it's really mobile portable. You can get close to church, then you can pull it back away if that's a decision that you want to make. We talked about how the connect chair is actually like a recliner. People tend to get across that line of faith and then get very fat and happy.

Nick Clason (08:23):
The grow chair is one that's marked by suffering and sacrifice, and so we got the hard metal chair, the one that hurts your butt when you sit in it for a little bit too long. And then finally the multiply phase was illustrated by a couch because the goal of it is to bring people back onto that couch with you, go back down through the pipeline, go back down through the process. So we illustrated that and we asked students to self-identify. We had 40.76 of our students say that they were in the connect phase, the recliner phase, but the overwhelming majority said that they were in 45.2% said that they were in the grow phase. So nearly half of our students self-identified as being in the grow phase where only like 4% said they're in the explore phase, and 9.5 said they were actually all the way in the multiply phase.

Nick Clason (09:07):
Now we have identifiers in our church metrics that we say if you've done these three or four things, then you are in this phase and you've moved on to the next phase. So we can pull that data on our students as well, but this is just them classifying themselves. I now lead a group of four other guys on a Sunday morning in our grow phase, we have a book that we go through a curriculum, and we just got done with the first book. There's three totals. So we just got done with the first book. It's seven weeks. It's daily reading. I mean it's a high bar. Every single one of them. At the beginning of this time, they said, I read the Bible, I pray I do all this stuff. Now that we've actually been in it, now that the rubber has met the road.

Nick Clason (09:49):
At the end of this, all of their summarization of it was like, man, this was a lot more than I'm used to. And one of the kids said back to this, teens are just as, they may go to service, but they may not practice religious expression. Part of the problem is they've gone to church so much, and so they know what the right answers are and they know what they should be doing. And so even when you ask them, how do you grow in your faith? What are you doing to grow in your faith? They would answer with the right answers. Well, I pray, read the Bible, but they all admitted at the end of it, you always said that, but we weren't really actually doing it, at least not at this level. So that just bears it out in that key finding. Key finding.

Nick Clason (10:29):
Number three, most teens report attending religious services with either both at 40% or one 25% of their parents. Again, meaning your attendance is again highly derived from your adult attendance. Again, in my own context, our own experience or Wednesday night, we would mostly say that that's classified under the explore classification. So let's bring outsiders and we probably, we average somewhere south of 45 to 40% of our Sunday morning attendance, which is our second step in our pathway, our connect phase. So I would not say that we have more students in connect than in the explore phase. What I would actually say is that Sunday morning is more convenient and that's when parents, and that's when students are also naturally making Sunday morning or just any church attendance a priority. And so that's the reason why I believe that our attendance is a little bit out of balance between Wednesday night and Sunday morning, and that's not a problem to be solved.

Nick Clason (11:29):
It's more attention to lean into and be managed, but it really just underscores this point that most teens attend church with either a parent or a single parent, meaning once again, like I said, your students are attending church either with both parents at 40% or one parent at 25%. Again, as much as we think that our programming is so relevant, captivating, so much better than the rest of the church, the reality is our success as youth pastors is often tied to the overall success of the church. However, I do think that there is something that matters and that there is something that we need to focus our mindset to shift a little bit on. So let's dive into that into the next section. All right, so the shift that I believe all of us should consider if 57% of born again claim Christians, self-proclaimed Christians are not attending church online or in person at least one time per month, I think that you and I should consider finding a way to go hybrid.

Nick Clason (12:26):
And I know you said, Hey, hey, hey, that last stat that said they weren't going online or in person. When I say hybrid, I don't just mean streaming your services. That can be an element of it, but I really believe that's a small portion of a good digital strategy. And again, I hear you. You're like, dude, I don't have time for it, and I get it. It is a lot of work and it's going to require a little bit of time management, thankfully, linked down below, I have this playlist where the last video I talked about good time management, but a good digital hybrid integrated strategy is more than just putting a camera in the back of the room and letting someone watch what's going on in the room. You're not interested in that, frankly, and neither am I. We want something that's made for the internet, something like this, something that's more relational, something that's more direct to camera, maybe something that's a little bit more interactive, but find a way to make it more hybrid.

Nick Clason (13:18):
Find a way to make it more integrated. I also hear you on the other side, but churches of family church should be about one-on-one relationships, and I agree with that. Full fledge, a hundred percent church about relationships. The best, most dynamic experiences I ever have is when I'm rubbing shoulders or sitting knee to knee with somebody. However, I'll also make the argument that churches are in the content creation and content production business. Think about it. What do you spend the majority of your time on? Programming, message prep, planning, worship services, small group, all things that are content based, and especially pastors, senior pastors, no offense to you, but Sunday morning services are some of the least relational moments in the entire week in the lifecycle of a church. Here's my deal. I'm a youth pastor, so I get in early, I get set up. Sometimes I'm a little bit late because of my setup into church.

Nick Clason (14:12):
I walk in, I sit down, I sing some songs, I sit down, I stare at the back of someone's head, I listen to a sermon for 30 something minutes. I get up early because I have stuff to do as a youth pastor, to get ready for the student ministry that meets during the last two services of our three service Sunday morning set. I'm not talking to a single human being in that entire service, but what I could do is I could consume all of that digitally. I could listen to it, my headphones on a run. I could listen to that honestly, while I'm across the way in the student building, getting things ready, having the Facebook live stream on in my ears while I'm getting things set up. I'm not saying that I should do that. I'm not saying that that's a recommended strategy, but I am saying the content consumption side, so much of what we're producing content-wise, can be done digitally.

Nick Clason (14:57):
So as youth pastors, as we're trying to reach Gen Z, as we're trying to reach Gen Alpha, a completely different generation, I wonder if it's worth considering a shift from focusing only on to finding a way to be a little bit more hybrid, which is why I've created this 100% completely free ebook right here on the screen, linked down below in the description. Also, you're going to see that as I bring about this bonus question. This is really the crux of this entire kind of argument. The question is this, are we as youth pastors, are we as youth ministry leaders? Are we in the event business or are we in the disciple making business? And you know what the fact of the matter is, we're actually going to dive even deeper into that question on the screen linked right here. So go ahead and take a look at that. If you're interested in exploring more about my hybrid strategy, that ebook, as well as that episode is linked right here on the screen as well. Hey, check you on the other side. Continue to enjoy this free masterclass, and as always, stay hybrid.

Episode 076: ✅ 7 Part Youth Group Checklist

Nick Clason — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 06:00:00 -0600

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DESCRIPTION
👋 Welcome to our YouTube channel & podcast!

✅ In this comprehensive video, we reveal the key to planning effective and engaging social events for your youth group. From icebreakers and team-building activities to creative theme ideas and logistical tips, we've got you covered.

👐 Discover how to foster a sense of community, encourage meaningful connections, and create a safe and inclusive environment for all participants.

YouthGroup #Checklist #EssentialSteps #SuccessfulGathering #YouthMinistry #Youth #Christianity #Church #Community #Leadership #Inspirational #Motivation #Encouragement #Teamwork #FunActivities #Icebreakers #Bonding #Faithbuilding #Engagement #Unity

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📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/076

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/4s-vOknIaQI

#1 PLANNING
//BASECAMP
https://basecamp.com/

//PLANNING CENTER SERVICES
https://services.planningcenteronline.com/

//GOOGLE DRIVE/DOCS
https://drive.google.com
https://https://docs.google.com/

#2 COMMUNICATE
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//9 BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

#4 SNACKS

#5 PREACHING & TEACHING
//TEACHING TO A TIKTOK GENERATION
https://youtu.be/iIgEtxPLGBg?si=7tQYGGyW7kCKq9KS

#6 SMALL GROUPS
//SAMPLE SMALL GROUP GUIDE
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/okmirbzzu6avn0o5knrj3/08_13_2023_RuinSchool_GroupGuide_Week1.pdf?rlkey=ozs2lmz1ewxmehwn89fnqj1u7&dl=0

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-00:44 7 Part Youth Group Checklist
00:44-02:50 1) Always Be Planning
02:50-04:36 2) Communication
04:36-05:47 3) Games
05:47-07:37 4) Snacks
07:37-08:55 5) Preaching & Teaching
08:55-10:09 6) Small Groups
10:09-11:35 7) Follow-Up

✍️TRANSCRIPT
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Nick Clason (00:00):
Are you a youth pastor, a youth ministry leader, looking to make your gatherings of people your physical gatherings more intricate and maybe even make 'em a little bit more exciting? How do you plan a surefire amazing event? And furthermore, what do you do to hybridize it? Right? My entire strategy in this podcast is to help you take not just your in-person gatherings, but also your digital presence, social media website, and meld those two together so that you can truly have a hybrid ministry. If that's what you're looking for, you're in luck because that is what we're going to be talking about in this episode today. This is the Hybrid Ministry Show, and we have a seven step framework for the Ultimate Youth Group gathering. Let's get going. Number one is you need to be planning. Listen, I am a 13 year youth ministry veteran, and I have learned that the hard way over my time in ministry, there have been so many times where I've been caught at an event without any plan whatsoever, and I am forced to pivot in the moment.

Nick Clason (01:00):
So it's not only helped me get a little bit more nimble on my feet, but also it's forced me to realize the importance of planning. So there are a couple of really good tools. One that works really well for us in our space is a project management tool called Base Camp. It's quite expensive, but if your church has the budget for it, I recommend at least looking into it, and I'm sure they have a free trial version that you can check out if that's something you're interested in. Also, planning Center online, it's what most people use, especially musicians and such for services and for musicians and disseminating music and stuff like that. But that's a great place to communicate with your tech person, with anyone else that's going to be on stage about what the plan is, what the game is. And so I use that every single week to just let everybody know what is to be expected and what's going to be happening in the actual program of the event.

Nick Clason (01:48):
Event. And then also just free Google Docs. It's a shared space. If you're in a meeting, everyone can have the same Google Doc up. You don't have to have a whiteboard, you don't have to be in some conference room. You can do it via Zoom. But Google Docs and Google Drive are both great docs for word processing, but Google Drive for file sharing and file storage, and you can link things via Google Docs, but you can use Base Camp. You can use Planning center services. You can use Google, Google Drive. You can use those to your advantage to get ahead to think ahead about what is going to happen in your youth ministry space. And hey, if you're watching this video and you've found value so far, please consider liking subscribing, maybe even sharing with the friend, because it's really important that it helps us out a lot, not for us and the accolades, but for the message of hybrid ministry to get out to the world because we believe that teenagers need the gospel and speaking this digital language, this hybrid ministry is their language that they're used to in this world. So please help us out by liking, subscribing, and sharing. Tip number two is communication. Get the word out. You've done the planning. Now people need to know, and I have this

Nick Clason (02:58):
Completely free ebook about how to utilize and use social media in your space. Link down below in the description, go check it out. But I believe that social media can be a form of communication as long as you're not just posting boring, rote, standard static graphics, right? If you use it to the way that social media is meant to be used, one of entertainment, one of fun, short form, vertical based video, I will help you with all of those things in this video. But as you're communicating, you need to be thinking on three different tracks. As a youth pastor, student, parent leader, there really are three audiences that you're communicating with. How are you getting the message out to your students? How are you getting the message out to your parents? And then how are you getting the message out to your leaders? And then a fourth kind of pro tip, bonus tip is also over here, the staff that you work with.

Nick Clason (03:51):
And some of those might cross. Some parents might be leaders, some staff might be parents and all that type of stuff, but those are your three main audiences. I believe that's one of the reasons that youth pastors struggle so much with communication is because you may feel as though you have adequately communicated it, and thus you have to your students. But do all the parents know or is the staff aware of how you're going to be using a different space in the building and then they find you over there and in the kids area because you told the students you're going to be there, but you didn't let the other people on staff know. And so you may have some more conflict with that. So as you're communicating any sort of event that, especially if it's out of cycle, be asking yourself, how do the students know?

Nick Clason (04:33):
How do the leaders know? How do the parents know? Another thing is games. We did a deep dive on games in this playlist over here called Exploring New Digital Frontiers, and we talked about where did games come from and why is it a part of youth ministry? I also gave some ideas. Another one of my favorite episodes that we did was me debriefing an event we did called The World's Greatest Donut. We had tons of games for it, but it was also an amazing hybrid event. And finally, I have a link in the show notes to some of my DYM favorite games. I've created several resources that are on Download Youth ministry, and they are dirt cheap, 5, 6, 7 bucks. If you don't have a membership, even cheaper if you do. So go check some of those out. I love the game. Emoji Phraseology. I love the game. GIF Flashback, and I love the Game Visual, Variance, Voyage. Those are just a few, but I have several on there. But games are an amazing way to up the level of engagement in your space. Fun is the language of teenagers, and so speak it, get them laughing, get them competing, get them having fun together in your gathering. Another really key element to think about is snacks. I had a meeting with a group of leaders last year, and I invited my wife

Nick Clason (05:56):
To come be one of the other leaders meeting with these student leaders, I should say, and I asked her, I said, Hey, what's one thing I could do to level this meeting up? What she said, have snacks. When do you go to somebody's house and they don't offer you something to eat or something to drink? Almost never, right? And the same is true in student ministry. Snacks help kind of bring that energy level down a little bit, not energy level, but bring that insecurity level down a little bit. People, their walls are down a little bit. They're willing to engage, come across the table a little bit more when their snacks. I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds simple. It might even be a budget buster, but maybe consider opening a cafe where people can purchase snacks, maybe put cheap things out. And one thing I've done before is if you do have a cafe, we gave popcorn away for free, but that drove people back to the cafe to buy the drinks.

Nick Clason (06:51):
There's a reason that bars put peanuts and pretzels out at the table for free because it forces people to buy their drinks. Hey, if you didn't know this, this episode or this channel has a website hybridministry.xyz in every single episode, this is episode. So if you went to hybridministry.xyz slash 0 7 6, we have for you a thing that we do for every single episode. We've done it since episode one, completely free transcripts. That's one of the things that we pay for out of our pocket to serve you and the listener. So if you are listening on a run and you want to go back and hear this, or if you're watching this and you want to take notes, you can go to the website and download a completely free transcript so that you can see everything that we are talking about. Now, element number five of a successful youth gathering is preaching and teaching.

Nick Clason (07:45):
Like I said, we just did an exploring new digital frontiers, and we did a whole episode on how to teach to a TikTok generation. Previously. This generation on websites and social media have an attention span of 8.25 seconds, which is less than the human pet goldfish, right? So how do you teach to a generation like that? How do you keep things interesting while still presenting the meaningful, purposeful, and important truth of the Bible and the truth from God's word? We dove into that. We also gave some ideas about hybrid message enhancements. Things like you version events, things like websites, things like QR codes, things that can just help take the message beyond just the physical meeting space, but you can offer it and extend it and put it in front of your students on social media, on their devices that they're using throughout the rest of the week, but communicate to them then accurately and effectively in the moment using some of these tips and tricks that we talked about in that episode.

Nick Clason (08:48):
But teaching and preaching is a vitally important part to youth ministry gatherings. Number six, small groups. You may not have small groups in your space, so if you don't, then find a way to let students digest the message a little bit. If you don't have small groups in your space or you have it another night of the week, consider maybe having your students sit around tables. And then you could do a more like master teacher style thing where you teach for a little bit and then you toss out a couple of questions to the tables to let the students interact. Gen Z does not want to be a consumer. They want to be a contributor. So find a way to let your students voices be heard. Find a way to let them talk about it. Maybe you do have small groups for the last 30 minutes in your student ministry gatherings.

Nick Clason (09:37):
Have a guide. I'll right here on the screen, you can see the way that we have our guides set up. We have before, during, and after and after, is aimed at our leaders being pastoral to our students. The before is sort of their prep work with the versus and the big ideas. And then during are the questions that we want them to be asking to lead our students from a silly sort of like drop the water level moment, like, hey, some icebreaker type stuff down all the way to some serious things and ending with the group's ending in prayer.

Nick Clason (10:10):
And finally, when your event's over, number seven, what are you going to do about follow-up? What is your ongoing strategy to stay in front of students throughout the week? Because if you have an hour meeting, but you don't ever get to a spot where you are engaging with them in their real life, what about Thursday morning when they wake up after youth group? What about Monday morning when they're on their way to school and they're on the school bus? Why should they think about the things of God that you were talking about last night or yesterday? Why should they care about those things? Which is one of the reasons I think hybrid ministry is so important, and I have this completely free ebook to help you reach and engage the students in their space to engage with the other hours in the week beyond just your program time.

Nick Clason (10:54):
It's not just physical, it's not just digital, it is hybrid. And so in that ebook, we also point people to a completely free resource called opus.pro. It will help you clip your messages up into small, short form bite-size videos. But what I want to know is that I want to help you guys understand the importance of gatherings and how you can take the physical gathering, how you can take your digital moments, how you can meld those two. Hope you found this video helpful. On the screen is the next video. Be sure to click that. Be sure to subscribe because we at hybrid ministry are making digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, and don't forget, stay hybrid.

Episode 075: 🤑 Digital Discipleship on a Dime: 5 Budget Friendly Tips

Nick Clason — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 04:00:00 -0600

🔥SURE FIRE RESOURCES 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

☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS
OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

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

DESCRIPTION
👋 Welcome to our YouTube channel & podcast!

🤑 Are you looking to create impactful digital discipleship resources without breaking the bank? Look no further! In this video, we present 5 budget-friendly tips that will help you craft effective resources for your online community.

digitaldiscipleship #budgetfriendlytips #onadime #youtubetips #digitalministry #christiancontent #churchmedia #faithtech #christianvlogger #technologymatters #christianinfluencers #digitaloutreach #ministrytech #faithonabudget #discipleshipmatters #christiancreators #technologytips #churchcommunication #contentcreationtips #faithonadime #digitalmission

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

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

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

😨 "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

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/075

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/WiosrLIifdA

#1 USE FREE STUFF FIRST
//CANVA
https://youtu.be/g0FQWvKjP_E?si=VW1l2akc9PXTLztT

//HYBRID MESSAGE ENHANCEMENT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIgEtxPLGBg&t=44s

//YOUVERSION LIVE EVENTS
https://my.bible.com/events

//QR CODES
https://www.qr-code-generator.com/

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

#2 PRE-FILM YOUR MESSAGES
//PRE-FILM YOUR MESSAGES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxepdu4iiM

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

//OPUS.PRO
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

#3 DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL
//CAPCUT
https://www.capcut.com/

//OPUS.PRO
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

#4 USE SOCIAL MEDIA
//FREE EBOOK
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

#5 UTILIZE HYBRID EVENTS
//WORLD'S GREATEST DONUT EVENT GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-00:19 Budget Friendly Digital Discipleship Tools
00:19-02:00 Use Free Stuff First!
02:00-03:36 Pre-Film Your Messages for YouTube
03:36-04:36 Don't Reinvent the Wheel!
04:36-07:10 Social Media
07:10-08:05 Utilize Hybrid Events

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Well, hey everyone. Welcome back to our channel. We're going to be exploring five budget friendly tips to help you create hybrid resources. Hybrid is when you're not just focusing on the digital aspect of your ministry, not just focusing on the in-person aspect of your ministry, but a melding together of the two. So let's waste no time and dive right in To tip number one, which is use free stuff first. I have all kinds of links in the description under this, but we had an episode where we talked about Canva. Canva will give every church and nonprofit a free pro account. So if you're looking for good graphics, Canva is the best option I believe for that. Another one of my favorite hybrid options is the U version Bible app, and specifically when you're preaching messages, which we just dropped an episode a couple episodes ago about message enhancement, U version events is a place where you can send people to take digital notes, to take next steps to read Bible plans on their own.

Nick Clason (00:58):
Another one of my all time favorite resources is the Humble QR code. It had a resurgence during covid, but it is a great way when people are in your space to have them scan something and then go ahead and take a next step all based digitally. And hey, listen, I also have a completely free ebook, and this is free for you. It's 40 done for you ideas to help you engage with social media in a custom way. There are a lot of social media programs, resources and graphics out there, but this resource will help you, your volunteers, your students, be the faces and the heroes and those people on your social media platforms. So download that, check it out. We'd love to have you take a look at it. And hey, if you are getting value so far out of this video, I'd love to encourage you to like, subscribe, maybe leave a rating, maybe share it with a friend.

Nick Clason (01:49):
All of those things really incredibly help not only us get the message out, but more importantly help people understand the mission behind this hybrid experience. Let's move on to tip number two. Tip number two is pre film your messages. Now, I have a video linked right here at the top of the screen called What Every Youth Ministry Needs to Do, and it is my full student ministry recommended strategy. Most churches in America have live streaming capabilities, but most youth ministries do not. If you do them, by all means, you should be live streaming your messages and posting them to YouTube. But in the event that you don't, I recommend sitting down direct to camera and having a pre-filed message moment. You can create a little bit of a set. You can put some plants on screen just like I am right here. You can use a microphone like this. You can use just a little shotgun microphone, and you can do it for less than a hundred dollars. I have a link to that complete blog in my show notes as well. But it's things like a little phone tripod, a little shotgun microphone, and maybe a little ring light just to help get your lighting up a little bit.

Nick Clason (02:58):
And boom, you are off to the races. Not only is it going to help you engage with a digital presence on a platform like YouTube, and it's also going to give you the ability to clip those long form clips down to shorter vertical based ones that you can post. I have a link to a free resource called Opus Pro. Link to that in the show notes, a little also teaser on what's coming next. And then finally, it gives you a chance as youth pastor to practice and hear your message before you deliver it live in the room. So pre film your messages, create a presence for you and your youth ministry on YouTube. Tip number three is don't reinvent the wheel, which that's the tip, right? Once you've recorded those videos, sat down direct to camera, either a real camera or a phone or whatever, edit it a little bit.

Nick Clason (03:48):
You don't have to. You can use a free editor like iMovie, movie maker Canva, a cap cut, not Canva, cap cut, but then drop that long form video into a free AI video, short form creator and I have a link. You can try it out. It's called Opus Pro. It's down in my description, and it will AI generate the best hooks, the best, most relevant places. It can put captions on the screen. It can also give you a little preview of the text of what the video is about so that when someone's dropping into the middle of a long form sermon, they're not confused about what's going on, but use the tools to your advantage. And Opus Pro is free for several hours of recording, and then it's a very nominal feat to keep using it after that, after the first part of the year.

Nick Clason (04:36):
Tip number four, use social media. Now, listen, I know sometimes in the youth ministry space, in the church world, social media gets a little bit of a bad rap, and the fact is, there are bad things out there, and so everyone needs to manage it to their own standards, and they need to practice their own walk of holiness in social media. But social media is a completely free tool that you and I have the ability to get on there and borrow space. And it's already where majority of our students are spending their time. In fact, 95% of teenagers admit to using YouTube. My kids are seven and five and they watch YouTube. It is just a part of the fabric of what we do, so be on those platforms. And the good news is that social media, short form, vertical based video is still king, and you can do that on all four platforms, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Facebook's iffy if you want to use it, but it's really easy to link it to your Instagram account, and so therefore you can just kind of get a two for one on that one. But use social media, and once again, like I said, free ebook will help you get started on that. It will take the film, your messages strategy, and then the clips from that along with some other fun content. And boom, you're off to the races. Listen, I posted a video,

Nick Clason (05:56):
One of favorite styles not too long ago. We draft things, and so it's like one person makes a pick when another person makes a pick and one person makes a pick, another person makes a pick, and it was called Drafting Blue Characters. And I had my boss, Darren do it, and he's colorblind, and it was really hilarious because he actually picked Vision, the red guy from Avengers, that's his number two pick, but that on Instagram got something like 13,000 views, and it wasn't a serious clip, right? But we gained a lot of followers and got a lot of engagement on our account as a result of that. So then now hopefully those people who have engaged with our account at that level on a more fun level will then also pay attention to some of the sermon clips that we post, which I posted one recently, and it got over a thousand, 2000 views.

Nick Clason (06:42):
And then hopefully if they're engaging with that, then maybe they'll take a next step from there over to our YouTube channel to watch a full message. And then once they're on, they're encouraged, promoted to click the link down the description to take some sort of next step to let us know what their next step might be. You see, that's why I do the silly to narrow it down to the serious, to narrow it down to the long form, to narrow it down to them taking a next step where we can engage with them in a relationship with Jesus. Tip number five is utilize hybrid events. I have a link in the description again for a free event guide of one. I just did. I posted episode not too long ago called The World's Greatest Donut. It is one of my all time favorite hybrid events.

Nick Clason (07:26):
It utilizes outreach, it utilizes games, and it utilizes social media to create a perfect hybrid event for you, your church, and your student ministry. But it's just a great opportunity to lean into the hybridness, not just digital, not just physical of your student ministry and of your space. Well, everyone, I hope that these five tips were helpful for you to create amazing digital discipleship, amazing hybrid moments in your student ministry. We are here to help make hybrid easy, to make discipleship more accessible for your students. Won't click the link right here on the screen to watch the next video, but we will talk with you next time.

Episode 072: 🧑‍🚀 New Frontiers in Digital Discipleship for the Church: Message Enhancement 💬

Nick Clason — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 04:00:00 -0600

🔥SURE FIRE RESOURCES 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

☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS
OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

🧑‍🚀 EXPLORING NEW FRONTIERS PLAYLIST
Exploring The New Way to Approach Ministry, Full Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLQ3UpL1HRb3FFtEu-7S1XZ

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

DESCRIPTION
Preaching, Teaching and Youth Ministry
It’s part of what we do in the church.

You’ve also heard that this generation, according to crossrivertherapy.com has an attention span of just 8.25 seconds. Which is 4.25 seconds LESS than we experienced in the year 2000.

Famously, that’s less than a goldfish

But teaching and preaching the Bible, is not only an integral part of youth ministry, but learning the Bible is important to the discipleship and developmental process, not only in teenagers, but in anyone who claims to follow Jesus Christ as their savior.

So how do we take the Hybrid approach to teaching and preaching.
Hybrid is not just your physical gathering
But not ignoring it in favor of your digital experience, either.

It’s both.

In this episode we’ll explore the how to preach and teach to a TikTok Generation.
What we’re up against.

What we can learn from culture

And finally, 3 Hybrid Solutions you can implement THIS Wednesday night.

churchattendance #hiddentruth #unveiling #2023 #church #truth #revelation #faith #spirituality #religion #worship #community #christianity #belief #sunday #sacred #divine #belief #sermon #christian

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

🆓 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

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/072

//View all the Charts and Graphs via YouTube
https://youtu.be/iIgEtxPLGBg

//Mr. Beast on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA

//Alex Hormozi
https://www.youtube.com/@AlexHormozi

//Steven Furtick
https://www.youtube.com/@stevenfurtick

//Research on Attention Spans
https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/average-human-attention-span
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/advan.00109.2016

//My Youth Min by Ym360
https://myyouthmin.com/

//The Learning Triangle
https://www.educationcorner.com/the-learning-pyramid.html

//Solution #1
https://sidekick.tv/

//Solution #2
https://my.bible.com/events

//Solution #3
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-01:36 Preaching to the Generation with the Shortest Attention Span in History
01:36-03:33 Teaching, Preaching and Hybrid Ministry is vital to the next generation
03:33-11:15 Teaching to a TikTok Generation
11:15-15:46 What can youth pastors learn from culture?

15:46-21:39 3 Immediate Hybrid Solutions

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Preaching teaching and youth ministry, they go together. It's just part of what we do. But what do you do when you're trying to preach and teach to the generation with the shortest attention span of only 8.25 seconds? Famously, you've heard it's less now than a goldfish down 4.5 seconds from the year 2000. And is there a way for us to digitally enhance through hybrid means the way in which people learn and listen to our teaching and our preaching now in this generation because teaching and preaching is not only an integral part of youth ministry, but it's an integral part of the way in which we disciple our students and help them understand the claims, values and teachings of Jesus. So how do we take this hybrid approach, not just digital, not just in person, but melding of the two together to increase awareness and to help bring about a better retention of our teaching and our preaching to our students.

Nick Clason (01:08):
In this episode, we will answer how to preach and teach to a tick talk generation and what we as communicators are up against. Additionally, we'll explore what we can learn from the culture that's around us. And finally, I want to offer for you three hybrid solutions to help engage and increase teaching and preaching and awareness in your context that you can implement tomorrow. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everyone. Welcome back to another edition of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always am your host Nick Clason. I'm a 13 year youth ministry veteran now currently located in the DFW Dallas Fort Worth area. Excited to be with you. I've been teaching and preaching my entire career, but I've also been engaging with the importance of hybrid ministry. I've been aware of that and aware of the digital revolution ever since I started in youth ministry, which is why we have this playlist right here linked at the top of the screen that you're a part of as we are exploring new digital frontiers.

Nick Clason (02:12):
The last video was all about games and how we can implement hybrid into our games and into the fun in our youth ministries. And this episode is about enhancing the messages. So I hope that you'll stick around to the very end of the video because in addition to that, I have a sure surefire resource linked in the description below. That's not only going to help you win on social media and bring about your messages and all those things to your students and help bring that to them the other hours of your week, but it'll also help you have fun with them like we talked about in the last video. And so I want to encourage you to I you to subscribe. Those things are free for you and they mean a lot to me, and I want you to do that because we do drop resources, like I just mentioned, 40 done for you, an entire month's worth of social media, but not just a bunch of graphics.

Nick Clason (03:04):
This is you actually getting in front of the camera, getting in front of a video, using yourself, your students, your leaders, whoever you want to help change the game on your social media platform. And so those types of things are coming at you every single week. We'll drop a new episode every single Thursday, so like subscribe, can't wait to see on the other side, but hey, we are going to be diving into teaching to a TikTok generation. Let's explore that together. So famously, this generation has an attention span of 8.25 seconds. It said that that is less than the household goldfish. So I don't know if any of you guys have gold fishes or teenagers in your house, but if you do, your teenager has a shorter attention span than a goldfish. What is going on nowadays though is the short form video revolution ushered into us by TikTok during the pandemic has changed the way in which we engage with content online.

Nick Clason (04:07):
It just has our attention spans are getting shorter. The need and relevance for a really, really crucial opening section of your video is what is going to determine if someone sticks around in your video or if they're going to leave. In fact, I want to share with you three examples from three very different classes and creators and just like different pockets of YouTube, but all three very good, three people who know what they're doing on social media. And I want to point out to you, we're going to watch 'em right here live on screen. I want to react to how well their hook and how well their intro does. So the first one up is a Mr. Beast video. So let's check this out together.

Nick Clason (04:54):
Hundred million mankind, okay? He's just taught, he's just B roll. He's got Justin Timberlake on there. Whoa, got those waves with his editing's great all the way to this barely functioning house, more of a shed. Well, why does this house cost a dollar? Yeah, we get another storm. It's probably going to, he's already into the content now of his video. He's only 38 seconds in. It feels like the intro. It just seamlessly moves straight into the content. Mr. Beast is probably the best at the opening ones. This one is more of a entrepreneur guy, guru trying to help you win online. So let's check out his video. This is my most brutally honest advice to my, you beat 99% of people zoomed out without media advice to my younger self and

Nick Clason (05:57):
How I, you're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress. He's catering to the difficulty of what he does and what the people that follow him need to do. He's got B roll, he's got light transitions, all that type of stuff. Great. Now this one right here, this is Churchill from Elevation Steven S check this one out sitting on that you're not using today. That's not the beginning of his sermon, but it's the beginning of this video. Arrows, you should have taken everything God gave you kept striking until you saw it to. They edited it so that it started there at what they considered to be the most interesting part, artillery to be defeated. It was his lack of drive. The reason I want to show all of you that is that the first 30 seconds or less of every single one of those videos, all very different, but all very good.

Nick Clason (06:56):
Everyone who edited that video knew exactly what they were doing. So I actually have a video that I just released on a platform called My Youth Men, which is a membership tier of YM 360. You can check it out, link in the description for a seven day free trial. But the video is about discipling students and teenagers through the usage pitfalls and platforms with cell phones as opposed to a way, and I show you those videos because I want to say that's what we as communicators are up against. Your students are watching those for entertainment, for fun, even maybe for inspiration with a Steven Furtick. And then you and I get up as their youth pastor and we start teaching at them in all of our old seminary taught ways. I think as I said in my video, that there are new ways of doing it.

Nick Clason (07:51):
In fact, this is a educator's tool. It's going to be up here on the screen. If you're listening to the podcast, make sure that you hit the link in the show notes so you can see everything on YouTube with all of our video overlays and all of our things flying in. But this is called the knowledge pyramid, and there are two sections to it. There's the passive teaching methods and then there's the participatory teaching methods. And most of us in church are using the passive teaching methods and the percentages are broken down by the knowledge retention rate. So how well this style of teaching helps people retain that type of teaching. And so the lowest at 5% is lecture based style. You might think 8.25 seconds is low, but I'm just going to admit to you, I am bored after a lecture after only 8.25 seconds.

Nick Clason (08:42):
You have to be really killing it, and I have to be really interested in that form of content. In the lecture style pyramid, 10% of the retention rate is reading, 20% is audio visual. So that would be something like including slides and or video in your teaching. And then 30% is demonstration. That's of the passive teaching style methods. So all of those things are all things that you've been taught probably in seminary of how to teach someone and how to maintain relevance as you teach someone. But then it shifts and at 50% a discussion group, a participatory teaching method is where that learning retention rate jumps up to 50%. If someone practices what they've learned by doing it, it jumps to 75% and then if they teach others, it jumps to 90%. So in most cases, us as youth pastors, we push our students through passive teaching methods, and then finally we get them into a discussion group As a participatory teaching method, discussion group is the lowest of the participatory section of retention, and that is why you and I as we are teaching, we need to differ at what we're doing. Look at what Mr. Beast did, how he looked at all the different houses, right? And he kept it moving. He was only on each house for just a few seconds. He was moving, he was garnering interest, he was keeping you hooked. Even look at fur, he's on the floor with arrows in hand doing his thing. Yeah, it was lecture style, but there's visuals to it. And in our youth ministries, more often than not, we're going to push people in to small groups, which is a relevant and meaningful participatory teaching method.

Nick Clason (10:32):
And so as we know and look at the different teaching pyramid styles, here is my question, what do we do? How do we infuse and use hybrid to help increase the retention rates of the learnings? Because you know that the message that you're teaching matters. It's a truth of God. It's a truth from God's word, and it's been put on your heart by him, and you're trying to help share that message with the students in which God has entrusted to you in your student ministry. So what do you do about it? I think that there are a couple of clues that we can learn from culture, even from some of those YouTube videos that we watch. And so that's what we're going to check out in the next section. Neil Bradbury has a quote. The link to that article is in the show notes. He says, the eight second myth, as he classifies it for attention spans is actually more related to human behavior on websites and on social media and how many seconds the average person spends on a website before clicking away or navigating off of it.

Nick Clason (11:39):
So we have famously dubbed Generation Z and Gen Alpha subsequently as the generation with the tension span lower than a goldfish. And that's true as it relates to social media and Mr. Beast and Alex Har Zi, and even Steven Fer and Elevation, they're trying to capture people's attention on social media. So they do have to make that happen within eight seconds. And we are up against that, I would say, as communicators because that's how students are spending a majority of their time. Gen Z's using their cell phone more than any other screen-based device combined. However, I want to point something out that is a website statistic. And so while that is true of websites, the attention span is a little bit longer because eight seconds is incredibly short. And check this out. Over the last however many years, these are the top five grossing box office movies of all time.

Nick Clason (12:35):
So in 2009, avatar came out, and I think it's even been supplanted by itself for the re-release or something like that, but Avatar, the movie is two hours and 42 minutes. Avengers End Game came out in 2019. Shout out to my favorite movie. I love you. 3000. It is three hours in one minute. I was nervous going into Avengers end game. I was like, I might have to pee. What do I do if I have to pee? And I did. Titanic in 1992 was three hours and 14 minutes. Star Wars episode seven, two hours and 18 minutes, and an Avengers Infinity War, the prequel to end game 2018, two hours and 29 minutes long. Movies are still making money, they're still making them, and they're still releasing them. Also, shout out to Disney for owning four of the top five of those properties. All that to be said though, if it weren't lucrative and if it weren't making money, Disney and the other major motion picture companies in America wouldn't be making movies at that length.

Nick Clason (13:43):
So what does that mean for us? We got this eight second thing, but now we got movies that are going longer than three hours. How do we reconcile the difference between those two? My contention is this, if it's good, people will pay attention. It's that simple. And here's the reality. Most research, including Ted Talk and that organization say that a sweet spot for lectures is anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. That's optimal. However, if it's moving, if it's keeping attention, if it's changing things up, even just going back and watching Mr. Beast intro video, how if it's moving and adapting, you can keep the attention of your audience. But here's a gut check. If Avatar and Endgame and Star Wars and Titanic are keeping people's attention, but you're losing them after only eight seconds, then the gut check moment for you and I as youth pastors might be, we might be more boring than we think we are.

Nick Clason (14:46):
In fact, I've been recording videos on this YouTube channel for six months, eight months now, and that's been a gut check moment for me. When certain videos get less views, I'll go back, I'll look at the analytics and I'll go and re-listen to it myself. And you know what? I'll notice, man, I'm boring, right? I have to learn how to be more captivating. I have to learn how to be more interesting. I have to learn how to keep and retain my audience longer throughout the duration of my videos. Not only is that true for me as a communicator via YouTube via video to y'all, but it's also true for me as a youth pastor. But going back and looking, watching those videos, which by the way, if you are not prerecording your messages or recording them at all to go back and look and learn, you are missing out on the easiest way to become better as a communicator.

Nick Clason (15:31):
But there's another hack and there's another little silver bullet that's going to slide in here because we are going to be exploring three hybrid ideas in this digital frontier to enhance our messages in the room. Let's check it out. So what are these hybrid ideas? Like I said, it's not just physical. It's not just digital, but it's a melding of the two. So in my mind, you're teaching live in the room, but you're putting things on their cell phone or putting resources on their cell phone for them to use later because they're taking their cell phone with them for the other 165 hours beyond just the one hour that you've been in your program. And most of us as youth pastors, we're not good enough to contend with cell phones. So instead of contending with them, using them, leaning into them, we just forced them to lock them away or get rid of them.

Nick Clason (16:20):
But one of my favorite solutions from my favorite people over at Download Youth Ministry is sidekick. Check it out, sidekick TV link in the show notes. I get zero kickback from this, but I'm a power user and they just released or they're going to release and listen. I may be letting the cat out of the bag a little bit, but they're going to be releasing a polling feature. So you can put a QR code on the screen, students can scan it, and they can vote live time, and you can show it live from the stage. And better yet, you can now control sidekick from your phone or your iPad if you don't have a tech person running back in the back. And so you can do live interactive types of things to interact with your in-person and letting them use the digital means in front of them.

Nick Clason (17:08):
So you can ask like, Hey, what is the best Thanksgiving food? Is it stuffing mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, Turkey or ham? Let us know. Scan this QR code, and then you can get live results from your audience. You also, just like the learning pyramid showed, in addition to your lecture style, you need to be bringing visual aid with it. Use your screens, use your multimedia to your advantage. Use the things that are common to your students, like memes and tos. You can even pull out things like, Hey, show the most interesting photo from your last week in your camera roll. And one of my all time favorite ways to be hybrid is any sort of call to action, a camp, sign up, a discipleship, sign up. Even now, the sidekick voting thing use QR codes. They've had a resurgence since the pandemic, but people now can scan QR codes with just their camera app and their phone.

Nick Clason (18:02):
It will pull a link up and boom, you are off to the races. Use QR codes to your advantage. Use sidekick, use digital media, use your screens to interact and make things hybrid. The next idea that I have for you is you version events in our space, we call them digital notes. And so we link our YouVersion live events. If you didn't know, YouVersion is the Bible app made by Life church, but they have a events portion. And so what happens is if someone is in your church, it will pull geographically all the events that are live and they can get in there and there can be notes. Your main points scriptures you Additionally, my favorite reason for it is you can create call to action. So you can put your camp signup, you can put a Bible reading plan so they can be on the digital notes.

Nick Clason (19:01):
They can be taking notes in the space in your room as you're teaching, as you're preaching. And then at the end, you can be like, and hey, if you are learning right now and enjoying this message about prayer, but you want to grow even deeper into prayer, then I have a seven day prayer challenge plan linked in the you version, in the digital notes, whatever you want to call it. And kids can click it on their phone and write their sign up for a Bible reading plan. It's a way to help foster discipleship to lean into the hybrid, right? You taught something, but now by just having notes available to them on their phone, you can say, Hey, click accept, and start reading that plan. The third idea that I have for you is use YouTube and use social media. In fact, in the links down below, I have a couple of things, a less than $100 YouTube setup for you to start doing messages similar to this one right here where you're sitting direct to camera and posting your messages to YouTube.

Nick Clason (19:59):
If you have live streaming capabilities, then do that. But if you don't, as a youth pastor, I get it. I don't either sit down, prerecord your messages. In addition to that, you can use a service also linked in the description called Opus Pro to then take your long form and clip it into short form and give yourself a bunch of social media content for the week. And if you then need something to help fill in some of the other gaps, that's where my surefire resource, my ebook, my 40 done for you ideas comes in. And that message can live in perpetuity online as you help answer the specific faith questions of this next generation. It can be more than just for students who miss. It can be for parents to check it out. It can be for students who don't even go to your church.

Nick Clason (20:43):
It can be for students who go to your church to share messages with friends if they would never bring their friends to church, they can share a message on YouTube with their friends. And so those are my three ideas, sidekick in digital media, you versions, digital notes, and finally, utilize and use YouTube and social media to your advantage. The final piece of this playlist is we're going to be exploring and talking about how do we care for students in an ongoing type of way. We meet with them once a week, but then there's 167 hours. How can we, in a hybrid way care for the students pastorally in the ways in which God has entrusted to us? That video is linked right here on the screen. Make sure you check it out. We're making digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, and don't forget, stay hybrid.

Episode 071: 🧑‍🚀 New Frontiers in Digital Discipleship for the Church: Youth Ministry Games 🎮

Nick Clason — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 04:00:00 -0600

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

🧑‍🚀 EXPLORING NEW FRONTIERS PLAYLIST
Exploring The New Way to Approach Ministry, Full Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLQ3UpL1HRb3FFtEu-7S1XZ

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

DESCRIPTION
👋 Welcome to our YouTube channel & podcast!

🧑‍🚀 In this playlist, we are exploring the 3 new digital frontiers for churches and youth ministry pastors and leaders.

🎮 And in this video we're exploring the world of Youth Ministry Games and Fun!
What is different?
Where did games even come from in the first place?
And how should we adjust as we move forward into this new digital frontier?

In the subsequent videos we'll talk about
💬 Message Enhancement
🐑 Shepherding

So be sure to subscribe, so you don't miss a thing!

churchattendance #hiddentruth #unveiling #2023 #church #truth #revelation #faith #spirituality #religion #worship #community #christianity #belief #sunday #sacred #divine #belief #sermon #christian

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

🆓 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

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/071

//View all the Charts and Graphs via YouTube
https://youtu.be/OiBjI9dMxu8

//Rank 'Em
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em---fall-edition/fall-8962.html

//Visual Variance Voyage
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/visual-variance-voyage%3A-fall-edition/holiday-or-seasonal/fall-9043.html

//Adobe Photoshop & Premiere Crash Course
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaKVpQBDSQV6Q9hFeXCptHSu

//Budget Friendly Design Options
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw

//Emoji Phraseology Vol 1
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology/social-media/instagram-6801.html

//Emoji Phraseology Camp Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---camp-edition/games/sequels-8122.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Summer Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---summer-edition/games/bundles-and-sequels-8088.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Easter Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology-easter-edition/games/pop-culture-6957.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Vol 2
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---vol-2/games/sequels-8640.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Halloween Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---halloween-edition/fall/halloween-8320.html

//Emoji Phraseology: March Madness
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---madness-edition/spring/march-madness-8594.html

//Emoji Phraseology: 4th of July
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---patriotic-edition/summer/4th-of-july-8780.html

//Emoji Phraseology: St. Patrick's Day
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology-shamrock-edition/games-6929.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Christmas Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology%3A-christmas-edition/christmas-games-8426.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Superhero Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---superhero-edition/games/pop-culture-8827.html

//Emoji Phraseology: SuperBowl
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---big-game-edition/sports/football-8520.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Bible Story Edition
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---bible-story-edition/games/bible-based-8687.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Back 2 School
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology---back-2-school-edition/fall/back-to-school-8900.html

//Emoji Phraseology: Valentine's Day
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/emoji-phraseology%3A-love-edition---game-%26-social-media/games/humor-6855.html

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-02:08 Exploring New Digital Frontiers in Youth Ministry
02:08-04:10 What is Hybrid Ministry?
04:10-08:20 Why do we play games in Youth Ministry?

08:20-17:35 3 Hybrid Game Ideas you can use this week!

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Games and youth ministry, they go together like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, Batman and Robin. But how can we as youth pastors or ministry leaders readjust the way in which we approach games and lean more into this digital space that we found ourselves in? Should we ignore it or should we find a way to capitalize on it? My approach and my mission for this podcast is to turn your ministry hybrid. How do we make your ministry hybrid, not just in person, not just digital, but a melding of the two. Does that mean that we should play more like cell phone based games, Kahoot games, zoom screen games? In this three part playlist, I want to give you the three new frontiers that we should be exploring as youth pastors, as youth ministry leaders into the digital space and frontier number one. Today. In this episode, we are going to be exploring the world of youth ministry and youth ministry games.

Nick Clason (01:02):
We're going to delve into the why and the philosophy of youth ministry and give you three games that you can adopt and take into your student ministry immediately today. All of this in effort as we are in this new digital frontier, this new digital space to effectively reach the students that God has placed in our trust with the message of hope and the mission of the gospel. We're also going to be exploring in this playlist how you can bring up your message enhancement in the hybrid world, and finally, how you can implement ongoing care, shepherding and relationships to the students that God has entrusted into you and your care in your student ministry. But let's dive further into this new frontier of digital discipleship through the means and avenues of games. Make sure also that you stick around to the very end because at the end I'm going to leave with you a one surefire resource that you can implement with multiple done for you game ideas and ways that you can hybridize your ministry.

Nick Clason (01:58):
And I have the ultimate hack that you can bring just about any game and turn it into a hybrid game. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everyone. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am Nick Clason, a 13 year youth ministry veteran, currently serving in the great state of Texas. And I want to let you know that I am on a mission, as I said in the intro, to help youth pastors usher themselves more and more into this digital age. And I want to make sure that we are keeping the integrity of our in-person gatherings while also offering more and more of an opportunity for our students to engage with us from a digital mindset and digital framework. And so what I actually have for you as a surefire link in the description, I have a ebook. I have created 40 a whole month's worth of posting strategy for you as a youth pastor implement the strategy that I'm currently using, the one that I've used to grow our YouTube account and our followership in our social media from zero to around 300 up to this point and just under a calendar year.

Nick Clason (03:03):
And it will give you ideas and games that you can use and implement that are turnkey right now that you can use. But they're custom. You and your students and your volunteers get to be the heroes on your youth ministry. It's not just a bunch of static on account of foreign kind of boring graphics. It's real faces, real human beings. If you put a little bit of work in, you can totally revolutionize your student ministry. And I also want to let you know that links right here at the top of this video is a link to a video, what I believe every youth ministry needs and why this is also important. It's basically the thesis for this entire podcast. Hey, and finally, I want to make sure that you like and subscribe to this episode because here's why we are going to be dropping more and more episodes, especially this one as we're exploring new frontiers of hybrid ministry in the next episodes to come.

Nick Clason (03:49):
And I want to make sure that you don't miss it and likes, honestly, they're free and they really, really help us out and they help us get this mission to more and more people. But let's explore before we dive into the actual nitty gritty of games and youth ministry, let's talk about the philosophy and even the history of youth ministry and youth ministry games. Where did games come from? Why do we do them? It seems like it's the rite of passage. Every single youth ministry needs games. You look at resources like YM 360, download, youth ministry, even old school back in the day group. They're all trying to help solve this problem of how can you have games and what do games look like and where can you best take care of supplying games for you and your students? And we have screen-based games and active games and digital games and hybrid games, and we're going to get into all of that.

Nick Clason (04:43):
But I wanted to take a step back and be like, where did this even come from? So back in the 18 hundreds when students were not going to school on a regular basis, they were working six days a week, they invented this idea of Sunday School to bring about an age graded focus for students and an age graded Bible study, one that was a little bit more relevant to them in their timeframe, a little bit more relevant to them in their age group. And so what they did was they created this breakdown by age and grade and gender even. And they started to create this school vibe where they would teach the Bible. Well then fast forward to the 1940s, churches were maybe not super relevant to reaching young people. And so these two organizations popped up right around the same time, young Life and youth for Christ.

Nick Clason (05:34):
And so they both came with the mindset with the entire goal is to reach young people, reach 'em for Christ, and help change them from the inside out and revolutionize them with the power of the gospel. And then finally in the 1970s, churches began to start to see a void of that because what they were doing was in Sunday school mode, they're having volunteers and parents kind of lead these groups, but they started to identify this need for pastors, for people who could come in and who could be specialists in this area for teenagers and for the young people in their churches because they saw what was going on with Youth for Christ and Young Life. And they wanted to also bring that and usher that into the local church. And so since about the 1970s and the Jesus Revolution time, shout out to that movie if you haven't seen it yet, but they're bringing about this young people, this place for young people to come and find belonging, meaning, and purpose.

Nick Clason (06:28):
So that's the history of youth ministry. But why games? So if you look over time, there's always an element of fun and something that will bring about a draw of a crowd. And so to get the maximum amount of people you might feed people, you might offer fun, you might offer warmth, you might offer a great environment or a good vibe. And the truth of matter is, is that games have always sort of been a staple in what we've done in youth ministry, so much so that I do think at some point we've gotten a little bit rote with them and they're benign, and we just do them without even thinking like, well, what's the game going to be? Well, why are we even doing games? What's the purpose? And so what I've seen in my 13 years of student ministry experience is that if you just do games for game's sake, it doesn't have much to offer.

Nick Clason (07:17):
But in my mind, the purpose of a game is to help speak the language of teenagers, which by the way is the entire reason why I have this ebook linked in the description below for you to become more hybrid and for you to become more digitally focused. Because I believe it's a way for us to speak the language better of our teenagers and teenagers, whether they want to admit it or not, they love fun. Fun is the currency of teenagers. Fun helps break down the walls of people who may or may not know why they're at your church or who God is, or they're exploring this faith thing for the very first time. And fun helps alleviate and reduce the tension out of the room why we do what we do. And so with that in mind, I want to give you three game ideas, three hybrid game ideas that you can take use and even download immediately with links in the description of this episode that you can use both on your social media in person, and better yet, maybe you can find a way to meld the two together.

Nick Clason (08:17):
So let's explore that in the next section. All right, so link below in the description are three games that I have in my Download Youth Ministry store right now, and they are fun ones that I like to use. But I also just want to let you know that in all of this, many of the things that I'm going to be suggesting to you are also linked in my completely free ebook. So if you don't want to go pay for it, you can come up with some of these ideas on your very own by just looking at my completely free ebook, which is 40 done for You Ideas to help you and your students and your volunteers become the heroes on your church's social media and in your church's digital presence. And listen, in my ebook, I'm going to give you just a little bit of a sneak peek and a little bit of a hack.

Nick Clason (09:01):
I recommend that you sit just like this direct to camera and present and preach your message ahead of time before you deliver it live into the room. You then use that to clip up, make short sermon clips. But if you aren't willing and don't have the time to do that, I do recommend the remainder of my strategy, which is having fun with your students and having fun with your leaders and having fun with maybe even other staff on camera and posting that to your social media because it's a way that you can interact and engage with something that's live and happening real and in the room, but you can also show that content out to the rest of the world, and if not the rest of the world, at least the rest of your church, the rest of your youth ministry, the parents that are connected to the students in your ministry.

Nick Clason (09:45):
And so three of these ideas are ideas that I have either detailed or outlined before, or ones that I've come up with since I released the ebook. So the first one is a game called Rank 'em, and there's two different ways to do it. I believe right now I have the fall version online on DYM and coming up soon, I should be having the Christmas version drop onto Download Youth Ministry. But Rank 'em is basically a, Hey, let your students take these five things and rank them one through five. Now, one of my favorite variations to that is what's called, and maybe you've seen it if you've been on TikTok or Reels, is the blind ranking thing, which is where different categories of things come in. So let's say you're doing

Nick Clason (10:24):
A blind ranking of a TV show, and I say The Office, and then you have to put it in one through five list. And so for me, if I got the office, I'd be like, well, that's one. But then if someone was like, fixer Upper with Chip and Joanna Gaines, I'd be like, man, I like that show a lot. Probably put it at three. I'm afraid to give away two. And then if someone's like, okay, Ted Lasso, I'll be like, oh, Ted Lasso so good. I want to put it at one, but I can't start putting the office there. So I guess I'll put it in at two. And then if someone was like the ugliest houses in America, I'd be like, okay, I can put that at five. I like it, but I want to reserve four for something. And then they said, the Mandalorian, I'd be like, all right, four.

Nick Clason (11:00):
And I'd be like, you know what? I don't hate that list. What do you think Office, Ted Lasso Fixer Upper Mandalorian houses in America. I'm okay with that list, right? But the point is, I didn't know what was coming next. That's the idea of a blind ranking. And so I have two versions in this actual game. Rank 'em where you can play live in the room with five things. You can do the one by one where they come in one at a time and you have to choose to rank 'em. I also have a social media version where you can take it and you can post it on your reels tos, YouTube shorts, and you can let students interact with it there and give their rankings. You can post it on YouTube story, or I'm sorry, Instagram stories if you don't have any of the other short kind of form platforms.

Nick Clason (11:39):
But you can use this. And again, if you get this game, I played this game in my context, live in the room a couple of weeks ago, and we only got to three questions. So what I did was, the way that I played it was I had myself and a co-host. And so the first one was me. They had to guess my rankings of these certain things at their tables together. And then how they did. Then we went to my co-host, they had to guess his rankings of the certain things, and then finally we switched that and they could rank them themselves. But the game has 10 questions, and so we only used three. So that leaves me seven more that I can use kind of sprinkled throughout on my socials throughout the rest of the week. Game idea number two is the visual variance voyage.

Nick Clason (12:20):
And because I'm a good Baptist, I like a good alliteration, but essentially it's a spot the difference game. And so if you get the widescreen version on DYM, I should have a fall version as well as a Christmas version coming out here soon. You have two graphics come in side by side, and you have to spot the difference. And listen, the best thing right now is that Adobe Photoshop, generative AI is letting you just add things to pictures kind of here and there. And it is a game changer for a game like this. By the way, if you want to level up your Photoshop skills, I have a link in the playlist to my Adobe editing and Photoshop. If that's something that you're interested, go check that out if you want a cheaper version. I also have link down there below Budget graphics for people who are looking to save time and money going through PowerPoint, Canva, Adobe Express and Instagram.

Nick Clason (13:04):
But in the visual variance voyage, you have two different pictures and you're just trying to identify what is different. But there's a timer on the screen and it's counting down. So you can play that live in your room, you can get contestants, you can play it in groups, you can play it at tables. But I also like that I have created a vertical based graphic that you can use, and you can then take those, and you can post those on Instagram stories or on shorts, whatever. And again, in both of these, rank 'em and in the visual variance voyage, if you don't want to use my canned graphics with a canned background, you can take the concept, right? You can take the two pictures and you can show them to somebody on a camera walking around your youth space like, Hey, spot the difference in less than 10 seconds.

Nick Clason (13:45):
Go. And then have them try to guess it, but you film them and you post that to your TikTok or to your YouTube short or whatever, and you can do just a simple picture and picture. Take my graphic that I've created and do a picture and picture with the video that you take of the person trying to guess. And so that's taking it to the next level where you take a game that you could just post a game in and of itself. But if you take that game and you film somebody trying to play it, then that's a whole nother level to it. Which leads me to my third option, which is my favorite option is emoji phraseology. I have just about any variant of season and game that you can think of. And basically what it is is you're trying to guess the emoji phrase, whether it's Christmas, whether it's fall, whether it's New Year's, whether it's February for Valentine's Day, whether it's St.

Nick Clason (14:28):
Patrick's. I mean, I literally have just about every season on download youth ministry, every single variation is linked down below in the show notes. But one of the favorite ways that I've done with this is I've just done one question by one question where we've gone up to people and we've asked them to guess, and then we've taken that graphic and they looked at it, and then I did a little picture and picture, or I actually put the actual icons on. I've done it where I did full editing and Adobe Premiere Pro with animations and sounds. And I've also done it where I just, in the TikTok editor, I just put the emojis on the screen and people had to try and guess and see what was playing. And so in all of those are games that you could play physically. Those are also games that you can play only digitally.

Nick Clason (15:10):
And my favorite is film other people playing those games and then post those out to your socials. One of the ones that was the biggest hit for the emoji was we went around and we did bible story emojis, and we asked different members of our staff and those, those were a massive hit, seeing other pastors and staff and senior pastors out there trying to guess those things on our socials. So here's the thing. The last way, the Ultimate Hack, I told you I was going to give you this ultimate hack. You can play just about any game, any game on download, youth ministry. It doesn't have to be one of my games. It can be any game that you find on there. It doesn't even have to have a phone-based formatting for it, but play any game. And then at the end of it, if it's a subjective based game where people are creating something, making a song, doing a lip sync, decorating a donut, whatever the case might be, take pictures of those things and then post them to social media and tell them that the vote is going to be what determines the winner.

Nick Clason (16:09):
And the voting is done on Instagram that does two things. It promotes your social media and it allows the students to be the judge, not just some random celebrity judge, not just you trying to pull something out of your hat at the last minute, right? Because Gen Z and Gen Alpha love to be publishers, they love to contribute to publishing the content, not just simply basic consumers being told what has happened to them. That is an older school, older industrial minded way of doing things. They want to know that their voice matters and that they actually even have a voice that you care about and that you want to listen to. And so that, I believe, is way number one, that you can wade into this exploring of a new frontier of how you can implement fun and games, not just in your room, not just online, but also in a hybrid way to help give students an opportunity to lean in and have their voice be heard in this hybrid way of doing things.

Nick Clason (16:59):
Which reminder is why I said in my ebook, I outline all the ways that you can flesh this out with posts twice a day for five days a week. You can scale it back if you don't have the bandwidth to do that, but whatever the case might be, I have millions of ideas in there from spiritual practice to fun, to your message content and ways that you can get that message out to spread the message of hope. So click the link for that down below in the description, and in the next video, we're going to be exploring how you can enhance your message and your ministry live in the room with hybrid versions. You're not going to want to miss it. Click that on the screen and we'll catch you on that side.

Episode 070: 📉 The Unveiling: The Actual Reason Church Attendance is Down in 2023 👇

Nick Clason — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 04:00:00 -0600

🔥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

☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS
OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
========================================

DESCRIPTION
👋 Welcome to our YouTube channel & podcast!

🤔 In this thought-provoking video, we delve into the intriguing topic of church attendance in 2023. Join us as we unveil and uncover the hidden truth behind this phenomenon that has been shrouded in mystery.

🚸 Who is Generation Z? Who is Generation Alpha? And what are we doing to reach those students and people in our churches? Because before we know it, Gen Z is going to be the youngest demographic in our church. Where are they? And what is our church doing that's pushing them away?

⚖️ Generation Z is the most justice minded generation the world has ever seen. That should be a dream come true for church leaders? But it's seemed to throw more of a wrench in our plans, than become a strategic advantage to us. How can we respond in a more relvant way?

churchattendance #hiddentruth #unveiling #2023 #church #truth #revelation #faith #spirituality #religion #worship #community #christianity #belief #sunday #sacred #divine #belief #sermon #christian

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

🆓 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

👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
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/070

//View all the Charts and Graphs via YouTube
https://youtu.be/t5mJyiUFUwo

//Pew Research Post-Pandemic Article
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/28/how-the-pandemic-has-affected-attendance-at-u-s-religious-services/#:~:text=This%20longitudinal%20analysis%20finds%20a

//Barna Info on Gen Z
https://shop.barna.com/collections/gen-z

//Deep Dive on Gen Alpha
https://youtu.be/7tVACJFlwpw?si=Iv8oKr4bcYc7Z4cG

//6 Questions About the Future of the Hybrid Church Experience
https://shop.barna.com/products/6-questions-about-the-future-of-the-hybrid-church-experience

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-00:53 The Drastic Church Attendance Shift of 2023
00:53-02:50 The World is Changing, How should the church rethink ministry and attendance?
02:50-07:45 Exploring the Imperical Data from Pew Research & Barna
07:45-13:11 Why aren't younger people attending church the way we know it?

13:11-18:45 The Real Reason Church Attendance is Down in Younger Generations

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Have you ever wondered what happened to the faithful church attenders? Meaning when you compare this Pew research data from 2019 to 2023, you see that there is a massive dropoff in church attendance when you experience it personally as a youth ministry or church leader, just how big that loss can feel. I'm going to explore in this video the dirty little secret of church attendance for now and for the future, going on past 2023. I'm also going to share with you my anecdotal 13 year youth ministry experience, what I've noticed as a youth pastor, but then also somebody who just is a part of churches and what I've noticed about church attendance during that time. And finally, make sure that you stick around to the very end of this video because I'm going to share with you the one little thing that I think churches are doing that are surprisingly keeping away young people.

Nick Clason (00:52):
Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. Well, hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always am your host, Nick Clason, a 13 year youth ministry veteran located in Dallas-Fort Worth area, and I am on a mission to help churches and youth ministries understand and embrace digital as a real form of church ministry and church discipleship. That's why we call it the Hybrid Ministry Show. It's not just physical, it's not just digital, but it's a melding of the two. In fact, I have a video where I talk about what every church youth ministry needs to be doing. It's linked right here at the top of the episode. If you want to check that out and explore my full basis philosophy and digital strategy, you can go ahead and do that. But for the rest of us, we're going to be exploring what church attendance looks like as far as trends and things are looking at for the future.

Nick Clason (01:44):
Because things are different. The world is changing, and because the world is changing, I do believe that churches not need to not drop the core things of their doctrine and their faith and their outlook. But what they do need to do is that they need to start rethinking and adapting how they're approaching church attendance and their people that are attending their church and how they can best serve them and best create disciples that are going to make an impact in this world. I also want to make sure that you hit a like button because listen, they're free. They cost you nothing, and they really do help a lot. And a subscribe would be even better. And here's why you want to subscribe because we actually dropped a surefire resource in a video not too long ago, 40 done for you ideas about how to reach the next generation, how to stay relevant by using digital. It's a free P D F that'll just give you ideas of how to explore and share the world of digital with your teenagers and the tenders. If you're interested in that, check it out. It'll be linked down below in the show notes. But let's dive in and explore this world of data between Pew Research and Barna. Let's go. Well, hey, everybody. As I said at the top of this episode, if you notice, pew Research is claiming that church attendance is simply down

Nick Clason (02:59):
The board. It's down in every single demographic. There's really only, interestingly, one demographic where church attendance from a post covid world is up, and that is with the religiously unaffiliated from 3% up to 4%, but otherwise, everybody else is down in church attendance. What's fascinating though is that recently Barna, and as I've mentioned multiple times, I'm a youth pastor, and so I took this Barna zoom discovery course on unpacking and understanding Gen Z and real fast before we dive into this conversation about Gen Z, what you need to know is that Generation Z is aging out of our student ministries, right? The youngest Gen Z demographic that we have is freshmen, maybe even sophomores in high school. The rest of our Gen Z are in our workforce. For example, I have a new resident, he's a college graduate, so he is in his first year post-college, he's Gen Z.

Nick Clason (04:00):
And so the fact is Generation Z are young people now. They're not just the youth pastor's problems, they're the church's generation and demographic to understand, and that demographic, that generation, they're attending church even less and less than before. But what's fascinating is I think you'll find out, and as I'm going to talk about the end of this video, is that it's not for the reasons that you might think that they're not attending church. And so as you'll notice, pew research here on the screen has said that church attendance across the board is declining. And I believe that to be true. Okay? What's fascinating though is I do want to lean into the younger demographic. And so in 20 19, 20 4% of 18 to 29 year olds are attending church. Now, peer research claims that only 20% of them are currently attending church, but Barna said that Gen Z is opting out of religion altogether.

Nick Clason (04:52):
So 25% of them, which is the largest of all the other age brackets, if you're including millennials and Gen X and whatever and whatnot, 25% claim to be have no religious affiliation what so ever. That's the largest currently, and it's the largest I believe, in history. Also, what's more fascinating though, and what I really want to kind of dial into is that according to a recent study, they sent just a survey to a big group of Gen Z students, some church, some not, and all kind of the melding in between of their church experience. And it said that the top five words from a list that they were given to choose to describe a Gen Z person's faith were these growing, open, curious, exploring, and unsure. So we have this data from Pew that says Gen Z is not attending church, but then we have this data from Barna that says, the top five ways that they would describe their faith are growing, open, curious, exploring, and unsure.

Nick Clason (06:04):
And so we have these kind of two things that I think are juxtaposed to each other. I don't think either of the data is inaccurate. I still don't think people from Gen Z are attending church that often, and that's what I really want to dive into and explore. But meanwhile, they are all of these things. They are open, growing, curious, exploring. And so how do we lean into a generation that's open, curious, exploring? Meanwhile, furthermore, and also incredibly important about Gen Z is they're very justice minded and they very much care about the marginalized, those in certain pockets and parts of society that are being overlooked. So we as a church should be clamoring for a generation that cares about that, that wants to serve, that wants jump in and help people because that's what the church should be all about. And so we have that.

Nick Clason (06:56):
I also want to share this with you. This last piece of research data from Pew, it dives in just a little bit deeper. I think it's interesting to note we're not going to spend a lot of time on it. So if you're watching this, feel free to just screenshot this. If you're listening to a podcast, make sure you jump into the show notes or head over to YouTube. Go ahead and see this on screen. But the rates are declining, and this is just even more of the data fleshed out and unraveled a little bit deeper so that you can look at it and just see the breakdowns of Christian, Protestant, white, evangelical and all these things. But the consensus is that church attendance is down. So the question that I believe is worth experiencing and exploring is what in the world's going on? So I want to share with you some of my experiences here in the next section.

Nick Clason (07:44):
Check it out. So as I've said, I am a 13 year youth ministry veteran, married to my incredible wife, Amanda. I have two boys. I started as a youth pastor, my final year of college, Cedarville University in Ohio. Shout out, go yellow jackets. And I started working as a youth pastor making a hundred dollars a week at a church in Lebanon, Ohio. It was about a 45 minute drive away from where my college campus was, and I did that my last semester as a senior on campus at Cedarville. That job did extend past graduation, so I worked an entire year past graduation at that church. And then that church, they took a special offering to get me hired. They weren't during my time making budget. And so while they weren't making budget, the senior pastor at the end of it said, listen, man, I don't want to ask our church again for another special offering just simply for your position while the rest of our church is not making budget, so therefore I think it'll be best you left, or if you stayed, we'd love to have you stay, but you're going to have to take a pay cut slash not get paid at all.

Nick Clason (08:45):
And so I knew that my time at that church was done. I went on to another church about 45 minutes back north, closer to college and closer to home, frankly. And that was actually a great experience. I was there for five years. They didn't have a youth pastor before. And so when I started, there was like four kids. My last week on that job. We went to summer camp and we took 88 students to summer camp. And so experienced a lot of growth, numerically, experienced even more growth spiritually. But in both of those experiences, what was happening was my wife and I were looking around and we're like, where are our people? There weren't many people our age. Of course, when we started at the one church, we were in college. When we left the other church, we were 26, 27 years old and had a kid.

Nick Clason (09:31):
And all in that time, there was really never anybody our age. There were always a few. There are always going to be a few people in our age bracket and in our age demographic. But what I've noticed anecdotally is that I have always been in a no man's land spot in church staff. I don't say that to complain. I don't say that to make anybody feel bad, but my generation, I don't feel like attends church that well. And actually, my wife and I were talking about this the other day, and when we were at that church that we were at for five years, it was called University Baptist Church in Beauford Creek, Ohio. We were there for five years. And the problem was we were like, well, we're young, right? And everybody else was about 10 years older than us. Most of them had kids in my youth ministry or starting in my youth ministry that most of our friends were like 35 to 37 years old. They had kids in

Nick Clason (10:24):
Lower elementary school. And we were like, well, listen, nobody our age goes to church. That was kind of the thought, the widespread thought at that time. Young families, young, they're not going to church. They're not making it a priority, but once they have kids, they'll end up being in church, right? Well, now here I am 35 years old or 34 years old. I have kids the same age as those families that I did at that church a couple years ago. And I look around now and there's still that void. There's still that void. There's a little more of it. A, I'm here in the south b I work as youth pastor, and I work when everybody else is at church. So I may drop my kids off, but I'm not getting to know really any of the families, which is another conversation for another day.

Nick Clason (11:11):
And so there may be more of that than I'm even aware of. But as I look around on staff and things like that, look at some of the pools I'm in. There's not as many people my age just not. There's just a gap. And like I was saying, my wife and I, we were talking about it and we've always felt that. I'm like, well, when we get to that age, then it'll be there. And it just hasn't, it's always felt like there's been some sort of attendance void or community void from the, and we've been able to find community lean in. I mean, we have become friends with people of all different ages and types of backgrounds and stuff like that. So we're not looking for people to be identical to us. The thing, I think the tricky part in all of this is that as we were talking about this, she's like, well, if I look around at some of my friends in my family, they don't go to church that much either.

Nick Clason (12:04):
And so even though even some people we maybe went to Christian college with or whatever, they're just, they're not naturally attending church. There's something about church I think that my generation has an aversion to. And I think that that's what this data is bearing out is maybe not post covid church. TE is down maybe since 2019 to 2023. The older generation that did attend church has unfortunately passed away. And this younger generation, as they're waving up, it's not that they're not coming back to church, it's that they were never really there. And so they may claim to be Christians. And I think that that is the conundrum in and of itself. There may be claimed Christians, but they're not showing up at our churches. And so I have a thesis as a youth pastor, as a 13 year church staff veteran that I want to propose with you.

Nick Clason (13:01):
It's going to be controversial, and you may not even agree, but I have a thesis of why I think that this is happening. So let's check that out on the other side. So here's my thesis. I really do think that young people are interested in God, faith, spiritual things and spirituality. I really do. I think the Barna data bears that out. I think what they're uninterested in is the church current demands, expectations, and the ways that the church has been choosing to do things for years. And I think one of the things that I want to challenge churches, church leaders, even youth pastors who are in a second seat to maybe lead up, is to rethink tier two issues. And that's my hack in this video, rethink tier two issues, because I think we've made things like, now don't call me a heretic and turn this off, but just hear me out.

Nick Clason (13:58):
I think we've made things like the Sunday morning sermon, worship experience, a tier one issue when biblically, the impetus for gathering together is not around a lecture style message. It never was. The gathering was meant to be a family, meant to be a living, breathing organism. And at some point along the way, we've interjected this idea of a lecture style message, and we've made that the number one step in church. And we have a generation of young people that are looking for community belonging, acceptance, looking for a place to make a difference, and then we ask them as a church to come in and listen to us, tell them what to do for an hour. And then beyond that, if they want to go deeper, if they're really, really committed, if they really, really care, if they're really about this God stuff, then they'll give us even more of their time and they'll start serving.

Nick Clason (15:03):
And I just don't know that that's the best entry point in churches anymore. Again, don't call me a heretic. I love preaching and I love sermons, but I think that there are many, many ways to rethink that. In fact, Barna answered the six questions for the future of the hybrid church a couple years ago in the P D F ebook. I can link that in the show notes down below. But in that they asked, what are digital ways to do church? And it was offered things like small group confession, Bible study prayer. The number one thing that people voted that could be experienced digitally was the sermon. I love listening to sermons, but I love also listening to it When I'm on a run or when I'm driving or when I'm at the grocery store, I listen to things in my ears all day long so I can hear a sermon that exact same way.

Nick Clason (16:00):
But instead, the expectation is for someone to walk into a room, stare at the back of someone's head and listen to someone up on stage, talk for half an hour. What if we rethought that and flipped the entry point into a more robust community? Because in my experience, community is like sermon 2.0 or sermon adjacent. We had the sermon, and now that that's good and locked in, now let's explore other avenues for you to go to church. What if we rethought that as a tier two thing? Because what I know the church to be biblically and theologically is a place for believers to come together to gather, to worship God together and to be a family and a community. Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 spurring one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.

Nick Clason (16:58):
And I think if all we do is show up into a Sunday morning gathering and we have the hallway pleasantries and the coffee interactions, and then a 30 minute sermon, and then we go to brunch, I don't know that we really encouraged anybody. We can smile real nice, but at the end of the day, did that do anything? And I think that right there is the rub. I think that's the difference between a different generation, an older generation of church tenders and this new wave of church generations. And so if you're a youth pastor, you're on the front lines of this. And you may be a beneficiary of older families that have kids that are sending their kids to your student ministry, but are those kids actually connected to God in the church or are they connected to their parents who are coming through the church and then ultimately into your

Nick Clason (17:49):
Youth ministry? And so get to know them because while they may not be making the decisions right now as the people who are, they're not the schedule keepers. Mom and dads are the ones driving them, but get to know them, get to know what makes them tick, and will they stay connected and attached to the church and the mission overall. And so that's my thesis. I hope that you just give it a thought, think through what these tier two issues might look like and how you can readapt them in your church. But hey, I want to let you know that right here on the screen, like I said, I have this video helping you break down how to reach this next generation. And I have a ebook 40 done for you, ideas listed out in this video, TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube. It'll pop up here on the screen. Hey, listen, we're trying to make digital discipleship easy and accessible, so don't forget, and as always, stay hybrid.

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

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

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

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

☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS
OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
========================================

DESCRIPTION
👋 Welcome to the Ultimate Youth Group Guide! In this exciting video, we'll dive into the power of Crush Games, Outreach initiatives, and Social Events to empower and inspire the youth.🔥

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

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

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

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

🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
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

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

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 067: 🔮 The Future of Church Youth Ministry 🔮

Nick Clason — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 04:00:00 -0500

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📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
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🎥LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100

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DESCRIPTION
⛪ In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show we want to explore the Future of Youth Ministry in the Local Church.
We’re going to lean into the idea, and namesake of our show, and truly unpack the idea of: “Hybrid Ministry”

😡 Additionally, I’m going to answer the question: Does God Hate Social Media?

👌 And give you 3 Practical Tips that you can begin implementing into your student ministry space: TODAY

🔓The Church needs to unlock & unleash the next generation.
They are the church of now.
And Gone are the days of the one-size-fits all approaches to youth ministries.

🎨 It’s about learning and finding where youth people are, embracing diversity and creativity.

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

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

Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/067

//BRACKETS
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-big-game-food-bracket/winter/the-big-game-8544.html
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/world%27s-greatest-donut/games/food-8745.html
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/the-student-ministry-bracket-of-epic-things/games-3974.html

//SCULPT IT
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/sculpt-it/games/humor-8503.html

//SOCIAL CHALLENGE PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNYRk3l4M-4&list=PL_FbsNmRvDjempodvm_5FsqwakX6OidCd

//SPIRITUAL RESOURCES
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/l6cp97ufmwn8gfpfkxbte/h?rlkey=s5hb09c6d6x1u9iqcdz5j1aya&dl=0

//DUCK, DUCK, TRIVIA

https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/duck-duck-trivia/trivia-8705.html

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-02:03 The Future of Church Youth Ministry
02:03-09:08 What does Hybrid Ministry mean?
09:08-17:29 The Biblical Basis for Digital Expressions of Church
17:29-29:48 3 Ways to Invest in your Online Presence

29:48-36:25 The Challenge of a Strong Digital Presence

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
In this episode, we are going to be exploring the question, does God hate us using social media? We're also going to be looking at unpacking and exploring and talking about the future of the church and the future of youth ministry. And finally, we are going to help lean into this idea of hybrid ministry. What is it? How do we implement it? What are the downsides of it? And lastly, we are going to offer three practical tips to help you win in your church and in your student ministry. And as always, there will be game ideas because that's just a part of the thing. The church is at this crossroads where they need to look at unlock and unleash the next generation because the next generation is the church of today, not the church of the future. Gone are the days of the one size fits all youth ministries, and so we need to help explore and unlock for you what's going to work in your context.

Nick Clason (01:03):
It's about us learning diversity, creativity, and leaning into the individuality of each and every one of our students, and to help do that, to help lean into the creativity. This is why I believe that the digital space is such a great opportunity for us. In fact, I have a done for you resource if you are just kind of floundering and have no idea where to go, and that's what we talked about in this video that's going to be linked right here at the top of the screen, TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube because we are going to help you navigate the best social media to go all in on your context as well as give you a free ebook that's linked right down here below in the description to help you navigate social media for your church and for your student ministry. But without any further ado, let's dive into this episode, the future of the church, the future of youth ministry, and what exactly is hybrid ministry.

Nick Clason (02:02):
Let's go. Well, hey everyone. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Nick Clason. I am a almost 13 year youth ministry veteran, currently living and working in the D F W Dallas-Fort Worth area. And I am on a mission to help churches and youth ministries realize their potential for what they can do with digital ministry and in the digital space. In fact, that's why I have this entire podcast, this entire YouTube channel. In fact, if you didn't know, we are a podcast, so you can check out the show notes for link to our full transcripts@hybridministry.xyz, but you might be asking what even is hybrid ministry? What even does that mean? And it's a little bit of a made up word I would say, but the idea of a hybrid thing, I think about it as a football fan. Think about Teem Hill of the New Orleans Saints, right? He's a hybrid style player. He can play,

Nick Clason (02:59):
He can get under center, he can snap the ball and throw it, but he's also got some kind of tight end skills, some kind of H back type skills. Or as an old timey Colts fan, Dallas Clark was a great hybrid or H back style of player. He didn't fit into a one size fits all mold. And that's really my heart behind what I think hybrid ministry is another really great example. I've used it before, so if you're a long time listener, you've maybe heard it, but the idea of Home Depot when I am a customer, I am a customer of Home Depot and so if on any given Saturday I'm just feeling Super dad and I want to throw on my cargo shorts and my new balance shoes and just go peruse the aisles of Home Depot, I can do that. I can experience Home Depot in a physical sense.

Nick Clason (03:47):
However, at the same time, if I don't have time to do that and I just want to place an order online, I can jump on their app and I can do that as well. But the third option is probably my favorite is a hybrid relationship with Home Depot where I grab my cell phone, I download their app while I'm in the store, I search for the thing I need, it tells me the exact aisle and bay number and location of my thing and I can walk straight there. I have a digital relationship with Home Depot while I am physically in the store at the physical location. And I think in a lot of cases that's the way that our churches need to start just thinking about because in a lot of times, especially with Covid, we did not have the physical as an option. And so we all moved to digital and it was an amazing opportunity.

Nick Clason (04:41):
I think a lot of churches learned a lot. I think a lot of churches are still doing things now as a result of what happened during the pandemic, but now as restrictions have lifted and people have gone more and more back into church on a regular basis, churches have been like that stunk. Let's go back to what we know and there is so much value in what can happen in an interpersonal relationship. Please, I want you to hear that from me. I want you to know my heart, but I also believe that, I mean, you know this right there are 168 hours per week in any given week, but most churches really only focus on the one or two hours that you have a programmed scheduled event. It's like the evening news or it's, it's like sitcom appointment television. If you want to know what's going on in this series, then you better be here at 10:30 AM and that's the only time that you're ever going to know what we're talking about.

Nick Clason (05:37):
And honestly, let's be honest, churches, that is a really selfish and kind of vain approach. The only way for people to grow is to make your thing appointment calendaring in their life, and that's just not the world that we live in anymore. You're going to have people do that and because you do have some people do that, you think everybody should adopt that approach. Meanwhile, there are people who do want to grow in their faith and do want to have a relationship with you and your church. However, their schedule may not allow for it. Like I know this coming Saturday we are hosting a national day of youth ministry volunteer training by D Y M, shout out d y m, but the problem is my boys have their very first game of T-ball and so unfortunately my wife can't, as a super rockstar volunteer that she is, she's not going to be able to make a portion of that training.

Nick Clason (06:29):
Does that mean that she doesn't care about youth ministry and teenagers and her role in our church? Not at all. She's busy. She's got something else going on and so we always have to think and accommodate for that. And I think a lot of times churches are just like, you need to prioritize this. And that's true. Hearing me say that I believe that our people need to prioritize the things of God. However, I also believe that we are now in a time and in a space in 2023 and beyond where we can offer things to people that they can consume, that they can learn, that they can come to understand, that they can gather teachings about the importance of what our church is doing, what our church is offering in a hybrid type of moment. They have an in-person relationship with our church, but they can lean into the digital and I think a lot of churches are approaching digital as the outreach arm and that's really all it does.

Nick Clason (07:24):
And then once you've come and decided to commit to the church, then you have to shift to completely in person. And I just want to tell you, I don't live that way. I got a speeding ticket last week. It was awful. I was going way too fast in zone. That should have been a much faster speed limit, but it's a speed trap. And after paying a $346 yesterday, I had the option to call to go in person or to go online to remedy that. Guess which option I chose? Just like all of you, I chose the online option. If there's a way to do it where it can be more convenient and it doesn't hinder the relationship, and I think that's what we need to do. So hybrid, it's not just about in-person or it's not just about digital. It's about finding a way to marry those two environments so that people can have a holistic and much more robust relationship with your church.

Nick Clason (08:24):
Hey, listen, I hope you're getting value out of this video and we're going to continue on and we have all kinds of other videos like this, and so it would be incredible if you hit the subscribe button so that you get notified every single time we drop a video like this and listen, it costs you nothing but a really does help us out. So if you would like this video and maybe even share this along with a friend or someone else that you know who's a youth pastor or a church communications person because we are on a mission to help churches lean into the hybrid side of their ministry. But let's move on. Let's answer next question. Does God hate social media and what is there if, is there a biblical basis for leaning into digital and hybrid ministry? Let's check it out. So I know a lot of pastors, I know a lot of people, I know a lot of leaders who encourage people to lean away from digital media, social media as a means of discipleship and a means of growth.

Nick Clason (09:23):
And I think in a lot of cases that that's really a healthy practice for a lot of people. I think with unfettered, unfiltered access to just doom scrolling social media time and time and time and time and time again, which I actually didn't mean to turn. Oh look, there's me. I didn't mean to turn my phone on doing that, but when people just do that over and over and over again, I know that it is not healthy. There are some definite downfalls and some definite payrolls to doing that. However, I also know that I need this thing to keep track of my calendar. I need that thing to read email. I need that thing to track my receipts. I need that thing to get me somewhere in a turn by turn. G P SS navigation system. That thing right there is where my wife and Mike's grocery list lives.

Nick Clason (10:14):
It lives in a digital format on our phone that we both have access to like a shared list. And so this thing is going nowhere. And so instead of just coaching people to throw it in the fire and be done with it, while that may be what some people need to do, I think we also need to begin to think about how can we help coach people through having a cell phone? Yes, there are bad and evil things on cell phones. If you have a teenage boy, a teenage girl, the pitfalls of pornography and what is available to them in their pocket at any given moment is dangerous. However, that's not going anywhere for them and unless mom and dad want to rip that away from them, they are going to have a cell phone. So how do we help them walk through and wade through the difficulties of that reality while also realizing that in many cases this is a necessary commodity for most people in America in 2023 and beyond?

Nick Clason (11:22):
I do actually believe that the Bible speaks about this and one of my favorite kind of passages of it, obviously it's not directly talking about cell phones and digital media because that didn't exist, but the principle I do believe exists. So in Jeremiah chapter 29, which is everyone's favorite bookstore, Bible verse Jeremiah 29 11, we're going to read it here in just a second, but actually starting in verse five is where we're going to start reading so that you for perhaps the first time in your life can get to hear Jeremiah 29 11 in its full context. But Jeremiah is writing to the Babylonian people who are in exile in, or I'm sorry, he's running to the Jewish people who are in exile in Babylon. So God's people are in a foreign land and he addresses their concerns. Here's what he says. I want you to build homes.

Nick Clason (12:16):
I want you to plan to stay. I want you to plant gardens, eat the food that they produce, marry and have children, and then find spouses for them so that they may have many grandchildren. Multiply, don't dwindle away and work for the peace and the prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare and it will determine then ultimately your welfare. Verse eight says, this is what the Lord of the heavens armies, the God of Israel says, do not let your prophets and fortune tellers, tellers who are with you in Babylon trick you do not listen to their dreams because they're telling you lies in my name. I have not sent them, says the Lord. This is what the Lord says. You'll be in Babylon for 70 years, but then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised and I will bring you home again for I know the plans.

Nick Clason (13:11):
Here it is, guys. Verse 11, for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, the plans for good, not for disaster. To give you a future and hope. I think that what God is basically saying in this verse is he's saying, invest in the place in which I have placed you. And he's saying, embrace the things of the land, of the place of the climate, of the context of which I have placed you and to the Jewish people that meant plant gardens, intermarry, have children, have grandchildren, pray for the prosperity of Babylon because that will determine and dictate the prosperity of you and your life. And in a lot of the same ways, I believe that technology is the opportunity for us to enter into a digital landscape and a digital Babylon, so to speak. And so we have the chance to lean into it.

Nick Clason (14:01):
We have the chance to go towards what the people of our day are using and navigating, and we have the chance to redeem it. We have the chance to bring light into it. We have the chance to sprinkle in and even more than just sprinkle, but fully embrace and bring the great message of hope of the gospel into a digital and hybrid space. And most of the times, the pastors that I have interacted with are saying cell phones are bad and evil because most people have really bad habits with it. And so they're saying, so just don't do it. You don't need it. You don't need a digital Bible. Go get your paper Bible. I'm just saying, listen, if you're a youth pastor and you're ministering to a 13 year old who just got a new cell phone, that's really not going to play very well to them.

Nick Clason (14:50):
I'm not saying that we should just cater to people. Discipleship is difficult and often we get the root word discipline from it, and so it's going to require some hard and difficult conversations. But all that being said, we are not going to successfully push people away from it and just I, listen, I get it just because, oh, well, should we cater to bad habits? Absolutely not. But there's a lot of good that can happen on here. Right now, I play fantasy football through my cell phone because of fantasy football. I have connections with people that I have worked with in the past, my family who lives in three continents on this globe. We play fantasy football together and we connect through this. My church staff right now, we have 30 people on our church staff playing fantasy football that I am help kind of spearheading and leading, and that's helping bring about some comradery among our staff.

Nick Clason (15:47):
I read the Bible this morning on the Bible app through a plan that I subscribe to on my phone a lot of times when I don't have, and I read that on my iPad, and if I don't have my iPad, I will read it on my phone. One of my favorite apps on here is the Bible verse memory app, right? My point is that there's a lot of good that can happen through this, and I think we a lot of times want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So let's lean in. Let's teach people how to navigate and make wise decisions and choices as they interact with digital and cell phone media. So the question that you're probably asking then if you're youth pastor, church communications person, is how do I invest in an online presence? What do I do? And I want to let you know before we dive into that, that if any of this is interesting to you, if any of this is ringing a bell, any of this is perking your interest that we have a website, hybridministry.xyz, and this episode is episode 67.

Nick Clason (16:48):
So if you go to hybridministry.xyz slash 0 6 7 link is also down below in the description along with my 43 ideas for how to lean into digital ministry. You can get full transcripts. That's one thing that we provide completely for free in every single episode in case you're out on a run and you're hearing this and you're like, dude, I need some of that. I need to take some notes and filter some of my thoughts around some of what we're listening to in this episode. Great, we got that for you. Link in the description, hybridministry.xyz/067, but let's explore and let's answer and tackle this question. How do you invest into your online presence? I have three ideas for you to help invest more into your online presence. One idea is just up your game in your social media and your digital media presence.

Nick Clason (17:41):
And so that can be all kinds of different things like your social media. Does that mean that your church or your student ministry has a pop Instagram account? I mean maybe, or is it that you launch a relevant YouTube channel maybe? Or is it that you're surfing on the TikTok trends out there on that app? TikTok could be, but whatever it is, there is an opportunity to weave in social media not only to your church attenders, but also to people out there in the world who don't know anything about you, your church or your student ministry. But my ultimate number one recommendation, especially if you're in youth ministry, and if not I still recommend this for a lot of churches, is YouTube. And what I actually have is a link in the description for how you can launch and start a YouTube channel for under $100, which by the way in 2023 is completely unheard of.

Nick Clason (18:33):
So you should definitely get in on that. But what it's going to do is it's going to help you utilize and start a channel simply using your cell phone upping and leveling up your game with some microphone gear and maybe some basic lighting to just get the ball rolling so that you can have a YouTube channel. And the reason why I believe YouTube is such a strong contender is especially if you're a youth pastor, 95% of teenagers claim to use and utilize YouTube. Meanwhile, people are getting on there and think about it, how do you engage and interact with YouTube? You probably hopped on there recently and said, how do I fix this clogged sink in my guest bathroom? Right? People are getting on there and asking specific questions, and while you may be trying to figure out how to unclog your sink, a 13 year old might be saying, why does God send good people like my grandmother to hell?

Nick Clason (19:27):
And you as a youth pastor have an opportunity to address and answer that particular and specific question. Now, tell me that that's not an amazing opportunity. We posted a video on our church's social media, our church's YouTube, the beginning of the school year called How to Ruin Your School Year. I think maybe we did the opposite of it, how to Not Ruin Your School Year, and it got like 150 views, and our audience is really not that big on YouTube. And I mean we have at least 150 students on our role and on our roster, but I know that not all of our students are subscribed to our YouTube are even really paying attention to our YouTube. So those 150 views did not all come from our students. My question is, would you like an opportunity as a youth pastor to have greater kingdom impact than you have currently right now in your local physical context?

Nick Clason (20:21):
Maybe the answer is no, but I would wonder why the answer to that would be no. Sure, you can't nuance and go as deep, dude, that was like a 12 minute video. I had enough ability to flesh things out and flesh out ideas and explain things fully and thoroughly that you might have to leave on the cutting room floor of say, a more short form vertical video-based TikTok or YouTube short or something like that. There is opportunity really there is out there to answer specific questions of teenagers. And YouTube is powered by Google the number one largest search engine of the world, and people consider YouTube to be the second largest search engine in the world. So put answers to the questions that people are going to the second largest search engine in the world in there, trying to get answers to big matters of faith and existential realities.

Nick Clason (21:15):
You have a chance to do that. And like I said, link in the description down here that will help you get your YouTube channel up the ground with just a minimal amount of gear talking head just like this video into a cell phone camera. The other idea, the third idea that I have for you are some hybrid based games if you're in youth ministry, the value of games. But one of my favorite things we do is brackets. So if March madness style, if you're a sports person, you got 64 teams, we'll do a 16 team bracket, we'll rank things kind of arbitrarily with our own sort of value-based ranking system. We have a platypus mascot in our student ministry and that was voted on competing against 16 other animals. So we had a yak and we had a lamb, which was a 16 seed, which almost won and upset the number one seed a lion.

Nick Clason (22:11):
We had a baboon on there, and what ultimately won was the platypus. I think that's the generation of Finn. And for talking one of my favorite brackets, I actually have a couple on download youth ministry. I'll put the link to those in descriptions if you want to go check 'em out or create your own. But we will do a Super Bowl food or big game day food bracket so that students can self-select what foods, what snacks are going to be at the Super Bowl party, and just a couple of weeks at the time of this recording. So probably by the time this drops, it'll be happening live. Feel free to go check it out at Cross Creek students. That's all of our handles on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, but we are going to be launching the world's greatest donut bracket, and it's going to be students selecting the world's greatest donut.

Nick Clason (22:58):
Here's the cool thing though. We just paid for, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars banner to be installed in one of our walls that we can reuse and replicate every single time we run a bracket. We'll probably do two or three of these a year where we can hang it in our physical space. So as students walk in, they'll see it, but then the push is for them to jump on Instagram and cast their vote, jump on social media and let it be known what they're going to be voting for. And so that's a way to be hybrid. We're talking about it, announcing it and making it a big deal in our physical space, and we're giving students even a chance to vote physically on a piece of paper, but then we're also pushing it towards digital media. Those things get a ton of traction in our context.

Nick Clason (23:47):
People talk about it, especially on staff people like which one won? How did you rank that one that it incites a little bit of faux riot. Okay. Another thing is we will do a lot of, we'll do some things called social challenges. I'll link the playlist that we do on that YouTube, but we will grab a couple of students every single Wednesday night, film them on camera, and then post that to YouTube. We'll clip it up into a short, and that'll be something that we can post on shorts as well, but that gives students a chance to compete in certain challenges or taskmaster type challenges. Again, that's a way to use the students in your physical space and promote and pump them up on your digital platforms. And other things you can do game wise is just create some sort of contest where there's a drawing contest or a sculpture contest or a dancing contest or whatever.

Nick Clason (24:42):
You can post those on social media and let people vote, cast their vote. Did you like A or B better, right? Like gingerbread houses or we'll do Plato sculpture things. I have a game on D y M called Sculpt It, and then we've done before. It's really fun. But we post all those on social media and then we let people cast their vote for the winner, and then the next time we get together the next week or that following Sunday, we'll give away a prize to the winning team or the winning table for their contribution in that game. Those are just ways to marry your in-person with your online and make it more hybrid. Make it last beyond the one hour a week that you have your students in your student ministry. Another idea, so that's just upping your digital presence game. And hey, like I said, link in the description for 40 ideas, 40 done for you ideas in vertical, vertical video based content like TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels that you can start adopting now.

Nick Clason (25:39):
And all of those ideas, by the way, are ideas that are recyclable. So for example, you can use the same, I just posted a game. We're calling it telepathy, but you can name it whatever you want to name it. I got it from some guys on YouTube shorts who call it wavelength, but one guy's thinking of a number and another guy's asking him for certain categories of things. So like the one I just posted, they asked for candy sport, clothing brand and day of the week, and then you give an item that is that number that's in your head. So my buddy was thinking of number three, and she said, candy, and he said, black licorice, which I think it's probably lower than a three if you ask me, but that's just me. And then she said, okay, how about sport? And he said, golf.

Nick Clason (26:23):
And then she said, okay, how about sport or athletic wear? And he said, new balance. And then she said, how about day of the week? And he said, Tuesday, she guessed that the number was four, but it was really three in his head, right? That's just a fun game. You can do a little bit of post-production editing if you want, even if you have no editing skills, you can do most of that on your cell phone to make that happen. By the way, I have a complete ebook, another one on how to post a TikTok from scratch. I'll also link that down below in the description. But all these are ways for you to just start taking steps to up your game and your social media. All right, the other idea, what about, so that's digital presence. What about web access, right? Is your website up to date?

Nick Clason (27:03):
That's all I'm asking. Is your website up to date? And there's this idea, do we push info to people or do we ask them to pull it for themselves? And I believe that we should do both, but I believe that you can push info, but people should always know that the answer to every single one of their questions lies on the website. So yes, send that Tuesday email reminding them about the fundraiser coming up on Saturday, but let them know that in the email, Hey, all this info is available on our website so that when Friday night rolls around and the mom and dad are thinking about how to get their kids where they need to go on Saturday, and they know that one of the kids is going to the fundraiser at church, they have to figure out where they are, what time they have to drop them off.

Nick Clason (27:46):
They don't have to go dig back through their email that they've gotten 125 other spam emails between Tuesday and Friday night. They can just go straight to your website. Is your church website up to date? Listen, people live in an on demand world. They're not relying on your email to give them the information that they need. They want to be informed, but then they also, they want to know or to go to get what they need information wise. So make sure your website is up to date. And then the third hybrid idea I have are just simply like individual tools. I'll link a few of these in the description down below. But in our student ministry, like I said, we did a video called Three Ways to Ruin Your School Year, and it was basically don't connect with God. And so in the reverse, we gave them three connections with God ideas, memorizing scripture, reading the Bible, and spending time in prayer.

Nick Clason (28:46):
And we created just a downloadable resource for them to use and utilize on their phone. It also pointed them and push them towards apps or YouVersion, Bible reading plans. So if you want to see some of those, you can check those out. But those are just ideas of things that you can help put in your student's hand. You can print physical copies if you want. You can also offer a digital version of it on your website or in an email download. And if you have an actual communications marketing department, you can put those behind Handshake websites where people have to put their name and email in, and you can use that to start building lists and things like that, which is a really good marketing practice. But if you don't want to know how to do that and you don't have a communications department, you can just put free resources on your website for people to grab, however and whenever.

Nick Clason (29:35):
But what about the challenge? What is difficult about doing this? I hear you on the other side of this video. Don't have time. No way I can do this. Great. We're going to address that in the next section. Look, I get it. This is a lot. And as I'm explaining this, you're like, bro, I don't have time to do any of this. I know it's a lot of work. In fact, there's a tension, an inherent tension that will lie when you choose to enter into a hybrid space. The best example I have is the church I worked at before here. I started out on the very first day of Covid. I don't recommend that as a strategy, but I dunno how any of you can avoid that if you're taking a new job. But because I started on the first day of Covid, the very first thing that I did that we did, that our church did, that our student ministry did was launch a YouTube channel.

Nick Clason (30:23):
Well, they already had a YouTube channel, but launch a YouTube show. We called it unscripted and most churches during Covid, it was a in-person programming, youth ministry replacement. And dude, it was innovative. It was one of a kind. I really did not see a lot of other churches doing a full on show direct to camera, not just camera in the back of the room. There was a lot of power behind it. There was a lot of creative team members, videographers, contractors that were working on it. But then, as you know, slowly covid started to kind of wind down in-person, became more and more of a thing, and we started having more and more students back on campus and back in the room, but unscripted didn't go anywhere. In fact, we wanted to let unscripted serve as the small group teaching element, teaching moment in multiple in-person small group meetings in various host home locations throughout the city that lent itself better for geography.

Nick Clason (31:33):
We were in a mega church, and so a lot of people drove many, many miles to our church. And so we could put houses 20 minutes away from the campus, but closer to where students lived. We could also offer groups on multiple days of the week as students are super, super duper busy. It was a really, really, and because Covid had ushered us into this moment, it allowed us the chance to sort of rethink and reinvent how we disseminated our teaching and got the Bible into the hands of our small group leaders and into the hands of our children. But more and more people were clamoring for on-campus stuff, especially in light of Covid. And so this tension between is this good for the show? Is this good for online? Is this good for YouTube versus is this what's best for in the room? Became this tension and ultimately became insurmountable to the point where the show got canceled.

Nick Clason (32:25):
Now, the downside, the real thing, the real rub you got to answer is we have kids sitting right in front of us every single week. Is YouTube the best strategy for those kids? That's probably got to be your number one priority, but the challenge is that there's going to be a tension between the online and the in-person constantly. And it's going to be so easy when it feels so insurmountable that you just say, forget it. I can't worry about the online anymore. I just got to focus on the in-person. And I don't necessarily have a formula or an answer for you, but what I do know is that there were some times where we did some things where we faced a challenge and we were tempted to just be like, you know what? Forget it. That's not the priority here. And we said, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that.

Nick Clason (33:19):
We're going to lean in and we're going to figure this thing out. And so one of my favorite things, in fact, I have a game that sort of tried to mimic it. It's not as good though because it's not like a full on show with our youth pastors and our personalities, but it's called Duck Duck Trivia, and it's where you play duck, duck goose in a circle. But in the meantime, there's a trivia game happening on the screen. I have it on D y m, but we did a version of it with our show. And anytime you heard a squeak with one of the rubber ducks that we had, people had to get up and play duck, duck goose in the room while also paying attention to the screen and playing trivia. I created a sheet, a downloadable note sheet for them to keep track of and take notes of.

Nick Clason (33:59):
The point I'm making with all that is that there was a way to win in the room and win online, and it was epic. You know what I mean? But you got to spend more time and you got to think outside the box. You can't just throw a four corners game on the screen and be like, that's going to crush on YouTube. It just might not. The other challenge of it is just going to be a time constraints challenge, right? Digital media, video editing, graphic design soaks up a lot of time. And if you're a lone ranger, if you're a one man band, if you're doing this on your own, bro, I get it, you're going to be spending a lot of time on it. Again, the temptation is going to be to just throw it out, throw the baby out with the bath water, don't need it anymore.

Nick Clason (34:42):
But if you lean into it, you can find some good on the other side of the mountain there. The fact is, you just have to value it. Your church has to value it. Your supervisor has to value you spending your time on it and notice and point out and know that it is making a difference, even if it's not seen and felt immediately right away. And that's the, that's the third shadow side. You have to determine your win with this because the payoff for digital is not immediate. And you have to answer questions like, is this to reach outsiders? Is this to serve and help mature our insiders? What is the real reason behind this? But here's my thing, because of what Jeremiah said in Jeremiah chapter 29, I do believe we should invest in where we are. So I think out of this video, I'd love to encourage you, I'd even love to hear from you, comment below, but what's one next action step that you're going to take today?

Nick Clason (35:33):
Maybe it's just like, you know what? I'm going to stop just only posting announcement graphics to my Instagram. I'm going to start leaning in a little bit to an Instagram strategy. Maybe it's I'm going to launch a YouTube channel. Hit that link in description, a hundred dollars, YouTube starter kit, whatever the case might be, what is going to be your next step, but just start now. But listen, remember, grab my surefire resource 40 done for you ideas to help you just navigate this link in the description or in the show notes, hybridministry.xyz, and right here, this is why every single church needs a strong digital presence. I flesh it out, I explain it. I give you my strategy in this video. It's linked right here on the screen. Go check that out or go check out this YouTube playlist video teaching you how to start your YouTube channel from scratch. But we're trying to make digital ministry accessible, reachable possible, so don't forget, and as always, 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

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💸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"
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AUTO POD
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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

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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.

Episode 061: 📲 Instagram vs. TikTok vs. YouTube. The Most Effective Social Platform for your Church's Youth Ministry 📲

Nick Clason — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 04:00:00 -0500

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📅 "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
In this episode, join us as we delve into the exciting world of social media platforms and discover which one holds the key to maximizing your church's youth ministry outreach. We'll be breaking down the pros and cons of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, helping you navigate the digital landscape with confidence. Whether you're a youth pastor, a church leader, or simply interested in harnessing the power of social media for positive impact, this episode is tailor-made for you. Get ready to uncover the secrets of engagement, connection, and inspiration as we unveil the most effective platform to elevate your church's youth ministry to new heights.

🆓 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

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/061

//PEW RESEARCH ARTICLE
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/

//6 PART SOCIAL MEDIA FRAMEWORK
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIbzg_DNJrTrCtBHQnxcOVo

//WHY EVER YOUTH MINISTRY NEEDS A STRONG SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
https://youtu.be/SDxepdu4iiM

//MOTION ARRAY
https://motionarray.com/

🕺 TikTok: 🎵

Get ready to dance into the world of TikTok! 🕺 We'll discuss the power of short-form videos in grabbing attention, sparking trends, and spreading your message like wildfire. Learn how to harness the creative energy of TikTok to connect with the youth in ways you never thought possible.

📸 Instagram: 📱

Discover the world of visual storytelling as we explore how Instagram can capture the hearts and minds of the youth. From captivating visuals to real-time interaction, we'll uncover the strategies that can turn your Instagram feed into an inspiration hub for your young audience.

📹 YouTube: 🎥

The long-form champion! 📹 We'll explore how YouTube provides a platform for in-depth content, tutorials, discussions, and live engagement. Join us as we unravel the potential of YouTube to create a library of resources that empowers and educates your young audience.

LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

So, whether you're an #InstaLover, a #TikTokEnthusiast, or a #YouTubeAficionado, this video is your guide to selecting the social platform that aligns perfectly with your church's youth ministry goals. 🌐 Let's make an impact together!

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated on all things Hybrid Ministry. Let's transform the digital space for good! 💙🙌

TIMECODES
00:00-02:34 Why Every Youth Ministry Should be Using Social Media
02:34-05:47 Every Youth Ministry Context is a little different
05:47-10:48 The Rise of TikTok
10:48-13:25 Instagram: The Curse of Legacy Followers
13:25-17:25 YouTube: How to Level up your YouTube Game in Youth Ministry
17:25-20:05 The Verdict is in: Which Platform should Youth Ministries be Using

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

Nick Clason (00:00):
Hey, in this video we want to answer what is the best social media platform for your youth ministry in 2023? So it's gonna be TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube. Yeah. Go ahead and hang out in this video because recently Pew Research dropped some stuff that said that 42% of Americans use TikTok. Meanwhile, 71% of Americans use Instagram, and furthermore, 81% of Americans use YouTube. And so in this video, we are going to inspect all three of them, give you the pros and the cons, and then ultimately answer which platform is best for you to dial into in your student ministry in 2023 and beyond. But make sure that you stick around to the very end of this video, because I have a surefire resource that is going to help you win in your social media, in youth ministry. We have a free download to at the very end of the video, so make sure you hang out with that.

Nick Clason (00:51):
Now, you might be asking like, is that research for Americans or is that research for teenagers? And that's a great question because the teenage data is actually a little bit different. And so Pew Research dropped an article about a year ago, in fact, almost a year ago from the date of this recording, uh, where it compared 2014 to 2015 stats all the way to now, uh, the most recent trends and most recent stats. And so interestingly, at the time, uh, YouTube wasn't originally captured as a social media. YouTube as a platform has been around, but it wasn't like converted in people's ideology to social until recently. Meanwhile, Facebook usage in teenagers went down, went from 71% down to 32%. TikTok was on the rise. It's up to 67%, and Instagram's on the rise from 52% up to 60, uh, from 52 up to 62%. Snapchat also was up on the rise along with Instagram.

Nick Clason (01:47):
And so 67% of teens say that they use TikTok ever. Meanwhile, 16% of teens say that they use it, get ready for this. Almost constantly YouTube though, however, does Chop top the charts as, uh, the usage for teenagers at get this, 95% of teenagers say that they are using YouTube. And then now, uh, Instagram and Snapchat, both are next and both used, both are used by about six in 10 teenagers. So that data is quite a bit different, quite frankly, than the original data. And so I'll drop the link to this article so that you can see it, you can read it for yourself. The link is in the show notes, but that's what we're gonna do is we're going to dive into TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube. Yeah, let's go. Well, everyone, my name is Nick Clason. I'm a youth pastor in the DFW Dallas-Fort Worth area, and I've actually been in youth ministry for believe it or not, 12 and a half years. And I've been managing social media accounts at each of those youth ministry stops in all sorts of various levels of intentionality and all sorts of various levels of, uh, like just know-how. And so what's interesting is when I first started, I viewed

Nick Clason (02:58):
Social media as a way to just get out more information. Like I had an email list and also I had an Instagram following. So Instagram wasn't even around when I started. I launched, uh, my very first Instagram student ministry Instagram page, uh, at the first church that I worked at. But every single church after that, I actually inherited an Instagram account and actually a fairly large Instagram account. However, in most cases, I helped launch a YouTube channel and I also helped create and start a TikTok from scratch. And so that's what I've done within the last year of starting here at the church I'm at now. We launched from scratch a TikTok account and a YouTube account. Instagram of course has been around and you're inheriting all of those followers. And so at just about every single church, I've had some measure of growing, uh, uh, social media ministry, a hybrid ministry and social media and and social networks, right, in all of my context.

Nick Clason (03:52):
And so I'm just curious for you, I would love to know both where you're watching from and what social media network seems to be working best for you. You know what's interesting, drop that in the comments below. But what's interesting is I just moved from Chicago down here to Dallas-Fort Worth and in Chicago, uh, they wouldn't text each other via text message or like standard ss m s messaging. They would really only text people each other, their friends through Snapchat, which was a really interesting phenomenon. And so down here it's not as much the same. Snapchat usage is still happening, but it's not the primary vehicle with which people communicate. And so it just goes to show that wherever you are regionally, it does truly matter and it's a little bit different and the culture and the climate are just a little bit different. So as you're letting us know in the comments below which social media platform seems to be working most in your youth ministry and in your context, you might be asking what does working even really mean?

Nick Clason (04:48):
I mean, are we talking views? Are we talking impressions? Are we talking like engagement? Are we talking reach? Like what is it? And I actually have a lot of answers to that and how to get started in our six part social media framework for churches. I'll link it right here if that's something that you're interested. But go ahead and take a look at that. If you are trying to get this up, up, up off the ground, get started in your social media, I would love to have you do that. If you are not watching on YouTube, that link will be in the show notes of your podcast catcher. But I just wanna know that as we break down in that six part context, we break down which of these social media, uh, channels, you can watch through each of the different platforms, and then you can be, uh, a decision maker as far as which is the best to implement in your current climate and in your current context.

Nick Clason (05:35):
But TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube, let's dive in and let's look at each of the platforms, the pros, the cons, where they came from and why they are where they are today. So let's go. Some say it started as early as 2019. Others say it started closer to the beginning of 2020. And you know me, like I tried to play my part as much as I could, but it seemed like no matter what, everybody around me was getting it and I kept distancing myself from it. I tried to stay away from it, but finally it was around Christmas time of 2020, I finally just broke down and I decided I was going to get it. Now, you know what I'm talking about, right? Put it in the comments. 3, 2, 1. I'm talking about TikTok. Oh, you thought I was talking about Covid? No, I'm talking about TikTok, right?

Nick Clason (06:23):
TikTok burst on the scene during the pandemic, actually. And what's fascinating is like there's all sorts of toss out there now, but like I would never download that. And it's like me now just like doom scrolling, like just consuming it at like mass crazy levels. Here's the thing that you need to know about TikTok is they invented a brand new way to do social media. And the way that they burst on the scene and the popularity with which they burst on the scene is now causing all other platforms to change their method and their approach to social media. And so TikTok, uh, brought to us what we now use, and you may not call it this or may not think of it this way, but essentially it's the discovery algorithm. It's the algorithm with which you consume the majority of your content from people that you don't even know you're discovering them, right?

Nick Clason (07:11):
A way that I've used this in my own life is last, uh, last spring, my family and I, we went to Disney. We visited the mouse. And if you've ever been to Disney, one of the best places to go to Disney is Epcot. All right? And so we went to Epcot on the very first day of our trip. My brother, uh, my sister and my brother-in-law came and they joined us. They live in Florida a few hours away. So they drove over. I mean, it was a blast. We hung out on Epcot. But in order to know the best, like if you've never been to Epcot, they have this thing called the World Showcase. And you walk around this giant lake and there are 11 different pavilions. You got like Mexico and Japan and China and Norway, and you got France, and you got Germany, and you got, uh, United Kingdom.

Nick Clason (07:51):
You got United States, you got Canada. I might've named all 11. I don't know, I might, I might've missed one. Let me know in the comments if you're a Disney person and if I missed one. But what we did was I built a map and I talked, I looked at the best food, the best drink, the best places to stop, the best carts to get stuff from at each of these different pavilions. And the way that I did that, the way that I did the majority of my research was through TikTok. It's amazing. And now TikTok is converting to not just scrolling and hoping to find a good next video, but now TikTok is actually trying to convert into more of a discovery, uh, or like search-based, uh, type of platform where you can go and you can get answers to certain questions. And you might be thinking as a youth pastor, that's an amazing concept.

Nick Clason (08:35):
And you're right, it is. You can answer very specific questions on TikTok. But here's the thing. In my Epcot experience, I got a lot of great answers. I went to the France Pavilion, I got the croquet glosser, I'm probably saying that wrong 'cause I'm not French, but I was told, Hey, this brioche bun with ice in the middle, and they flip it over in like a waffle, iron type thing. I found out about that completely and exclusively on TikTok. I would've never found that little, like, kind of like off the beaten path little restaurant to find that thing in my normal meandering. And walking around Epcot, TikTok came in clutch for me on that. However, I have no idea who posted it. I'm not following them. I don't have a relationship with them, and it's not a continued ongoing one. And so the relationships on TikTok, especially with those who follow you, are far less, uh, substantial than some of the other ones because of this kind of discovery based algorithm.

Nick Clason (09:33):
And I think TikTok might be trying to change that a little bit, but you just need to know that as a youth ministry, if you put your content out there and you do get a lot of subscribers, or you do get a lot of views, or you do get a lot of followers, like that doesn't necessarily equal more people that you're having like good influence with because I think it's something like 85% of the content that any one of us consume on TikTok are from people that we don't know. And so for you, a really good thing to do would be to create a meaningful call to action that pushes them to some sort of thing, to a link in the bio if you do have enough followers on there to your YouTube channel, to a digital connect card online, so that you can get to know the people that are watching your videos and that are getting answers from the, uh, big questions that you are trying to answer on TikTok.

Nick Clason (10:21):
So with that being said, hey, listen, if you are getting value out of this video, if this has been helpful so far, I would love it if you would hit that like button, if you would give us a rating if you're listening to a, a podcast or if you would subscribe on YouTube and maybe even consider this sharing it with a friend. But after this, we're gonna move on to not just TikTok, but now we wanna look at Instagram. So coming up next, let's take a look at Instagram, the pros, the cons, and what you need to know about that platform. All right, so Instagram, one of the things I call it, I don't know if this is really what it's called, but if you come into youth ministry, you're probably going to, at this point in, in the lifecycle of youth ministry and the lifecycle of Instagram, you're probably going to inherit what I call legacy users.

Nick Clason (11:04):
So that's people who have in the past been associated affiliated or connected with your youth ministry in some sort of way. But in the last couple of places that I've, I've shown up and I've, uh, jumped onto the Instagram, what I've realized is that there are college students, majority of college students as our follower base. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing for general social media marketing, it may not also be a great thing for youth ministry, social media marketing, because those are not the people that you're trying to reach anymore. And so, uh, on Instagram, you probably have some sort of an older audience as a result of just like the history of it and the way in which we've done things. So even in a church I went to, we went and we just did a follower and following like audit, and we just, anyone we didn't know we took out because if, if we don't know 'em, and we've been there for a few years, like obviously it's time to, to sort of cut ties with this relationship here.

Nick Clason (11:59):
And we're not trying to be jerks, we're not trying to cut people off, but, uh, that was not our target that we were like going towards, you know? And so if you go to a business account and Instagram and you look at the analytics and it's all skews older, like that's as a youth pastor, you're like, that's not, that's not what you're trying to do. That's not who you're trying to reach. You can still minister to those people and, and you should, but you just kind of gotta know that there's going to be legacy users on Instagram. You just gotta figure out what you wanna do and what your personal philosophy to managing that is. The other piece of Instagram that you need to know is that it started out as a photo sharing app, and then it stole stories from Snapchat, and then it stole reels from TikTok.

Nick Clason (12:37):
And so honestly, right now on Instagram, there are three very distinct different experiences for Instagram users. There's the feed and there's stories and there's reels. And so for me, because, uh, short form vertical video content is king right now, I am able to just do all of my focus on reels and use reels to share stuff to the feed and use reels to share stuff out to stories. And so by using reels, I'm able to kill literally three birds with one stone. But if you don't know that and you don't have some sort of like thought through strategy, Instagram can eat your lunch because it is busy and there's a lot going on there on Instagram. Now, let's dive into the third and final versus TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube. Let's check it out. YouTube, according to a 2022 study, we looked at it earlier, 95% of teenagers are using YouTube.

Nick Clason (13:34):
95%, nine and a half out of 10 people in your demographic that you're trying to reach are using YouTube. Now, not all YouTube users are built the same, right? Some are on there as adults, right, to like repair their faucet. Others like my kids, they're on there to watch Roblox and they're on there to watch Rainbow Friends and people get killed by these scary monster things. Teenagers are on there for a probably, uh, a hybrid of those two reasons, along with answers to specific questions along with entertainment, along with watching Mr. Beast videos, like whatever the case might be. Teenagers are on there for a variety of reasons. 'cause YouTube has a variety of content. I mean, for crying out loud, this video right now is on YouTube, but 95% of teenagers use it. In addition, it is the second largest search engine in the world powered by the first largest search engine in the world.

Nick Clason (14:26):
So it is a great place to be discovered and to be found. And when people are going to YouTube, they're often asking specific questions, right? Like the other day, I got onto YouTube and I was asking how to fix smoke coming out of my lawnmower. Very specific question. So I want you to reverse engineer, and I want you to kinda retrofit that idea into your ministry as a youth pastor. What are some of the specific questions that teenagers are asking you in day to day? Why does a loving God send good people to hell? If we're always forgiven for our sins, then why do we need to obey him? Now, what's the purpose of obedience? Does God need you or require you to vote Republican? Right? Whatever the the questions are that you are fielding as a youth pastor, think about it. You have an opportunity on YouTube to go on there and answer very specific questions that your kids are asking.

Nick Clason (15:21):
And furthermore, it is the second largest search engine in the world. So take those specific questions and help give them some specific answers. During C O V I D I moved to a church, started a church the very first day of C O V I, and then I got immediately locked down. And so I was working out on my master bedroom with boxes all around me trying to figure out how to be a youth pastor in this brand new context. And I, quite frankly, I did not have enough to do. During that time. I kept asking my boss, what more do you want from me? What more do you want from me? And he was like, just keep doing what you're doing. And I wasn't doing much. But so what I did with my time, even as I was at home, is I taught myself Adobe after effects.

Nick Clason (16:03):
I taught myself how to do it step by step, key frame by key frame agonizingly, and I was building things completely from scratch. And then once we broke free from the pandemic, I found out that all the creative people at my church were using a thing called motion array. I'll link that down below in the show notes if that's something that you wanna check out. It's an amazing tool for After Effects Premier Pro, uh, stock footage, stock audio. But guess what? I could take a motion or a template and I could very easily use After Effects because I now had an ability and a skill set that I didn't have before. I completely used YouTube to teach myself a brand new skill. Speaking of which, if you are interested in our completely free Adobe Premier Pro, uh, effects and plugins, they're easy bounce ins and bounce outs and rotates in and rotates out and drop in from the top and drop in from the bottom, and a smooth effect and a bounce effect, then I wanna encourage you to go to the link down below, order the link in the show notes and grab that.

Nick Clason (17:01):
If you're a video editor, if you use Adobe Premier Pro, this is my number one go-to tool. And I would love to encourage you, if you're watching on YouTube, you're seeing some of the effects right now, I would like to encourage you to download that and use it in your ministry if this is something that you are doing as a video editor. So now let's dive in to the conclusion, TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube. Finally, the verdict. Here we go. Let's look at it. So the verdict, TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube. What is it? If you asked me if I were to rank them in importance, here's how I would rank them as a youth pastor in 2023. In order of importance, in order of usage, in order of opportunity, I would rank them YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, in that order. Now, here's the good news.

Nick Clason (17:46):
I have a way for you to knock all three of them completely out of the park. And here's why. Because of TikTok and them introducing the discovery algorithm, Instagram has adopted reels and YouTube has adopted shorts. And so by adopting one centralized strategy on your social media, i e short form vertical video-based content, I have a completely free ebook that I am giving away in the link to the show notes. And it's called this, it's called The One Month Done For You Posting Tool. And it will give you 40 different video ideas that you can film on your smartphone or on a camera and post with very little editing, uh, need or ability. You can do all of it from your smartphone. Uh, the, the good news is when you download that ebook, you're also gonna get a link to our ha Have I Ruined My TikTok account?

Nick Clason (18:35):
A Complete Guide to Posting a TikTok from Start to Finish all via your phone. And so both of those are going to be paired well together so that you, if you have no video editing ability, if I'm talking about Adobe Premier Pro plugins and you're like, what in the world are you talking about? This is your way as a youth pastor with minimal, uh, experience, minimal, uh, know-how in any of these areas to completely revolutionize your social media experience. Because if you go all in on short form vertical video-based content, you can do fun stuff. You can do challenges and games with your students. You can get students on your social media and you can overhear, you can get, you can answer specific questions to big and specific problems. You can do recaps to your messages so that your messages don't just happen on a Wednesday night and then die there.

Nick Clason (19:21):
You can use a fully faceted, fully integrated social media posting thing. And I have all of that completely for you for free. All I need you to do is click that link and download that, um, and just start using it today. And I would love to know if you do and if you find it helpful, because I think that it's an amazing resource and an amazing tool. So go grab that download, and if you actually wanna put that completely to the, to the fullest extent, if you wanna use that to the best of its abilities, then you need to go check out episode number 60, linked right here answering the question why every single youth ministry needs a strong digital presence. Because here's the deal, we are here to make digital discipleship easy and we wanna encourage you to stay hybrid.

Episode 060: 📲 Why Every Youth Ministry Needs a Strong Social Media Presence 📲

Nick Clason — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:00:00 -0500

📲 Why Every Youth Ministry Needs a Strong Social Media Presence 📲

In this episode we'll give you a COMPLETELY FREE Done for you, reproducable month long social media posting tool and stratgey framework. Just copy and paste this month after month for a strong social media presence in your church's youth ministry!
Hit the link below!
👇👇👇👇👇

🆓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

RISE OF THE NONES
https://amzn.to/44YyZlT

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, it's crucial for every church to embrace the power of social media. Whether you're a small local congregation or a thriving mega-church, marketing the church effectively can help you connect with your community like never before. We'll be discussing tried-and-true marketing church strategies that include utilizing social media platforms to create a strong online presence. From crafting compelling content that resonates with your audience to developing a comprehensive church social media strategy, we've got you covered.

Looking for innovative church social media ideas? Look no further! Our channel is your go-to resource for church social media management tips and tricks. We'll guide you through crafting a church social media policy that ensures your online presence aligns with your church's values and mission. With our insightful videos, you'll learn how to become a proficient church social media manager or even explore the option of bringing in a dedicated professional. Together, let's unlock the potential of social media for churches and take your ministry to new heights. 🌟

Don't miss out on our game-changing advice for creating the best church social media strategy. We'll provide you with customizable church social media templates and actionable steps to execute a flawless plan. If you're wondering how to effectively use social media to extend church invites and foster engagement, we have the answers you need. Join us as we delve into real-life examples, including the social media strategy of renowned churches like Elevation Church. Prepare to elevate your church's online presence and witness the incredible impact it has on your youth ministry and congregation as a whole. Subscribe now and embark on your journey to a Strong Digital Presence for your church's youth ministry! 🎉🏛️

📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/060

//NPR ARTICLE
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1175452002/church-closings-religious-affiliation#:~:text=Estimate%3A%20In%202019%2C%20the%20year,opened%20and%204%2C500%20churches%20closed.

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT EPISODE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/033

//FINDINGS FROM BARNA E-BOOK
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/006

//SIX FINDINGS FOR THE HYBRID CHURCH EXPERIENCE
https://shop.barna.com/products/6-questions-about-the-future-of-the-hybrid-church-experience

//PEW RESEARCH ARTICLE:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/

📱NICK'S SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES
SPIRITAL PRACTICES TIKTOKS
•https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/spiritual-practice-videos/social-media/instagram-8804.html

INSTAGRAM TOOLS
•https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/instagram-slider-engagement-tool-vol-1/social-media/instagram-8118.html
•https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/instagram-stories-slider-tool---hot-takes-edition/social-media/instagram-8034.html

ALL RESOURCES
•https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/featured-authors/nick-clason/?cgid=shop-nick-clason&q=nick+clason&start=18&sz=18

🕰️TIMECODES
00:00-02:19 Intro
02:19-10:18 How can our church be more relevant for Gen Z & Gen Alpha?
10:18-21:52 Why youth ministries need to post their messages to YouTube
21:51-25:05 40 Done for You Social Media Posting Ideas
25:05-26:50 Where to get all these resources?

✍️TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
Well, hey, everybody. In this episode, we are going to answer this question why I believe every single youth ministry needs a strong social media presence. We're going to look at some trends, some statistics, and share with you why now is the time to double down, to engage and to make social media and a digital presence important in your church's student ministry. Well, everyone, if you and I have not had a chance to meet, my name is Nick Clason. I am an actual youth pastor in the D F W Dallas-Fort Worth area, host of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast. So welcome to that. Excited to have you with us. We are going to dive into some statistics and some, some trends and some quotes, and I got all kinds of fun stuff. If you are not already subscribed to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button, hit that notification button, hit that like button.

Nick Clason (00:57):
All those things help us get seen by other people who also need to hear this message about the importance of digital and student ministry in your church in 2023 and honestly, far beyond. So excited to have you with us. Hey, I also wanna let you know we got a couple of freebies. So link down below in the description in the show notes. If you're listening on a podcast, hit those up. We got your free ebook on how to create a complete TikTok from scratch. And in this episode, we are also going to, with that exact same link, we are going to drop another free done for you social media structure plan, um, 40 free videos, your social media plan. I'm gonna give it to you for you and for your youth ministry. Make it happen, download that ebook. Also, if you are a video editor and you use Adobe Premier Pro, we have some free presets for you so that you can use those Adobe Premier Pro presets in your editing.

Nick Clason (01:52):
Completely free, super easy to use, just want to encourage you to check those things out, uh, a like rating, subscribe, all those things. We are on TikTok, we are on Instagram. We are all the places. Hit the description, YouTube, hit the link in the show notes on a podcast. But without any further ado, let's hop in and let's dive in to the topic of why every youth ministry needs to have a strong social media presence. Let's go. So I was recently reading through, uh, the comment section of YouTube channel, and I saw this question and I thought it was fascinating, and I thought that it was worth exploring the question read like this, what elements can we bring into our service and our church, whether innovative or just a mood that increases our relevancy to Gen Z and Alpha? It may cost us discomfort, but we are willing to stretch.

Nick Clason (02:44):
First of all, I love the notion here that we are willing to stretch understanding that the times that we are in with Generation Z and generation alpha, gen Z, um, most people are saying, uh, the old, the, the youngest of them are born 2010, uh, on up through young adulthood. Now they're in their twenties, mid twenties or so just now graduating college, just now getting started to, um, have a career. And in addition to all of that, joining your church force for the first time. And so if you're in youth ministry, gen Z is not in your youth ministry. Uh, maybe like your high school we would say is, is Generation Z, gen alpha, um, eighth grade, seventh grade or so, right in that range. Um, down on through, uh, having been born between, uh, 2010 and 2025. So some of them aren't even born all the way yet.

Nick Clason (03:35):
They're in the kids' ministry, but they're waving on up. So Z and alpha are so, so completely different. I wanna share just some, some kind of state of Gen z state of gen alpha statistics with you. But those things are gonna help us frame this conversation about why social media is so important for the next generation. A lot of churches have a social presence and it operates as their outreach arm, their evangelism, uh, branch of their ministry, so to speak. And I, I think that is a great tactic and a great tool, and if you're not doing that, you definitely should. However, that being said, I think there are also opportunities to, um, promote discipleship growth, theological and spiritual connection and commitment, not only with each other, but also just with connection to God's word. And so I want to dive into some of those things, but before we do that, let's look at who Gen Z and who Gen Alpha are, what we know about them, what some of our learnings are, and what we can kind of like take from that and how that's gonna help us frame this conversation.

Nick Clason (04:38):
So, uh, over here, before we dive into that though, over 4,000 churches close their door yearly, over 4,000 churches. This from npr.org. Um, and the estimate is this, in 2019, the year before the pandemic, before the pandemic, keep that in mind. So the pandemic was already, or, or was, or was going to be hard on people. This right here, right? Like this is pre pandemic, more Protestant churches closed than opened in the us. Um, 2014, 4,000 churches opened, and 3,700 churches closed 2019. Then that number started to shift and get a little bit more. And so churches are slowly becoming, um, starting to close at a rate greater than their opening. And you know that with that trend over time, that's going to make churches more and more obsolete, less and less relevant. Now, is that because Generation z generation alpha don't want to go to our church, perhaps, and there may be some things worth learning, but why?

Nick Clason (05:45):
And where does social media play into this? I'm gonna give you that in a second. But first, 56% of Generation Z claim to be Christian. And you might think, oh, that's pretty good. That's encouraging. I thought that might be lower. I did. However, 25% of Gen Z claim to have no faith at all. James Emery White wrote a book called The Rise of the Nuns. And this is that trend right here being played out. This is the highest classification of no religion at all by any generation. Gen Z, millennials, Xers, boomers, all the things. Gen Z the highest at 25% claiming to actually have no faith whatsoever. Furthermore, the five biggest terms, when, when, uh, this is done by a study from Barna, the five biggest terms that Generation Z used to describe their faith were these five growing at 47%, open at 38%, curious at 35%, spiritual at 33%, and then exploring at 32%.

Nick Clason (06:48):
And so what that tells me is that Gen Z, while they may have a classification, right, of not having religion, um, not claiming one at all, they are open and they are willing and they are curious. And so I think that pairs well and creates a really good kind of groundwork and ecosystem for us as student ministry leaders and personnel to, uh, continue to answer some of their questions. Here was where this gets fascinating, and I think personally where the rubber meets the road. In response to this statement, Barna said, Hey, the statement is this. The church does not answer my questions. 13% said that that statement was completely true. 13% said the church does not answer my questions 24%. That's somewhat true. So more true than not that the church doesn't answer their questions, um, 28%, somewhat not true. Uh, so, uh, it's getting a little bit better.

Nick Clason (07:46):
And then 35% said that's, that's not true at all. Okay? What I wanna highlight and kind of pull out there is that 37%, almost four out of 10 people would say that the church doesn't really answer their questions yet. However, they would classify themselves as growing, open, curious, spiritual, and exploring. And so if there's an opportunity for the church to lean into a demographic that is curious, open exploring, um, asking questions, why would we not answer those questions? Well, I hear your rebuttal on the other end of the camera, right? Well, I, I am handling those, uh, questions I am asking and answering big questions through my teaching series, through my bible studies, through my devotionals, and that's great. However, pew Research recently said that 58% of evangelical protestant church attenders attend church get this at least one time a week, 58%. So that means out of your, uh, your a hundred percent membership, people who call your church your student ministry home, only six out of 10 are actually coming on a week to week basis to even hear that teaching.

Nick Clason (09:00):
Also, Warren Bird, on our last podcast, we, I, I shared some, some snippets from Warren Bird, uh, but Warren Bird says this, he says, people tend to over exaggerate when it comes to this question. When it comes to their church attendants. They overinflate the numbers, right? They want to look better perhaps than they actually are. And if 58% are actually attending at least one time a week, then there's this to keep in mind that there are still 40% who of their own admission and of their own classification are not hearing your weekly messages unless they're actually there because only 58% are attending at a week to week sort of clip. And so what should I do about that? You're asking, you're like, I am trying to answer their questions. They say they're open, they're spiritually engaging. This is where I think that all churches, especially all youth ministries, should be posting their weekly message content.

Nick Clason (09:55):
And you should be doing so uploading to YouTube. Okay? Here's the thing. You probably already have a soundboard that you're using in your room, and if you do, in most cases, you're able to add a minimum capture the audio, and you can start uploading that to podcasts. But YouTube is king right now, and I wanna share with y'all why after this. So here's the reality. If you head back into the archives of any of my podcasts, YouTube videos, um, we talk a lot about YouTube, in fact, episode, um, 33 http://www.hybridministry.xyz/033, link in the description link in the show notes talks about how to start a YouTube channel completely with links to all the gigs that you're gonna need and how to do that directly off of your phone. It will help you upgrade your audios just ever so slightly. I am now using, I got a couple lights here.

Nick Clason (10:49):
I got a camera that I'm recording off of. I'm also going to drop here in just a couple weeks, probably next week. Um, a a complete gear rundown of us after a year of YouTube upgrading our camera equipment. And I say a year, I look at my watch here, which actually gives me my date today as I record. This is July 31st. We officially launched our YouTube channel at the student ministry that I work in, in January 1st of this year because we, our church changed their name. And so I was holding the YouTube channel to launch along with the name change and all that stuff. We, so far this year on YouTube have posted well over, um, I think it's over 200 videos. Um, I'm trying to go to it right here on live, that auto channel player player, oh, 399 videos. I just uploaded a short this morning, uh, by this afternoon, I'll post my second short.

Nick Clason (11:42):
We'll be at video number 400 since January 1st of this year until now, July 31st. We are currently at 202 subscribers. Not crazy numbers, not anything that you wanna write home about necessarily. But if you had the opportunity to reach 200 additional people in your student ministry or in that 202, there are probably people who, well, I do know this. There are students who subscribe to our channel. There are parents who subscribe to our channel. Would you not want the opportunity to speak to those people? And that's the key, right? If Pew Research says only 58% of people are attending church once a week, then YouTube offers you an opportunity to share that message with them. But why YouTube? 3.48 billion people according to Hootsuite, roughly 45% of the world's population use social media. That's where they are millennials, which is not necessarily our target demographic. That's us as the youth pastors.

Nick Clason (12:39):
However, this is a trend worth watching because millennials are setting the pace, I think for some of these younger generations. Millennials say that they prefer YouTube to traditional tv two to one. That's crazy to me. I don't, but that's how millennials are, are consuming it. And that's also how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are consuming it. I had a kid yesterday walk up to me and I was recording some videos for some of our social media stuff, and he's like, oh, I wanna do it. I wanna do it. Look, I have a YouTube channel. I have over a thousand subscribers, and I was low-key jealous of him. 'cause that's my goal right now is to get my channel up to a thousand subscribers. I was like, no, you don't. Let me see. And he showed me, and he is just doing like goofy Minecraft tutorials and stuff like that.

Nick Clason (13:17):
He has 1.1 K subscribers via his YouTube channel. It is bunkers. Uh, also check this out, 51% of YouTube users say that they visit YouTube, get this daily. So why should we be on YouTube for all of those reasons? So if you wanna know how to start your own YouTube channel as a church, as a student ministry, you definitely should hit up episode 0 3 3 link in the show notes for that, and we will help make that happen. Um, help you get the gear and all that type of stuff going. Now, here's the thing in our context, this is why I want you to hear this in our context. We are in a large auditorium space. We have a soundboard, but it's not retrofitted and it's not graded to livestream. Okay? Our big church auditorium is, but our main service is not. And so because I didn't, uh, we're gonna be delivering live messages and, um, I, I also wanna post to YouTube.

Nick Clason (14:09):
I had to have a kind of like reconciling moment. What I decided was I was gonna do video. If you're watching our YouTube right now, it's just like this direct to camera. I'm talking directly into the camera with a scripted teaching video. We've got a teleprompter. It goes right in front of the camera here and it scrolls and you can watch it and you can read your notes and you can deliver a message with a YouTube hook that's hopefully engaging, um, with video, uh, lower thirds, uh, text that'll bounce in, bounce out sound effects. You can weave in other clips, B-roll, all that type of stuff. But it's made for YouTube. It's not just a camera perched in the back of the room, which is what most of us do for time reasons. And here's why that's important. In episode six of this podcast, me and my previous co-host, Matt Johnson, looked at some of the findings of the Future Church.

Nick Clason (15:00):
Um, this was from Barna. They, they dropped an ebook a little over a year ago called Six Questions About the Future of the Hybrid Church Experience. We pulled out some stats, we chatted about it. I'll drop the link to that episode in the show notes. I'll also drop the link to the Barna ebook in the show notes if you wanna explore more about that. But I wanna 0.2 things out to you from that ebook. It says, 60%, 60% of those participating in church that offer an online service during the pandemic say that this is the only digital offering that the church makes, their live stream of their service. And furthermore, 63% of church adults believe that the church should use digital resources for the purposes of spiritual formation and disciple discipleship. 63% of churched adults, not Gen Z, not gen alpha, the church adults in this classification.

Nick Clason (15:55):
So this is millennials, this is Xers, this is even maybe some boomers giving us some of this data. Um, according to this ebook, they have a quote in there that says, churches, if if churches more than a building, can digital ministry be more than a sermon? And I would contend the answer to that is unequivocally yes. We're gonna dive into the nitty gritty, the tactical, and give you a free downloadable resource on how stick around for that. But before we do, I wanna drop one more eye-opening thing out of this ebook. It said, this faith, this is, uh, a stat I'll, I'll put the, um, graph on YouTube if you're following and watching there. Faith expression during the pandemic, the question was, do you use the internet? The percent answered yes. Um, there are three categories practicing Christians, church, adults, and dropouts. 66% of practicing Christians say that they use, uh, faith, uh, in the internet.

Nick Clason (16:48):
They use the internet for faith practices during the pandemic at 66%. Church adults at 56%. And dropouts, even those who've dropped out at 36% say that, um, as a faith supplement, 52% of practicing Christians, 42% church adults, and 30% of dropouts as a faith supplement. And then as a substitute for physical church, 50% of practicing Christians say that 46% of church adults say that. And 30% of dropouts would claim that. In addition, they broke that out, uh, with, uh, a deeper classification of church, gen Z Church, millennials, church Gen X, and church boomers, obviously, no surprise to you, gen Z was the highest of that. 67% as, um, for faith purposes, 56% as a faith supplement and as a substitute for physical church, uh, that was at 58%. So Gen Z, and mind you, this was old enough. So at least 18 years of age Gen Z.

Nick Clason (17:43):
So that's not counting kids in our youth ministry. And that's not counting Alpha, 'cause none of them were old enough to be pulled on survey. So if it's that high in churched adult Gen Z, how much more for the teenagers in your youth ministry? Uh, James Emery White has a quote out of his most recent book, hybrid Church, rethinking the Church in a post-digital age said the vision. This vision, talking about the metaverse, this vision led Zuckerberg, c e o of Facebook to change the name of its company to Meta. Zuckerberg described a grandiose vision of a metaverse as an even more immersive and embodied internet. When or where you're gonna be able to do almost anything that you can, uh, imagine, get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create as well, uh, as entirely new categories that don't even fit how we think about computers or phones today.

Nick Clason (18:37):
If you, uh, wanna reference point, think of the movie Avatar. The Metaverse would be a shared social space where avatars represent users, a world that avatars interact and inhabit. And in that metaverse, you could own virtual property just as you would physical property or even create, uh, your, even create your own virtual property. Not to mention, you can buy and sell property. The last step in achieving all this would be a full three D telepresence v uh, via VR or AR glasses. Hubo technology is a technology company that manages hybrid and virtual events, predict that soon events will be, um, less about chronology and speakers and more about exploration and interaction. That quote right there is worth weight in gold. Um, I, and I'm just kind of picking it up 'cause I read this at 1:00 AM last night, the end of a standard webinar is coming near and being replaced with live streaming VR entertainment and Oculus Rift parties.

Nick Clason (19:34):
What Emory White says is this, and this is what made me pull this quote out. Needless to say, the internet is not gonna be flat for too much longer. And why do we want to do this for Gen Z and Gen Alpha? This is the internet that they are going to be ushering in and growing up in. They're spending time on the internet, on their phones. And while there are, uh, digital hygiene things that we as youth pastors need to model and teach our students to do, I think gone are the days of just, Hey, no phones. Like, yeah, that's easier. And we all know that like reducing our technology use helps us. However, you got a new kid walking into your student ministry, are you really gonna take his phone and lock it up in a locker and tell 'em you can't have it until the end?

Nick Clason (20:18):
Is he coming back after his first week of visiting your church? Probably not. But if you help teach students, Hey, here's technology, here's resources. Here's a way that you can grow in your faith beyond the walls of this sermon and service while I'm up here trying to answer your questions, but give you more to study with because this is what I was studying this week as I was preparing this content. And here's something for you. Here's a P D F, here's a checklist, here's a devotional, here's a prayer guide, whatever the case might that's gonna help students grow in their faith. And all of that can exist and live on your digital platforms. In particular YouTube. But wait, I'm so busy, but wait, I don't have time. I'm already preparing messages. I'm sitting in meetings. I'm running C c b or I'm running church data management reports.

Nick Clason (21:05):
I don't have an admin. I used to have an admin. I might get an admin. I'm probably never gonna have an admin. And I'm stacking chairs and I'm repainting the youth room and I'm patching the wall from the kid whose butt fell through the thing. I get it. I'm there. I'm a youth pastor being in youth mystery 12 and a half years. Here's why this, uh, this is why we are dropping this resource. So we are going to be giving you all the month long social media posting tool done for you and your youth ministry free ebook link in the show notes. When you download that, you're gonna get a link to two eBooks, my TikTok from scratch, and now this month long youth ministry social media thing. Let's dive into what is actually going to be in that. Let's go. So we will detail this a little bit more in the ebook, but essentially I'm giving you a basically 40 ideas that you can post, uh, five days a week.

Nick Clason (22:01):
So there's seven days in a week. I recommend that you take two off just to practice Sabbath and, uh, not working whatever your two days off that you want to be. So for example, I post Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I don't work on Fridays in the office or Saturday. So I don't post either of those days. And each of those days I post two tos. I recently talked a couple episodes back about how we went from three down to two, and then I'm gonna give you three or I'm, I'm sorry. I'm gonna give you, uh, a video thing to post every single day. So for me, my Sunday, I post the message hook from our teaching video that we do, we we capture it like this, then I clip it out and make it vertical. And I post a game on Monday. I'll do Meme Monday, and then I'll post some sort of spiritual practice video, either a talking head or pre uh, existing resource.

Nick Clason (22:50):
I have some resources in the show notes on Download youth ministry that you can ahead and grab if you want. Um, on uh, Tuesday I'll post a message clip, and then I'll do some sort of game or fun thing, uh, Wednesday, another spiritual practice video, and then a recap of our Wednesday night youth ministry, just some B roll and some audio that I did the sync auto sync on TikTok around cap cut. And then finally the third message clip, and then another game or activity. And so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna help teach you how to clip those messages. Um, I want to, I wanna let you know about a, a resource. I'm gonna include the link in the show notes called Auto Pod. It is taking my long form sequence in Adobe Premier Pro and shrinking it and making it vertical. That's something that you can use and that's helpful, uh, to you if you are a, a video editor in that way.

Nick Clason (23:38):
If not, just clip it in on your phone using cap cut and, uh, you cap cut's a super powerful tool you can use. Um, and then, uh, and then also I'm gonna give you about 10 to 15 different game ideas or activity type ideas that we've done in our youth ministry. You can check it out, link to, um, you can check out our student ministry link in the description, cross Creek Student Ministry, social, go to our shorts, watch just some of the goofy stuff that we do. But I'm gonna give you ideas on how you can repurpose like d y m type games or other fun things like that and use it on camera or, or one thing I did yesterday was I, uh, me and a student took the camera around and he asked people, Hey, we're going back to school soon. What do these back to school?

Nick Clason (24:22):
Emoji phrases mean? He'd show them a picture on the phone and then they would try to guess, um, and to like incentivize them to actually choose to be on camera. We'd give 'em a fruit snack if they said yes, and then I captured it, and then I'm gonna go edit it and post, um, and have the, uh, emojis pop in. But if you don't wanna do all that right, you can just video it and just do like a quick picture and picture overlay of the emoji phrase. So there's all kinds of ideas, but all of that is going to be done for you. 40 ideas, replicatable, reproducible, the same framework, but also different videos every single week on your social media because vertical short form video is still king, bro, I missed all that. Great. We offer free transcripts for every single episode at our, uh, podcast page, hybridministry.xyz.

Nick Clason (25:14):
This is episode 0 6 0. So you can go there, pick up the free transcript, also link in the show notes for free editing presets for my TikTok video and now my, um, month long social posting tool done for you for youth ministries. Check that out. And hey, listen, if you're not in youth ministry, grab it and adapt it to your church. Because here's the thing, you don't have to just be silly and goofy in youth ministry churches wanna see their pastors having fun as well. So, uh, hope that you guys found this episode helpful. Hey, if you did, would you do me a favor and just share it? I would be forever grateful if you shared it, if you liked it, if you rated it, if you reviewed it, if you dropped a comment so I could engage with you in the comments. So pumped to be here walking through this with you.

Nick Clason (25:56):
Listen, I'm in the trenches just like you. If you're in youth ministry, if you're in church communications, if you're a social media manager for a church or business, I'm right there with you. I'm doing this podcast in my free time early morning before everyone else gets into work. And then I'm gonna turn around. I'm gonna start working right after this because I'm doing it with you. And so I want to be along on this journey with you. Make sure you follow us on TikTok, subscribe on YouTube, hit me up on Instagram. And until next time, and as always, we are making digital discipleship easy and accessible. Don't forget to stay hybrid.

Episode 046: How to be Present with your Social Media Presence

Nick Clason — Thu, 25 May 2023 04:00:00 -0500

What is Incarnational Ministry? It's Jesus' involvement in our life. How do we embrace the same philosophy of Jesus' ministry in our own ministry contexts? And how do we do so in a hybrid and digital way to show up where our church people, members and congregants and spending their time?

Follow Us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Show Notes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/046
FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

SHOWNOTES
THE ARTICLE BEING READ & REFERENCED:
https://youthministry360.com/blogs/all/how-to-be-present-with-your-social-media-presence

MY STUDENT SOCIAL MEDIA:
https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekchurch?lang=en

10 FREE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE TIKTOKS:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4n40o5080lblih/Spiritual%20Practice%20TikToks%20-%20Nick%20Clason%20and%20Bailey%20Fore.zip?dl=0

TIMECODES
00:00-02:18 Intro
02:18-07:24 How to be Present with your Social Media Presence
07:24-12:19 How do we Show Up Where our People are Spending their Time?
12:19-12:58 Don't post Announcements on Social Media
12:58-14:01 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Well, hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. Thrilled to be here again with you. And just let me let you know little bit of a shorter podcast today I'm actually gonna do something a little different, a little unique. I recently wrote an article for YM Short for Youth Ministry 360, um, titled How to Be Present With Your Social Media Presence. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop the link to that here in the show notes, but I'm actually just gonna read it for you, um, and also give you some author commentary as I, uh, am reading it through. So expect like a 10, 12 something minute pod. You probably already saw that. If you already downloaded this, if you're on YouTube, welcome in. Glad to have you. Excited to be with you.

Nick Clason (00:48):
And here's why. Honestly, um, this may release the week before, week after, not sure yet in the order. I'm doing a little bit of some batch pre-recording because my family and I are getting ready to go to Disney and I'm looking to just completely unplug from work, from this, from podcast side hustles, all the things I'm doing. Uh, so excited about unplugging, excited about getting ready to send and go and be with my family in Disney. Um, that being said, I, the, the craziest thing about this article is I wrote it, I can't even remember how long in advance, and then it dropped months later. Like I, I wrote it, I know when I lived in Chicago and it dropped just a couple weeks ago now when I'm living here in Dallas. And so my life has changed immensely. And when I heard it, there were elements of it that I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Nick Clason (01:34):
Oh, I don't know if I would've said it that way. And then there are other things I was like, yeah, I definitely still agree with that, you know, so I thought it'd be fun to bring to you all because I wrote it before, I think I wrote it before we even had a podcast going. So these thoughts, like, just think about that. If you've been on this journey with me listening to, to me in your ear ball holes for a while, think about this. These, these thoughts that have been ruminating inside of me and brewing inside of me. Uh, anyway, all that to be said, show notes, hybridministry.xyz. Subscribe to us on YouTube, follow me on TikTok Act place. And Nick also five star review if you would be so inclined. And without any further ado, let's dive into how to be present with your social media presence.

Nick Clason (02:19):
All right, here we go. How to be present with your social media presence. Read by the author himself, Nick Clayson. Here we go. Incarnational ministry. Did I lose anybody yet? Now before you go dust off your lexicon, you probably already know and embrace this as a characteristic in your life and in your ministry, right? Here's the thing. And I said this cuz I knew that, that pastors, youth pastors, who's ever gonna be reading it, primarily, this is a youth pastor. This isn't aside by the way, in case you didn't know primarily youth pastors reading this. They embrace and embody this, this characteristic, this idea of incarnation ministry just may not use it. You know, super frequently in our vocabulary anyway, in the gospels, we see Jesus going to be with his people that he encounters. So if our ministries are going to be a mirror of Christ's incarnation life and incarnation ministry, we are required to go and be with the people that we're ministering to.

Nick Clason (03:16):
And if you and I were youth pastors in the nineties, well we'd probably be found at the mall sitting next to a Chinese restaurant that's handing out free samples of their bourbon chicken and browsing hot topic on our way out the store. You know, you remember, however, if your towns anything like mine, well, the mall I just described as a of it, former of its former self. So where are all the teenagers hanging out? According to some statistics, 45% of Generation Z report that they're online, as they describe it as almost constantly, 45%, 24% of teams report feelings of discomfort if they go more than just one hour without access to the internet. And finally, on average, generation Z allocates two hours and 55 minutes per day on average to social media. So let's just be honest for a minute. The mall has gone to there, and let's be honest and frank, our pockets, it lives on our phones and the students that we're trying to reach and spend their time, they're online.

Nick Clason (04:26):
Regardless of your opinion of whether or not you believe that this amount of screen time is healthy, advantageous, it's probably not. It is where our students are spending the majority of their time. Let's pause for a minute. Um, a quick aside from this, I was in a recent Barna CoLab group on how to disciple Gen Z and their, they're sharing some recent findings, super interesting, super fascinating stuff. One of the things that they shared, um, actually it was a guy that they interviewed from a church and he said, uh, if Generation Z is the first digitally native generation, then generation alpha right behind them. By the way, if you're youth pastor, that is fifth and sixth, seventh, eighth grade, maybe not as high as seventh and eighth grade, but definitely like sixth, fifth, and on down. So they are the youth ministry of the future.

Nick Clason (05:13):
So if generation Z is the first digitally native generation, then that means that generation Alpha is the first digitally dependent generation. Crazy to think about. And so a lot of times, let's be honest with our generational age gap and difference, even as I'm a millennial, even as some fellow millennials, Xers, boomers on up, what is our constant, like, what are we constantly asking generation Z and younger to do? We're asking them to get rid of their phones. We're asking them to disconnect and unplug from technology. And while I think that there's advantages to that and it's advantageous for people to learn the disciplines of being able to break away, find some silence, find some solace and solitude, um, away from social media culture, away from online culture, I think all of that is well and good. I just think that you have a generation that is dependent on it.

Nick Clason (06:06):
It is literally their alarm clock. It's their calendar, it's their actual phone. It's where they communicate with all their friends, whether it be text message, Snapchat, be real, but it's, it's their their map, it's their navigation system. It's the way that they check their grades. It's how they pay for their school lunches. Like it's everything. It's not like, I'll give you this example. I am recording this podcast when I'm recording it in preparation for my trip to Disney World. Everything at Disney World is now online. It's in the my Disney Experience app Genie Plus, which is the replacement of Fast Passes, lightning Lanes, um, checking into my resort, making mobile food orders, like everything is on my phone. And you are at an amusement park with your family trying to unplug, trying to disconnect Bif, do you have to be on your phone? And there are people who are like, I'm done.

Nick Clason (06:56):
I'm not gonna do that. And that's fine. But the reality is we are moving more and more towards that than we are away from that. And so if this generation is dependent upon it, what we have to do is stop villainizing the phone and we have to start looking at it as an opportunity to teach them and disciple them through how to have faith with a phone through that lens. And I think that's my heart in this article, and that's what's coming through. Let's read the next section. So here's a question for you. If in the nineties you would've gone hung out at the mall to connect with students and teenagers, how in 2023, which is one of the articles written, how in 2023 are you showing up where your students are? See, I'm not necessarily proposing that the digital church replaces the in-person experience hybrid far from it.

Nick Clason (07:47):
But if your students go home after school and spend almost three hours on their phones, which is what the statistics told us, then couldn't you make an impact with your students or your people online? All right, so here's some ideas how to do that. If you've been listening to this podcast any length of time you've heard it, I'm gonna say it in idea and then I'm gonna riff on it. So I'm gonna say idea number one, idea number two, so that you're clear, okay, idea number one, share a devotional thought. Guys, you can hold your phone out in front of you and you can give either a recap of, or you can give a completely new and different from, not different cuz come, gonna come from the Bible, hopefully, but different from your sermon or from the lesson that week or whatever the case might be.

Nick Clason (08:29):
You can give just a devotional thought, boom. Hey guys wanna give you quick encouragement, 60 seconds or less. People don't want longer than that. Anyway, you can do a deep dive into an encouraging, um, or challenging passage of scripture. Again, 60 seconds or less. I, I think maybe it was Mark Twain, I'm not sure, but it was him who said, Hey, I wanted to write a short letter but I didn't have time. So I wrote a long letter. See, it takes more time to make something quick, concise, and short. Idea number three, have fun, create fun and funny posts. Hey, if you're not following us on TikTok on our student ministry, I would encourage you to, you can go check it out. We are Cross Creek students. Um, hopefully now we are at Cross Creek students. If not, I may still have it set as at Cross Creek Church cuz TikTok won't let me switch my name over to Cross Creek students, but that's ultimately the goal.

Nick Clason (09:18):
I've had a hard time switching it over. But we do fun and funny posts. I literally, right as I was walking into this spare bedroom of my house to record this podcast, I was literally posting a video of a girl drinking ranch dressing flavored soda and trying to guess the flavor of it. Like it's just fun. And honestly, what I do is I toss out the invite on a youth ministry night. Hey, you wanna be on TikTok tonight? Sure. They all come into the room. I have six bottles of soda with weird flavors. I have a game cud up on my laptop. And another thing with the filter on on TikTok, it gets me like 20 pieces of video content that I just store, bank and pull back out later when I need it in my calendar. Idea number four, film answers to theological questions, right?

Nick Clason (10:02):
People are inspired by answers to deep things that maybe you don't wanna put online, but things that students are dealing with. Like, why do bad things happen? How do I develop a habit? Why, how do I spend time with God even if I don't want to? Why would I go on obeying him and living a life of sinlessness or the goal of that if he's always just gonna forgive my sins? Anyway? You talk about that every week. What's the point of it? What does God think about gay people? Does God require me to be a democrat? Does God require me to be a Republican? What would Jesus think of our current political landscape? You get the idea. Idea number five, encourage spiritual practices and disciplines. I don't know if it's gonna get accepted or if it's out yet, but I recently submitted, if it is, I'll drop a link to it in the show notes.

Nick Clason (10:48):
I recently submitted 10 TikTok videos. Actually, you know what I'm gonna do? It's on ym, um, or I submitted it to d y m I don't know if they took it or not. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop a link, uh, to that resource, the Dropbox resource in the show notes here, completely free charge. Just go grab it and use it. It's, uh, memorize scripture with me. Practice meditation, sit in silence, have a praise break, all kinds of different things. 10 different spiritual practices that that students or people or adults can use. It's not branded. So you can use it. Just download it and post it wherever you, uh, manage social media free for you. Uh, let's see. Are we on six idea number six, you can do recap posts or videos. Just take, literally you only need 3, 4, 5 seconds worth of of videos and you get like 10 of those real fast at the beginning of the night, um, or during your program.

Nick Clason (11:40):
And then you just put 'em into TikTok. Auto cut. Boom. You got a less than 22nd recap video. Phenomenal way to do that. Idea number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, less idea Number seven, give shout outs to leaders and volunteers. Figure out how to do that on social, whether it's static graphics, whether it's motion graphics, whether it's you talking graphics, whether it's voiceovers, give shout outs to leaders and volunteers. Finally, you can quiz students on their Bible knowledge. Uh, one of my favorite ways to do this is on the Instagram story editor with the story sticker, uh, uh, multiple choice story sticker. You can put it in there and you can ask them bible questions and test their Bible knowledge. Super fun way to go about doing that. Those are just some ideas to name a few. I don't know your context, but here's one thing that I do know, we're back to the article, is that I want you to notice that not one single idea that I mentioned above was an advertisement for an event.

Nick Clason (12:32):
We've gone into this, if you've listened to me for a while, you've heard this before. But what if we could use social media to encourage students to actually take the next step in their faith to engage with you or with your ministry, to challenge them to deeper more meaningful ways and a more meaningful walk with Jesus. It's not just another communication platform, which is what we often default social media into being. It's a means to help accomplish a more incarnation form of ministry. So that's it, that's the article. Love to know how you are using social media in your ministry context for more than just announcements to encourage people in their faith to show up where they are. But the bottom line is we are rooting for you. We are cheering you on. So glad you're in here. Hey, listen, if you didn't know this, 2023 is the year of short form video content, vertical video, short form content, less than 60 seconds. If you're like, man, I don't even know how to get this word out there, we got you right here. Link the description. If you're watching on YouTube or go grab our 100% completely free e-book titled, have I already ruined my Church's TikTok account? No. But this book will help teach you how to post one from start to finish all the way through doing it all on the phone in your pocket. So we're here for you, rooting you on. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a loyal listener. And as always, we never forget.

Episode 020: Kerry Ray on the limitations of digital ministry, can we overcome it, and how do we help digital immigrants make an impact with digital natives

Nick Clason — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 04:00:00 -0600

SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick finishes up from part 1 of his conversation with Kerry Ray, director of editing and publishing at YM360. Kerry talks about the limitations of digital ministry and how to best navigate some of the new challenges of digital ministry. In addition Kerry shares some of the resources that are available through YM360 for youth pastors who are in the trenches doing ministry.
Follow along at http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry
Or any and all other resources at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
For resources from YM360 head to http://www.ym360.com

SHOWNOTES
YM360
YM360
http://www.ym360.com
MINISTRY TO PARENTS
https://ministrytoparents.com/
MY YOUTH MIN
https://myyouthmin.com/

TIMECODES
00:00-03:01 Intro
03:01-05:41 The Limitations of Digital Ministry and How to use what we learned from our time in COVID
05:41-11:10 How do we show up to a place teenagers are native to?
11:10-22:00 If you had a crystal ball, how does digital and hybrid ministry need to adjust as we go forward?
22:00-26:55 What resources are available to Youth Pastors?
26:55-27:53 Final encouragement from Kerry to ministry leaders
27:53-31:07 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
What is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. And hey, if you were here for episode, uh, 19, the most recent one that we dropped, it was a part one of an interview with my great friend, um, Kerry Ray, who was on staff at YM 360. He, after 30 years of work inside the local church, has decided to step into more of a role where he's, um, serving the youth pastor, um, and people who are in the trenches doing ministry. So not only does he come with a wealth of personal hands on, boots on the ground, kind of firsthand experience and knowledge of reaching teenagers, um, and seeingDigital Ministry, Contact Work, Relational Ministry, Discipleship, Student Ministry, Youth Ministry, META Church, Streaming Church, TikTok, Social Media life before digital was introduced. Uh, the way he puts it was, um, I'm a digital immigrant versus now doing ministry to people who are digital natives. And so, uh, we're gonna dive into part two of this interview, but I would recommend if you have not heard, go back to part one because he introduces this idea, um, that's not, you know, it's not from him alone, right?

Nick Clason (01:08):
But like, he introduces this idea of a thing called contact work. And contact work is basically the basic premise of going to where people are as opposed to hoping that they will always just come to us, right? If we build it, if it's so beautiful, if it's so shiny and amazing, they will come to us. So he introduces that idea. Um, and now we're gonna kind of explore is that idea of ministry possible, uh, to do digitally. And I would argue that him and I agree for the most part, but I think that, um, we have to sort of like nuance our way into it. Which honestly, it's an interesting dichotomy. And even in having the conversation, I think is how most people feel about digital ministry. I think at a knee jerk reaction, there's this, oh no, you can't do that digitally because discipleship and ministry is best done life on life.

Nick Clason (02:00):
And for the record, I agree with that. Like, I want people that I can physically touch, hug, like sit and eat a knee, have a cup of coffee. Like, here's a great example. Right now, my wife is gone. She's, uh, visiting her mom back home in Ohio. I'm in Texas. We have a relationship. We've video or FaceTimed four times this week, uh, or four times a day, I should say. Um, every day that she's been gone, we've texted late at night, like, we have a relationship, but good grief, like, I wanna give my wife a hug. You know what I mean? Like, there's, it's obviously better together. However, my cell phone is making it possible to remain in contact with my wife. And, and so I think like when you put it that way, you're like, well, yeah, of course. Like, so then how do we add some intentionality?

Nick Clason (02:47):
And we talk about safety, some parameters. What does it look like, um, to do ministry in this way? So I'm really excited for you to check out part two. Again, if you haven't checked out part one, go back and listen to it. Um, and without any further ado, here is part two of our conversation. I mean, honestly, the entire basis right of this podcast is, is what's called the Hybrid Ministry podcast. Because I think what we've learned, at least the way I felt, and I was a part Kerry of an attractional based church during C and so we put together, in my opinion, the best youth ministry online experience that existed. But no one cared because the contact work didn't exist. And so it's, but then what happened right, was this argument, this tug and this tug and pull, like in c everyone was forced to go all the way digital.

Nick Clason (03:37):
And so we all did, we all went all in to the best of our abilities. And then once the restrictions started to lift, the pendulum swung almost so hard because we all saw the effects of not being together and how valuable that is. And so it almost swung like, let's, let's throw the baby out with the bath water and all the good things that we learned from that time period from being fully digital and having, you know, our like proverbial hands tied behind our back. Like I, so I went to a place where a, um, I was a campus student pastor. I didn't speak. Um, and we didn't speak even pre covid. We had a video speaker, um, every week cuz there's universal across all campuses. And I can give you my opinions about that later. But that was, that was one hand tie behind my back.

Nick Clason (04:26):
The second hand tie behind my back was that I wasn't allowed to meet with students. So Ty, what I feel like both hands tie behind my back, all right, now you're the youth pastor here, go do youth ministry. And I was like, how? But that literally forced me right? To just rethink everything. And for literally six months to nine months, I had to navigate that world with both a handstand behind my back. And maybe that is what, and as I'm talking this out with you, maybe that's what has prompted my passion around this because I realized there's some good things you can do digitally, but it can't replace what's done physically. And so I think we gotta find that, that hybrid I think contact, I think, yeah, yeah. At its core happens in person. But think about, you know, when you started out in ministry, you couldn't grab a phone and text that student and be like, Hey, how'd that test go?

Nick Clason (05:20):
You didn't have that. You had to rely on a physical meetup, the football game, youth group, whatever, to make that happen. And so we, we can live in that digital space and bow borrow off the equity that we have from what happens in person. And so how do we enter into there effectively, like you said, cuz that's what Jesus did. He showed up. We can now show up in ways that teenagers are, to your point, native to how do we do that? What are the, what, what does that look like? I think we're all trying to figure that out.

Kerry Ray (05:53):
I, I think we are A couple of things. You, you said one I wanted to say, I don't know if your, your listeners understand or know about you that you walked into a church as a youth pastor, right? As this whole thing started, or that whole thing started. And so immediately you were trying, you, you, they didn't even know who you were. So you were trying to introduce yourself in a digital way, uh, to a group of people who didn't know you at all. Um, and that was interesting. Um, but the other thing you said, um, you mentioned about, um, we snapped back, the pendulum swung back. Mm-hmm. , can we be honest? I think the reason why the pendulum swung back so quickly is because we were so many people were terrible at one of it, at one side of it. Yeah. And it was failing so badly and they were terrible at it.

Kerry Ray (06:40):
Well, it's not familiar. The second well, yeah. And the second that that ended, they they run back to what, you know Yeah. As fast as you can, because I'm terrible at this. So we did, you threw the baby out with the bath water because you were like, one, I'm not good at it. Two, um, nobody likes to do stuff. They're not good. Right. So I'm not good at it. I don't wanna do it. I just wanna get as far away from it as possible. Let's go back to what we know when it was working. Let's go back to the stuff that I was confident in doing. Let's just run back to that. But if Covid showed us anything, it is, there needs to be, to your point, a hybrid. There needs to be both. And there are students that are out there that we can, you know, need to say hello to digitally.

Kerry Ray (07:22):
We do need to learn how to utilize that digital space better. Um, and this is another thing I was thinking as you were, as you were saying that is, you know, in the physical contact work mm-hmm. , there were boundaries and rules. Um, uh, especially in ministry. You know, you, you had, there's, there were certain things you could do and you, there were certain things you put boundaries on and said, Hey, contact work means this. It does not mean, you know, driving a female or even a male by yourself and go, oh yeah, that's contact work. No, that's, that's potential jail time. That's what that is. . Um, so you don't, you don't do those things. I think in digital. Um, you mentioned texting a student, Hey, how'd that test go? Mm-hmm. . Um, I know with our small group leaders, they were very nervous mm-hmm. and still are.

Kerry Ray (08:12):
Cause we don't know the boundaries. Um, do you text a student? Is that okay? Um, because what if their parent is not cool with, um, you know, a 35 year old texting a 14 year old mm-hmm. . Um, how was your day? Um, you know, that can, that can kinda be weird. Uh, so there are some boundaries there. Do you hang out? You know, I can go to a football, I can go to a middle school football game and I could be there as a student pastor and I can see my kids that I see, I can meet their friends. This, there again, young life does a great job of this. You know, I can be intentional about meeting people. I'm in a public space. There's other people around. Yep. That is very different than me logging into Call of Duty intentionally and playing in a chatroom of, you know, a bunch of 14 year old guys and girls that I don't know.

Nick Clason (09:06):
Yeah.

Kerry Ray (09:06):
That's, that's different. And maybe the digital immigrant in me has that trigger goes, this is weird. Yeah. Uh, maybe that's the digital immigrant in me versus the digital native, but there's some oddity there. And so we've gotta figure out not just a balance of how do we, how do we engage that way, but what are the boundaries? What are the best practices? What are the safety protocols that need to be in place in a digital format to where you're not the weirdo, you're not the weird old guy or the weird old girl hanging out, you know, in a chatroom or in a, in a digital space. Um, the internet has been great, but it's also shown us that it's highly dangerous and that it is full of predators. And not to say that the football, the middle school football game stands, that there's not predators out there as well sitting in those, in those bleachers.

Kerry Ray (10:02):
But it's, society sees it differently in a digital space. Um, because right now that is where a lot of the ugly stuff is happening. Um, so all that to say is we don't need to abandon it. We do need to be careful. Mm-hmm. , we do need to engage, but to do it with boundaries and guidelines in place. And we need to, if you're in the church world, you need to set your people up well because they don't know. And they're trying to do what you're, you're telling them, Hey, do contact work. Hey, engage, Hey, be a part of these, these students' lives. And they do. But you gotta give them the boundaries of the protocol so that they know and they have confidence in how to interact in that digital space. One, they're already digital native more than likely. And two, it's an awkward space that they're unfamiliar with. And three, they need to feel safe. Just like if you sent them into a football game and said, Hey, I want you to hit at least one football game. Here's what you do in that space. Here's what you don't do in that space. You need to do the same thing with them in a digital context.

Nick Clason (11:10):
Yeah. So, from the seat you're sitting in now, um, what, if anything, like do you see about how covid, digital, hybrid, any of that stuff, how is it influencing and impacting ministry leaders? Cause you're sitting in a unique seat where you are helping serve the type of person that you were for the last 30 years. So what are you noticing? What are you hearing? What are the pain points? What are people asking? What are people trying to figure out? What are things that you're seeing? And then what do you maybe envision or see as, uh, a future maybe, maybe in like a year, but also maybe in the next five, 10 years of ministry, student ministry and all that stuff?

Kerry Ray (11:55):
Yeah. What I'm seeing is I get to speak to youth pastors in multiple states, in multiple denominations. Um, people who have been doing it for 20 plus years, 10 years. I was at Arkansas this past weekend and a room of, you know, 25, 30 guys and girls, um, who do youth ministry. And, um, there were some that were full-time. There were some that were, you know, part-time. There were some that were bivocational. Um, there were some that had been doing this for 10 years, eight years, 20 years. And then a couple of the couple of them are like, yeah, this is month three. Yeah. Um, , you just go, woo. Um, but I think they're all struggling with the same thing, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, is how to balance, um, how to juggle the digital aspect versus the physical aspect and, and what is contact work and how to, how do I create things that people wanna be a part of that students wanna be a part of?

Kerry Ray (12:55):
How do I program? Um, you know, a lot of 'em are just trying to figure out, how do I do any of this? I'm just winging it. How do I get support and momentum and, um, those pieces without even the digital piece involved. Um, but yeah, that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing people struggling. I'm seeing people trying to navigate this return from shut down to non shut and the, and the damage that has been done in the, in, in that. And I am seeing people try to figure out how to engage in a new way, a new group of people, um, being, you know, this, this group of, um, of Gen Z students who are still around, and then this incoming crop of generation alpha students who are currently, uh, sixth, seventh. And depending on the age, you've got a couple eighth graders that are young ones mm-hmm. .

Kerry Ray (13:48):
Um, but just trying to, how, how do I, how do I engage them? How do we, how do we, um, provide them with, with the things they need? And there again, I know this has nothing to do with digital, but what I'm really seeing the most, uh, in the youth ministry space is the audience has shifted so much in that culturally it's a different world. Um, there's a lot more questions. They're open to a lot more things. They, um, and, and pastors are trying to figure out, for example, you know, how do you teach in a ministry context? How do you teach a teenager about the word of God? Which is absolute truth when the generation doesn't believe in such a thing is absolute truth. Mm-hmm. , how do you do that? Um, how do you, you know, how do you, so many youth pastors are preaching about characters in the Bible or things that were happening scripturally.

Kerry Ray (14:45):
And they'll say, you know, well, well, Moses, so and so and so and so and so and so as if the people listening to them know who that is, is without stopping to say, let me tell you who this is, because they're, again, the nuns in os they were raised by a group of parents who didn't grow them up in, in scripture. So they don't know. And so our, our mistake is, or the mistakes I'm seeing, or pastors speaking in a, in a phrase like, say, like I said, well, Moses, you know Moses, they don't, yeah. They're like, yeah, the guy with the boat, they're like, no, that's Noah

Nick Clason (15:16):
,

Kerry Ray (15:17):
But we have to pause. We have to slow down and teach mm-hmm. . And I think we have to do that. I think technology, um, Instagram, social media, TikTok, I, I love, I love, and I hate what I'm seeing right now on TikTok. Um, and if you're not on TikTok, you need to at least look at it. Mm-hmm. . Um, if I can encourage, if a youth pastor's listening, if I can encourage you, I know it's, you know, it's the devil. I get it. But at least be familiar with it. Yeah. At least engage. And I know your church probably has a stance on it. And, and I'll warn you, there's things, you're gonna see some stuff on there. That algorithm is incredible. Um, you only need to pause for a second and it'll feed you more of that. Um,

Nick Clason (15:59):
So yeah, listen, here's the best TikTok hack, by the way. If you start it and they start feeding you stuff you don't want, hold your, hold the video down, click, not interested, do that two or three times and it's gone forever. Like I'm telling you, can, you can game that algorithm, uh, the way each can, the way you'll, you want,

Kerry Ray (16:17):
I'll see a better TikTok hack. Don't sign up for an account

Nick Clason (16:21):
or

Kerry Ray (16:22):
That, cause that way every time you, every time you log off the, turn the app off, you turn it back on, you get the most stuff. It's new every time. Um, but what, what I was gonna say about, about TikTok was some of the greatest things I'm seeing is, is student ministries, youth pastors, pastors utilizing that technology and teaching theology. Yeah. And, and, and, um, you know, there's a couple guys that do like the, you know, one minute sermon, um, and stuff that excellent content mm-hmm. this, the negative side of that is I'm seeing that the same thing with terrible theology mm-hmm. . Um, and I would say that group of people are using it very well. And our students, there, again, keep in mind your kids don't know the difference. They don't. Yeah. Um, and so they're watching things on TikTok that are, let's call it, you know, 30% true.

Kerry Ray (17:22):
Uh, and then it just kinda hangs, hangs hangs the right or hangs the left and, and goes crazy. Um, you know, I watched somebody the other day talking about, you know, Jesus, you know, Jesus's name wasn't Jesus. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, good. This is good. And then they kept going. They kept going. They like, so Jesus wasn't really God, he was just the, and I'm like, oh, no, no, because it started off, it started off really strong and going, yeah, this is good. This is good. Let's teach them these things. You know, there weren't really three wise men as far as we know. There were, there were wise men that showed up. Great. Great. So, you know what they were, they were really these things. They were Illuminati No, they were not Illuminati. You know, just, just crazy stuff. Um, where do I think it's going?

Kerry Ray (18:08):
I I definitely think, you know, the, the, those of us who are digital, uh, immigrants we're aging out. Um, more and more digital natives. Um, that's the way the world works, right. You know, more kids are being born more, more babies and children are being handed iPhones and iPads as pacifiers and are growing up with it. And that is a thing. And it can be good or it can be bad. And, and I guess my biggest takeaway would be, or challenge would be this, don't build a moat. There's no mo big enough. Whether you're talking to parents or whether you're trying to do your own ministry piece. Don't build a moat and try to protect everybody from technology. That's, it's foolish. You're not, that's, that's not a winnable battle. No. Um, I think what we need to focus on is redeeming that culture and redeeming technology and saying, how can I take what is, what is, how can I take who these students are and meet them where they are versus where we wish they were?

Kerry Ray (19:11):
Um, meet them where they are and redeem this technology and utilize it in a way for the glory of God and for, for the, for the right reasons. The right purposes. And try to try to really point to him using technology and use it to reach students. Use it to disciple students. Use it to, um, bring and share Jesus to students who may never, ever step foot in your church door, but they may be scrolling through TikTok and just happened to come across a video where you talk about this God man who loved you so much that he gave himself for you on your behalf, so that you could have eternal life. And it may, here's what I find interesting about students in this generational speech that we're in right now. There's no reason for a teenager to show up to the things you're doing.

Kerry Ray (20:05):
Mm-hmm. , there's just no reason for it. Yeah. But they still are. They're showing up to these things. And it's not because you got a great Instagram account. They're showing up to these things because they have an internal intrinsic curiosity about spiritual things that I believe that God has placed in them from creation to seek him out. Yeah. And they're showing up because that curiosity is itching and they're trying to figure out a way to scratch it. And they're just curious enough to still listen and use, use Instagram and TikTok all you want, but use it to scratch that curiosity in them that is God given. And let God be God and God do the things. We don't save people anyway. We never have, we haven't done it physically and we're not gonna do it digitally. Um, that's not, that's not for us, but utilize the, the tools that we have in front of us to continue to do the things that we are called to doop.

Kerry Ray (21:06):
Um, so yes, technology is out there. It is, it is doing its thing. Um, don't run from it. Don't build a mote to protect people from it, whether they're your own kids or not. Utilize it. Teach people how to use it. Teach people how to be safe with it. Set your volunteers up to utilize it. Well give them boundaries. Help them to, to do this thing well. Um, you know, show them how to do it and show your church how to do it. Show all the digital immigrants how to do it. Um, and lead, lead there. Lead from lead from the backseat. Um, especially if you're watching this, listen to this. Sorry. If you're listening to this as a, as a digital, uh, native, help people learn how to do this and to do it right. And to do it well. And not to be afraid of it. Cause I think the biggest thing is fear. Um, but yeah. Mean, sorry, man. I got, I've got on my soapbox for a minute, but

Nick Clason (21:58):
No, that was really good. I just, that was a great, that was a great place to land it. Why don't you, uh, you know, this has been a very youth ministry centric conversation, which admittedly so, and we, we let you guys know that at the beginning. Tell 'em about, uh, everything, you know, what, how can they engage with stuff over at YM 360. What are some of the resources that you, you all are producing to help, to help people in this space right now?

Kerry Ray (22:20):
Yeah. For, um, we, we create things. Our, our whole point is to make the things, to make youth ministry youth pastors wear a lot of hats. It's, it's hard. Um, I told those guys in girls in Arkansas, uh, this past weekend, youth ministry's harder than it's ever been. And it's not easy. Yeah. But we have more opportunity than we've ever had had because there are so many blank canvases out there who don't know. There's not a lot of, um, church baggage in teenagers right now, cuz they never went. Um, they read about it, they see it online, but, you know, they see people deconstructing and talking about it, but they don't have it themselves. A lot of them, because they, they haven't engaged yet. So, gosh, there's so much out there. Um, and why do sixty.com if you wanna check that out? Uh, there's tons of resources, uh, for you.

Kerry Ray (23:10):
There's, we post blog articles every single Monday. You can check out that kinda stuff. Um, I think that the, the best things that you can be a part of right now that we work on is we have two big platforms that we put out every month. New content for one of those is called ministry parents.com, ministry to parents.com. And it's not for parents, it's for you to help parents. So if you're in ministry, uh, and you're trying to help equip parents to be better parents in their home and to be, and to help those no e s's raise students in a way that points them to Jesus, um, we provide you with all the stuff. We do it all for you. Uh, we write all your emails, we, we curate all the content for you. It's really just point and click and paste and send.

Kerry Ray (24:00):
And we do it all for you. Uh, all of us know that we're supposed to partner with parents. None of us really know what that means. Um, and so and so we're trying to figure it out. And you know, what usually keeps us as student pastors from it is either we don't have kids of our own. And we go, well, I'm not legit. There's no way I'm gonna look at a parent and go, you know what you should do with that 14 year old? Cause they're gonna look at me and go, yeah, you tell me about that buddy. Or by the time we are legitimate, we realize that curating content for parents as far as what they need is a full-time job. Yep. And we can't do all that. And so that's what ministry parents does. Ministry parents.com. And then we just launched a brand new platform for training and development of youth pastors, um, that talks about all of this kind of stuff on the regular, every month we provide you with, gosh, 2026 plus pieces of content that's brand new every month that talks about everything from volunteers to parents, to technology, to other disruptors that are in that you're dealing with.

Kerry Ray (25:04):
Um, the whole point of it is to help you grow, lead and thrive in ministry. It is, it is all about developing you as a person. Um, you could check that out as well. It is my youth min.com, my youth min.com. It is, it is worth it. It's worth checking that out. Um, all those are subscription based stuff, but it's, it's not expensive. So whether you're full-time, part-time, uh, big church, small church, um, multi-site, multi staff, or you're flying solo, um, it is something that you can utilize. Um, and anytime, you know, my I am available, like I said, I tell people all the time, let me be that guy. Let me be the person that when you're struggling and you need somebody to talk to, when you are excited, when you're new and, and going, I don't know if this is the right way to do this or not, uh, I'm available.

Kerry Ray (25:54):
And, and more than happy to talk to you, I, I stepped out a student ministry proper to take this YM 360 role to give myself the ability to have these conversations like we're having the day, uh, with youth pastors, youth workers, uh, all over the place. So my email address is Kerry kr y com. Um, or you can catch me on Twitter and Instagram, uh, K R two, and then the letter you k um, I, I don't have TikTok. I just have a blank account so I can keep up with what's going on, but nobody wants to see me do Renegade or any of the dances anyway, so I know Charlie de that's, it's true, it's true. I should be on Dancing With the Stars, but I'm a, I'm no TikTok dancer day. So Yeah, day one day it's my aspiration. . Uh, yeah. So please, please hit me up and lemme hear from you. Any questions you ever have, anything you ever need, or if you just need to be encouraged and say don't, because here's, here's the deal, Nick, I just want people to know that there's less people joining into the student ministry rights than there used to be. Hmm. And, uh, we need more people than ever before. And so, yeah.

Kerry Ray (27:10):
You know, um, gosh, I'm going blank on that. Josh ship is the guy who said, you know, every student needs one caring adult. Yeah. Every student is one caring adult away from being a success. Um, and so, man, we need so many caring adults out there who are willing to see students, to love students where they are versus where they wish they were. That's good. And, and just to jump in and say, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm willing to let somebody show me the ropes. So

Nick Clason (27:43):
This stuff, man. Hey, I appreciate it. Thanks for your, uh, absolutely your time today from, uh, Birmingham Hotel Room. It's been great.

Kerry Ray (27:51):
. Thank you very much, man. Thanks for having me.

Nick Clason (27:55):
Wow. Well, man, I hope that you guys found that interesting and fascinating. Uh, hey, uh, in the show notes, wherever you get podcasts, you should be able to, uh, see the links to all the things that Kerry was talking about and all the resources that are available. If you are not a youth pastor, thank you for sitting through just a couple of old timey youth pastors chatting up, doing ministry, talking about ministry. But if you know someone who is in, in particular, man, I would really encourage you to share with him the ministry to parent and the, um, my Youth men, um, platform. Share those links with them. It's something that can be really, really helpful. Uh, we talked about this a little bit, um, off off Mike, Kerry and I, well, once we hung up. But my youth min, honestly, guys, it is conference level training.

Nick Clason (28:42):
And so if you're a youth pastor and you're in a small church without a giant budget, like it's behind a paywall, however, it is far cheaper than if you got a plane, got a hotel, um, and paid for a conference ticket somewhere across country or whatever, and you have access to it. Like, I don't know if you heard, he's like 20 something pieces of new content every single month. So there is conference level training very available at your fingertips, very accessible. Um, and so that's a budget saver, you know, and so I think leaders who wanna be learning, um, are growing super helpful. So check that out for sure. I am a, I'm a contributor to it, so, um, shamelessly love to have you check it out. Um, but anyway, uh, appreciate you guys, uh, listening. And if you're anything like me and you listen to podcasts on the go, I do it when I'm, I'm running, I do it when I'm driving, and I do it when I'm on the lawn doing the dishes.

Nick Clason (29:37):
The reality is, um, Kerry said so much good stuff in there and I would hate, hate for you to miss it. And so we, for free provide, uh, transcripts for every single episode. You can check those out at hybridministry.xyz or just, uh, read through it in your podcast catcher so that you're able to just see what's going on and, uh, hear what's going on and maybe take some notes, um, and take some of the things that you heard in your ears and put it to paper if you need it. Um, for conversations or for meetings with, uh, upper level leadership or whatever the case may be. We just wanna serve you and help you win in your area of ministry. So you can check that out at hybridministry.xyz. We're also on Twitter at hybrid ministry. We'd love to have you come hang out with us. And hey, listen, if you found this helpful one way that you could really help us out, um, a gigantic favor for us would just be male.

Nick Clason (30:26):
If you could give us a like, or a rating or a review, that would be very beneficial, help us pay it forward, um, and help you maybe pay it forward even to some other people who, who wanna help uncover and find this information. So, once again, grateful for you, thankful for you. Um, hope you guys have a great rest of your day, wherever you are, whatever you might be doing, and we pray that this is helping, um, make digital discipleship just a little bit easier for you in your ministry context. Until next time, talk to you later guys. Bye.

Episode 019: Kerry Ray on doing ministry like Jesus did, and how technology has changed the way we ministry and communicate to teenagers in Gen Z and Gen Alpha and beyond

Nick Clason — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 04:00:00 -0600

SUMMARY
In this episode Nick sits down with his friend, and YM360 General Editor and Content Director, Kerry Ray. Kerry is a veteran with over 3 decades of experience in church ministry, all in student ministry. Kerry and Nick talk about the ways in which technology has changed and shaped the ways of doing ministry. And Kerry also talks about the importance of going to a teenager's "turf" or showing up in their life, relationally.
Come hang out with us on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry
Or grab show notes and transcripts at http://www.hybridministry.xyz

SHOWNOTES
YM360
http://www.ym360.com
MINISTRY TO PARENTS
https://ministrytoparents.com/
MY YOUTH MIN
https://myyouthmin.com/
EPISODE 016 ON HOW THE IPHONE CHANGED THINGS WITH DERRY PRENKERT
https://merry-swamp-3547.fireside.fm/016

TIMECODES
00:00-02:49 Intro
02:49-05:55 Kerry's Intro and Experience
05:55-09:12 What it's like no longer being in the trenches of ministry
09:12-13:44 What was life in ministry like before the cell phone and after?
13:44-16:22 Is technology what created FOMO?
16:22-21:00 What is contact work?
21:00-32:58 Can we use technology to our advantage in ministry efforts?
32:58-34:27 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast, episode 19. We've been doing 19 of these. I can't freaking believe it in your catcher. It might be 20, because we posted as Double Zero pilot. I kind of hate when people do that, and then I, I went and did it. So, anyway, uh, as always, I am your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And today you're in for a treat because number one, I'm not just gonna ramble in your ear holes the entire time, like I have been for the last several episodes, but two, I'm bringing on one of my really good friends. His name is Kerry Ray. He is the director of editing and publications right now at YM 360, which is, YM Youth Min, right? Youth Ministry 360. And he has 30 years of church ministry experience, particularly in the student ministry and youth ministry space.

Nick Clason (00:58):
So, let me caveat all of that to say this is a ministry podcast, not specific in particular to youth ministry. However, that being said, um, you know that I am a 12 year youth ministry veteran, and so a lot of my connections and conversations come in the youth ministry space. And so, um, I just will caveat all this to say that today is going to be a very youth ministry centric conversation. Um, but all of it is going to be couched sort of in, uh, digital, right? And, and so what Kerry is gonna be talking about, um, and what I did is I, we had an interview and it went really well, and it went really long. And so I decided, I think I'm actually gonna bite, uh, split this up into two more bite size pieces. And so, episode one is gonna come out this week, episode two, or part two of this, I should say, is gonna drop on Thanksgiving Day, so you can enjoy it on the way to your, um, grandmother's house over the river and through the woods.

Nick Clason (01:59):
So in this first part in particular, he's gonna talk a little bit about his experience, um, what he's seen and how he's seen digital play a role in that. And then he talks about, um, a thing that I first learned from him, but he says he's still primarily from young Life called contact work, right? And if you've been around this podcast at all, you've known, we talked about showing up where they are, um, which is what Jesus did, honestly, right? He, he showed up where we were, he put on skin, he became human. And so that's what he talks about, and he kind of gives the basis for it and why it's important. Um, and so that's gonna be today. Um, so hopefully you enjoy it. And so, without any further ado, we're gonna get started. And you'll notice just how well I am as a host when we plan this thing, when you hear how we get started. So here we go. 3, 2, 1. Check it out. Hey,

Kerry Ray (02:50):
Is whoa gonna go first on,

Nick Clason (02:53):
Man? Come on. Doesn't even listen to instructions.

Kerry Ray (02:57):
I did. I thought you said, I'll do a thing later. And then you go ahead and introduce

Nick Clason (03:02):
Yourself. I'm keeping all this in. This is Kerry, everybody. Kerry, introduce yourself to the tens and tens of listeners that I have.

Kerry Ray (03:10):
Hey, tens of listeners. My name is Kerry Ray. I am the director of publishing for Y M 360 in Birmingham, Alabama. Uh, YM 360 Youth Ministry 360. Uh, before that, uh, this is my first year actually as a director of publishing, whatever that means. Uh, I did, uh, before that, I did, uh, right about three decades in the student ministry seat, um, in multiple denominations of churches, in churches, multiple states, uh, different sizes, churches, different size, not sizes, different size churches, um, multisites single sites, uh, single sites that wanted to be multisite, uh, . I've been, I've been around the block and, and seen a lot of things, man. Um, but yeah, I've been in the youth ministry for right at 30 years. And, um, this was my first, actually at the time of this recording, this was my, this last Easter was my first Easter, uh, in, in here in 2022, was my first Easter in 30 years, not to be on staff at a church.

Kerry Ray (04:15):
So it was quite the different thing to sit in there as a regular person who could see all the things going wrong, but uh, was not responsible for, for fixing any of them. Um, and so it was great. It was, it was really great. Um, it's weird now on Saturday nights after, you know, you get in a routine for 30 years. Uh, Saturday nights are kind of a weird thing because you go to church on Sunday mornings, but you're not going to work, you know, to do all the things. Um, so, and you go with a family on, on a Sunday morning, it's whole thing. Just a different world, man. So I've, uh, like I said, I've been, I got to wife 360 in October of 2022, um, and started a, a new thing. We, we work in, uh, Y 360, if you don't know, we're, we're part, um, publishing.

Kerry Ray (05:06):
And, uh, we create content for student ministries, youth ministries, all over the world to use. Um, and we also do camps. We have a, a generate by Y 360, uh, which does camp all across different locations. We had this last summer, summer of 2022. We, I believe we were in 20, 23 or 24 locations, um, running camps, 20. We had three different teams spread out all over. Uh, so it was great. My, my section of that, we create all of the, uh, written material, all the devotional material, all of the, um, all the written material for camps. Um, so yeah, it's been a lot of fun. It's very different. And then I get to, uh, coach student ministries, youth pastors, all across the place. Um, I've been doing that for around seven years, so, yeah. Nice. Yeah. Lot of fun. Lot of fun.

Nick Clason (05:59):
So let me ask you this, just, this isn't one of the questions I sent you. I'm already going off script, but, uh, do you enjoy Saturday nights and Sunday mornings not being responsible for stuff, or is there like an element of you that misses it at all?

Kerry Ray (06:15):
Oh, absolutely. I think anytime you do something for a significant amount of your life, um, there's a part of you that missed that, um, that misses, um, you know, just being around and, and, and knowing all the faces and knowing who's where. And, um, yeah, there's just part of it that you kind of miss a little bit of it. There's some part, and maybe this will make sense for some of you listening who've done anything for a significant amount of time, there's parts that you miss that you don't know why you miss, or you don't even know what you miss. You just say something's weird and off and just seems a little different. Um, yeah. But yeah, there, there's pieces and parts. There's definitely pieces and parts that I don't miss.

Kerry Ray (06:56):
You know, I don't miss, you know, being gone all day on a Sunday. Um, I don't miss, um, I the whole getting to be a part like you go as a family and do stuff with as a family, uh, that's really brand new. Yeah. Um, and, and it's, it's been great. My, my kids, I, my wife and I have two kids. We have an eight year old and a 14 just turned 14 a couple days ago. And so this is such a significant time in both of their lives mm-hmm. that it is great to be, you know, just a dad and not a staff member. Um, and to get, to get to sit in, I'll tell you, you know, a little bit of a confession. It's also difficult. Um, we're at a smaller church now, and, um, having been in large church ministry for so long, um, now that my daughter is participating in ministry, and, you know, that ministry is, you know, trying to figure itself out and mm-hmm. and, and go through all the, you know, all the growing pains of, of a growing ministry. And I'm sitting on the sidelines and thinking, gosh, , that's awkward. I can help that, but I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna white knight, you know, come in when my, on my high horse and, and quote unquote fix it for them. Especially with,

Nick Clason (08:16):
You're fixing it as the YM 360 guy. Are you fixing it as Madison dad, as dad? Are you fixing it as a church volunteer? Like, what, yeah. What's

Kerry Ray (08:26):
Your role, right? Or are you fixing as the guy that quote unquote knows it all right. So, you know, you don't, you don't wanna be that guy. Um, so yeah, it's, it's just been, it's been weird. That's, that's kind of the honest thing is to have done a thing, and I think this is true at anything, not just ministry, but having, you know, if you were, if you were a cabinet maker and you walked in and people were, you know, fumbling around with a hammer trying to build a cabinet, and you're just biting your, you know, biting your closed fist, going, oh, no, that's not how you, you do it . Um, so it, it's that, I mean, and not saying that they're not doing a great job. Um, they are, they're doing well in figuring it out. They're just, you know, figuring it out. Um, and they're going through some, some growing pain in that process. So yeah, that's, that's what we're doing as a family right

Nick Clason (09:13):
Now. So I'm, I'm curious, Kerry, like two or three episodes ago, I'll link it, you know, in the show notes, but I had, uh, my friend d Pinker on, and we talked about, um, how he, he has a similar longevity track record that you do, and he talked about how the invention of the iPhone was a pretty monumental, like, milestone marker for him in youth ministry. Like he kinda remembers ministry before the invention, um, and widespread use of the iPhone, and then post the invention and widespread use of the iPhone. Do you have, would you say you have a similar, um, experience with that? Like, did you, did you notice that being a pretty big milestone thing in student ministry and in your career noticing how students interacted? Did that change things? Did you, um, have to program or think about things differently because of technology and it's, you know, interwoven into the culture?

Kerry Ray (10:11):
Um, honestly, I, I think the iPhone changed not programming so much as it changed, um, advertising. And I know that's a big no-no word. You know, in the church world, you're not supposed to see the things you're doing as a quote unquote product or something you are promoting. Um, but you are, you're, you're promoting a thing, um, come be a part of this, whether it's a camp, a Wednesday night, a Sunday morning, you are trying to tell people this is a thing we have, um, otherwise you're sitting there by yourself. Um, and so I think it changed, I think it changed dramatically how we engaged with, with students. Hmm. , um, I don't think so much at all. It, it really changed programming. Um, but it definitely changed the way we engaged. It definitely changed, um, the level of intentionality that you had to put behind, uh, promotion and how you promoted and how you celebrated.

Kerry Ray (11:15):
Uh, it also gave you kind of an open door, you know, whether you want it to be or not. A lot of youth ministry is word of mouth. Yeah. Um, I always used to kinda call it the skating rink effect when I was a kid. You know, the skating rink was, was a thing. , sadly, that'll show you my age. The skating rink was a thing, and we didn't, in middle school specifically, you didn't know why it was a thing. Yeah. You just knew that's where everybody was. Mm-hmm. . And, uh, but it was word of mouth, you know? It was, it wasn't the, the skating rink when I grew up, the skating, it was called fun time, skate land. Uh, it wasn't that fun time. Skateland had this giant marketing, you know, this this monumental system or this, this thing that they were doing. They were like, come to fun time.

Kerry Ray (12:01):
It was just, it was word of mouth. And the middle school, you know, that that's where everybody was going on on a Friday night. They were going to fun time. And you talked about it in the hallways, and people do, and I think in cinema ministry, whether we want it to be or not, it, it's always been a word of mouth. You know, I'm, you know, why do, why do so many kids show up to this one event, this all nighter that you do? Well, because the word got out that these people are going and the other people wanna go. And then it snowballs into this thing. Um, and I think the word of mouth became digital. Word of mouth. Um, and you could, you could digitally have a megaphone to, to broadcast that thing versus just relying on word of mouth. Yeah. Um, and so that changed the game.

Kerry Ray (12:47):
So it changed. Um, the only thing I would say in programming, uh, uh, that it would change was that you had to be, or you started to be a little more intentional about recording the things that you were doing mm-hmm. and putting them out there for people to see later. Yeah. Uh, and to advertise with. Um, that's probably the only way it really changed. And I would say it changed programming. It would just, Hey, we want to capture certain things. And so we would talk about, as a team, uh, what are the things we wanna maybe capture tonight and, and broadcast so that people can see it and try to leverage the fomo, you know, the, the, that FOMO piece mm-hmm. is, is a real deal, the invention of the iPhone, Instagram, now TikTok, um, even, even be, you know, be real. It is that FOMO piece of what's happening in the moment. Who's doing what, Ooh, I wanna be a part of that. Mm-hmm. , that's what changed. I think that's what changed.

Nick Clason (13:45):
So would you say before that, that fomo for someone my age, who's only done ministry in an iPhone generation, is fomo a recent phenomenon since the invention of technology and things like that? Or was that always a part of it? Now you just can see it with your own eyes that you Oh, you're right now missing out.

Kerry Ray (14:07):
Yeah. No, FOMO has always existed. Um, it wasn't called that, but you know, there was always that, you know, nobody wants to be left out. Everybody wants to be, um, they did say it for hundreds, hundreds of years. They've been saying for years, you know, that, um, when you walk into a building, but think about yourself anytime, iPhone or not, you walk into a restaurant in a busy time of the day for a restaurant mm-hmm. , and you're the, there's maybe one other person in the restaurant. There's something inside of you that goes, it could be the greatest restaurant ever. It could be the best food, best atmosphere, but there's something inside you that intrinsically goes, huh, yeah, something's wrong. What's wrong with this, this ? And, and I think that's, I think that's who we are as, as human beings. When you walk into a store, there's nobody shopping there. When you, when you go to a gym and you work and there's, you're what, what's midnight? That's if you're doing it in a time where typically there would be people there, whether we walk into a church now, um, and there's, you know, there's nobody really attending. You go, huh? When you walk outta that, you don't say, you know, man, that was great. You go, man, that was great. I wonder why nobody goes.

Nick Clason (15:27):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting, right? Cause none of that's based on the actual content maybe. Nope. Of like, oh, that was a great message I really resonated with, or whatever. Like what you're noticing is like the social equity landscape of like, what's going on around you, looking around, no one's there. And

Kerry Ray (15:44):
It is a thing, and it is a thing. I think that thing has always existed. And I think whether it's the iPhone or social media, um, has just exacerbated that and made it, yeah. A more prominent thing turned the volume up, if you will, uh, has made it a more prominent thing, more obvious thing. Um, the, but I think it's always been there. Uh, I think it's, you know, when you were eight years old and didn't get invited to a birthday party and you knew other people did mm-hmm. , that's, you had fomo, you were missing out. Um, I think that's just a, a human thing.

Nick Clason (16:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So you and I connected, you were at a church in Cincinnati. I was at a church in Cincinnati, and we were on the doorstep of working together. Um, and so in that process, I guess, I mean, I guess it was even formal. We had formal interviews and stuff. Um, you explained to me, uh, a thing that, I don't know if you came up with this or coined it or whatever, but you called it contact work. Um, so explain a little bit to our listeners, like what that is, where it comes from, maybe the theological or biblical basis for it. Um, and, uh, like then I wanna kind of explore, is that type of work, is that type of ministry, is that possible more and more as we enter into this digital space? But first of all, give us just a little bit of like a background of like, what is it, um, what are you talking about with contact work? I think when I heard it, I never heard it called that, but it was very intrinsic to me. Like, I was like, oh, yeah, this makes sense, right? As a youth pastor, like, this is what I'm trying to do. I just never kind of put this label to it. So explain that a little bit.

Kerry Ray (17:32):
Yeah. Well, I definitely did not, uh, coin the phrase contact work. Um, that is, um, I served for a while, um, in young life, and that is a, that is a big, big piece of young life. If anybody's listening who has ever been a part or knows anything about young life, contact work is one of their core tenants. Um, they put a lot of, a lot of energy and effort and strategy

Nick Clason (18:00):
Into Andre good at contact work. That's, that's probably what they're best, I would say.

Kerry Ray (18:04):
Oh, they're, yeah, they're excellent at it. And it's because they value it. It's such a high value, um, for them. Like I said, it's one of their core tenants. Um, it's such a high value that they do it well. Um, and so borrowing that phrase from those guys, um, I just learned it and saw it done really well and saw it valued. Um, and so I, I kind of adopted it into early on into, um, what I was doing, and it was, it was going where they are versus expecting them to come to you. Hmm. Um, contact work at, at its core is, uh, young life would call it earning the right to be heard. Um, but it is, or maybe you hear them say, um, doing things on their turf mm-hmm. , um, so to speak. But basically it is, it is going to where the students are mm-hmm. versus sitting and expecting them to come to you, and then you're putting in the time with them in their places where they feel comfortable and confident, and where they maybe kinda run the show versus your place behind these walls, behind this door where you're in charge and are expecting them to, to do certain, certain things. Um, contact, contact work. Oops, sorry. Contact work is something that is something that we have done for years. It's an expectation.

Kerry Ray (19:37):
Sorry, my headphones went out for a second.

Nick Clason (19:40):
Oh, no, you're good. Contact work is sounds great to me. So,

Kerry Ray (19:42):
Okay. Contact work is, is something that, um, I have, you know, expected is the best word to use of any staff we have I've ever had on, on a, on a church staff. Um, it is, it's that big of a deal. Um, for example, when I had interns and, you know, we were only allowed, you know, what, 15 hours with an intern mm-hmm. mm-hmm. 10 of those hours with contact work, and I would ask them to, you know, fill out a form that tells me where they were going, what they were doing, who they, who they hung out with and talked to. Mm-hmm. , it was that big of a deal. I wanted them to value it. Um, that's when I first started in ministry. Early on, we didn't call it that. Um, but that was my role. Um, I had an older youth pastor who kinda looked at me and sat me down and said, Hey man, I, I'm too old to go run with the Bulls. Um, so , I'm gonna ask you to do that, and I'm gonna expect you to be in the school. I'm gonna expect you to be the one at the games. I'll still be the guy preaching, but, and you know, teaching, teaching you how to do those things, but, you know, you're the guy that's gonna run around with 'em. You can call it Tide Piper, whatever you wanna call it, but it is going and building relationships with students, with teenagers on their turf where they are at instead of expecting them to come to you.

Nick Clason (21:02):
Yeah. I think, and I think, like for me, man, the basis really of me starting this whole podcast is realizing that, uh, digital can play a role in that. You know, I think for churches, a lot of churches, uh, get stuck into their, like, programming schedule. It's Wednesday night, Sunday morning, whatever, and not realizing that there's another 167 unclaimed hours that students are living life doing their thing. Um, you know, so that can obviously be done in person, but how would you say, have you seen that be either possible, or would you say like, yeah, that's not even really a possibility, uh, to show up on their turf in like a digital or more of like a hybrid type of way?

Kerry Ray (21:53):
Lemme back up for a second first, and I can say that one, it's, it's part of what we're called to do. Mm-hmm. , if you're in ministry, um, we're supposed to be following and living as Jesus did. And what you never saw in the New Testament was Jesus just sit still somewhere and say, you know, everybody come to me. Mm-hmm. , I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna sit here , you know, in Jerusalem. I'm just gonna sit here and expect you to come to me. He traveled, he, he went around from town to town, place to place sharing and talking. And part of that was, you know, just getting around the people. Mm-hmm. , um, the people that, you know, he came to this place to die for was just to be amongst and, and interact with those people. Um, and that's part of our calling we're, we can't just sit in a church.

Kerry Ray (22:43):
You could have the greatest program in the world, but you sitting in a church and just expecting people to come to you is one arrogant too. Mm-hmm. , it's foolish. Three, it's ineffective. Um, it just doesn't, it's not the thing you can't, that's not who you're called to be. You're called to, to be out and about. And with people, people, these students are, you're calling, they're, they're coming to know Christ is your calling. And, and it can't be, I'm just sitting here and the kids that get here, that's great. The kids who don't hate it for them, um, that that's not okay. Yeah. So let's start there. Uh, number two, um, it, it matters to your community. Um, you hopefully want your church, your ministry, your student ministry. You want that to, to have such an impact on the lives of the people in your community, no matter their age, that if it disappeared, people would care. Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (23:40):
. Yeah.

Kerry Ray (23:41):
And to do that, you can't sit in your ivory tower literally and, and expect that to happen. You've got to go out and make some sort of impact, some sort of influence. Uh, and I think in the world we live in the, with the, um, deification, if you will, you know, all of the, you know, I am, you know, de deconstructing my, my religious experience. Um, people are weary. People are weary, people are leery I'll rhyme there. Uh, they're both, they are, they're, um, suspicious mm-hmm. of church. Like, what do you, you know, what do you want from me? Oh, you just want my money. Um, and we've got, if you're talking about students and general teenagers, uh, we've got, this is the first group generation that was raised by students who bowed out years ago. You know, statistically they're, they're called the nuns. N o n E S, not n u n S.

Kerry Ray (24:42):
But the parents are the people who were in student ministry, you know, maybe. And then they bowed out and their parents didn't, you know, didn't raise them in church. And so now they're having kids of their own. And, and so it's, it's blank slates. So you've got parents who don't know, who don't know church. You've got students who don't know church. Um, they're blank canvases. And so, uh, we are, should be out and about if nothing else trying to, trying to show and be the hands of Jesus Christ, the hands of beauty of Christ in these communities in which we are called the love administer to, um, digitally, um, I, I, let's be honest, we watched these last couple years with Covid shutting everything down. Mm-hmm. , we watched the churches who, and the student ministries who had embraced a, a different philosophy versus the come to me.

Kerry Ray (25:40):
Um, they transitioned better. I won't say, well, I will say they had, they made it through the Covid piece a little better mm-hmm. than the churches and the student ministries who lived in the come to us mentality. Um, but let's be honest, I think everybody struggled with it. Uh, because even young life, uh, who is excellent at contact work, I watched Young Life struggled to find themselves because they couldn't do that anymore. Yeah. They couldn't do the face to face interaction, and they had to try to do it in a digital format, and it didn't work as well. Sounds, um, it, it failed. Um, yeah. And it struggled. I mean, some of it, I mean, he, it kinda worked. Not really. I, I would say it failed. Um, even, you know, the big players in, in student industry, the people who were doing this, the guys out like, you know, um, fields and Josh, Doug Fields and Josh out in California went to a digital format.

Kerry Ray (26:38):
And I don't know, I, I haven't talked to these guys about it, so I'm gonna assume, but I, I would assume if you, you asked those guys, they would tell you that it was not what it was. Mm-hmm. , did they do the big digital thing? Well, sure they did. Yeah. But I don't, I don't think it was what it was before that. Yeah. I don't think they got the same interaction. It's a, it's a lot of work for a little payoff. Um, I know at the time of covid, I was in, uh, church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and our middle school ministry was tied to the weekends mm-hmm. , and it was kinda a show up to church, and you go to this thing, but our high school was built offsite. Um, and we had had multiple years where the students had built communities, it houses across the city, and those communities met offsite, and it was in that community that those students lived in with small group leaders that lived in that community that those students lived in.

Kerry Ray (27:33):
And those students were showing up and inviting people into this thing because it was their thing. Mm-hmm. , um, it was kind of their turf, but with our, uh, blanket over the top of it. Sure. It was, but it was still their thing. Um, and when Covid hit, I got to see firsthand middle school, they come to us, we shut that down for a little bit, then we tried to do it digitally. It just didn't fly. Um, it was a struggle to put, you know, 10 kids in the room, in, in a digital room, uh, high school. I don't think, if I looked at the numbers, and I tracked them every week, I think in total we lost two students. Wow. Two, why? And we actually picked up a few. Why? Because they had already built this community that was not attached to the come, come and see mm-hmm. ,

Kerry Ray (28:31):
It was, it was a community. So when we took that community that already existed and just moved it to a digital format, they, they still do the same people. It was still, it was built on a different thing. Mm-hmm. , it was centered around community and not centered around come and see Yes. Or come and participate. Yeah. Um, so it, it, it, it mattered. It, it changed. And I, like I said, I watched, um, during those, during the covid years, got to see, you know, there were plenty of churches that that died. There were plenty of churches that are still, you know, where a year out now when this is being recorded. And they are still struggling with putting the pieces back together. I don't think, I don't think ministry, I don't think church will ever quite be the same. Um, post covid. Interesting. But, and I think youth ministry is harder, um, because I think students got realize they didn't have to be there.

Kerry Ray (29:25):
Mm-hmm. , uh, the church kids stopped going. The, the non-church kids never went. Uh, and we had a generation now that has been raised at least for a couple of years, you think of a sixth grader, they went through sixth, seventh, and part of grade without ever being in a so ninth grade in that time where it's already hard to be a part of a community because you drive for the first time, you've got some freedom in ninth and 10th grade. Yeah. Depending on your age and your state, uh, you start having freedom, you start working, um, you start doing other things. It's already hard in the, in the youth industry world. For those of you listening to this that are in, in ministry, you know, that time is already difficult anyway. But now you've got a group who went three years without engaging at all mm-hmm. ,

Kerry Ray (30:08):
Uh, and then behind them is another group that went three years without engaging at all. And behind them is another group that, you know, hey, which is babies at the time. So it's going to be a difficult dig out. Um, and I think that that actually makes this contact work piece even more relevant. Mm-hmm. . Now to your question, if, can it be digital? I don't know. I, I have not seen that work super well. Um, now I will tell you this, we all know that, um, for a teenager, uh, when you, and I think of the friends we make, you know, they say, well, my friend, you know, you like, you think my friend that I play, you know, call on duty with, you know, that lives in California. You're like, you never, you, you live in Alabama, you don't know that kid , but you're like, no, I play with them every day.

Kerry Ray (31:00):
I, you know, I spend hours with them on a headset, you know, shooting people and, and you know, talking about stuff over the headset to them that is a real friend. Yeah. Um, that barrier has dropped mm-hmm. to us as adults. You know, I think, you know, for those of you that don't know, those of us, you know, over the age of, let's call it 27 ish, you know, we're digital. We're digital immigrants. Mm-hmm. , we're, we come with baggage of how technology works and how it should be used and utilized, and, uh, where our teenagers and below, or digital natives mm-hmm. , there's never been a time where they did not know technology. There's never been a time where social media was not interactive for them. Um, and so we as adults, as digital immigrants, let's use that instead of adults, us as digital immigrants, we look at, um, online friendships, online relationships, um, and go, that's weird.

Kerry Ray (32:03):
Um, that's not a thing. But to them as digital natives, that has always been the thing that has always been very real. Um, dating apps and, you know, swiping left and right. And I mean, that went from like a silly thing. Like, you know, this is those of us, again as digital immigrants, look at that and go, come on. Um, you know, you're just, you're just, you know, trying to find a hot dude or hot girl and hook up. But for them, they're like, no, I, I'm trying to find a relationship. I get to know people this way. Yeah. Um, it's, it's fascinating. Yeah. Um, so I think there is, there, there's gotta be a way for that to happen mm-hmm. , and we've gotta figure out this, and I'd go back to contact work. There's gotta be a way for contact work to happen in a digital context. But there is some, there is something to set for a loss of the, the face to face because the face to face is so significant.

Nick Clason (32:58):
Wow. Well, wasn't that awesome? I'm so excited for you to hear and learn from part two. Um, anything and everything that Kerry mentioned, uh, YM 360, my youth min, um, all those things. Um, and also Derry's episode. I'm gonna link all of those in the show notes, which you can grab a in your podcast catcher or be over at hybridministry.xyz. And I would really encourage you, because he said a lot of really good things. And if you're like me and you listen on 1.5 or two times speed, uh, you may have not caught it, or you're driving or you mowing the lawn or whatever you're doing, head to hybridministry.xyz and you can grab a full transcript of this episode so that you can have and use to utilize at your discretion. That's a thing that we do and produce for you, um, for a hundred percent free.

Nick Clason (33:49):
So we just wanna let you know that that is available there for you to check out at http://hybridministry.xyz If you found this helpful and I'm sure that you did, please give it a share. Send it to someone that you know, maybe in youth ministry, um, and leave us a rating or a review. That would be really, really helpful for us. We would love to, uh, hear that. So, um, we will chat with you guys next time. Excited to share with you part two of this episode. But until then, we'll talk again later by.

Episode 018: The Do's, Don'ts and lessons learned from launching a YouTube channel for your church in 2022

Nick Clason — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 04:00:00 -0600

SUMMARY
In this Episode Nick explains and explores his experience with YouTube. What he learned from launching a YouTube channel during COVID, and his new recommendation for churches and ministry leaders for delivering useful content online for Gen Z and Gen Alpha and beyond.

Follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry
Or get FREE transcripts at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Or find more written content like this from Nick at http://www.myyouthmin.com

TIMECODES
00:00-00:36 - Intro
00:36-07:22 - The lessons I've learned from starting a YouTube channel during COVID
07:22-10:31 - Why start with YouTube?
10:31-13:13 - How to get indexed in searches on YouTube
13:13-16:26 - Ministry Implications
16:26-20:36 - YouTube Best Practices
20:36-22:09 - Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
What is up everybody? And welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. Excited to be with you today. I am Nick Clason, your host, and today I wanted to talk about YouTube, and I actually wanted to talk about why I think it is useful for churches to quit live streaming their sermons. Now, hear me out. Hear me out. Before I dive into all that, let me just get a couple of things off the bat here said. So first and foremost, I wanna talk about YouTube. I don't like to talk about things on this show that I don't have a lot of experience with. And so today is an exception because I have almost zero experience with YouTube. And so for you to understand why and why and the history and everything like that, I just want to give a quick overview. So the church that I most recently served at, not where I am now, but where I most recently before here served at, had a almost 600 YouTube subscriber channel and over 300 or something like that, videos published on it.

Nick Clason (01:22):
The reason for that being that we started our YouTube channel and our YouTube show, the first day of Covid. And so our YouTube channel and strategy was primarily a digital version of what we would do if we were in the room. So we would think, let's do a game. And in our defense, I think what we did game wise and announcement wise and host wise was a little more YouTube centric than just simply throwing a camera in the back of the room and us pretending there were students there. But instead we were doing it a live stream. So what I mean by that is we built a studio and instead of a game, a screen game or something, we would do a segment. And it was almost like competition or challenge based. So I mean, if you think Mr. Beast or any of those big YouTubers, it was things like that.

Nick Clason (02:27):
So we were trying to think outside the box and trying to morph and do student ministry in a YouTube sort of way. One of the things that I think shot us in the foot was, first of all, we did it in a pinch. So we did it immediately and we pivoted very fast. And what we did and what we created, I personally was very proud of. But all that being said, once Covid began to run its course and things were over and opening a little bit more, people were looking for an in-person experience. And so what we were producing online was really no longer fulfilling the need that it needed to. So it probably needed an adjustment, and we started to make those adjustments. And what I mean by that is once Covid was over and kids were not stuck in their room, they're probably not that interested in our little segment or our little trivia game that we're playing or whatever on the screen.

Nick Clason (03:29):
But I do think that we had tons of formidable and useful spiritual content sermons, messages, whatever and whatnot that were totally useful. The problem was we did it in a full, long form show, so to speak. And so just youth group games and announcements and worship and all those things led into the message. And so you didn't get to the message until about 16 minutes on the actual YouTube thing. Typically the shows around 30 minutes or so. And so it was about half stuff and half a message. You get it If you're programming in the room, it's exactly what you would think as far as format wise, okay? And all of that. I was at a multi-site megachurch. All of that was handled by a creative team, a video editor, an audio producer, our tech department handled that, handled, uploading, posting, making it live, all those things.

Nick Clason (04:29):
And so I helped produce the content. I helped think through some of the philosophy and the strategy of it, but I was not boots on the ground in the weeds, hands on with doing, posting all the YouTube content and growing the channel. And in a lot of ways, the 600 something subs subscribers were a response to what happened during Covid, right? Everyone was subscribing to YouTube channels. Everyone that called our church home, parents, students alike, they subscribing to our channel. All right? So now fast forward to where I am now, and I'm at a little bit smaller church. We got a team of three, but we have around the same student count, or slightly more than the campus that I was at. And so we have a pretty frequent schedule Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday, Wednesday. So every three days, there's something that we need to be thinking for, planning for, and prepping for.

Nick Clason (05:26):
Not to mention, the entire team of where I'm at is completely brand new. And so we are basically building something from the ground up. There was some stuff in place before and whatever and whatnot. But the reality is we're starting from the ground up. One of the things that we're starting from the ground up, we're continuing on with the Wednesday meeting times, Sunday meeting times, but we're launching and fleshing out a completely digital strategy. And so with all that being said, I wanna just give that caveat to this is my experience with YouTube. I have been very involved in the production of YouTube content. I've learned a lot of things, some dos and don'ts and whatevers and whatnots. But also we are at the church of, we are gonna be changing our name here in January. And so I actually secured the YouTube channel for our future name of our student ministry, which is still a secret to a lot of people.

Nick Clason (06:28):
So because of that, I have not started posting things to YouTube. What I have started doing is I have started beta testing our YouTube strategy more on a video filming and editing side of things. Is this a sustainable and scalable process that I can continue to implement beyond on a week to week type basis? And so I've been practicing some things, and so I think I feel pretty good about the workflow and rhythm to be able to pull some of these things off. And so I'm excited about launching a YouTube channel and account in January knowing that I'll be able to replicate what I've been doing. So that's sort the background and the history of at least my personal experience with YouTube. So why start with YouTube? Alright, I think YouTube is, is actually a really unique social media platform. It's the only one of its kind in the category of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube is owned by Google, and it's the only social media platform in that category of those kind of core FI four or five that is owned by Google.

Nick Clason (07:52):
So you got Google, you got Meta, and then you got TikTok, who's sort of like the third player, the owner there in that, right? You've probably heard this before, but YouTube is actually widely considered by many to be the second largest search engine in the world behind only Google. Some if you get real nitty gritty with it, some actually say it's not the second largest, it's the third largest because Google Images is technically larger. Bottom line, all three, Google search, Google images and YouTube are owned by the same parent company, Google. And regardless of that, right? YouTube is a search engine. And so who among us has not installed a light fixture from the help of a friendly person who posted a YouTube tutorial on YouTube for us to watch and consume and use, Okay? And because it's a search engine, I think it's actually a pretty strategic advantage that can be used by us as pastors and ministry leaders.

Nick Clason (08:55):
Because if you think about it, when you search for a video, right? Search more how to or think how to fix, how to answer, how to do this, how to navigate this. So, or challenge us to think YouTubers rather than pastors or speakers. And I think that was one of our number one Achilles heels in where I was before. We were thinking YouTubers in a lot of ways, but in our, for example, and I'll get to this in a minute, but in our titling and in our thumbnails, we were treating this as series, the series Jesus series, Part three, March 1st. That's not a compelling, in captivating title for our audience who is with us every week and just wants to get on there and watch something on demand that may be helpful. But to someone who's gonna organically come across our YouTube content, that doesn't explain anything about what's in the video.

Nick Clason (09:59):
So why is live streaming problematic particularly? And full disclosure, I'm a student pastor. And so if you're watching this in a senior pastor and your church has good cameras, good audio equipment, good lighting to fully embrace a live streaming strategy, then by all means continue to do that. But if you're a youth pastor, I would not necessarily recommend building the gear, the switcher, the infrastructure of live streaming. All right, So let's talk about watch times. Cause this plays into it. According to a backlink.dot com, they surveyed and looked at 1.3 million YouTube videos to try and better understand the YouTube search feature and algorithm. What they determined was that longer videos significantly outperform shorter videos. And the average length of a first page YouTube video that's beneficial and helpful is 14 minutes and 50 seconds. All right? So you need to understand that the way that YouTube indexes and categorizes their videos is a combination of two things.

Nick Clason (11:15):
Overall, watch time paired with average percentage viewed. And so it turns out that videos in the 14 to 16 minute range actually index really well. In fact, those are the highest ones on search. There are other factors of things that help increase watch times, such as the hook or the intro. All right, So let's just think in the land of sermon delivering a sermon, Okay? I want you to just rank these two scenarios. Scenario number one. Hey everybody, welcome back. Real quick before I dive into tonight's message, I wanna remind you about the Churchwide Bake sales. It's coming up on Sunday, and if you want to earn money toward the mission trip, it is required that you be in attendance. If for some reason you can't make it, just be sure to talk to me afterwards. All right? Now, last week when we were in part three of our series, Jesus, we were reminded that Jesus was bonded together with his disciples because of their love.

Nick Clason (12:14):
And so tonight, what I wanna focus on in part four is what happens after the death burial and then ultimately resurrection of Jesus, right? That's scenario number one. That's you preaching to your congregation, your students, the people that call your church home. Let's talk about scenario number two. Hey, what if you could win a million dollars? What if I told you that the message of Jesus is actually one that supersedes and rises far above the benefits of winning millions and millions of dollars? Do you see how one at least has the intention of a hook? I don't know if it's good or not, right? That's why I say in fairness, I'm not a YouTube sivan or expert, but I want you, I wanna challenge you to think like a YouTuber. And so where one is taking care of housekeeping in your student ministry, what's going on the bake sale? The second one is actually thinking about YouTube first. It's creating a hook. So what are some implications for ministry? Well, first of all, a 30 to 45 minute sermon where the speaker is presenting primarily to a room full of people versus not really looking or paying attention to the camera. It's just there. Capturing them, doesn't act, Doesn't exactly right. Speak YouTube's preferred language. Think about it, in a live room environment anyway, messages between the length of 10 to 25 minutes seem to have become a pretty optimal length for student ministries who gather in person.

Nick Clason (13:51):
And I also think that if you take your YouTube or if you take your message content that you're going to already naturally deliver into a room, what I'm gonna actually propose here is that instead of capturing you delivering live to your room, I'm gonna propose that you prefill your content. And what happens is when you prefill your content, number one, you can create and craft a hook that is specific in particular for YouTube. Secondly, you can shave the time down to fit into that 14 to 16 minute window. Even if you go longer in the room, aim for that 14 to 16 minute window. And third, it gives you the opportunity to practice your message before you get up there and deliver it to a live room full of teenagers or parishioners or congregation members. And so that's one of the things that we've been doing.

Nick Clason (14:58):
We teach live every single Wednesday night, but during that week, after I'm done with my prep, I sit down, I put up a camera and iFilm my message. Then I do a little bit of post production, I add a sound bed behind it. I do some flying in graphics, lower thirds slides, and I put those on the screen as well. And that's gonna be our strategy for YouTube. Why? Number one, it's gonna let us do a YouTube first messaging. We're not gonna bury it behind a bunch of other elements. We're gonna go with the message first. If YouTube is in fact a search engine and kids are out there searching for answers to their faith, then let's give them the answers to their faith. And they might not care about our church announcements. They might not care about the worship, but what they do want is they want answers.

Nick Clason (15:45):
So answer the question, tell them what you're gonna talk about with the hook right up front at the very beginning of the video. And that for me is one of the hardest shifts, is moving from holding my ace content up my sleeve until the very end, waiting for the message to climax, but instead giving a teaser and a preview at the very beginning of the message. That's a shift. YouTubers do that really well. Pastors build to their ultimate conclusion, and so they try to create this mystery around what's gonna come. But the reality is on YouTube, if you don't hook them right off the bat immediately, then they are gone and on to the next thing. And so think like a YouTuber. Let's talk through some other YouTube best practices. Like I said, make sure your titling is something that a YouTuber would search for as opposed to Jesus Week three, Mark 14, one through 10.

Nick Clason (16:39):
That's not as captivating a title as Is hell a real place dealing with crippling anxiety or is rest even possible? You see the difference between those two. Think YouTube, think search engine, think click bait, think controversial type titles that help your video perform better because it's a search engine. The meta description or the title, the description of the video, those things all play a huge role in the YouTube ranking. So make sure you spend a little bit of time thinking through and crafting some good compelling descriptions. And then you can also link to things on your church's website or social media, or maybe even some products in the description of your video. Also include tags. YouTube gives you a spot to do that. So include keywords from your videos or tags that relate back to the topic. All three of those factors, title, description, tags, all play a role in the searchability of your YouTube content.

Nick Clason (17:33):
Also, your thumbnail plays plays a role. Go look at Mr. Beast. He's like number one, YouTuber in the world. Go look at his thumbnails on his YouTube channel and just get some photos with a decent iPhone, maybe a Google Pixel phone to take some halfway decent portrait shots. Throw some catchy text over it using maybe something like PowerPoint Canva, or if you have more skill Photoshop and use different catchy thumbnails to try on your videos. You can also then use a free tool like trends.google.com to look up your searchable words and compare things. AB testing. If you wanted to use the word fear versus the word anxiety, put those into trends.google.com. And you'll notice that anxiety has a higher search level. So use that.

Nick Clason (18:25):
And then also comments and shares and people embedding your videos are all things that are gonna help index it better in the YouTube algorithm. So ask for things like comments, ask for things like shares, and then on the embedding feature, try to embed your YouTube videos onto your church website onto your, And so then your website is hosting your YouTube video and embedding it already helps index it better. So you already have a platform that people are going to. So use that. That's a feature that's already built in and that can help you get going. All right, what if you're just starting? What starting gear do you need, right? Listen, if you're gonna go budget friendly, get a nice smartphone, right? I just gotta Google Pixel, the latest iPhone have some great things. One of the main things for filming is you need a separate microphone, Okay?

Nick Clason (19:24):
So you can get, just go on Amazon, do a quick search for a shotgun microphone with your style of phone connection that's needed. You can get something for under a hundred bucks. You can also get a lapel, a wireless lapel lighting. Natural lighting is great. Some ring lights can help. Do the trick. Get a tripod that you can stick your phone on. If you want a more professional rig, then listen. Just go to YouTube, search best YouTube starter set for gear, and you'll find something. I love everything that Brady Sheer from Pro Church Tools has to say just about anything in the church digital space. And in fact, I think the day I'm recording this, he yesterday just trapped a video on his favorite camera gear. So go copy that if you got the budget to do it and make it happen. And then you're just gonna have to do things like edit, and you're gonna figure out you wanna use iMovie, Da Vinci, Resolve Adobe Final Cut Pro.

Nick Clason (20:20):
Again, budget for some of those are cheaper, like iMovie and Da Vinci Resolve are free. More expensive options are the Adobe Suite or Final Cut Pro. You're just gonna have to see what you have and what's available out there. But listen, my recommendation, again, like I said, get on YouTube. Treat it like a search engine. Get out there. Put your message, the message of hope that you have about Jesus. Create a YouTube channel. Prefill your content or film it after you deliver it. If you want it to be a little bit more polished and you've a little bit more familiar with it, and just start posting some stuff out there, right? Try some things. Follow some of these best practices. You may not go viral overnight. I can't promise that, but these are some of the best practices out there on YouTube. And so simply following them is just gonna give you the best chance to be discovered.

Nick Clason (21:12):
And that's the goal. We want students, teenagers, or people wrestling with faith to come across the content that we have to offer, and hopefully give them something that's helpful. And this is just a way to expand your impact and your reach as a youth pastor, as a regular pastor in 2022 and beyond. Hey, I hope you guys found this episode helpful. If you did get, Man, leave us a rating or a review. We are on iTunes, Spotify, all the major podcast platforms, hybrid ministry. We're also on Twitter at hybrid ministry. We have full transcripts of everything. We provide this to y'all at hybridministry.xyz Come check us out there and we will talk to you guys.

Episode 016: Derry Prenkert on how the invention of the iPhone has radically changed how Pastors and ministry leaders accomplish the mission

Nick Clason — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 04:00:00 -0500

SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick sits down with his friend, Derry Prenkert, a 20+ year youth ministry veteran. Derry shares about the monumental shift of the invention of the smart phone. How things were before, and how things have shifted, but most importantly, how we utilize this technology for our benefit and gain to reach more students for the mission of Jesus.

Follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry
Find all the resources you need from the podcast http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Follow Derry online:
-TWITTER: https://twitter.com/derryprenkert
-INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/derryprenkert/
-PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-third-decade-in-youth-ministry/id1338273697

SHOWNOTES
Steve Job's introduction of the iPhone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7qPAY9JqE4
Derry's Parenting Resource: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/adolescence%2C-technology-and-parenting/training-3996.html
Johnny Mac's Stuff: https://yourhouseblend.com/jonnysblend

TIMECODES
00:00-03:30 Intro
03:30-10:53 The impact of the invention of the iPhone
10:53-14:30 What happened in ministry after the invention of the iPhone
14:30-23:20 How have you responded since then?
23:20-32:44 When do you ask phones to be put away?
32:44-41:23 How can we utilize technology now to further and advance God's mission?
41:23-43:38 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. Excited to be with you today. Uh, today we have our very first, uh, guest interview, uh, friend of mine Derry Pinker. He's located in, um, Amish town, Nape Indiana. Um, right now, uh, he worked at that church for over 20 years, and then he was at another church for just a couple years, super large church in, uh, Kentucky. So, um, excited to bring you Derry's conversation. Uh, he mentions a couple of different links. He talks about Steve Jobs' keynote, a resource that he has on download youth ministry and echo ministry. I'm gonna include all of those in the show notes, but without any further ado, let's just hop in so you can get to know Derry.

Nick Clason (00:51):
All right, well, what's up Derry? Good to have you on the podcast. Welcome, man.

Derry Prenkert (00:56):
Yeah, it's so good to be with you, Nick. Thanks for having me on.

Nick Clason (00:58):
Yeah. So as we were talking a little bit before I hit record here, you have a podcast or did, or what would you define the, the existence of your podcast? Right Now?

Derry Prenkert (01:11):
The status of my third decade. It is, it has been on the longest hiatus ever. Um, yeah. And it is coming back. Um, it's tied to this whole world of the shift that I've, I've made from being in a local church to now serving pastors in the local church. Yeah. And I'm in a season of getting all the groundwork laid for that. I, uh, have every intention, every intention by, uh, early 2023 that it's gonna launch back out. And there are some, there are actually some things already recorded for it, so, so it hasn't completely gone away. There, there is, there is a future to it.

Nick Clason (01:46):
That's good. Cuz it's still in my podcast catcher, so I'm not unsubscribing from, I just wanna let you know that it's still there. So, um, but back when I mowed the lawn when I worked two churches ago, I think I heard you, um, talk about like, uh, this really big shift in culture and you noticed that it was, uh, have to do with when the iPhone came into existence. Mm-hmm. , just give us a little bit, like give us your story, how long you've been, you know, doing youth ministry, um, and how you have a beneficial perspective of before technology and phones are a part of what we have to navigate and deal with. And then post, and then maybe we can just kind of chat about how we navigate that as, you know, people who are, uh, ministering to people, students, um, who are very much entrenched in this technology, like Lane and world.

Derry Prenkert (02:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, my story is somebody that started in youth ministry at 19 years old. I was just about to turn 20 and I started an internship and that was back in 1996. Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I'm old. Um, and so graduated from high school in 95, start in, in ministry in 96. And so I get 11 years of ministry. Um, and in those 11 years, uh, you know, cell phones, car phones were around when I started . Yeah. And cell phones were around when I finished college in 1999. But they were, they roamed the minute you got outside of about 10 miles from your house and you only use them in emergencies. And then, and then it moved into, you know, 2004, 2005, the razor flip. Flum was the coolest thing in the world is texting, kind of entered the picture mm-hmm. . Um, and then, you know, so I, but, but really it was 2007 when Steve Jobs holds up this, this phone.

Derry Prenkert (03:36):
And it's actually interesting to go back and watch, I don't know if you've ever watched that keynote when he does it. No, I should, but, but he, he, he introduces it and is pretty prophetic, like the level of what he's talking about where technology is heading. Cause he said this is gonna revolutionize and change. And he says, he says, What would happen if we were to introduce a computer operating system, a phone and a iPod all in one thing. Yeah. And that's, that's the heartbeat of what they did. Um, and actually I, I do a technology thing with parents, uh, adolescents, technology and parenting. Mm-hmm. , uh, what I do is, I'll actually, it's, it's a fun little exercise cuz if you think about, you got, most parents of teenagers right now are, are there children of the eighties if they're really, if they've got younger, like their youngest kids are teenagers now, nineties or maybe early two thousands mm-hmm. . And so what I do is I'll put up on the screen different, like, what was the technology of our time. And so like, you know, in the eighties you got like VCRs and corded phones and, and a Walkman or a giant computer that has a green screen maybe.

Nick Clason (04:41):
Yeah. I found the VCR yesterday in our building, so that was cool,

Derry Prenkert (04:46):
Dude. And, and did you try playing anything? Cause it probably just ate the tape, right?

Nick Clason (04:49):
Yeah, no, I was like, I don't, I don't even know if we would ever need this, but, Right. Yeah. Here it

Derry Prenkert (04:53):
Is. Yeah. Yeah. It's, see the, in the eighties in technology, like everything got fixed by blowing on it. Um, so like the VHS tape wasn't working. You blew on it. The, the Nintendo cartridge. Yep. You blew in that and then blew in the box. Mm-hmm. . So that was, you know, eighties in the nineties, you have cell phones come, you got the Discman mm-hmm. that I remember. I would, as the nineties I would run or exercise with a discman, but I had to be careful not to run too hard because the CD would skip Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:17):
As I skipping. I

Derry Prenkert (05:18):
Remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, early two thousands social media in MySpace shows up. Yep. But, you know, garins show up, Uhhuh, um, digital cameras are a big deal in another 2000 flat screen TVs. Right. So we walk through these different, different moments and I say in 2007, Steve Jobs holds up this, this little device. And everything I just said was around in those different decades now lives inside this single device. Mm. Interesting. It is your video games. It is your music, you know, it's your disc man, it's your VCR or your DVD player. It is your

Nick Clason (05:53):
Computer, your calendar. Yeah.

Derry Prenkert (05:55):
Yeah. It's everything. It's all there. And, and so for parents, it's just saying like, recognize how significant this shift is. And so for those of us in ministry, if we are in that age, it's important to recognize that for those of us that are, I I, a lot of youth pastors are maybe a little, um, younger than the parents that they have. Right. Remember, like, these are the parents you're working with that, that this shift has happened. It might be a little more native to you as a youth pastor if you're in your, your mid to early twenties mm-hmm. . But it's foreign. It's, it's, it's so different and, and it's, it's changed so much. Um, the two things to kind of say, when I look at youth culture, cuz that's where I spent a lot of my time Yeah. That I would say are huge, is, uh, one youth group in church.

Derry Prenkert (06:40):
I was at a church that ha drew from multiple high schools. And pre 2007, we were the place to go to connect with friends. Hmm. Um, now we saw God move and we were, we were, we were unapologetic that that wasn't the, that wasn't the primary point. The primary point was to encounter a relationship with Jesus, to understand your call, to be a part of this kingdom work. But the appeal for my kids, I'm gonna drop names that nobody knows from Wawa c high school at Northwood High School. Mm-hmm. and Goshan High School. Someone knows each other. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, uh, they can meet weekly at our place. Right. Uh, now with the institution of not only, you know, the, just the move of the cell phone with texting, but then once the iPhone came in, it wasn't just you, you could, you didn't have to go there to meet a place you could actually interact face to face, you know, through FaceTime, through, through, um, whatever it might be.

Derry Prenkert (07:33):
Google Meet all do different stuff. You could, you could do that over the phone. So it became less important. The other thing that's super intriguing is, I don't know about Eich, but the greatest day of my life, uh, as a teenager was when I turned 16 in one month in my town, because that was the day I could get my driver's license. Yeah. And by getting my driver's license, that meant a whole new, uh, level of freedom, empowerment, and ownership. Like that driver's license was my ticket to independence. Yeah. I've noticed, um, a major change. I can't believe how many kids I interact with that are like 16, 17 and, you know, we're doing an event. They're like, Hey, can I get a ride? I'm like, You don't have your license yet. Yeah. No. And, and, and, and I I don't have like the scientific proof to this, just the conversation.

Derry Prenkert (08:25):
Sure. It's, they're like, Why would I, why would I need it? Well, yeah, the big shift came like that that license was my way to get to my friends. Mm-hmm. and my community. Now, this, this thing that we can hold in our hands is our ticket to interact. And so, so like one of the, I guess like the big implication that I would throw out that is huge is it it has radically transformed our connectivity mm-hmm. , um, even with the people right next to us. Yeah. Um, so I mean, so many other thoughts, but there's, those are just a couple things like that we recognize. Another way I say it is like we basically now are carrying around super computers in our pockets. Yeah. That, uh, it's, they are that we're, we have, we have excessive, uh, access to information. We are, we are constantly connected. Um, and it's like invasive, you know, it's not like it's, when's the last time I I I, you can answer this or the people are listening, When's the last time you actually turned off powered down your phone

Nick Clason (09:26):
On your own? Well, mine's new, so never

Derry Prenkert (09:29):
Yeah. .

Nick Clason (09:30):
Right,

Derry Prenkert (09:30):
Right. And it's, it's like impossible to, like, they've made it so it's hard to do. And so it's always there. Now, now I might sound like I'm interesting. Yeah. I'm negative on this. I do mourn more in some things because I'm old and I'm an old guy sitting saying, Get off my lawn kids. You know, a little bit. But, um, but those are some of the things that I think are big that have changed. And so, so just the way we go about ministry has to change with it. It is in my mind, we measure time on before and after like, events that come to mind in youth ministry world, most youth pastors that were around before Columbine mm-hmm. and after Columbine, they know it changed the way you had to handle liabilities and safety

Nick Clason (10:10):
Measures. Yeah.

Derry Prenkert (10:11):
Mm-hmm. pre nine 11. Post nine 11 as a, as a culture, our life shifted on how we view, uh, things pre covid, post covid. We're still learning that all. Yeah. I still could make the argument pre iPhone and post iPhone, pre smartphone and post iPhone could be, could be the most significant watershed cultural moment that we've experienced in the LA since World War ii. Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:35):
I don't, one of, one of like, I, one of the guys I listen to a lot, his name, you know, Brady Shear mm-hmm. , he talks about this being the biggest communication shift that we've seen in 500 years. So he's referencing that being the printing press. Yeah. And now with all this digital stuff. So that's a great call. Let's go like, let's go there a little bit. You said, um, pre iPhone people would gather from multiple high schools to your church. Did you notice that stopping, um, after, did you notice attendance shifting or did you just notice that still happens but there's, there's now just an iPhone in everyone's pocket and that's changing how they're interacting. But things are still, still sort of the same. Like, what would you say was, uh, like a, an actual effect, right? Yeah. Of that attendance thing you're talking about.

Derry Prenkert (11:25):
This is not scientific at all. It's very guttural and it's nature. Uh, and it's my experience, I would say it didn't, for some it stopped. But I would say the bigger thing is it got more sporadic. In fact, you we're just talking, I don't know, it would be fascinating. You know, they talk about how people are coming to church less often Right. Than they used to. That a regular attendant is, attender is considered once every month or once every three weeks. Right? Yep. I wonder how that correlates to the institution of like the, the actual cell phone and smartphone because Yeah, because that was the thing. Like pre pre smartphone, um, even kids from the same school, there was the chance to just, you know, we're not just going through in passing periods. We're gonna have a small group time. We're gonna have a pre hangout post hangout mm-hmm.

Derry Prenkert (12:09):
once a week. This is my guaranteed time. I'm gonna get time with my friends. Yeah. Um, and so it got more sporadic. Yeah. Uh, definitely. And, and that could be in part because they could have the community outside of the youth group. Um, but it still, that's why I would, I would still be a firm believer. There is a limitation to what you can accomplish over digital. I think anybody that truly had to walk through the PA pandemic and live completely on a screen would a hundred percent agree with me. You can't replace, um, interpersonal in person reaction Totally. With digital. But you can find more connection or, or you can find connection in the gaps through that. And so I think it got more, um, more sporadic, uh, in nature. And yes, they are showing up with them. And I mean, man, whew, how many conversations do I have?

Derry Prenkert (12:58):
I had with parents and leaders on, We gotta, we gotta, we gotta like force kids to turn these off or tell 'em they can't have 'em at all. And then, and then the issue of parents talking about what age do I give my kid a phone? When do I not? Because not only are they carrying it around, I mean, it's just, it's just there. And so the amount of attention that was going down to it when they were around that, that I'd say kinda really hit in the two, like 2014 15 phrase when everybody got one. Mm-hmm. , uh, everybody had one.

Nick Clason (13:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, even my kids in first grade and his teacher sended stuff on his like e backpack and then his like e folder and he has like iPad time. Like, so my sort of thing is, while you may lament the loss of some of what was prefo and pre-technology, um, it's not going anywhere. And so, you know, cuz I, I'm with you sometimes I have leaders who are like, We just need to get rid of the phones, take 'em away from the kids. Like make sure that they, you know, only use paper bibles and that, you know, it's, it's wrong to read God's word on a screen type of thing. And that's, that's a high preference maybe mm-hmm. . And there may be some validity to some of those things, but the fact of the matter is like, why, You know, my argument is why are we discouraging a kid from reading the Bible if it's super accessible to them and in their pocket 24 hours a day?

Nick Clason (14:25):
Um, you know, so, So what have you noticed or what are some of the things that you've done realizing like, we can't, we can't get ourselves away from these. They are everywhere. They're on all the time. They are our everything. Our day planner, our calendar and our social life in a lot of ways. You know, like what are some of the things that you've, you've tried to embrace as a youth pastor, um, to maybe leverage them or lean into them and then maybe what are some of the times that you've discouraged use of them? Because you're like the, the, you know, the re the result of what's gonna happen here physically is gonna be greater than what is happening if you're on your

Derry Prenkert (15:02):
Phone. Yeah. It's great. Um, in the thing I do with parents, which total shameless plug, it's actually on D ym, you get it, download Youth Mystery

Nick Clason (15:12):
And then you have an extra $4 in your pocket. Yeah, yeah,

Derry Prenkert (15:15):
Yeah. From that roof. Yeah. It's called Adolescents Parenting and Technology. I use an illustration. I, and I, it's an illustration that, that hit me is our phones are a knife, um, and a knife, uh, can serve many purposes. Uh, a knife is, can be used to spread butter. It can be used to whittle wood to make, uh, amazing things. It can be, it can be, uh, used to, you know, cut through things that are hard to cut through. It also can be used to kill people. Um, it's really about what is happening with the person that has it in their hands. And a part of that is what's their intentions as well as what's their awareness of a knife. You know, I've got, you've got younger kids. Mm-hmm. , I had a six year old that early on, he just got us obsessed with our steak knives when he was three or four.

Derry Prenkert (16:03):
And we had to like, put those things up high cuz he just, he didn't understand the danger involving those knives. Right. Um, and, and so, uh, so with that, like, with that illustration in mind and looking at it that way, I, I look at this thing, a knife is really, for the most part neutral. Unless it's this crazy butcher knife that is, for the most part, a knife is neutral. It's what you're doing with it in your hands. So then it becomes about making sure to check your motives as well as prepare the person that has it in their hands to use it in the right way and to know how to use it in the right way. And, um, I think in that, like, especially if we're talking to ministers and I, I would put this across the board, in fact mm-hmm. , I would argue that senior pastors teaching pastors should be coaching, uh, 50, 60 year olds how to utilize their phones wisely, even more so than those that are just growing up with it, a native part of their life.

Derry Prenkert (17:03):
Hmm. Um, cuz I don't see a lot of students, uh, just making a fool of themselves on how they treat people on, on social media is, uh, as much as I see adults, uh, in what they're saying and everything else. So, so the, it's across the board. Like we have a responsibility to look at what does scripture say about, especially from a discipleship aspect of how we are to love our neighbors ourselves, and then how does it play out on this thing, you know? Mm-hmm. . So, so that would be, that would be a thing. So, um, so that's just, sorry, little rant there, but the knife and, and, and we, we have a responsibility to show them. Uh, I am a big fan Nick, of just intentionality in ministry overall. I think a lot of pastors, uh, I'm, I'm dedicating really, I feel like the second, second half of my life is I just want youth pastors and any pastors to be healthy in ministry.

Derry Prenkert (17:53):
And a big part of that is guarding your own heart. Um, another part is just thinking clearly and strategically in Christ's focus and inten and intentionality in what you're doing is a big part of that. Um, and so I would, I would argue that anybody that is in charge of a program, uh, a ministry, uh, any regular ministry gathering, there should be a side to say, Okay, what's our philosophy in how phones play into this? Mm-hmm. . And it can take up a lot of different forms. Yeah. One is what's our, so we're gonna be teaching this series, How's it showing up on their phones? Mm-hmm. , are we gonna do digital notes that they can look at while they're in the room? Are we going to do follow up stuff through social media that's gonna create interaction? Um, you've done some great stuff on the importance of don't just use your social media of as a, as a billboard that uses this interactive place.

Derry Prenkert (18:47):
You know, thinking through those things. Mm-hmm. , um, how are we going to actually handle the phones inside the space? What are, are, are, uh, uh, to what, what do we need to take into account if a middle school, I, I'm helping out in middle school right now, and I'm at a pretty conservative community mm-hmm. where I'd say it's six through eight grade, I would say no more than half the kids are, are actually walking in with smartphones. Now I know some would go, That's ridiculous. Well, that's my community. Sure. So I need to be thinking through, um, that I, I have to have a path for the non phone user. Right. But also I need to be thinking through for the phone user to begin to show them now. Like, Hey, if you're gonna follow Jesus, that plays out in this thing. Yeah.

Derry Prenkert (19:28):
So how do we do that? So what, what am I teaching? You know, when I get to the practical steps of my teaching, how am I intentionally saying, Hey, this is how this plays out on your phone. You know, that can be a part of it. Um, and then, and then I think, uh, there's just the overall, uh, idea of, I, I have kind of these categories I think through that I want to try to do inside the programming. And this is very youth ministry specific. I want to have times where, uh, where they have it and it's on, but they're encouraged to put it to, to the side mm-hmm. and not access it at all. Because, because we need to be able to do that in real life at times. Mm-hmm. , you know mm-hmm. . And so small groups, a lot of times, I don't know if you have this some, sometimes they'll do like the basket or, or, or things to say, Hey, it's here.

Derry Prenkert (20:14):
Or just even stack them in the middle of the room like, it's here, but we're not gonna use Oh yeah. Use that right now. Yeah. And, um, or it's just even a, Hey, let's put this in our pockets. Just hang tight with me for a little bit. Um, then there's then there's times where it's like off or not there at all. And we can talk about that one a little bit more. Probably it'd be a good one of, of, Hey, this is a no cell phone situation. Yeah. I think that's very debatable on how much we're often, but there's times where it's important to just, I mean, uh, solitude, simplicity, um, making sure that we're not controlled by things all apart of following Jesus. But then most importantly is we're gonna have times where we use this thing in a redemptive manner. Yeah. Um, we're gonna find ways.

Derry Prenkert (20:57):
So, so we are closing out and we've talked about, uh, the importance of praying for others and what ha you know, maybe we're doing a series on prayer and it's about praying for others. And, and what we say is, Okay, here's what we're gonna do right now. If you have a phone, I want you to pull it out and I'm just gonna ask the Lord to speak to us, to give you a name right now as somebody you could pray for. Hmm. And, and now I want you to pull out your phone and I want you to text them, not not, not text them that you are praying for them, actually text out what your prayer for them is. Hmm. Or when you walk out the room tonight, I want you to use that little voice memo thing. I did this this morning. Uh, I got a friend who just started first day in ministry today. I, I did a voice memo to him that was just solely my prayer and that was it. Like, here's my prayer for you today as you started on ministry. Yeah. That's cool. So, so finding ways to use it, redemptively. So again, I kind of went different, but use it redemptively. Find ways to put it to the side, find ways to turn it off or not have it there at all. And do all of that intentionally.

Nick Clason (21:51):
Yeah. I mean, a lot, a lot of what we say on here is that digital and physical, uh, both are important, but they're both categorically different. And so that's why I do think there is value in things that are strictly physical only. I think, like you said, we learned a lot of things about ourselves and people during covid when what was physical could not be completely replicated digitally. Yeah. Um, and vice versa. Right. And that's, that's the thing too, is like, I think the vice versa piece is like, there are some digital things that are digital only, like mm-hmm. me. Like you can do message recaps and, and things like that where you're calling back to what you did, um, throughout the week. Like on things like social media where people are not physically gathering in your room on a Tuesday morning, or they can be reading a u version plan on their own when they wake up on Thursday afternoon, you know, at lunch, whatever.

Nick Clason (22:46):
So mm-hmm. , that's, that's this whole idea of hybrid is it's, there is room for, for physical only. And there's also space, I think for digital. And that's part of the thing is we've, and I think a lot of churches are kind of running up into this, is they're, uh, Hey, you're, you're a youth pastor so you have to do all of it. Mm-hmm. , it's like these are two completely like different lanes. And so there's, I mean, there's staffing conversations and budget conversations I think like around all these things that are gonna be coming, coming down the pike at, at churches, so mm-hmm. , what would you say are times, um, maybe where you would, you would say, Hey, let's put phones away all together. Maybe talk about like camp situation Sure. Or, or retreats or whatever. Yeah. I'm sure that's probably one of the, the main ones that comes to people's minds.

Derry Prenkert (23:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Nick, you and I are a part of different youth ministry communities. Um, Facebook groups are a wonderful mess at times. . And one of the, one of the hot topics amongst many other things is when this gets asked of, Hey, what's your policy on cell phones? And it's interesting. It's like just hot takes start firing all over the place. Right. So, um, I was a part of one church for 23 years mm-hmm. , and I was a part of another church for 2.3 years. That's my little joke, uhha. But, um, , uh, in the one church that I was at for 23 years that I also grew up where technology was unfolded. And we, we had a hard and fast rule that really any trip that we did, we started with the idea of no cell phones would be allowed. And it was because we had a high emphasis on interactivity and, and, and it, cell phones weren't around when we set the rule.

Derry Prenkert (24:24):
It was, you can't bring your walkmans, your discmans your game boys because we're here to interact with each other. And the minute you look down on that thing, you're not there. So that just kind of lended itself over to cell phones and everything else. Mm-hmm. . And so, um, so any camp retreat, anything like that, we just, we put a pretty hard and fast rule with the one except perception being our senior retreat that we do with grads. We'd say, Hey, you can bring it. It was almost like this. Oh, you're old enough now. I, I don't know that I liked the motives in it, um, in, in it all. So, but then I went to, uh, another church where it was like, you can have them all the time mm-hmm. . Um, which, and the interesting thing I saw was effective ministry was taking place in both situations.

Derry Prenkert (25:09):
Um, but we hadn't really stopped and re strategized in my 23 year church to say, Hey, we're kind of, we kind of just stumbled into this, but these things are so much a part of his life. So we need to understand when we ask a kid to leave theirself at home, we're asking them to leave their most prized valuable mm-hmm. , um, possession mm-hmm. at home. Um, and then at the other church it was like, it's all there. But where we really said, Hey, how are we, are we, are we assessing how we're we're using these? And so I don't, I don't come from the mindset that says definitely no. Or definitely yes. As much as, again, back to that word, intentionality. Yeah. Um, have a plan. Yeah. Talk about it. So, so where we really landed, where at the church I was just at, was, um, if the event is going to be primarily focused on those that don't know Jesus coming into the situation, we're gonna be very hesitant to say he phones.

Derry Prenkert (26:06):
Yeah. Because they're not gonna get the idea of it. If the event is, is high, um, service based, um, intentional discipleship mm-hmm. and deepening, we're gonna stop and say, Hey, you know what, let's, this might be a time, Yeah. Let's evaluate this, where we're gonna maybe more lean toward this is a no-go, but then we're gonna say, here's why it's a no-go. If it's heavy discipleship, it's gonna say, this is gonna be a significant time. Where the primary things we're gonna do is we're gonna focus in on your connection with God and your connection with others, and we're gonna challenge you to find ways to do that outside of the technical technological world. Can you do that inside the technological world? Absolutely. But we see the value of a break. Um, and so that's kind of where we landed. Uh, but I mean the, the, I'm back, I'm back around the church that I was at for 23 years, though a lot of the rules are still in place that if it's a trip or retreat, it's no go. The interesting thing is, um, parents hated a whole lot more than students did.

Nick Clason (27:03):
Yeah. Now they were the one were noticing that too. Yep.

Derry Prenkert (27:05):
Yeah. If you, I would argue you wanna try to institute a no cell phone rule and you don't have it, it's gonna be really hard and it may not be worth the fight and it won't be because the kids, it's gonna be the parents. Parents are be, How do I get a hold of Johnny? Yeah. And, you know, in whatever case. Um, but, but when we take seniors on the retreat, when we were taking them, you know, and we'd allow to have phones, it just naturally had come up in conversations. They would go, Wait, are you gonna start allowing this for other kids on your, on, on campus? Like, we didn't have. And and I'm like, and, and I'd get into the conversation with 'em like, Oh, are you ticked because you had to suffer through not having 'em. Yeah. And you're, and you wanna make sure they get punished like you did.

Derry Prenkert (27:42):
And the seniors would be like, No, no. Like, I'd love that. We didn't have 'em. Yeah. I, I I actually would come back from camp. So grateful that you really pushed that on us for that time. Mm-hmm. . Now, is that right or wrong? No, I, I like, does that mean that you absolutely shouldn't do it? No, but it was just, it's an interesting aspect to it all. So again, long, long talking to just say it's about intentionality, it's about thinking through why would we want to do this? Mm-hmm. and then, and then making sure to communicate to those that are participating. And if it's in youth ministry, the parents of saying here's why. Yeah. Um, and then being ready for a fight, if you wanna say No phones. Cause it's, it's a challenge.

Nick Clason (28:20):
Yeah. That, No, that's really good. And again, right, like there's things that only physical can accomplish and there's things that only digital can accomplish. And I think an experience like a camp or whatever, there is a lot of connection that needs to take place. And most students, and you know, back to what you said earlier, people in church like don't know how to live in a world where it's just that where their phone isn't constantly dinging or lighting up or vying for their attention. And so I, I too have noticed in those types of environments where students, people are like grateful and thankful or say, man, like I'm, I haven't even like, wanted my phone. They're kinda surprised by it. You know, that that's, that's kind of the case. So Yeah. It's so

Derry Prenkert (29:05):
Interesting. Can I give two practical, just real practical tips if you choose to do no phones, especially if you're a youth pastor. Yeah, yeah. Um, one is bring in a, at at least one, maybe multiple people who's their sole job is to capture photos and videos of the experience mm-hmm. . And at the beginning of the experience, make sure that the students know who that person is, because one of the things you're asking them to sacrifice is

Nick Clason (29:28):
Capturing, capturing

Derry Prenkert (29:30):
The memories

Nick Clason (29:30):
Of

Derry Prenkert (29:31):
It all. And that's bigger than ever, right? Yeah. Because they can do that. And so making sure that that's there, and then making all those photos and videos available as soon as you possibly can. Um, and I, I noticed that, um, the, a camp I was at this summer there, the photographer was actually uploading those, um, to their social media platform, like with a link while the camp was there, even though the kids didn't have phones, so that as soon as they got home within like one hour, the kids were like posting their, you know, their real, their reels that recaps, like that's good. Building up all the stuff on the, That's really good. So I think that's a big one. And then two is think through your strategic feedback loop to parents. The parent freakout is, I don't, I, how do I know? Well mm-hmm.

Derry Prenkert (30:14):
, if you have a, a way of saying, Hey, here's, here's where you can go, um, whether it's a Facebook page or group, or if it's your Instagram, or if it's even like a, a remind, uh, setup or whatever, texting, like, here's where it's at. We found that Facebook lives where you could at a camp mm-hmm. , um, actually doing a, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go live at this time. I'm actually gonna give you a little glimpse into the session just for a short bit so you can just see what's going on and then come back and update you. And the beauty of a Facebook Live, every parent is still on Facebook, uh, for the most part. So they, they, they're there and so they can jump on live and then you can let it sit there. So, um, but those two things will, will go a long way in helping the resistance you might get. Um, when it comes to the no phone

Nick Clason (31:00):
Rule. Yeah. We, we, we do, we've done like a photographer and my, my favorite, and it always depends on like if the church or I have the budget to pull this off, but like get a videographer as well, or the same person, um, and have them do a daily, like, recap video. Those are great for opening your like sessions, but they're also amazing to throw up on YouTube and then text a link out. And so, you know, parents who, uh, send their kids without phone or whatever, they feel this like sense of relief if like they see their kid. Absolutely. Then the downside is one, one time I had to, uh, remove a clip because a kid was like picking his nose and the mom like, wanted it out. Yeah. Um, and then another time ano a mom was like, I haven't seen my kid in any of the recap bees. Yeah. And I'm trying not to freak out, but like, are they having fun? Like, are they making friends? Like, and I get it, like as a, as a dad myself, you know, now, like I would also want to try and like lay eyes on my kids. So

Derry Prenkert (32:01):
Totally same. Totally same. Actually Gabe, the pastor at the church that I'm serving with now, he did a meal time at camp and he just said, Okay, who needs to see their kid Facebook Live, , who needs to see their kid? And he just went around and said, funny. And he put up the phone, he said, Tell your mom you're okay. And, and it was like one of the most viewed Yeah. There are a lot of people there, so Yeah. And that is legit. And it's, you gotta be ready for it for that whole world. And, um, it is, that is evidence again, of the different world. And, and as a parent of a high schooler and a middle schooler, I wasn't at the high school camp. I was at the middle school camp. I was watching for my kid. Yeah.

Derry Prenkert (32:38):
That I didn't quite quite realize. So.

Nick Clason (32:40):
All right. Last, last thing. Um, how can we, as pastors, people in ministry, what are ways there that you see that we can optimize technology, um, now Cause like the overall mission, right? Of the church mm-hmm. to make disciples. And Paul used, you know, the thing available to him writing letters at the time to reach churches that he was not near. So what are some ways, just maybe a couple ideas off the top of your head that you have seen effective or ideas that maybe you haven't seen totally fleshed out, but are ruminating inside. Like Yeah. Where we can use what is available to us in technology. I mean, even the fact that I'm sitting in Texas here in northern Indiana and we're having this conversation and we're seeing each other, like, that's an advantage that wasn't available to us pre 2007. Right. And so, uh, what are some of those things maybe that you have seen or have thought about that we can use to our advantage to help kids take steps closer to Jesus?

Derry Prenkert (33:40):
Yeah. Let me throw you a little bit of a curve on where I might go with this to start only, um, in that I've been a part of large to very large churches mm-hmm. , and you've been a part of larger churches where there's a budget that's available and mass communication through technology. And so our minds might immediately go to Yeah. Podcasts and video streams mm-hmm. and, uh, you know, Instagram and getting somehow in with you version so you can build up a Bible reading plan. And I Yes. Yeah.

Nick Clason (34:10):
But I would it if you can

Derry Prenkert (34:11):
Yeah. I would say pastors and ministers to remember to that this is an incredible one to one ministry tool still mm-hmm. . And so, um, and, and this has gotten especially big to me as I've shifted over into this world now where my primary job that I says God's called me to is just to pastor pastors, especially those that are youth pastors. Well, they're all over the nation. Yeah. And so, um, last night, Sunday night for me, I'm recognizing I was just like, Lord, who are the people right now that might just kind of be in that spot that a word of encouragement or a check-in could go a long way? And there were, there were four texts that were sent out to individuals going, Hey, you're on my mind. How did today go? Or what's going on in your mind? Woke up this morning and like I already told you about, there was one guy that is first day he shifted from the education world to the church world.

Derry Prenkert (35:03):
Hmm. And so, um, so I, I would just start by saying yes, I mean, as we think about the massive ways to do it, let's not forget that pastoring at its best that's good is a one to one, a one to three relationship mm-hmm. . And so, uh, connecting with our parishioners are people that we're discipling, whoever they might be, uh, through the phone and doing it healthily and thinking through safeguards and all those things are really important, especially for youth pastors. Um, which probably is a whole other episode to talk through at some point. . Yeah. But, um, but to understand like, this is a ministry tool at its core. And so a a properly placed text, phone call, FaceTime, um, like, or comment on a, um, on a, on a post, uh, can is, is ministry, like, is deep ministry and meaningful ministry at times.

Derry Prenkert (35:53):
Mm-hmm. . Um, That's great. It was interesting Nick, uh, my former youth pastor, uh, my dad died 10, uh, 13 years ago now, and my former youth minister is no longer in youth ministry. And, but it was an incredible influence on my life. Mm-hmm. . And it was about, uh, it was, it was right around eight years after my dad had died, I posted just a memory of him and below in the comment section, my old youth pastor got on and he, all he wrote was, I'm so proud of you Derry. And I read that and I lost it. And, and I talked to him and, and what happened in that moment was like, I realized, uh, can, like, thank you. I miss I miss having my dad, and I'm not, I don't have a dad that can physically say to me, I'm proud of you anymore.

Derry Prenkert (36:39):
And I'm, I'm like a 36 year old man, like blubbering over my youth pastor telling me he's proud of me. But it's because he, he, in that moment, he ministered to me through a simple comment on a Facebook group mm-hmm. that also helped me work through some grieving that I was at. I hadn't really just walked through and said, God, I'm kind of ticked, I'm kind of ticked right now because I've lost, like, why did this happen? And, and it helped me kind of break through to a new level. And so, so anyway, like just, I, I, that's the one thing I would just say is as we think through the strategic and the greater stuff, let's not forget this is a incredible tool for the most effective ministry that is relational and personal in nature. That's good. That's good. Um, um, I would say otherwise though too is, um, I have a good friend, John McAllen, Johnny Mack, he did this thing, he started, it was called Echo Ministry.

Derry Prenkert (37:25):
And the idea was how do you take and create echos of what's happening on the, on the weekend? How do you have the message echo through the rest of the week? And our technology, our cell phones are such a primary tool to make that happen. You said it so well, there are things that we can do now because we have these, um, where it can show up in the moment, in, in different ways, uh, whether it's, uh, uh, a thinking through, uh, devotional journey, like I said, through you version. Mm-hmm. , uh, uh, the youth group that I just was at for the last couple of years, they're doing a thing called sale up Moments every week. They have just one moment that, that where they, they use on social media where they say, Okay, you're scrolling through, but stop, exhale, um, and listen to God allow 'em to speak to you.

Derry Prenkert (38:16):
You know? And there's a whole acronym to it. I can't remember what the H was good. Yeah. I like that. You know, have a burger, I think was the last, no, I can't remember what the H was, but, um, they, they, they walked through it and, and so using that was, um, was, was a way to do it. So I, I think it's that matter of how can we echo it mm-hmm. . And there's a lot, you know, podcasts can be a part of it. Uh, I started something called Digging Deeper with our main services when I was, uh, at my own church. And, and what we did was every Wednesday I would sit down with whoever was preaching mm-hmm. . And if I, I, I was a part of the teaching time. If I was preaching, somebody else would come in and the first thing we'd say, Hey, hey, what hit the cutting room floor?

Derry Prenkert (38:53):
What were you not able to get to this weekend that you wish you could have? And people just love that aspect, but then we would pick it part a little bit more mm-hmm. . And so, and it, it's not hard. It's a, you know, get, get a little basic, um, Yeah. Recording set up and you can get it set up pretty easy. Um, and so there's just so many ways, but I would just start with the, like, how can we echo into the week, what happened on the weekend Yep. And use it on a digital format.

Nick Clason (39:16):
Yeah. No, that's good. I, I also personally think that we don't know yet like, the answer to some of these questions. Yeah. Like, I still think that there's, uh, things yet to be discovered, you know, in front of us. And so I think, uh, if there's any sort of like, challenge for anyone listening, I would just say like, just do something. Um, and you may stumble upon something great. You may find some stuff that's terrible and you need to cut it out. Um, but if you're, if you're always looking that direction, uh, you'll, you'll stumble upon something good that you maybe don't even know, or you maybe didn't, you know, you maybe weren't even able to see it right now when you started it because of a limited technology or budget or whatever. And so just be looking for ways. Cuz like I said, it's less, I think, I personally think it's easy to make digital about being flashy, um, or whatever, looking good to parents or other youth pastors or other people in ministry, whatever.

Nick Clason (40:15):
But I think it's far less about that for me at least, and it's more about how effective can I be in spreading the message of Jesus with all the tools that he's given to me. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm alive in 2022 with access to podcast microphones and phones that can take incredible videos and pictures, like mm-hmm. , how am I going to use steward those things to reach the most amount of people, you know, that have an audience to reach. So I think that's, that would be my challenge to whoever's listening is think what Dare said, think through all the things that, with intentionality, Um, and then just be open, you know, to, to utilizing some stuff.

Derry Prenkert (40:52):
So yeah. You're, you're so right on. We don't have it all figured out. Probably one of my greatest pet peeves in life are, uh, those that are convinced they have it all figured out. Um, Yeah. and I, I, I can do that at times. And usually when I'm at that point and I'm like, Oh yeah, I know how to do this. Mm-hmm. , that's the moment when I will fall flat on my face. And so, so there's a ton to be learned. There's a ton to be determined I love, or

Nick Clason (41:14):
That's when a new iPhone comes out, Right. And you're like, Oh, this changed everything. Or Covid hit and this changed everything. So yes. Totally. Good. Yes. I think we're living through that. Well, hey man. Um, anything else off top of your head? You don't have to, but I just wanna make sure you said everything you wanted to say. Didn't leave anything unsaid.

Derry Prenkert (41:30):
I think the only thing I would maybe end with is in that same vein is, um, it's everywhere. It's so much. Uh, also don't be afraid to not feel like you have to do everything, you know? Um, uh, especially to the minister that's trying to think through how to do effectively. There is a, there is a moment where less is more because your soul needs to rest, you know? Mm-hmm. , if you're finding yourself trying to, uh, late at night when you should be being around your family, invest your family or on your day off going, this is the time while Ill dive into all this digital stuff. Eh, you know what, maybe, maybe that's, uh, not worth it. No, not, maybe it definitely is not worth it. Definitely not worth, There's just, that's the part of like this thing, there's just so much out there. Mm-hmm. don't, I, I I guess it's like that idea of don't gain the digital world at the cost of your soul. Yeah. good is, is, is a big thing. And I just, I say that out of a season where I'm just seeing so many of us burn out. Um, and we're burning out in a lot of different ways, but one is because we're just constantly on and we don't hit the off switch. That's

Nick Clason (42:34):
Good. That's good. Love it, man. Well, hey, thanks again. Uh, you referenced a couple things in here. I'll toss 'em in show notes, like your resource on D ym so that all tens of our listeners can go get it. There you go. Um, anyway, thanks for hanging out man. And uh, absolutely. We'll chat again. Chat again. Yeah. Awesome.

Nick Clason (42:52):
Well, wasn't that great, Uh, super thoughtful, super helpful. Um, I hope that you found this interesting and helpful as well. Hey, um, we are online on Twitter at Hybrid Ministry. Would love to have you come hang out, follow us over there. Um, we're still growing, not super active yet, but, uh, we're well on our way. And also everything you need, show notes, links, transcripts, all kinds of stuff. You can find out hybrid ministry.xyz along with a now growing bank of archive and older episodes. So if you're just not stumbling upon us, we'd love to have you go back and check it out. Uh, you can do all of that at hybridministry.xyz Ze. Again, thanks for being with us today and we'll chat next time.