This was our last week of the series we called OUGHT NOT: things Jesus Told Us Not To Do where we went through where Jesus said to fear not, sin not, worry not and judge not.
There is a bunch of different bits in there and a solid message from Jarod Moses from our Eat Valley campus.
I don’t know if you realize this, but there is no going back to how things were. We are going to be different when we are allowed back into the public. I really believe that the church won’t be gathering in person for a while. I think when all of the pandemic stuff hit first and we had to move to online, my first thought was triage mode and we needed to pivot hard and fast in order to move everything online.
It was putting a band-aid on a bullet wound type situation.
Now that we are going on week 6 of this I am realizing (and planning) as if this is going to be our reality for the foreseeable future. We first had to think short-term just to get our feet under us, but now that this might be until the fall (it really could be in our area) we need to stop thinking so short-term.
In another post for DYM I wrote about not comparing what we were doing in attendance to what we are doing now, and that still is in play, but we also need to plan to move forward as if this is not a short-term thing we are doing until all is going back to normal. Like I said before, this is a new normal, there is no going back, and the sooner we as leaders begin to plan, make strategy, cast vision and lead in a way as if this is going to be an online ministry for quite a bit, the sooner we will be able to lead better, adjust and still be effective in how we reach students in the name of Jesus.
In my opinion, right now youth leaders should be:
Coming up with a long-term online engagement strategy. How are we going to keep students engaged with online service? How do we keep students in online, digital small groups? How are we going to keep on reaching new students when we are not physically meeting? These are the questions we need to be thinking about for months from now, not just weeks.
Coming up with short-term goals that set up longer online ministry wins. In our team meeting on Monday, I told our team we are no longer treating this as if we are going to be done online in a few weeks. We are going to come up with short term goals for each campus in how they are going to build up their ministries to 75% of hat they were running before the virus hit and they should come up with practical steps to reach that goal by the end of May.
Why 75%? Just a number I thought would be reachable and not lose momentum if/when we do get back together meeting in person.
Why at the end of May? I am all for short-term goals for further down the line goals. It gives us some measurable markers in a deadline of time to see where we are in our ministry.
How we keep leaders engaged and encouraged. This is about the time where volunteers will start to get discouraged because the shininess of online groups is wearing off. Being relational without physically being together can be difficult. So what we need to be thinking about is how we are going to keep encouraging our volunteers for the long haul. We should start thinking through how we can keep them going and setting them up well to lead online.
For us, our goal is to connect personally, every week with each one of our volunteers who serve in our ministry. Is that a lot? Yes. But are our volunteers more important than ever right now because they are connecting with students in order for groups to happen right now? Oh yes.
I like to ask 3 questions in every meeting:
The point of all this?
It’s time to stop thinking as if this is only a few week ordeals in our ministry. The sooner we adjust our vision and strategy for our youth ministries online, the more effective we will be when the shininess of online engagement begins to fade (which for us is right about now). Even if church gatherings are allowed again sooner than later, awesome, we go back to our strategy when we were meeting, but at least we will be thinking forward and prepared to do this for the long haul and get a leg up now rather than weeks from now and we are falling behind in the online world of engagement.
But keep going. No one here has pastored during an epidemic before. This is all new. Be encouraged, be faithful, keeping loving students.
This was week 2 of our series called OUGHT NOT: Things Jesus Told Us Not To Do and we had a great message about “sin not”. We also had our youth leads show how they were being good neighbors and serving during this time and we challenged our students to do the same.
I posted 2 weeks ago about all of the little bits and segments we have had for our online services. I personally think, I know I am biased, that we have had a good balance between fun and heart pieces.
I would say my favorite ones have been the video prompts we have had all the leads at our campuses do at home. We give them what we need to film, they capture it and send it back in and we make the quick video. This is something you can do with your staff, your volunteers and your students. It’s been really fun.
But here is a list of clips we have done in the last 2 weeks so for our online services so you don’t have to watch the entire service… you’re welcome:
This is week four of the online services for Sandals church Youth and we started a brand new series called OUGHT NOT: Things Jesus Told Us Not To Do.
We had a fun game to kick off the night called Taste Buds and then played a little truth or dare. We almost threw up. Just watch. Then we got to hear from some of our youth leads from different campuses.
Dane, our youth lead from our Palm Ave campus, gave a timely message talking about how Jesus told us not to fear.
Such a great night!
This is a FANTASTIC letter that the Mariners Church youth pastor just sent out to the volunteers in our church. Feel free to adapt it to your youth ministry if it’s helpful, and if you’re not a FREE 60-day gold trial member or using the training platform he mentions in the email (DYM University) then click here for details.
Greetings AMAZING junior high & high school volunteer leader!
Our church is so blessed to have you SERVING teenagers!
Our families are so fortunate that you CARE about their kids!
Our ministry is stronger because of your FAITHFUL commitment!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!You’ve been valued since the day you began working within our youth ministry… but, you’re even more valued and needed and wanted right now.
WARNING: this is a LONG email… but, I have a FREE GIFT for you at the very end. 🙂
I wanted to write you a quick note and let you know of a gift we are making available to you to strengthen and increase your impact with teenagers. We have acquired a site license that gives you total access to an incredible online video youth ministry training (more details below).
Before you access those videos, I want to make you aware of the high priorities that are happening within our youth ministry and ask you to play a role with the students you’re leading, loving, and shepherding.
Youth Night Live is our weekly, live webshow (JHM | HSM) every Wednesday (JH at 6pm/HS at 7pm). It’s fun, fast-paced, and intended to give our students an opportunity to connect with their church and be challenged in their faith.
Your role: please encourage them to watch/engage. Join them in viewing and then jump on a Zoom call, Google hangout, or FaceTime with them a little bit afterwards.
Life Groups are our weekly time to connect with the students you’re shepherding.
Your role: by now you should have been contacted by our JH/HS staff about having a regular, weekly meeting with your Life Group (if not, please let me know). If you’re not tech-savvy (like me)… we’ll help you out. We’re gathering best practices and will continue to figure out how to make these times fruitful.
Discipleship resources provide next-step faith development for students.
In both junior high and high school we want to help teenagers learn to grow spiritually on their own so they’ll keep growing when they graduate from our ministry. We’re currently reworking our website to make it super easy for them to have access to great resources in seconds–check it out.
Your role: Please encourage your students to download and experiment with these faith-development tools. Encourage your Life Group to download the same resource and work through it together. Let them know to come back often as we’ll be expanding our offerings weekly.
NOW SOMETHING FOR YOU! In this time of stay-at-home learning, we want to give you total access to a robust youth ministry training library. Currently over 40,000 volunteer youth workers are watching and learning from DYMUniversity.com. I’ve gone ahead and added your email into the system, and within 24 hours you’ll get an email invitation to access 25+ different videos (they’re short–10 minutes each) with topics such as:
- Ways to Care for Teens who are Hurting
- 5 Discipleship Essentials
- Suicide Prevention
- Learning to Ask Great Questions
- Developing Teens Potential, and
- 22 other great topics.
- Watch and learn, and then take the 5-minute “reflection-type-test” (no wrong answers) and put in my email address at the very top of your reflection sheet and your responses will go directly to me. I’m super excited to see you grow and learn!
Again, thank you for playing such an important role in our church during this crazy time.
You are doing an incredible job and I’m praying for you by name.
Blessings,
If you want to use DYMU to train your volunteers DIGITALLY, at home, at their own pace & starting today + get $100 off. Click this link now. DYMU will change your youth ministry during this time. Excited to have your team join in our over 40,000 students currently enrolled in DYMUniversity!
We are coming up on a month going all-online for our youth ministry. As I am sure you are noticing, the shininess is starting to wear off, and we are going to be needing to work a little bit harder to continue to seek online engagement from our students.
For many, this is about the time where we are going to get discouraged. We are going to compare our attendance from before all this COVID stuff hit to our attendance after the switch to online-only.
But let’s not compare apples to oranges.
I don’t think it is healthy for us to compare what was happening in our ministry before COVID with how our ministry is reacting to it right now. It’s two completely different situations and circumstances. We have all had to uproot our strategy and implement a new one within a week. I am here to let you know that it’s going to take some time to build this new culture among both your students and your leaders.
And that is okay.
Give yourself a break for a second. Think about the culture you have in your ministry without COVID. The culture you have – whether you have been building it for years or you just took it over – has taken a while to get where it is right now. So we need to give our online strategies a little bit of time to catch. Too many times youth pastors try something new, but when they don’t see the results they want in a few weeks, they bail on it. They don’t give whatever it was time to sink in, take hold, and build up.
Give it time.
Don’t compare what you used to be pulling to what you are not. We need a new reference point. We need to use these first few weeks to see where we are beginning in this weird season, and use that as a reference point to build on. If you normally had 25 students on a Wednesday night, but you have only had 10 show up and be interactive on your online experience and groups, you are not missing 15 students; you have found your 10 core students in your ministry. Now you use this as a reference point and build from there.
COVID-19 has hit the reset button for all of us. We are really finding out who our core students are in this season. We are also seeing who our core leaders are. We’re seeing which leaders really are all-stars, and which ones need more training in this season.
COVID is not an excuse for what is missing in our ministry right now. It’s just revealing and highlighting what has been missing all along. I would say it is also revealing where we as leaders have been lacking in our own leadership skills. It’s revealing where we have allowed our personality or service or momentum from our ministry cover up our flaws a little bit. With all that gone, we really see where our own gaps in leadership are. Use this time to work on them.
So don’t compare apples to oranges. What we WERE doing right and what we ARE doing right are way too different for us to get down or discouraged. Let’s figure out our new reference points of where to begin. Let’s keep driving this new culture and strategy for online. Let’s give it time. And let’s keep trusting in Jesus that His word will still be proclaimed and students will continue to get to know Him.
Keep going. You got this.
If you want to listen to two great podcasts from two great leaders who are leading well in the midst of all this, take a listen to these Youth Ministry Hacks Podcasts:
66: Hacks Of How To Make Online Small Groups Successful w/Jon Rush from Elevation Youth
67: Hacks On Developing Leadership Culture In A Digital Age w/ Sam Grosso
This month, we’ve stacked the membership way beyond the $20 in store credit & the normal, multiple discounts. Members get a game, a video (which we used in our youth ministry stream this week already – get the scoop on all of that right here) and all of our Youth Group LIVE! assets (graphics, social media, videos, teaching transcripts, etc…) that we’ve been using. There’s also great stuff for student leaders to do on their own, plus bonus freebies that you’ll want to use the minute your group gets back together: Crowd Star. This is a killer lineup of stuff for members:
And here’s just one of them in greater detail, it’s fun to unpack the goodness of just ONE of them. Being a Gold Member makes so much sense—when you may have to make big cuts and tough decisions in the weeks ahead, DYM gives you SO much value for just a few bucks a week. So here’s the MYSTERY item in full detail, the Youth Night LIVE! :
Beyond that there’s the Sidekick app that’s proving to be perfect for your streams, the Leader Training Library to share with your leaders, the Newsletter Builder App to send correspondence to your people. Goodness, it just makes so much sense! No wonder so many youth workers been with us for years and are so contagious about spreading the good news of membership.
All in all, it’s a GREAT month to be a DYM Gold Member! We’re thankful for you and honored to serve your church (and the TONS of new churches who are just discovering us in the past month who are members now) and know youth ministry is in GREAT hands through challenging times.
Here’s the latest episode of the DYM Members-only podcast (describing this month’s member items) as well if you want to listen as well:
We stand shoulder to shoulder with you, honored to be reaching the next generation alongside you.
Blessings!
Doug Fields & Josh Griffin
Youth pastors … and founders of Download Youth Ministry
PS: If you’ve never been a DYM Gold Member and taken advantage of the Greatest Deal in the History of YM … you can do a FREE 60-day trial and get all this instantly and 2 MORE months worth for exactly ZERO dollars. No credit card. Nothing. Ziltch. Zip. $0.00. Get the scoop right here and go download crazy today.
It was such a fun online youth group! If you’re not Gold Member yet, we have a 60-day FREE trial (which we’ve never done before) for you to taste & see that the Gold Member is good (actually, the Greatest Deal in the History of Youth Ministry) … what are you waiting for? NO credit card, no strings attached.
The DYM Gold member FREE trial gets you 60 days of store credit, access to Sidekick, games, downloads & and 60 days to experiment taking your ministry to the next level. We’re thrilled to offer it to you and we (Doug/Josh) are even more thrilled to use in in our own ministry.
As we all pretty much have pivoted to online programming, I thought I would share a simple post of really easy but practical bits and segments we have been able to do that has worked really well for us. I have had a few other youth pastors reach out and say they have taken these and have fun with their live streams as well.
I love how they turned out and they have been really engaging to our online audience as we navigate this weird and new time of ministry.
I will try to post what we have come up with every two weeks or so to keep ideas flowing and rolling.
I hope that is helpful and can spark some good ideas on your end.
