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spiritual | cultural | technological life

Youth Ministry

youth gone wild : stats can be misleading

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as youth pastor i do a lot of news filtering on the state of, trends of, and all the ills of today’s and future youth culture. if you do some news search for teenagers it isn’t a very promising picture (especially globally). one of the trends i see in the news is a whole lot of angry kids in the england. but as with any news reporting as with any statistic there is always the ‘other side.’ so my heart was lightened by the latest from asbo jesus.

Altheadlines 

its nice to think of the other side of all the statistics that we hear about and fear over. truth is, i have over 100 kids from ages 12-18 in our youth community and, though i don’t know the intimate details of every moment of their lives, i pretty confident they are all on the positive side of every bad statistic.

it reminds me of some parenting education i used to teach on. i used to coach folks on doing a paradigm shift in their viewing of their children. to stop looking/seeing the bad stuff but to look for those positive pieces and celebrate those (even if they are minute).

well, enough of the preaching. its time for some music this whole thought process made me think of.

top tech trends of 2009 for youth ministry : new day in @ymtoday

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i was asked to write a, shorter than this, article for ymtoday on the tech trends of 2009. this is my unedited & proper use of capitals article for your review.

Gone
are the days where spent calling everyone on the youth phone list,
cutting clip art books and taping graphics to papers for making
posters, and sorting slides into a projector carousel. Today's youth
ministry is full of early adoption to new technologies to communicate
and build relationships. It seems to be 2009 amped that trend of
leaving behind the those things we used to do so routinely in the early
2000's.

Here's a little list of technology trends from the past
year used, being used, or to use for your youth ministry. Not all were
created in the last year, but they did seem to pick up more steam.

1. Facebook: Do you remember MySpace? I do, and I thought it was pretty cool. Facebook though is just a fabulous youth ministry tool where MySpace
wasn't. Create a group or fan page for the ministry you are a part of,
easily send messages to the whole group, create events, post pictures
& videos. It is easy to do, takes less time, and its where your
teenagers are hanging. Have you watched your teenagers spend time onFacebook, it borders on problematic. If you have some cash, you can invest in ads on Facebook
, the metrics for adverts is amazing, not terribly expensive either,
plus it shows who are 'fans' in your ad extending the trust
relationship. You can even get on board with a free mission trip via the social media network.

2. Twitter:
People are up in the air as to whether Twitter is a usable youth
ministry tool. My teens many follow a few friends and a bunch of
celebrities. I don't have a youth who would create a twitter based newsletter for us like Adam. Twitter for me is brain trust
& community of other youth and ministry leaders. Have a question,
need prayer support, want to celebrate, need consolation after loosing
a job, and more you can join into the community of youth workers on
Twitter. I sought help developing this list via my Twitter community.

As a program, Twitter is a mobile based application, so it has txt and alert capabilities. Which leads us to our next item.

3. Mass Text Services:
If you think it is going to be a pain to get all your people onto
Twitter and then to enable the cell phone alert tweets for your twitter
account, just set yourself up for one of the many mass text messaging
services. If you are like me, youth gathering times are their normal
loud and crazy, but now its all that with the teens staring at their
cell phones. They have entire conversations overtxt . I've even caught
teens not answering their phone calls but then answering text messages.
Tap into that behavior with some of the paid services like txtsignal or a free service like broadtexter.

Note: Txt services use two basic formats: One is where message is more like an email going thru the system. Different cell companies handle that information differently, so a txt
service will have you indicate what type of provider the corresponding
phone number is. Other services are more like a phone to phone
communication, big difference with those is you do not need to know
service providers, but they will most likely charge by the number oftxt's and phone numbers (ie. each txt to 1 number is 5 cents, so one mass txt to 50 people is $2.50).

4. SmartPhones:
I was told once that 'there haven't been any new inventions, only
inventions making everything smaller.' This is certainly the case with
the fusion of computer & cell phone. Whether you are iPhone,
Blackberry, or now Droid the day of a phone being just for talking is
gone.

The smartphone as it continues to become more affordable
& builds in development will become the youth workers greatest
tools (might even out do the guitar,haha!). As new applications are being developed from YouVersion's Bible app, Youth Specialties Tough Topics, productivity apps like Evernote, GPS directions, to even creating your very own phone application
more & more will administration and communication will be done
through the phone. I can be sitting at an sports match and send out
emails & text messages to the whole group or just our leaders, make
notes for the next days to-do list, take pics of the game and load them
up to ourfacebook group or flickr page, and then post new information to our website.

5. Flip Cameras:
Video used to be the toughest thing in the world. Cameras cost a bunch
of money and then you had to edit the videos. Chances are your computer
was not powerful enough to deal with all the resources needed for
video, so it took many days to put together and render videos. Those
days are gone.

With the advent of YouTube being the quality
standard and the destination for most created video content the Flip
Camera is the new video must have. Not only are they extremely cheap
($100-180, for a decent one) they shoot really good quality video,
transfer extremely easily (digitally, so you don't have to do the tape
playback recording), and portable so they can always be on your person.
You can purchase one, two or three of these gems & hand them out to
youth during events to capture footage for a highlights video. Pull out
a camera when you are out on the town and inspired to do a little
devotional for a video podcast. Get some of the youth to create a
news/announcement video. Have a bunch of cameras to do a scavenger hunt
and post stuff immediately to your presentation software or to the web.

So
what's on your list of big trends for the year? Leave a comment or two,
I'm sure there is something I'm missing or maybe my numbering is off.

Honorable Mentions:

  • Digital Photography: Every youth event I go to seems to have youth & youth
    leaders in tow with high quality cameras. Bye bye disk camera &
    slide film.
  • Digital
    Publishing: All those pictures & graphics can be printed into
    beautiful books & posters for affordable prices & effort.
    Forever keeping the narrative of that ministry
  • Netbooks: Though I'd say that might be more for the college scene
  • Google: From Google Voice, Docs, Earth, Ocean, Maps, Latitude to the beta test of Wave there's something for everyone
  • Affordable
    Presentation Equipment: Doing the projector thing was a huge ordeal
    (not to mention projectors were HUGE!) now the hardware & software
    is small in size and price
  • Collaborative Tools: Maybe its Basecamp, could be Google Wave, we all are using stuff to help us collaborate with our team of ministers & cohorts.

naming the paradigm : rob bell on youth ministry

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Robbell

i've often said when working with other youth ministry leaders, 'you can get anything done if you can speak to it well.'

my thinking behind that is, my observation, that much of youth ministry actions are intuition/gut moves (some may say Holy Spirit leading, which i'm cool with). those movements are done with great intentions and well meaning, but just as i have a hard time telling folks why i am a 'nice guy' (something i've been accused of on occasion) it is hard to explain intuitive actions. coupled with, many 'professional' youth leaders are quite young and haven't had a great deal of experience working with & coaching adults sometimes twice their age. but, if you can speak to people why this or that is necessary, they are more apt to go with your leading, even if they do not completely agree. thus, an importance to speaking well of what you are doing in ministry.

with that in mind, i was quite excited to read some of rob bell's thoughts on youth ministry in this interview with youth worker journal. he speaks so well to some of the issues i feel at hand for our current crop of youth growing up in youth ministries around the country.

YWJ: OK, the magic bullets, if you don't mind.

RB: The
dominant paradigm in churches is production, not discipleship. It's
about how to keep kids coming—how are the numbers? In the gospels,
whenever there were large crowds, Jesus gave a difficult teaching that
thinned out the crowd. Over and over, He chose those moments: John 6—Unless
you eat my flesh and drink my blood. Nice. Very accessible for kids.
There is a certain pattern where He's trying to find out who is
serious. Youth workers are put in this position where their paychecks
are based on how many people they can keep in the place. When they read
the gospels, they realize this whole system seems to be going the other
direction. Many youth pastors I've met are promoting something they
don't believe.

YWJ: Like what?

RB: They're
told by the senior pastor to encourage the students to attend the
service where there's a seven-part sermon on raising funds for a giant
building, and kids don't really buy it. At the same time, the kids are
wearing a red bracelet and becoming passionate about AIDS and water in
Darfur. So the youth pastors and the kids sit in a system that says the
preservation of this system is the first priority, and they look around
at these giant issues of justice that are demanding a generation to
step up and do something about it; and guess what they do?

this excerpt i pulled basically because it shares two tensions i feel in youth ministry, 1. the need to have top notch programming & 2. the culture of preservation (something i feel is paramount, not in a good way, in my mainline tribe). those two things are just not part of the Kingdom of God that i envision.. now, can #1 be a gateway, sure.. can #1 help in discipleship, sure.. but at what cost are we going so overboard that we loose sight of our goals.. living at Christ lived, loving as Christ loved. to me that isn't grounded in a program or an institution. those are ground out in relationships beyond human measures and being remarkable because you have been inspired to be that way.

anyways, check out the interview i could go on and on with the various questions & answers.

youth ministry’s future : glimpse of youth ministry in the year 2400

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so i don't usually write fiction, let alone, sci-fi type fiction, but when ken asked if i would contribute to the upcoming issue of the reporter (which is focusing on youth culture & youth ministry issues) i felt honored to do something.

"so what do you want me to write about?"

"well, something on youth culture."

little did ken know, i for some reason had this curiosity for buck rogers that day.. so i had been doing some reading up on the old show & comic series.

"how bout youth ministry in the future."

"like 2050?"

"no, like the year 2400…?"

some time passes

"cool, can you write that by monday?"

"probably not, but i'll try."

"you sure?"

"yes, it'd be nice to have something not so serious"

here's an excerpt of my futuristic view of youth ministry in the year 2400. published by the umportal, that i turned in on thursday, after my monday deadline

Just then, he receives a ringing in his communications chip. Zahn taps
his head and a visual hologram appears of one of his teenagers, Jessup
(one of the oldest and more active teenagers in the ministry). Jessup
is visibly upset. 

Annika, Jessup’s girlfriend from the Saturn
moon Titan, has broken up with him, and Jessup is worried he’ll never
find another person like her in the entire Milky Way galaxy. Jessup is
now convinced he will grow up alone. 

my concept for this article is simple.. the tools and trademarks of the culture will change (which was fun to try and imagine), but the human needs & behaviors will not change. as i see, they haven't changed in thousands of years, they aren't about to start. beyond that, anything you read into it is purely your own speculation.

telling stories on missions : sharing experiences with congregations

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how to use social media to share your ministry story with home congregation & ministry partners from Gavin Richardson

one of the things that social media has allowed myself & you the lay web designer to do is easily share missions, event, and other ministry experiences with our congregations and ministry partners. i know folks are starting to do this more & more, so here’s some of the set up & tips that i’ve used in the past.

  • site: have a website that you can do quick updates to. this might be a special wordpress site or typepad/blogger are all formats that give you ease in telling little stories or updates without having to know code or ftp information. you can even use twitter if you need. i also like to use flickr for posting pics & videos. so much easier
    to upload a batch than to put into a blog posting.
  • connections: ask ahead if you can get wifi in the area or cell service, and which kinds of services. if you can get wifi (which is surprisingly much more common than not) its wonderful. next best is cell service & you can probably spring for one of the broadband connecting cards depending on your provider. next, if you can only find cell service you might tether a connection, or just plan to use a smart phone application. my iphone has applications for all kinds of blogging updates, or i can just surf the web browser.
  • ahead of time: depending on my anticipated needs i’ll set up a posting ahead of time. example: our experience up into appalachia last summer i knew there was no wifi options, so i set up a blog post with a twitter widget that i could send updates to. i gave a shortened url link to the one of the ministry secretaries that she could put into the prayer chain emails.
  • hardware: if you have a wifi connection bring your laptop. if you do this right you can stay up a few minutes after lights out, do what you need to do and then close shop and move into the next day. one of my key hardware pieces is a universal card reader. the best 30 bucks i ever spent in ministry. if you don’t take the pictures, no worries, borrow someones camera card download theirs and use them to upload. same thing with video. if you have one or more video cameras (we used a sony webbie flip camera and a harddrive camcorder for our bahamas trip this year) bring what cables you need for charging & downloading. if they use flash/sd cards then you just need your universal reader..
  • mobile upload: most social media sites have mobile upload options. you need to have them in your back pocket. twitter has an email to post option, as well as twitpic (which will post to your twitter). so if you can send pics or video through your cell service you are good to go. flickr also has an email that will post to your account. have your mobile apps tested out and ready to go before hand.
  • choose your portal: life on a missions or other ministry experience is generally filled with little downtime. if you are like me you don’t want to spend your every minute telling others and not living into the moment you are in. so, choose what your portal is for sharing. do you want to write out stories? or, like we have done, take the photos and put them out there to tell our story. this year we went more immediate video doing some little one or two minute update videos. since we are photo/video heavy this year, we just used flickr. set up a trip set and gave out the shortend url then populated it as the week went on. boy have we ever populated that… most likely too much. if you want to just have the youth or adult participants write stuff for blogs, give them a heads up. sometimes though its hard for people to sit down and write, so you either need to tell them what to talk about or give them the whole week to work on writing to get into a flow. some folks though, write very easily, well & quickly, look for those folks, but not at the detriment of the experience.
  • clean it up: once you get home, clean up some of the url updates, spelling errors, add captions, edit finished versions, add more content, etc. people don’t need everything, they love to get a taste or idea of what it looks like & what is happening.

disclaimer/distribution: i’ve been asked before if i’ve gotten permission for posting photos and such. yes & no. i’ve put in our release forms that this is part of our group & i tell parents that this is what we do, so if they have issue we can remedy the situation. most of the times our parents are exstatic to see what’s going on. how often do they get frustrated with their kid going to camp, only to return & asked “what happened?” responding “nothin..” with this, they know something did happen. now, we do take some precautions of not putting in names, certainly not full names. we generically name photos most of the time. i don’t do uber tagging so it falls into the greater searches, but is usable for my own search. with flickr you can protect download of pics to just your contacts/friends/family which is helpful if you can get people to get a free account and ‘friend’ you.