⚡ [FREE] Digital Integration 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] DYM Games https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/9-best-dym-products ====================================== DESCRIPTION 🤔 How do we train our youth and student ministry volunteers? 📅 How frequently should we be training our volunteers? 🧑‍🏫 What are some topics? 🖥️ And what are some platforms you can utilize? And be sure to stick around to the end because I have an idea that will help you train your volunteers but not add another meeting to your plate 🔗 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg ====================================== 📓SHOWNOTES //SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS http://www.hybridministry.xyz/085 //YOUTUBE VIDEO https://youtu.be/9cBRvSwIo //FREE EBOOK STRATEGY GUIDE https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book TRAINING IDEAS 1) Leader vs Friend 2) Managing a Distracted Group 3) Taking Kids Seriously 4) Praying with your small group 5) Gen Z & Gen Alpha > ### --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tVACJFlwpw&t=460s 6) Cultural Trends 7) The power of listening 8) Showing up 9) Getting Teens to Serve 10) Partnering with Parents PLATFORMS NATIONAL DAY OF VOLUNTEER YOUTH MINISTRY TRAINING //https://dymtraining.com/ndovymt/ HYBRID MINISTRY YOUTUBE //https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick //PRACTICAL YOUTH MINISTRY TIPS //https://www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips DYM LEADER TRAINING LIBRARY //https://leadertraining.dymapps.com/ MYM by YM360 //https://myyouthmin.com/ PODCAST GETTING STARTED GEAR NOTE: Some of these items are affiliate links and we do get a small commission for your purchasing of these items. None of them are marked up due to them being affiliate links MICROPHONE: https://walmrt.us/48UTzWh YOUTUBE STARTER KIT: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz ====================================== 🆓 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 00:00-00:39 Youth Ministry Volunteer Training 00:39-03:22 Why do we need to train volunteers? 03:22-06:59 How often should we train our volunteers? 06:59-11:19 Topics to Train Volunteers in 11:19-16:26 Youth Ministry Training Platforms ✍️TRANSCRIPT Try Transcribing for Yourself at Rev.Com http://www.rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa 00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;29 Nick Clason How do we train our youth ministry volunteers? How frequently should we be offering trainings for our youth ministry volunteers? What are some key topics that our youth ministry and our youth ministry volunteers need to be exploring? And then finally, what are some platforms that you can utilize that you can send them to so that they can sharpen their skills as volunteers? 00;00;23;29 - 00;00;45;52 Nick Clason And finally, make sure that you hang around all the way to the end of the video, because I have an idea that I think will not only help your volunteers level up, but also is going to not add another meeting to your plate. Well, everyone, welcome to the hybrid ministry show. My name is Nick Clason and I've been a youth pastor for 13 something years. 00;00;45;53 - 00;01;05;46 Nick Clason And because of that, you've got to think about a youth ministry, has a lot of things that feel a little bit unnatural. Like let's just say, for example, I was a volunteer in your youth ministry and let's say I walked in for the very first time and you told me, Hey, listen, just go like, go hang out and love on teenagers. 00;01;05;51 - 00;01;35;02 Nick Clason Like, I would probably as a 13 year youth ministry veteran, I would probably be okay and figure out how to do that. Now, if a brand new dad or mom or college student walks in and you give them those exact same instructions, they're probably not going to know what to do. For one of the reasons simply being because they are told all throughout society and culture not to do that. 00;01;35;02 - 00;01;57;06 Nick Clason And so in a lot of ways, youth ministry is kind of creepy, right? And so we have to help A, give them the comfort and safety to do some of those things, but be help teach them in love with them on how they can do that safely and appropriately, and that it is good youth ministry for them to to go hang out with teenagers and not just be a chaperon. 00;01;57;09 - 00;02;19;47 Nick Clason But I say that to say because you need to help sharpen their skills. You have to help level them up. Some of the things that you and I do as youth pastors, youth leaders, we already do these things naturally, but we need to level up. We need to train our volunteers. And if if one of the roles that we're trying to use have them hang out with students, well then, hey, was. 00;02;19;47 - 00;02;50;11 Nick Clason And we should probably give them opportunities to do that. That's why I actually I created this completely free e-book. If you look through it, it's 40 ideas, a month's worth of posting content, but it's not just a bunch of still and static graphics. What it actually is, is it's teaching you in training you not only how to prerecord your messages to post them on YouTube so that you are showing up in a digital and a hybrid space on a platform where students are spending 95% or 94% of students are spending some of their time. 00;02;50;23 - 00;03;11;28 Nick Clason But also then it will let you, your students and your leaders do things and work together on camera. Different challenges, different different games and things like that. And so that's going to be a great opportunity for your students and your leaders to start to rub shoulders. And you can kill two birds with one stone by crushing it for social media. 00;03;11;33 - 00;03;51;07 Nick Clason How frequently should we as youth pastors and youth ministry leaders, how frequently should we be hosting trainings? Well, let's talk about that in the next video. Suffering. We should be hosting trainings. There are several schools of thought and there are a couple of different ways to think about it. First of all, every single time you meet, you may be having some sort of huddle and I would recommend some sort of thing around that, some sort of, you know, strategy of around meeting, getting everyone on the same page, giving everyone the service order service brunch sheet so that they have what they need so that they're they're not in a lurch for that night. 00;03;51;12 - 00;04;17;01 Nick Clason However, that can give a little bit cumbersome and especially if it's like on a Wednesday night, you may be running into volunteers and they're getting off of work schedule. And so one thing that I have done in the past is instead of doing a weekly huddle, I've done more of like a monthly gathering, monthly huddle. And then that monthly gathering would not only operate as a weekly huddle to get everyone on the same page and talk to them about what we're teaching and sharing in our small group. 00;04;17;01 - 00;04;47;30 Nick Clason But then it would also give me a moment to do some teambuilding as well as some training. And so that was sort of be a strategy to do that. But let me just say that one time, one year I was doing a monthly huddle, I shifted from a weekly huddle to a monthly huddle. And in my monthly huddle, one thing that felt like all I can explain is the feeling was myself in many of my volunteers every single time, when it was time for another huddle, they'd be like again, rather just felt like it was all the time. 00;04;47;30 - 00;05;05;09 Nick Clason Felt was constantly something that we were turn around and doing like, we got another one of those again. yeah, that's right. It's been a month, right? And so there may be a rhythm and you just got to figure this out. What works for you? Because a monthly huddle is often probably something you have to do in an off peak time. 00;05;05;09 - 00;05;26;42 Nick Clason So it's Sunday after church or it's Wednesday late after one of your Wednesday nights or something like that. But it's not going to be tied to and woven in to your already existing youth ministry schedule. And so you just you got to figure out when can you get all of your volunteers to commit to another moment on their calendar in their week. 00;05;26;56 - 00;06;06;27 Nick Clason And then another idea within that is how frequently are you going to be communicating? So while you do have meetings, there are going to be infrequent or not infrequent, but but different types of communication. So things like group text messages and or emails, how frequently, how often are you going to be also sending those things? I personally I recommend weekly, so a weekly sort of communication email and then another like another form of gathering, whether that be a an annual meeting, which I haven't said yet, but that's an idea, an annual meeting, a one time meeting, whether it's twice a year, you get together for a big sort of thing, whether it's a monthly sort 00;06;06;27 - 00;06;24;42 Nick Clason of leader gathering or some sort of weekly huddle. Now every single one of those scenarios, your training is going to have to look a little bit different. If you do annually, you probably can do a big seminar type style thing. You can probably do that if you meet twice a year. If you do monthly, you might need to make it a little more bite sized. 00;06;24;42 - 00;06;52;11 Nick Clason Not so long, not so so many hours of a commitment. And if you meet weekly, you got to be more in like the tips and tactics zone and all those to be said. You can also share some tips and tactics to level up youth ministry training in your weekly communications via text via email. Now, you might be thinking like, okay, I see the need for this and I realize I need to figure out where I'm going to stick it on my calendar. 00;06;52;15 - 00;07;18;57 Nick Clason But what in the world should I be talking about? Great. Let's let's talk through that in the next section. All right. Some good topics. And these are just suggestions and examples. And and if something pops up in some particular area or arena in your student ministry, then address it by all means. Right. But if you are like I know I want to me and only to help level my leaders off, but I don't even know where to start then. 00;07;19;10 - 00;07;41;38 Nick Clason Then there's give me a list right here on the screen. If you are listening, you can head to the show notes, HybridMinistry.xyz/085 Also, if you do end up over on YouTube, be sure to give us a subscribe and a like because these topics we don't want only you to have them. We want all the youth pastors in America to know them, to have them, and to be able to turn to them in a time of need. 00;07;41;38 - 00;08;05;31 Nick Clason But some topics that I have done or have seen or I just think can be useful. I have ten right here. Screenshot them. This could if you do a monthly gathering, this could essentially fill out your monthly training calendar for for the year. Right. One per month. So the first one is how do you distinguish between a leader versus being a friend of the students. 00;08;05;36 - 00;08;22;37 Nick Clason You can also then chat through in another month managing a distracted group. We've all been there. We've all led a group that's distracted, especially the sixth grade boys group. How do you get them on task and what is a win for them? How do you take kids seriously? A lot of times we want to come in. We want to tell them what to do. 00;08;22;37 - 00;08;44;54 Nick Clason But how do we take their needs, their concerns, their thoughts, their ideas, their their the things that they say? How do we take them seriously so that we can add and bring value to who they are as people? How do you pray with your small group? What are some practical ideas beyond just praying to close? But how can you be praying as a small group and be a praying small group together? 00;08;44;58 - 00;09;02;52 Nick Clason Maybe do a little training on Gen Z and Gen Alpha? I actually have a video links right here at the top of the screen about Gen Alpha, exploring who they are and what we need to know. So maybe you could go watch that and that could be the springboard for some of your content. What are some cultural trends right these days that are going on? 00;09;03;01 - 00;09;23;21 Nick Clason You should be thinking like, what? What's what's culturally relevant right now and how can we take those trends and how can we chat through? Some of them especially have a a team of adults. They're not living in teen culture anymore, so help expose them to some of those things that maybe even you need to do a little bit of study, a little bit of research on, but help expose them to some of those things. 00;09;23;26 - 00;09;56;11 Nick Clason What about the power of listening? You know that it's not good for a small group leader to be in there and to just be yammer on the whole time. So help help challenge them, help challenge your small group leaders to listen first and talk second. What about the power of showing up helping, as we talked about in the last video in this youth ministry Master Class 2024 playlist as we talked about scaling up the care for leaders, shepherding you can you can spread out some of those responsibilities if if a small group leader shows up to a kid's soccer game, not only does that get you off the hook and I'm not saying that you 00;09;56;11 - 00;10;17;17 Nick Clason should be trying to get off the hook of these things, but if you have 100 kids to get to soccer games for, that's going to be tricky for you to get to a hundred different soccer games. But your youth ministry volunteers can also show up to the kids in their small group, getting teens to serve, helping, helping equip small group leaders to to be recruiters and helping teenagers step into their God given callings and abilities. 00;10;17;17 - 00;10;40;49 Nick Clason And finally, how do you partner with parents? Give smokable leaders tangible tips and tricks and tools to be able to reach out to parents? Very simply, something like do they have all the email lists? And if they don't, do they have access to get all the email lists? Have you allowed them to be a member of your church management software to at least be able to get in and access the group information? 00;10;41;00 - 00;11;00;13 Nick Clason So those are just some topic ideas. It's not holistic, it's not exhaustive, but they're just ten ideas to help you begin to think about training. I remember thinking, Do I do that? Do I do you know one of those topics in a monthly gathering? Do I cram some of them together in an annual gathering? Do I weave some of them in and out of my communication? 00;11;00;18 - 00;11;38;48 Nick Clason The answer to that is it's up to you. You guys figure out what's going to work best for you, but I do have in the next section several platforms that you can explore and look at and maybe even try to train and level up some of your youth ministry volunteers. So hey, let's go check that out. So from a once a year from an annual sort of perspective, there is no better option honestly than the NDOVYMT, which is an abbreviation for the National Day of Volunteer Youth Ministry training put on hosted by my friends over a download Youth Ministry, Josh Griffin, Doug Fields and their team. 00;11;38;52 - 00;12;09;11 Nick Clason There is a link down in the description or head over to the show notes for our train. My volunteers Scott, which will give you info and insight into how to sign up for one of these things. The fact is the pricing is very, very cheap for training your entire team. It's only $250. If you want to be a host church or have other churches come to your church as a host, church is $400, but you get to bring as many people, as many volunteers to that training as possible. 00;12;09;11 - 00;12;30;15 Nick Clason Plus, it's all video based. And so you get that video for the entire year. Even if you don't play the full video, you can kind of clip it up and use it throughout the year. Another platform idea platform idea number two is honestly this YouTube channel, right? Like I am focusing on helping Mel between the digital and the physical and bringing those things together. 00;12;30;15 - 00;12;50;45 Nick Clason But I also have a lot of like just generalize youth ministry content so you could check out my youth ministry channel idea number three, you can help. You can check out the Practical Youth Ministry Tips podcast. My friend Eric with the K Williams, he is dropping gold all day long over on his channel as well. So both of our channels are completely free. 00;12;50;45 - 00;13;08;53 Nick Clason Both of us are trying to to just get the message in the word out there. And so we want people to at these, be aware of it. But right now we're doing it for primarily for free, right? We're not charging you 400 hours like National Day Training is another couple of ideas is the do I am leader training library. 00;13;08;53 - 00;13;29;07 Nick Clason So if you're a member of do you. I am I can't remember the tiers who gets access to this but but I know if you're at the highest couple of tiers you get access to a do I am leader training library. So there are videos that you can log into a portal and you can watch video trainings from people like Doug Fields, Josh Griffin and some of their friends over there. 00;13;29;07 - 00;14;09;37 Nick Clason And they have several of the topics, even several topics that I was was suggesting earlier are available on that podcast site. Another thing that I have submitted content for and I have used is the My Youth Min portal by YM360. I think it's aimed a little bit more at the primary and Central youth worker, but it's a great platform to check out if it's something that you is behind a paywall, but it's got like some topflight people talking about things, people in the trenches, and it's like 19 pieces of new content drop onto that platform every single month. 00;14;09;48 - 00;14;27;55 Nick Clason And so that's one of the keys about it, is that it is it is dynamic and it is moving. It's not just going to be like a leader training library of static videos that haven't been updated in several years. And so the MYM podcast link down below the description or the show notes, all for all these are links down the description. 00;14;27;55 - 00;15;00;47 Nick Clason And finally, the idea that I think because things are changing and I don't want another meeting on my calendar and, and you probably don't want another meeting on your calendar, an idea for training either to supplement or to replace some of your in-person meetings is what about creating a podcast on the go right? Like you can you can offer training to your leaders as they're going as they're heading to work, as they're running groceries, as they're picking up kids from school and soccer practice. 00;15;00;52 - 00;15;34;46 Nick Clason If you create a podcast feed, whether it be a public or a private feed and you just do 5 to 10 minute trainings, you can pick up a pretty easy and cheap microphone. Very similar to this. I'll drop some links down below in the show notes for you to check out. If you want to do video based, you can use your cell phone and you can get up and going and listen If you if you start pre filming your messages like I recommend in my full year strategy anyway, you should have a camera, whether it be a real camera or you just using your phone and you're using my under $100 starter kit to get 00;15;34;46 - 00;16;00;06 Nick Clason going. You can use that as a way to get some of that training up and going and then you can just start posting it to places. And so if you do audio, you do a podcast feed, if you do video, you do YouTube. But like I said, what I'm trying to think of as I'm trying to ride some of the future waves in some of the future trends, because that's actually what I'm going to be talking about in the very next video, which is going to be linked right here on the screen. 00;16;00;11 - 00;16;21;42 Nick Clason Carey Nieuwhof in his 2024 trends. It is an amazing article. He's been doing an amazing job. And I know we're several months in now to 2024, but I wanted to do a React video and so check that video out link right here on the screen because we in this podcast are trying to make digital discipleship easy and possible and accessible. 00;16;21;42 - 00;16;25;31 Nick Clason And so, as always, stay hybrid.

⚡ [FREE] Digital Integration 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] DYM Games https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/9-best-dym-products ====================================== 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 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz ====================================== 🆓 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 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.

⚡ 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=sr11?crid=338IYV0RBLJFS&keywords=growing+young&qid=1705628888&s=books&sprefix=growing+young%2Cstripbooks%2C153&sr=1-1 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz ====================================== 🆓 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 00:00-03:41 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.

⚡ 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?utmsource=google&kw=161716281504&mt=&dv=c&event=PPCSRC&p=1186432&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkKqsBhC3ARIsAEEjuJhcSbVsWbqnq8WgKR-HbmYbSVDHHSUTO1p-Np1urnuMYt6U5dstMaAjwvEALwwcB //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/?utmsource=adaptivemailer&utmmedium=email&utm_campaign=rel%20-%2022-03-22%20worship%20attendance&org=982&lvl=100&ite=9703&lea=2048393&ctr=0∥=1&trk=a0d3j0000112o9deae //HYBRID MINISTRY E-BOOK https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz ====================================== 🆓 FREEBIES 🆓 📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool" 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 00:00-01:26 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.

🔥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 🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide" GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut DYM: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/world%27s-greatest-donut/games/food-8745.html ☝️ONE-CLICK SOLUTION FOR REELS & SHORTS OPUS FOR AI SHORTS & REELS 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 ======================================== 🛠️TOOLS Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit AUTO POD https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361 👉 STAY CONNECTED YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz 📓SHOWNOTES //SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS http://www.hybridministry.xyz/069 🍩 "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 //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.

🔥SURE FIRE RESOURCE TO LEVEL UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME 🔥 📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool" https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book 🎥LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit DESCRIPTION ⛪ 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 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/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=PLFbsNmRvDjempodvm5FsqwakX6OidCd //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.

🔥SURE FIRE RESOURCE TO LEVEL UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA GAME 🔥 📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool" https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book 🎥LEVEL UP YOUR YOUTUBE GEAR FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit DESCRIPTION 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! 💙🙌 👉 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 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.

COUNTERCULTURE is back! In this episode, Zach and Cooper highlight what to expect in upcoming episodes.

What does it look like to follow Jesus everyday? How many of us (wrongly) assume that we have to earn our salvation? This week, pastors Rich, Kim, and Cooper tackle these topics, as well as other questions regarding having a relationship with Jesus (4/24/22).