Hybrid Ministry

By Nick ClasonBusiness Religion & Spirituality Christianity Technology Marketing

Hybrid Ministry episodes

January 26, 2023 Episode 028: The Purpose of the Church and Social Media's Role within that
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick discusses the purpose of the church, as laid out from Jesus in the Great Commission, as well as the 59 different times the New Testament lays out a "One Another" statement. He then disects and brainstorms different ways in which the church, through a Hybrid and Digital approach, can live out the mission and purpose of the church through some of the One Another statements of the New Testament Church.
Come hang out at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Or on TikTok http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Or on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
SHOWNOTES
FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account Video: https://youtu.be/oxBn-p9O-eg
The Do's, Don'ts and lessons learned from launching a YouTube channel for your church in 2022: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/018
Atomic Habits: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299/ref=asc_df_0735211299/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312014159412&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8492597528919365054&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027304&hvtargid=pla-541463258824&psc=1
TIMECODES
00:00-01:31 - Intro
01:31-03:47 - What is the role of the church as a whole?
03:47-11:55 - How the Church should carry out the Great Commission
11:55-15:00 - Build Up
15:00-19:51 - Speaking Truth
19:51-21:42 - Stir Up
21:42-24:24 - 3 Short Form Video Hacks
24:24-26:24 - Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I am your host, Nick Clason, excited to be here with you today. And if you have not go check out the show notes or head to hybridministry.xyz I'm gonna put a link to it in here, but we just released two things, a brand new YouTube video and a brand new ebook, both which are built to help you post a TikTok from start to finish. It's titled, have I Already Ruined My TikTok Account? And the entire purpose of it is really this understanding that like social media in 2023 is moving a hundred percent towards short form video content, TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube, short style content. And so are you prepared and equipped to post that type of content? And are you prepared and equipped? Do you know what it takes to, do that?
Nick Clason (00:57):
Um, and have you, if you've ever logged into TikTok, and if you've ever been confused and you're like, what is going on in this place, this video and this ebook are both, uh, guides to help you walk through and navigate how to post something from something that you pre-recorded, or how to, uh, record something natively in the app, how to, uh, jump on trends, how to use audio, personal, um, business accounts, all kinds of different things. And so, uh, like I said, we got the link to that for you here in the show notes. Go check that out. I hope that that's something that you find beneficial and valuable. But in, uh, today's episode, I want, I really wanted to look at what is the purpose and what is the role of social media in the local church? So if we think about it, the purpose of the church, um, I think it was given to us by Jesus.
Nick Clason (01:51):
So I don't think that that changes. I think, you know, churches all have their own mission and vision statements, but I think they all should be derived and come from, uh, the Great Commission, which we find in Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20, where Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Again, this is Jesus talking. And he says, so therefore, go and make disciples. That word go is often used for like missionary conferences, like, go, go, go, go to Africa, go to Poland, to go to wherever. Right? But, but really the verb there is not go. The verb is this idea, the word go is better translated like as you are going. And so the verb, the actual verb is to make disciples. So the purpose of every church, every local, uh, church expression, every gathering, every eia, the Greek word of churches, eia, gathering and coming together, a conglomerate of people, um, that are all built and, and focusing on the same general mission, um, is to make disciples.
Nick Clason (02:58):
So as you are, are going, as you are living your life in the places where you live, learn, work and play, make disciples, help people take meaningful, significant steps towards Jesus. Um, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. He says, and then he, um, says, Baptiz them in the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit. Once they make that decision. And then finally, I will be with you always, even to the very end of the age, Jesus gives us this promise of His presence, this promise that he will not leave us nor forsake us, that he will, as we are taking steps towards him, as we are helping other people make decisions to follow him, um, that people will be, um, that, that he will choose and will be with us to the very end of the age. So that is the purpose of the church as given to us by Jesus himself.
Nick Clason (03:48):
So then if, if the purpose of the church is to go and make disciples, the avenue or the venue with which Jesus lays out for us to do that is, I believe, best to be done in and through the context of his local church. And so I think that, um, what has happened is if we look back into a little bit of church history, which this is not intended to be like a church history podcast, nor am I that well versed in that topic anyway, but the, the, we all know, if we look back to like the Book of Acts and some of the early church, like the church was much more like a family. And now I feel like in America, north America, um, because of Western influence, the church is much more operated like a corporation, less, like, less like a family. So more corporation, less family.
Nick Clason (04:44):
And so social media, um, oftentimes is the marketing arm of this corporate entity that we're all living in and experiencing. And so social media's role often is an awareness. Um, role is often a role on helping people, um, learn about, have brand recognition and awareness of the church. It's all about color schemes and guides and branding and fonts. And, and listen, like as a, as a marketer at heart, like I'm, you know, I'm a youth pastor, right? But like, I, I'm obviously interested in this topic of marketing and stuff like that. So as a marketer at heart, I don't mind those things. In fact, I actually, I appreciate them. I understand what we're doing and, you know, with those things. So with that being said, right, like what, what is the role of social media in a gathering? Is it to help, uh, draw family together, right?
Nick Clason (05:40):
If we're gonna go off the old, uh, new Testament example, um, and framework, or is it to bring brand recognition and awareness, um, the role of the church to make disciples to do that in the context of a of gathering of a family. Um, where, where do we get our basis for what church is? You know, if we look through the New Testament, there's really not a lot of examples of a church built like a business with a c e o, with a head, with a pastor, with a president, with a figure talking head. Um, it's just, that's, that's really not what we see a lot. Instead, what we do see a lot of in the New Testament, right, as we see some of these examples of one another's. Um, so I think one of the best, uh, examples of, uh, what the church can do and what the church should be and what the church should look like is, um, found in the 59 times that we see the phrase one another spelled out in the New Testament.
Nick Clason (06:34):
So for example, we have, um, the command to love one another. We have the command to honor one another from Romans 1210. We have the command to live in harmony with one another, Romans 1216 to build one another up. Romans, uh, 14 for Thessalonians five to be like-minded. Romans chapter 15, to accept one another, Romans 15 to admonish one another. Colossians three, we have care for one another, serve one another, bear one another's burdens, forgive one another, be patient with one another, speak the truth to one another, be kind and compassionate to one another. Speak with Psalms and spiritual songs. Submit to one another, consider one another, look to the interests of others, and finally, stir up, stimulate toward love and good works. And I think most of us would agree that that entire slew of list, that's not even all 59 of them, right?
Nick Clason (07:24):
But the ones that I picked out that I put there on that list, I think most of us would agree that those are best done, or at least most familiarly done and accomplished through, um, being done in person. And so, if we are going to live out the call of the church, then I think, um, you could make an argument. I think some people do, and try to make an argument that the church should be most and best expressed in the context of a family, in person, local gathering type of experience. Okay? Now, just because it's familiar doesn't mean that something different is wrong, okay? And I think if you look at, um, the New Testament, obviously, what is the majority of the New Testament, the majority of the documents right, that we have in our New Testament are letters, letters from the Apostle Paul, letters from James, letters from, uh, Luke, letters, from whoever wrote the book of Hebrews, letters from Peter, letters from John.
Nick Clason (08:33):
And what are these letters? They are written to different churches with what? With the intention to live out these one another's, to admonish one another, to speak truth to one another, to build up one another, to stir up love and good works to one another. And so if those things are the case, um, what was writing in the first century? Well, writing was the means and method to communicate from long distances. Paul was writing to these churches because he was in prison. So he did not have the option to be physically present with them. And I think in a lot of ways, like, so, okay, then like, let's play that out. So yeah, that's what, that's, that was Paul's issue. But our issue, like, we can be together. Yes, that's true, but we also don't live in this very oral, um, slow paced, you know, in the first century, there were no cars.
Nick Clason (09:22):
The main mode of transportation was most likely walking. And so a lot of the, as you are going from Matthew chapter 28, right? A lot of that was probably on the way on the road. Jesus and his disciples probably had so many conversations as they were walking to and from different places in different locations. And so when we think about it, we're like, well, we, yes, we don't have to write letters cause we're not in jail to one another, but we don't live in a culture that really allows us to be together as often as they were in the first century. And I think that we should potentially try to pursue that. I think we should try to make every effort to be living life, um, together, uh, life on life and, um, encouraging one another and moshing another and doing those things in person.
Nick Clason (10:09):
However, I think that distance is still an obstacle, is still, uh, a thing that we experience here, um, in 2023 and beyond. And so, um, the constraints of not being able to physically be together 24 hours a day, seven days a week are real, right? Like, we have jobs, we have families, we have homes, we have sports schedules, we have, um, band practices, we have, um, we have to run our kids to and from all kinds of different things and activities. We have obligations, we have PTO meetings, we have family gatherings that are obligations. We have all kinds of different things that keep us from living life on life with our faith community. And so we should be doing all of these things in person. However, I think that the hybrid side of this is there is a means and a medium that is now available to us that was also available to, um, a a similar means of method that was available in the first century.
Nick Clason (11:07):
Paul used letters. Now I think we can use digital means and digital mediums to get the message of hope across. So let's talk about living out some of these one another that we looked at, right? I want to pick in particular three and, and talk about how those can be lived out in a hybrid world, okay? Because yes, social media can be a good marketing tool, yes, social media can bring a lot of awareness to your church and help get people to your big gathering. But if we're really gonna live out the method of Jesus, which is to make disciples, and then as the New Testament lays out 59 different times to do things with and for, um, one another, okay? Let's look more at the family aspect and think about how we can, um, how we can use social media towards that end. So the first one I wanna look at is build up, build up one another.
Nick Clason (12:01):
What are ways that you can build up the people of God that call your church, um, home, that want to be a part of a, a family and a faith community? How can you encourage them? Maybe you can look down the barrel of a camera and a shotgun microphone and record one video a day, one video a week, and encourage them to keep the faith to make a difference in the world and this sphere of influence that God has placed them in their life. Maybe you can read scripture. I think I don't have this stat very well off the top of my head, but I think it's something like 8% of, um, Christians say they read the Bible on a regular basis. And most people would say that regular means one time a week. Okay? Conversely, they say that Generation Z um, spends anywhere from five to eight hours of screen time per day.
Nick Clason (12:56):
All right? And so, um, that's just one of the generations that we're dealing with. The reality is they're reading scripture once a week versus being on their phone anywhere from five to eight hours per day. What if, while they're on their phones, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on any of the social platforms that by the way, are now all promoting short form video content, what if you just read scripture? That's all you had to do. One of my, one of the trends, one of the, um, one of the frameworks that I used in my own ministry that gets some of the most traction is a hook like this where they open the phone and I I'm doing nothing. I'm saying nothing. And all I'm doing is pointing to text on the screen, no words for about 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds. And I'm pointing at the, at the text on the screen, which says either stay or scroll, which is just big and bold, right?
Nick Clason (13:46):
Like that's the whole point. Big, bold. And then right beneath it says, read scripture with me so they know what they're staying for, right? And once you see that, like if you're a Christian, okay, and you see stares scrolling, it says, read scripts with me, you're gonna have this like sort of guttural, visceral reaction. Like, ugh, I probably should stay and not just go onto the next dance video or sports video or whatever other video's gonna be behind it, right? And then just read a verse, one verse and then just riff on it for the remaining 30 seconds that you probably have left. You know, what does it mean? You could, um, promote other spiritual practice. You could help them get into practice of meditating, memorizing scripture, prayer, um, maybe even accountability. Hey, text a friend that you haven't texted in a while, like, do this one another text a friend from your small group who you know, needs encouragement. That's a way to help, uh, through another person, encourage a person in your local body. Um, you could also just deliver some wise words, um, some, some words that come from scripture, some words that come from a wise mentor pastor, somebody who has some age and life experience, but that's just an ex. Those are just a few examples to kinda get your wheels turning of how social media and short form video can be used to help build up the elicia, the gathering, the family of Jesus.
Nick Clason (15:01):
What about speaking truth? Um, obviously you can use sermon clips and we have talked about that ad nauseum, but it's still a worthwhile thing to talk about. If you are live streaming your service, grab a clip of your pastor, cut it down, get it into a 16 by nine framework, put in some sort of hook. If he doesn't have a good hook, use like the voiceover feature or some like big text on screen thing, be like how to navigate conflict. And then boom, cut to the pastor talking, right? If you do not have the technology available to you to, uh, do a sermon clip, um, we've talked in the past, and you can go back to the ultimate YouTube framework. I will, um, put that link here in the show notes. Um, but you can, um, pre-record your messages and you can make that be, um, a thing that you then pull clips from and, uh, give just different quotes.
Nick Clason (15:47):
Uh, 62nd inspirational things from the sermon content. Here's the thing, I'm a pastor, okay? A youth pastor, but a pastor nonetheless. And, um, I, I put a lot of prep into my weekly content that I deliver one time a week to a room full of people, and after that, it goes to die somewhere on my hard drive. But being able to then repurpose this out of your communications department or your digital strategy people, or even if you, it's you the pastor, take your content and put it back out there into the world that you have spent so much time preparing, that's a way to help, um, speak the truth with one another, to the people in your church to remind them of what they heard on the weekend. Maybe they weren't there. Maybe this is a, a primer, a teaser of what the appetite for them to hear a clip of the sermon.
Nick Clason (16:29):
Then they're like, you know what? Maybe I should go listen to that whole thing. Which leads me to the point that if you are, you should have a place for them to go listen to the whole thing, uh, either in full audio form or on a YouTube channel. Again, whether that's your live stream or that's a pre-recorded thing that you are doing, and then posting. Some other examples of speaking truth are sermon quotes, right? You can take just a quote from your pastor sermon and you can create a video out of it, even if it's just like a video of a drone flying over a mountain and then the pastor's quote flies in or a a tweet screenshot or something with some nice music behind it. Um, you can do adjacent type content from the sermon, right? So this month, for example, in our student ministry, we're talking about the, um, sermon series of habits.
Nick Clason (17:13):
Okay? So it's the habit of living in community, the habit of, um, bible reading, prayer, and then accountability. Okay? But what I'm gonna do on social media, and you can go check this out if you want, at our, um, our TikTok, um, it is at Cross Creek Students on Instagram, YouTube, and hopefully TikTok here soon. If you can't find it on TikTok, you might try at first. Colville students, we just changed our name and here's a quick story for you. We just changed our name and I, uh, I secured the handle at Cross Creek students on TikTok, and it said that it has, it has 30 days, um, to totally deactivate your account. So I deactivated and deleted the Cross Creek students account so that I could go from my first Colville account and change it to Cross Creek students, um, because I held it up until the 30 day period.
Nick Clason (18:01):
Um, but I have not been able to switch it over. So everything is Cross Creek students, the new logo, the name, um, and all the other handles are, but that handle specifically is still at first Colville students. I'm looking every single day this week to see if I can change it. If not, I may have to change it to something like first, uh, cross Creek students one. Um, but then once I do that, I have to wait another 30 days before I can make another change. And so I don't know when or if that, um, at Cross Creek students handle will become available. So I don't wanna lock in something temporary and then that handle becomes available, but I'm stuck, you know, for another 30 days. So anyway, um, welcome to the life of someone who's, um, working with these companies, by the way, their support not helpful.
Nick Clason (18:45):
So anyway, um, but the adjacent content that I have written on habits is, um, I just got done reading the book, atomic Habits by James Clear, phenomenal book. Definitely recommend it. I'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. Um, but I am going to share just some, some habit building, um, tips and frameworks, um, general habit building tips. And so that's adjacent content. We're talking about these four disciplines of community prayer, scripture, reading and accountability. And then over here on our social media, we're gonna talk about how habits are built, informed, make 'em easy, make 'em attractive, how to break bad habits, make 'em invisible, make 'em difficult, make 'em, um, something that you don't desire, right? And those two things go together. But this one is a little bit, um, more psychological, not as spiritual necessarily. And this one over here is spiritual. But if you take some of these principles from the Atomic Habits book and some of the other habit building things, you can apply them over to the spiritual habits. Okay? Um, another idea that you can have in speaking the truth is just like a hook. Like, Hey, here's what the Bible has to say about blank. It's a great hook. You're gonna get people start your video off strong.
Nick Clason (19:53):
All right? The third and final one, another I wanna look at is how can we stir up one another? How do we stir up one another toward love and good deeds? Um, you could give them a challenge to think about this. This is what scripture has to say about that. Um, what about, um, toward good deed, you could give them, give them challenges. You could ask 'em to pass along something maybe on like in like a Facebook group, like post a picture of you paying it forward and you do that whole thing at Starbucks line repay for the person behind you, or whatever the case may be. Um, but that just gives a little bit of social proof and a little bit of like camaraderie, like, Hey, we're all in this thing together. And, and better yet, right? Like, you can try to do all that and facilitate all that through social media, but if you can get your pastor from the stage to push that and say, Hey, this week we're all gonna pay it forward.
Nick Clason (20:40):
And then on social media, you're, you're posting, Hey, post a picture of you paying it forward, or, you know, something like, like that. Um, or you get a little, a TikTok video of, of you paying it forward. You have someone just in the passenger seat taking a video of you doing it or someone in your church doing it. And, and you can find a way to grab that and curate that and have them send it to you. Then you can post that and celebrate that. Remember what gets celebrated gets repeated. And so if these are some of the things that you want to do in your church, uh, capture that on video and sell, get that out and celebrate that. Again, we're in this unique time where all the four major players in social media, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, are all in right now, all in on short form video content.
Nick Clason (21:22):
And so for the first time ever, you do not have to create custom content for all four of those things. You can create one video that works for all four, and I have the, the framework to help you create that, post that and repurpose that to those different platforms. Again, Lincoln Bio, how you can get that free ebook or the YouTube video, check that out. Let me give you, um, three short form video hacks that, um, were noticing for 2023 as we're moving ahead. So hack number one is SEO does matter. If you look at TikTok now, especially, they are trying to use it more like a search engine. So just like YouTube was very much like how to this, how to, that. Now TikTok is moving that direction. So think about your videos that way. And so be using things like captions on screen, be using things like, um, hashtags, and then also be thinking about the actual caption that you are writing as you're getting ready to post your, um, your TikTok.
Nick Clason (22:20):
So try to think of search engine type optimization type of words. Another short form video hack you want is you wanna have a good hook, something that's going to stop the scroll. That's why that stay or scroll thing that I explained earlier is such a good hook because it's literally asking people to stay instead of scroll, which is the main behavior that people are doing when they're on social media, especially in a short form video place like reels or shorts or on TikTok. And then finally, um, use cross platform posting, like I said. So go to YouTube shorts. I just started doing that on our own account. Go to reels for both, um, Facebook and Instagram. And then you can duplicate and do dual purposes through your Facebook and Instagram feeds, right? So like, um, your feeds will help, um, if you, if you like, on reels, if you also post a reel to the feed that's going to go out mostly to your church members, to your eia, um, or into your stories, right?
Nick Clason (23:17):
That's another place that's gonna go mostly to your members. If it's on just reels, that's more of a discoverability. So how having people outside your church find you and see you and engage in spiritual practice with you. And so you can, for, again, you can do dual purposes. You can encourage admonish, build up, stir up, um, speak truth to the people in your church, and also offer some of those spiritual guided practices to some people who may not be inside your, your church. It's a unique and amazing opportunity that we have right now as people in 2023 to use the tools, to use the, the means, mediums, and methods of the day to help share the message of hope, to share the gospel with the people of the world, the people in your church, to encourage one another, to build one another up, and to help make them more like Jesus.
Nick Clason (24:09):
So use it. Be a social media user. Don't let it get you. Don't let it suck your soul dry, but use it to share the message of hope of Jesus because he has changed your life and you wanna share that with other people. Hey, thanks again so much for hanging out on this episode. I hope that you found it helpful if you did share it or leave a rating or a review. Both of those things are going to be phenomenally helpful in our indexing and helping get this message out to other people who are, uh, social media managers, church communications specialists, and their churches. Um, we just really want to be a resource to the local church. Um, I believe that the local church is God's Plan A for reaching the world. And so in every way, in everything I can, I wanna just help, um, the, help those people and help, uh, God's people get this message out there to them.
Nick Clason (24:59):
Um, also head to hybridministry.xyz. Um, you can grab that copy of that free ebook link is in the description or on the website there. Um, and, uh, come hang out with me personally on my TikTok. It's @clasonnick, um, c l a s o n n i c K. Um, I'm posting Little Clips, um, from this podcast to my own personal TikTok and I also just try to have some fun on there posting some football content and other fun things that interest me. So just fun place to hang out. Um, and then I also got my YouTube channel, which, um, is gonna be a little hit or miss admittedly. Um, but that is where that, how to post to a TikTok video is going to live. So you can go check that out. That's something that interests you, and we will talk to you all next time. Keep it hybrid people.
27 min
January 19, 2023 Episode 027: Nick's Interview with TikTok superstar, Josh Chasteen
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick sits down with teacher and TikToker, Josh Chasteen. Mr Chasteen went viral on TikTok a year or so ago, in part because of his early adoption of the platform, his silly and relatable content, but he shares the story and all that's happened since that TikTok went crazy viral. In addition he shares his view and vantage point of what it's like being on TikTok as a grown adult and teacher and connecting and bulding relational inroads with his students.
SHOWNOTES
FREE EBook "Have I already Ruined my TikTok account?" https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
Check out the YouTube Video for that:
https://youtu.be/oxBn-p9O-eg
Follow Josh on TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@mr_chasteen101
Follow Nick on TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
For All things Hybrid Ministry
http://www.hybridministry.xyz
TIMECODES
00:00-02:23 Intro
02:23-09:44 How it all Started with Mr Chasteen
09:44-15:00 The TikTok that changed everything
15:00-18:03 What do your family members think of all this craziness?
18:03-22:04 How does TikTok allow you to connect with students for ministry and relationships?
22:04-26:35 The death of curation and content
26:35-27:55 What's the funniest or most fun you've had on TikTok?
27:55-29:47 As a teacher, what's one piece of advice you'd give to pastors or ministry leaders?
29:47-31:26 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I'm your host, Nick Clason. And hey, if you have not already, make sure that you jump into the show notes or head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz to grab your free ebook for how to know if you have already ruined your TikTok account. It is your guide, complete guide from start to finish on how to post a TikTok and how to start flooding your social media with this short form of vertical video content. Short form, vertical video content is here to stay. It is the trend for 2023, and it gives churches and ministries and pastors a significant advantage because you are already creating content within the normal rhythm and scope of your week. So repurpose some of that content. Use it on social media. Literally every single platform, TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook and YouTube has introduced shorts.
Nick Clason (01:09):
They're all out there begging for this type of content to be on their platform, so don't miss that opportunity. I know specifically in my own context, we just started posting to YouTube shorts and just about every single video has over a thousand views. I think. Not a lot of people are out there using that platform. So we already have like 17, 18 subscribers from posting for four days so far. So it's a pretty unprecedented time. Every platform is in a little bit of a different place in their life cycle. Um, and so go grab that ebook so that you have the resources that you need to make that happen. In today's show, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to introduce you to someone who got on TikTok early, um, and had a, uh, uh, TikTok go completely bonkers viral. He has a crazy story to tell you. It's my friend, uh, Josh Chasteen. Him and I are actually friends from college. He was in my wedding, I was in his wedding. Um, but you may have actually seen him on TikTok if you're on there at all. He's a teacher, he does all kinds of fun teacher type stuff. So I'm excited to bring you this interview and conversation today with my friend Josh. Well, I'm here. Josh. Josh, thanks so much for joining me. How you doing today, bro?
Josh Chasteen (02:30):
Doing good, man. Just got done with basketball practice and, uh, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Nick Clason (02:36):
Yeah, yeah, man. So glad to have you. Good to reconnect too. Um, you know it, I was just talking to you offline for a second about how we, uh, or how I was making this, this ebook, um, and I logged on to grab a screenshot and it was your, like, one of your tos that popped up, and as soon as I saw that I was like, oh, yeah, Josh has this incredible TikTok story. So would you mind just walking us through what happened to you? It was about a year ago at this time, or maybe a little longer. Like what happened? How did it go viral? Like all this crazy stuff, like let us know.
Josh Chasteen (03:11):
Yeah. Well, things really got crazy a year ago, but it actually like dates back to 2019. So like fall of 2019, um, I hear about TikTok sounds fun, people doing dances. I'd never seen it. And so, um, I'm a junior high health teacher. I had six classes throughout the day. And so what I did like, and I just kinda like to do this random stuff where I kind of talk to kids about what's going on before we actually get into like, you know, stuff we're supposed to be doing in class. And so mm-hmm. , I was like, I spent the first five minutes of every bell like just asking them like, Hey, tell me about this TikTok app, you know? And so we're like talking through it. Every bells kind of telling me a little bit about what it is. And, um, so by the end of the day, you know, the kids were kinda like, you should get a TikTok.
Josh Chasteen (03:56):
And so we kind of came up with this plan, like, okay, well how about like, what if every Tuesday I did like TikTok Tuesday, where um, I either do a TikTok with like a group of students or another teacher or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, that's awesome. And so it was like, okay, whatever, you know, day or two goes by. And I'm like, I don't really think about it again. But there was like these, um, two girls that would like come by every day during lunch and they'd be like, Hey, you ready to start your TikTok? We'll help you do it. like, no, go away. I don't wanna do this right now. . And then they just kept coming back and finally I was like, okay, come here. Let's, let's do this. So they downloaded the app on my phone. I'd still never seen a TikTok at this point.
Josh Chasteen (04:32):
Um, and they're like, okay, well let's film one. I'm like, well, what do you do? They're like, well, I don't know, like, what's your favorite song? I'm like, uh, I mean, yeah, by Usher, you know, that's like the ultimate hype song . And so they're like, okay. So they're like, all right, we're just gonna film you doing, I teach health. So they're like, we're just gonna film you doing like the day in life of like a health teacher just do like whatever. So we're doing this like off the wall stuff and we're putting it to Usher Usher's. Yeah. And so they post it. I'm like, okay, cool. Well, everybody, like throughout school that day is just going insane. They're like, Hey, we saw your TikTok, saw you on TikTok. And um, you know, like, so I have had, you know, thousands of students throughout the year mm-hmm. .
Josh Chasteen (05:14):
And so at this time, this is 2019, there's no teachers on TikTok, you know, I'm like the pioneer of teacher TikTok apparently. Yeah. So there's no teachers on there. So like, first of all, like all the students in the school district, you know, like we have about 450 kids per grade. So all the kids at the junior high and the high school, you know, are getting on this. And so it's got a couple thousand views and they're like, you have, TikTok has a couple thousand views. I'm like, is that a lot? Like, I don't really know . And they're like, you have like a thousand followers. I'm like, once again, is that a lot? That doesn't seem like a lot to me. They're like, no, you, that really is. So I'm like, guy,
Nick Clason (05:45):
And this is from that very first one. This
Josh Chasteen (05:47):
Is just the first one. It was like that first day, you know? So I was like, okay. So I like went home that day or maybe the next day and I'm like, let's see what talk's about, I had never even opened it myself. So I'm just like scrolling through and I'm hooked. Like TikTok is like the most addicting thing ever. You can just get stuck like scrolling and it's never ending. And so this is me, I'm just watching this stuff and I'm like, this is pretty funny. And I'm like, I, I think I could like put some of this, these like trending things. I keep seeing these common things, which I'm like, oh, this is like a trend. I'm like, I could put like a teacher spin to this. So I did a couple of those and it was probably like my, I don't know, third or fourth one, um, that like really like blew up.
Josh Chasteen (06:27):
Like I just, they kept getting bigger and I'm getting thousands and thousands of views. Um, there was one that I did about like getting out of a te like canceling a test. And that one got, you know, I don't know how many views it got. It wasn't quite a million, but then I did one that was like, when your principal catches you making tos and it was like me and these two students, we were just filming it and it was like us doing like this at the time, you know, it was like this TikTok, you know, this was like the thing. So we were doing it and then like I stopped it and then I wanted the next clip to be like when this beat dropped like my principal looking at us through the window, like the classroom window. And so my principal, he's very stoic, like just looks like he's always angry, you know?
Josh Chasteen (07:12):
And so he had just come out from bus studios. The end of the day I'm like, I gotta get this like second shot of him looking in the window through my classroom door. And he did not seem like he was in the mood, but I was like, Hey, can I bother you for a second? I just want you to look through the window. I'm just gonna film it and then I just want you to give me your normal face. All you gotta do is look through the window. So he does it. And then, uh, it's great. I post it. The thing went insane. Like it had 50,000 views within like the first two hours. I'm getting all these followers. And uh, people thought it was hilarious. Um, and so it was like crazy. It was like really messing with my mind, you know? Cause I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got all this pressure now I've got this video with a million views.
Josh Chasteen (07:51):
I don't even know how to work the app. Like I still have like students filming it for me. Um, and so I'm like, you know what? I remember waking up one Saturday morning. I'm like, this is too much. It's stressing me out cuz now I have this pressure, like I gotta film more stuff. Um, but the kids were obviously loving it and I just, I'm like, I woke up in the morning, I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. And I get on Instagram and Instagram I had it set up where if you get messages from people that you don't know, it doesn't like notify me. But I like just saw that I had all these messages and I open up Instagram and it's like, bars, stool sports. We wanna partner with you, we want a licensing deal with this. And it was like all these other random companies that were reaching out to me and I was like, what in the heck?
Josh Chasteen (08:32):
This is insane. And so so they found your TikTok and went and and messaged you on Instagram? Yeah, they were messaging me on, uh, on Instagram. Yeah. Cause my Instagram was connected with it. And so I was like, well I don't know, maybe I can keep this going for a little bit, you know? And, uh, . So I, I don't know, I just kept posting stuff and um, would kind of like see what the common trends were and put a, a teacher spin on it. And um, so I signed like a licensing deal on a couple different tos where it was like, and that kind of gave me more notoriety. Like Barsol, Barsol Sports had one where I canceled a test and it was like they had all the rights to it and there was like no money in it, but it was like it was on their Snapchat and all this stuff.
Josh Chasteen (09:12):
And so it just like started blown up. So I got to like 50,000 followers Yeah. On TikTok. And then Covid Hits and all these other teachers get on TikTok now the market's saturated. Mm-hmm. , I got nothing to film cuz I'm not in school. I don't have my students there giving me ideas and filming for me. And I don't want my wife to be like, you know, Hey will you film this? She doesn't wanna sit there and be like, you know, so you know Andy, so she's like not super into it. So like I kind of went like stagnant there for a while and I don't know, we get back into school in 2020 and I'm like posting some stuff here and there, but it's just kind of like a rough year. Um, you know, cuz it's like we're wearing masks and we're doing different things and the kids were kind of down.
Josh Chasteen (09:55):
And so we were behind cuz we had like been shut down periodically at random dates. So we were like not on schedule. So we had this like test that we were gonna take. It's the hardest test of the year. There was no way my kids were gonna be ready for it. I was not gonna give 'em the test, but I was like trying to make 'em sweat it a little bit. I was like, well maybe I gotta like post something on TikTok. If a pro sports team comments, it'll get you guys out of the test. Like I said, I was not giving it to him, but I had 50,000 followers. I was confident one pro sports team would comment. So, um, I'm like, Hey, let's do this. You know, whatever. Well it's like Tuesday of the week of break the bell rings to go from homeroom to First Bell.
Josh Chasteen (10:30):
I'm like, oh crap, I forgot I was going to, um, post this TikTok, I gotta do it today if I'm gonna do it. So I like pull out my phone in between the bells, put it up there, put jingle bells to it. It's an eight second video. It's just me looking at the camera. I don't say anything. I post the little caption. If a pro sports team comments, then I'll let my students get out of the test. Posted it by fourth Bell. The Detroit Lions had commented, so everybody was rejoicing. I'm like, phew, I don't have to like find another reason to get 'em out of the test . And then by the end of the day, like, you know, I think it'd gotten up to like a million views. Um, the Dallas Mavericks had commented the Seattle Mariners, whatever it was cool. Well, the Lions thing, like were te they were terrible last year, which shout out to the Detroit Lions.
Josh Chasteen (11:14):
They're in playoff contention. They're doing awesome. Dan Camp was doing great , but um, they really got the algorithm going. I think this is really, really sparked it. All of this was like timing things. Mm-hmm. . Um, I posted another TikTok like right around that time, um, about, um, like it's one that I post every December about how kids put off like doing homework until the end of a semester. So I posted that one right after I posted this one. And so they were kind of like working with each other. Um, but the one about getting out of a test, um, the lions were the first to comment. And so that was the one that was at, at the top. And so everybody's just bashing the lions, like he said, a pro sports team, not you guys. The lions suck, you know? So the lions are just getting absolutely obliterated in the comment section because it's like a pro sports team, not the Detroit Lions, but that like sparked the algorithm I'm confident of.
Josh Chasteen (12:08):
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I mean, and so we're talking millions and millions of views and so now it's popping up on all these other like professional sports teams pages and they're commenting. And I remember being, it was like probably the next night I was at a friend's house. We had a little get together like for Christmas mm-hmm. and uh, I'm like pulling this up. I'm like, whoa, pizza hu commented. I'm like, the NFL just commented. ESPN just commented. I'm like going nuts. And everybody's like, what? You know, we don't know about TikTok. I'm like, this is insane. Everybody's commenting. And so it was up to like 44 million views or whatever like by the weekend. Um, and then it was like everything I was posting was like gold. Like these kids were like, it was the last daybreak. They're like, Hey, can we post a TikTok with you?
Josh Chasteen (12:45):
I'm like, the bell's gonna ring in two minutes. Okay, let's do this and we'll put it to a trending sound. 11 million views. Yeah. Like it was just, everything I was posting was insane. And so it became a whirlwind, like all these local news stations are like interviewing me. ESPN, a producer at ESPN interviewed me is like, we wanna have you live on Sports Center on Saturday. I'm like, is this legit? Like, this doesn't seem real. Um, I get, and I felt like it was just for the dumbest thing. It was an eight second video with me not talking. And so, you know, the Detroit Lions had me up to a game. I was on the field, um, during the Lions Packers game. It was funny. I'm on the field and they're like, Hey, uh, go out in between the quarter, stand in the end zone.
Josh Chasteen (13:24):
We're gonna get a picture of you in the end zone. And um, the Detroit, like their comment was roll out the TV cart. And so I filmed another TikTok where I'm rolling out this big 80 inch tv cuz I'm like, I wanna like let people know the kids got out of a test. The lions commented, let's make a video in response to that about the TV cart. So I emailed all the teachers in the school. I'm like, does anybody have a TV cart? Like one of those old school one, nobody had one except our STEM teacher had an 80 inch flat screen tv. I'm like, this will work. Well, I rolled that out and that blew things up too because people are like, that's a TV cart nowadays, like that 80 inch flat screen. And so, and you're like, no, not really. We don't even have beef .
Josh Chasteen (14:03):
Yeah. So they, uh, they had me up to a game. And so anyway, uh, they had me out on the field in between quarters and um, they said they just wanted to take a picture while they like had me up on the jumbotron, they showed the ESPN clip, they rolled out an old school TV cart like the lions mascot did. And they like gave me like a thousand dollars check, you know? So I'm like, oh my gosh, this is insane. So it was crazy. Like all of these things that happened, like Papa John's is like, we wanna sponsor a pizza party for your students. Pizza Hut sponsored a pizza party for like, my staff. Um, like Instacart just sent like a ton of snacks for all of our students. Like, I mean, it was insane. All of these like little partnerships and all these brands were getting involved and yeah. Uh, I think like 150 to 200 different like brands or, you know, verified creators commented and, you know, even like Luke Combs and Paul Abdul and all these people got involved. So it was insane.
Nick Clason (15:00):
Yeah, man. Yeah. Well I think like, there's a lot in there, but, uh, like you saying you got on in 2019 when it was like the wild, wild West and it was like, yeah, you could go viral in a second. Like, now, one of the disadvantages I would say of TikTok is a, it's becoming a much more saturated market. 2020 pushed a lot of people to it. Mm-hmm. . Um, and so now like you really do have to like, put in a lot of work, you know, to grow, um, on TikTok. And so, you know, whoever's listening, whatever, like you still do it. Um, but every, every social media is going that direction. And it's actually interesting cuz YouTube is trying to replicate it. And I just looked at our YouTube analytics. Today's, I'm recording this on January 2nd. I started posting yesterday. Our church just changed their name yesterday.
Nick Clason (15:48):
So I've been holding off on YouTube to, to align it up with the name change. And so I just started posting shorts and the first three all went up over a thousand. Wow. Um, and I think, so it's like every, every social media is like going all in on these like short form things. But, you know, TikTok is, it, it takes work now. And so you say all that. Um, I'm just curious like what , you know, I know your wife, but people listening don't, like, what's, what's your wife thinking through all of this? Like, is she like rolling her eyes? Like you, this is ridiculous that you're getting all this notoriety? Or does she think it's fun? Like what's the, what's her sort of like, uh, take on the whole thing?
Josh Chasteen (16:26):
Yeah, probably a combination of both. I mean, I think that is fun. Like everywhere we go, you know, people would say something to her. She had friends from California that are messaging her like, this is crazy. Like, I know somebody famous now and she's like, well, you don't know anybody famous. You know me, who's like married to this guy. And you know, anywhere we went, like, we would go out to eat at Red Robin and the hostess is like, Hey, I see you on TikTok. You know, people were always coming up and it was like really just kind of like celebrity status and, um, the thing that she didn't love. So I remember one night we're eating dinner. This is like the week that everything's getting crazy. There's a ring on the doorbell, it's, I don't know, probably seven o'clock at night. And then she comes in, she's like, Hey, um, Fox News is outside. I was like, what? I was like, I'm in my pajamas, like eating dinner.
Nick Clason (17:12):
How did they
Josh Chasteen (17:13):
Even fighting me? I, that's a great question. And I'm like, are you serious? And I like, go up and there's this dude out there in a suit. I was like, Hey. He's like, Hey, we're running this story tonight. Like, uh, that's awesome. Is it cool if we like interview you? I'm like, well, can I like go throw on some pants and like ? It was just insane. And so she was like bothered by that. Like, now these people are coming to our house. And um, so actually the public relations lady in our school district actually like, took on a lot of the stuff for me. She's like, I will field all these calls and stuff for you. I was like, okay, cool, thank you. Nice, nice. So, um, yeah, but it was, that was pretty funny and I don't know, I mean, it's died down. Like I think that Yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, but in that time it was just a little chaotic, uh, in . I don't know. I think she likes it, but at the same time she's just like, Hey, I'm my own person too, you know?
Nick Clason (18:02):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, yeah. I'm not just your wife. Yeah.
Josh Chasteen (18:05):
And
Nick Clason (18:05):
Exactly the other celebrity guy's wife. Yeah. I get that. So, shifting gears a little bit, Josh, like w I remember when you, because like, so I'm in ministry and you're a believer, like you, you love and follow Jesus. And I mean, I was youth pastor and you were one of my volunteers at the first church I worked at. And so, um, but, but even before I, I worked there. I remember when we were in college together, you told me, um, you felt called to like ministry or called to like reach in the next generation. Um, but you told me like I w I feel called to do this in the avenue of like, education through being a teacher because just the amount of exposure and the, the sheer volume and number of students that I'm gonna have an opportunity to reach is greater than just an average like youth pastor. And I just remember you saying that. And so as, as I'm thinking about this from a connecting with students standpoint, talk a little bit about how your TikTok account and presence has allowed you to, um, connect with different students, um, make relational inroads and stuff like that.
Josh Chasteen (19:14):
Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of things there. I mean, I guess the first thing I would say is like, you know, TikTok is not this like, you know, magic potion. If you just get on TikTok, you're gonna have all the students that are, you know? Yeah. So I mean, my big thing is building relationships. Like, um, one of the things, you know, you and I both know Doug Franklin, uh, well mm-hmm. , one of the things he said a couple years ago that I never forget is like, if you want to connect with any student, talk to them about their favorite topic in every student has the same favorite topic. Do you know what it is? Themselves.
Josh Chasteen (19:47):
Themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, I love just like talking to students and like getting to know, Hey, what'd you, this is what I do every class bell. Like, or every, like Monday I spend the first couple minutes of every Monday's class, Hey, what'd you guys do this weekend? Somebody raise your hand. Tell me what you did on Friday. Yeah. What are you guys doing this weekend? You know? And then like gathering information and then it's like I get to know students and then talking about that, Hey, you're really into this. How's this been going? How's that? And like the kids, like, now that I've been in this for a while, like really remember that mm-hmm. and it's like, um, you know, I get letters and stuff written back and things where it's like, you know, you really like cared about every student. And it's just like, I don't know that I really went above and beyond other than just like getting to know them.
Josh Chasteen (20:29):
And I think that like in my field, in, in any field, even youth ministry, it's easy to like, Hey, here's the tasks I have to do. I have to do this, this, this, this. Mm-hmm. . And we miss like, the whole relational aspect in it. And it's really about like people and like loving people and getting to know them. And so, um, so first of all, I think that that's like a strong suit of mine is just being able to connect with kids. The TikTok thing has helped, but I could see how it could also hinder, there's this word out there that kids use cringe. Okay. So , you, uh, there's this tough balance where it's like, yeah, I want to put stuff out there that's funny, but I don't want to be cringey. And it's really hard. Yeah. Um, so like, that's why I'm like, you gotta be yourself.
Josh Chasteen (21:12):
Like, that's the main thing. Like when I try to do, like, see things that are funny that other people do and I do it, it comes across as cringey. So like, you have to be authentic. Like if you're funny, be funny. If you're not funny, don't try to be funny, you know? I don't know. That's good. So, um, there's that. And I think that, uh, for the most part I've stayed out of it. And the ones, the videos that have done really well are like, where I'm like just looking at a camera and I have a caption that's like trying to get people to respond to stuff. Mm-hmm. or like, I am being like overly nerdy where it's like, I'm not trying to be cool, I'm just Yeah. Being stupid. And that's like the point of the video. Yeah. So, um, you know, I don't know, I'm trying to remember like what your original question was. Like how do you use TikTok to reach more people? Um, you know, I think that, I don't think it's like the number one thing, but I think it's supplemental to like what's already being done. Mm-hmm. .
Nick Clason (22:04):
No, that's good. I mean, like, really the whole premise of, of this podcast for me is like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of like, digital opportunities for us, you know? Um, and I think that at least some of the ministries I've been in, especially where I came from, like, uh, I, when I moved there, COVID was happening mm-hmm. immediately. And so as we were kind of finding our way out of it, we had pivoted pretty hard into a really like, big, like, digital strategy. And so as, as things were starting to sort of settle down, things were starting to come back, there was this really big argument between like in person or digital and it was pivoted against itself. Like it's either all in person or it's either all digital. And I just think that there's, there's more nuance to it, and it, that's where the idea of this hybrid comes in because you're a real teacher with real human students and real human relationships.
Nick Clason (22:56):
So you have that already going. And I think most people listening to this, if you're a ministry leader of some sort, like you're gonna have that with your students or your congregation or whatever, but you can still kind of show up, um, and use some of these other tools to, to be present, you know? And yeah. And you're, as a teacher, it's, it's different than, you know, like someone who's in in ministry. Cause you're trying to like, actually like share the message of Jesus and stuff like that. You're probably gonna get in trouble for things like that, you know, but, but because you, uh, have that kind of presence, I think it probably, like you said, as fun, you got students who are like, let's do this thing. Like let's download it. And I know I've had experiences where, like I post a lot of the tos on my ministry account, but I'll have, I'll have students who are like, we need to do this trend.
Nick Clason (23:42):
And I'm like, all right, do like, let's do it right now. Like, let's make it happen. Um, and I told them, I remember last year I told them I thought it was stupid and I told 'em all the reasons why it wasn't gonna work, but then by that night they're both like, screenshotting me, like our account. They're like, this is the number one video on our TikTok account because like, they just know better than I'm going to know. You know? Like, yeah. And so that's, I think that's another principle too in your story is like lean into what, like the knowledge that students have, like use them, get them on screen if it, if you're like, allowed to insurance wise and whatever and whatnot. And so, um, that's just, that's sort of the, the thing I love about, like your story is that you are doing this in a mini, like, not ministry, not for ministry, right. But like, it helps sort of aid in their relationships and stuff that, that are going on, um, with you being a teacher, people seeing you, you know, when they're on the bus or at home or, you know, whatever the case might be. Yeah. So
Josh Chasteen (24:41):
It's pretty cool. And I would say too, like, you know, you talked about how it like takes some work and stuff like that. I kind of prided myself on like, I'm not putting a lot of effort into this. Like yeah, I don't own a ring light, I have no editing apps. Um, yeah, I filmed everything on an iPhone seven up until like, the one went insane last year. And then like my camera kind of went out and I actually, I did my e s ESPN interview on FaceTime on my iPhone seven. Uh, but I made a little bit of money, so I'm like, all right, I'll buy a new phone, put it into this. So up until then, I mean, I, I, and even still I, um, don't really have a lot of this stuff, but all that to say is there was like a brief moment, like when I officially blew up, or like first initially is what I meant to say initially blew up that I was like, okay, I gotta keep trying to pump out content and do all this stuff. And it was like, those videos always did really poorly when I tried really hard mm-hmm. . But it's like, when I'm just me and doing things that I love and make videos that are fun to me to make, then those are usually the ones that do well. I think it translates.
Nick Clason (25:40):
No, that's, that's really good feedback too, right? Like, you have almo like to whoever's listening, you have all the tools probably already in your pocket. You don't have to go get a bunch of gear, you don't have to go learn a bunch of new skills. And it, as TikTok has gotten bigger, like there, it has more and more power now too. You know, you can edit more, you can add more effects, you can do all sort of stuff. And so you don't have to get crazy. And that's, that's a thing. I think social media's really just like leveling the playing field. It's like, Hey, everything's about video. You can post, hold up a video and talk directly into it. Do a funny thing, do a trend, and boom, all of a sudden like you're, you're there. Like, you don't have to learn a new skill.
Nick Clason (26:19):
You don't have to go to school for graphic design. You know, I even, I even think about when you and I went to college together, I wonder how many of those people that have like, video degrees or graphic design degrees, like how much of that's like obsolete now, you know, because Right. So many, so many tools are out there. So, alright. So last thing just real fast, like what's the funniest, uh, TikTok or what's like the one that you're like the most proud of or one that you're like, this was, this was the most fun for me to do, or most fun for me to film? Or funniest trend or what's, what's such like one TikTok that you've done that you're like, this is my favorite and here's why.
Josh Chasteen (26:55):
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I think , I don't know, there's so many. Um, it's usually the ones where I get a lot of people involved. Like, so there was one that we did where it was like, um, I don't even remember what the song is, but it's like you show like somebody's yearbook picture and then you show them now mm-hmm. . And so we did one of those with, um, our staff, like maybe that was last year. Like our teaching staff probably like six or seven teachers. Uh, some of my good friends. And so it was like I had 'em bring in their yearbook, I'd show their picture and then I'd show them now. And so, but it's just like fun because it's like the more people that are involved, the more fun it is. Yeah. And so it's kind of one of those, I'm like, I don't even care if this like, ends up being like viral or whatever. Yeah. It's like I had fun making it and actually that one did pretty well cuz I think it got like half a million views or something like that. But, um, so I don't know what, yeah. Like I said, the ones where I'm involving a lot more are usually the better.
Nick Clason (27:53):
Yeah. That's fun. All right, last thing, um, I didn't prep you for this, so, so sorry. But as, as a teacher, um, and someone who interacts with the next generation every single day, what's one thing that you wish, like pastors churches or youth pastors knew about teenagers or about the next generation? Like what's just one thing you're like, Hey, I wish you all knew this, or I wish you'd stop doing this, or I wish, like, I wish you knew this about what I see from my unique perspective as someone not in like a church or ministry related field.
Josh Chasteen (28:25):
Yeah, I think that, uh, this generation like is pretty good at like telling when people are being real and when people aren't mm-hmm. mm-hmm. . So I think, you know, just, uh, be real. Um, but also I would say, you know, I kinda already mentioned this earlier, like put a big emphasis on getting to know students because there's just a lot of hurt. Like, it's just amazing to me the amount of hurt that's out there. Like a lot of like, just junk that kids are going through. They're going through things that I've never could even imagine going through, but you don't know that on the surface. And so it's kind of like really, um, building those bridges and like tearing down walls, like getting to know them, um mm-hmm. where like some of this stuff starts coming out and then, I don't know, there, there's so many kids out there that just need like a trusting, caring adult in their life. And uh, and it's not a ton of work to like make that happen. I mean, it is work cuz relationships take time, but, um, yeah, I mean, just get to know kids.
Nick Clason (29:24):
Yeah. That's good man. That's good. Yeah. All right, bro, well that is it. That's all I got unless there's anything else that you wanna say. Um, I appreciate your time and, uh, thanks for hopping on, bro.
Josh Chasteen (29:35):
Yeah. Don't get too addicted to TikTok. That's the only thing I would say. Set, set some screen limits or else you'll go down a bad rabbit hole, but that's it.
If you're there all day. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But no, thanks for having me. This is fun.
Nick Clason (29:46):
Well, hey, I hope you found that interesting and fun and just kind of an opportunity to kinda look and see, um, at what it is like to, uh, have a tweet or not tweet a TikTok, kind of go crazy and kind of go viral. So obviously that's not necessarily what we're all, you know, maybe like vying for or looking for, but it is, uh, it's a crazy story. And, um, more than that, I think what Josh's message was about, like, don't, don't just, you know, settle in for all the technology, but really get to know people. I think that's the heartbeat of most of us as ministry leaders, pastors, and so I, I just hope that you find that conversation helpful, useful, encouraging. Uh, hey, if you have not, again, like I said at the top of the show, go grab that ebook.
Nick Clason (30:31):
The link is in the show notes. I also have a complete video guide to that, if that's something that's helpful, uh, for you to watch, uh, to, to go through posting your first TikTok. And also if you found this helpful or if you grab that book and you find it helpful, share it with a friend. Um, leave a rating or a review. Uh, you can do everything and get all the show notes and transcripts and everything that you need to find over http://www.hybridministry.xyz. You can come hang out with me on YouTube or TikTok link to both of those in the show notes. And until next time, we'll talk to you all later. Bye.
32 min
January 12, 2023 Episode 026: Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account? A Complete Guide to Posting a TikTok from Start to Finish
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick walks through the step-by-step and page by page menu options for posting a TikTok. Whether you're versed in this or this is your first time opening the app, this guide will take you from start to finish! And Nick shares some tips on what and how to share to other social media platforms.
This also comes with a complete digital downloadable guide: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
Or check out the complete YouTube Video on it: https://youtu.be/oxBn-p9O-eg
As always, every episode available with FREE transcripts at: http://www.hybridministry.xyz
And hang with Nick on TikTok at: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
FREE Checklist: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/free-social-media-checklist
TIMECODES
TIMECODES
00:00-00:53 – Intro
00:53-03:11 - Why TikTok, Reels and Short Form Video?
03:11-03:47- - Logging Into TikTok for the First Time
03:47-05:56 - Video Menu Options
05:56-07:03 - Profile Menu Options
07:03-12:07 - Creating a Video
12:07-17:21 - Editing the Video
17:21-19:34 - Time to Post it!
19:34-20:46 - Make sure you do this ONE THING before posting to other platforms
20:46- - Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
So have I already ruined my TikTok account? Here's a guide on how to post TikTok from start to finish. Hey everyone, my name is Nick Clason. I am the host of the Hybrid Ministry podcast, and this is a little special YouTube slash podcast episode I'm excited to bring to you on the framework for posting a TikTok in 2023. Now, there's a lot of things out there about like SEO and keywords and strategies and tips and hacks, and in fact, I actually have a checklist that I have pre created for all social media, just a basic like, uh, have you done this? Have you done that for posting to social media at your church? You can get the description or you can get the link for that in the description, the video down below, uh, or in the show notes, hybrid ministry.xyz. But why TikTok? Like why of all the platforms that we have, why TikTok?
Nick Clason (01:01):
And here's why. Every platform right now, Facebook, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, they are all going after this short form video content. It's like lightning in a bottle. It's so easy to go viral. Um, and when I say easy, it's like you post the dumbest thing and it goes viral, but then you spend a lot of time and effort and energy on something that you think is amazing and it gets like 14 views. And so the reality is it's this very finicky, very like, hard to like land what is going to go viral, but when you see other social medias copying another social platform's kind of bread and butter, it's worth noting and it's worth, uh, going all in on. And so when every single major social platform is copying TikTok in their, uh, their, their for you sort of algorithm, you need to make that a priority.
Nick Clason (02:00):
It's, I would liken it to win Instagram stole stories from Snapchat, and now TikTok is actually stealing B reels, uh, post, now they call it the now feature in TikTok. So, uh, if you've never logged into TikTok, uh, or you have, and you know, you should, you've heard me talk about the importance of short form video, but you, you open it and it's overwhelming. You don't know what to do or you think you know what to do, but then you get kind of turned around editing videos or whatever and whatnot. This is meant to be a, uh, a thorough guide to every feature available in TikTok. Now, some caveats, I've really only been using TikTok for about three to six months now. Um, I too is just as much of a novice when I opened it. They're constantly evolving and changing, and I'm not even a hundred percent sure if I know all the features. I tried to comb through each and every feature as I was in preparation for this video, but there are several I haven't even used. And so
Nick Clason (02:59):
I just wanna be clear with that. Like, uh, I'm still at a very basic level, and so if, if I can do it, what we're doing in our church, you too can, can get up some very basic sort of content. So when you log into TikTok for the very first time, a video is probably going to start blaring at you at full volume. Okay? That can be a little bit disconcerting and throw you off. You're a rocker because most other platforms keep videos muted. TikTok for whatever reason is the opposite, so turn your volume all the way down, or if you just tap the screen, the video, whatever video they play, um, it'll pause it. Now, uh, if you're getting on TikTok for the first time and they're feeding you things that you don't wanna see, they're not, you're not interested in, hold that video down and just click, not interested.
Nick Clason (03:43):
Do that a few times and you're gonna teach the algorithm what you want to see. So when you, uh, are sitting there looking at a video, video that TikTok fed to you, you have, uh, several different video menu options. And so I want to, uh, run through what those are. The first one is you can, on the right hand side of your screen, you can follow the creator. Uh, that little plus sign right there will give you a, uh, follow, um, or not follow kind of option. Now, if you look at the very, very top of your screen, you're going to be looking at either following or for you, you're either in your following algorithm, all the people that you're following, or you're in your for U algorithm. TikTok will almost naturally bring you to the for U algorithm. So just be aware of that.
Nick Clason (04:34):
Even when you click follow the people, the videos that you're seeing may not be coming from followers. That's, again, that's one of the things that makes this algorithm unique. Um, you can, like the video, that's the heart. You can comment on it, you can save it. That's a little save, uh, little bookmark looking icon there. You can share it. That's the arrow out. You can send it to people within the TikTok app. You can, you can download the video and save it, or you can copy a link and send it. Uh, and then the bottom, uh, icon there, a little round one kinda looks like a, a record turning. That's the sound, that's the audio that is being used. Could be like an original audio from the creator, or it could be like a sound or a trend or something like that. All of that is to you.
Nick Clason (05:15):
On the right hand side of the screen at the bottom, you have five menu options. You have your home button and the subcategories for that, like I said, up at the top of the following. And the four you, then you have the, now that's TikTok, s b real copycat. It's almost identical to what Be Real is doing. Uh, you got the plus button there, then very dead center, that's your create button, okay? Then next you have your little envelope, that's your inbox. And for there you get your notifications, dms, likes, follows, et cetera. That's all the things that you, uh, when people interact with your content or your videos. And then finally, the last thing on the very right hand bottom corner, uh, is your profile. That's where you have your videos. Um, once you click on that, you'll see, uh, another kind of menu across the top.
Nick Clason (06:02):
Uh, the left most option is your videos, everything that you've posted kind of on your grid. The next one are your private videos. The next one are your saved videos. Remember that bookmark icon. And personally, I like to use that as a way to save ideas. So if I'm going through TikTok and there's a sound or an idea that I think is fun or interesting that I can use later, I'll save it. That's then where I'll find it. And what I'll personally do is I'll save that on my personal account, and then I will share that video to my ministry account. Then I will switch accounts, log over into my ministry account, go into my dms, and get that video from myself, and then I'll use that, um, either that sound or that idea or that trend or whatever I need from that video, maybe a filter, whatever that I'll use to them post.
Nick Clason (06:46):
Um, moving on on that menu, you got your liked videos. And then finally, um, there at the top, you can edit your profile, your link, all the other necessary and pertinent information there. Okay. Now, how do you, that's just simply viewing a video and kind of navigating through your basic menu items. So how do you then create a video? So the way to create a video is on your home screen. You can tap that plus button, all right? And once you tap that plus button, you're given several options. All right? At the very, very top center, uh, there's the option to add sound. You can add a sound that way by clicking it and searching for a sound. Or like I said, when you see that record player on a video, you can click on that. Um, and once you're, once you click on that, there will be a, it'll pull up all the videos, uh, that have used that sound.
Nick Clason (07:37):
You can click use this sound option. That is personally, I think the easiest way to do that. That's why I like to save those videos and then share them so I don't have to go and try and find those sounds. Again, that's my way of kind of archiving and remembering where those sounds are. Now one thing worth noting, if you're on a personal account, you can use any sound you want. If you are a business account, those are much more limiting. There are ways around it, um, like recording the video and then in post-production in like Adobe Premier Pro or something like that, dubbing that sound over. Then when you post it, it's gonna be technically an original sound. It's not gonna come from the trend sound. Uh, there are pros and cons. Uh, I've talked about this in past podcast episodes. There are pros and cons to, um, personal and business accounts.
Nick Clason (08:23):
Uh, you just gotta choose what matters most to you. I think probably the biggest downside of not doing a business account is your link and bio isn't really a link. It's just typed out and people have to like, then go type it into a browser so they can't click and go to your stuff. That's a pretty big downside, and you don't get as many analytics. Um, you still can see views and likes and those types of things by going to each individual video, but you're not able to see trends. And so once things start getting going for you, you probably do wanna swap over to a business account. Just know that it's gonna limit the sounds that you are able to use as a business account on your TikTok platform. All right, so you've clicked to create video. At the bottom of your screen, you're gonna have this big red record button that is gonna probably feel very familiar to you.
Nick Clason (09:09):
It's gonna look like a camera phone or something like that. Right above that, that red button you have the, you have a thing that says 15 s. That's for 15 seconds to the left of that. If you slide 30, uh, or 60 s I'm sorry, and then slide again, you have three m three minutes, okay? Uh, you can shave the time down after you record. So if you don't know how long it's gonna be and you just want to go the three minutes, then if you don't take that full time, it's not gonna post the full three minutes like black at the end of your video, right? So, uh, just know that going into it, if you're using a sound, like if a sound, you click use sound and it's already loaded at the top of your video there. When you click 15 s or 60 s, um, you switch to that often right below it, it'll say, this sound will only allow you to record for a maximum of seven seconds or something like that.
Nick Clason (09:59):
All right? And so then, you know, oh, I can just stick with the 15 seconds and I don't need all the other stuff. Right? Okay. So, um, to the left of the record button are, is your effects menu. So there, that's where you're gonna get like your green screen, or right now there's a delay mirror effect that's kind of trending on TikTok that's there. Um, things that like rotate through on your head that my TikTok account personally, like I do this thing for football and all the NFL teams rotate through. I have so many views on those, it's ridiculous, but that's what's helping kind of grow my audience. Um, that's where you're gonna get those types of effects. To the right of that is your upload button, okay? That's where you would upload a previously recorded video or photo from your phone, from your camera roll that you already shot outside of the TikTok app, for example.
Nick Clason (10:46):
Um, and so then at the top right you have, uh, the flip button that's just simply to flip your camera forward facing, rear facing beneath that you have, uh, your speed. So you have different speeds, 0.3 x 0.5 x one x, two x, and three x, uh, for recording speeds. Uh, below that you have the retouch option, full disclosure, and never used that thing. It's kinda like a filter thing. Beneath it, you have another filter option. This one I think is more about image, less about the specifics of like a retouch sort of thing. Beneath that, you have your timer. That's where you can like set your phone down and give it like a three second head start, so you can walk away from it and do a dance or whatever the case might be. Um, you have a three second, ten second option. When you do that.
Nick Clason (11:29):
Beneath that you have your q and a option. That's where sometimes you'll see a person's comment on the screen and you can reply with video to the comment. All right? So once you're ready to record, those are all your menu options. Now that we're ready to record, tap that record button. When you wanna start, and when you wanna stop immediately to the right of the button, you have two menu options that are now available. After recording, you have delete, it looks like, kind of like a backspace button. If you want to delete what you recorded, start over, try again. You can do that. There. You also have a red check mark. Um, and that's where you then accept the video. And now you move on into the next sort of editing phase of the, the video. Now, your new menu, once you're into the editing phase, in the top middle of the section, you have your sound.
Nick Clason (12:15):
If you haven't added a sound yet, that's where you can add a sound. Um, if you've already recorded a sound, a video with the sound, that's where you could delete that sound if you no longer want that sound mm-hmm. on the right hand side of the screen, um, you have, you are at the very top. You have your text on screen option, that's where you click that and you can type that out, um, on your left. Then you now have three different menu options, um, from your, from your text editor, right? You have the square with the A around it. If you, if you select that, that will add a border to the text on the screen. So it might be easier to read if you select it. Again, that will put a full background on that. And if you select it, again, it'll add a background, but now it's transparent and if you select it again, it'll go back to your original without any of those effects on it.
Nick Clason (13:04):
Then to the right of that, you have your paragraph alignment, you have center, then left alignment, then right alignment. And then to the right of that, you have your person with a speech. That's where you often get that voiceover effect. That says, um, that, that's used as a hook. A lot of times on videos, uh, if you choose that, it will make that, um, text on screen. It will turn it into, uh, a voiceover. And there, once you select that, you'll be given, uh, different options, different types of sounds to play around with. Um, once you select that, the menus you have are recommended motion creative vocals. Those are categories for the types of sounds, and then sub options within those. Okay? To determine what your text, uh, looks like, um, you have the classic option. You have the typewriter option, the handwriting option, neon option, and the CIF option.
Nick Clason (13:57):
And those. So you got your, your a, your paragraph, your speech, and then to the right of that, that's where you get your text, um, looking options. Okay? And then from there you can select colors and they do swipe from right to left so that you can pick which color you want on, on, on screen there. All right. So when you're done, select, done, pretty self-explanatory. The last thing that you can do then is once that, uh, text is now on the screen, if you select it, it'll pop up three menu options. All right? So you can, uh, text to speech, you can add that feature, or if you already did it, that's where you can change, uh, the voice or whatever the case may be. You can set the duration. How long does that text remain on screen? That's where like if, uh, at a certain sound effect or element or whatever, something pops up, uh, you would drag, you would drag the text to start there or to stop there.
Nick Clason (14:49):
Okay? And then the last thing thing is to edit, to actually like rewrite or, you know, you had a typo to go in there and change that. All right, moving on down beyond the text, you have your sticker options. That's things like your mentions, hashtags, you can add polls, support nonprofit, add a location, ask a question, reply the date, the time, all kinds of things. If you're familiar with Instagram Stories editor, it's very similar to the sticker options that you see on Instagram Stories. I've actually never even seen that menu option until I went to prepare for this video and I was like, oh, I didn't know all this stuff was on here. Um, beneath that, you have effects, okay? And so across the top, once you click effects, you have your trending effects, then you got visual motion effects, transitions, and, uh, split options.
Nick Clason (15:31):
So you can kind of explore different effects, things to add to your video and what, whatever, and whatnot. Right there, beneath that, you have your filters. It's just gonna change the look, feel your video. Beneath that, you have studio, that's where you're actually editing, cutting your video, okay? So if you wanna do something to edit the video, click on the video. It's gonna give you a video bar and a sound bar. If, if you have, uh, like just the, the audio from the video that you recorded, they'll be together. If you have a audio, like a song, those are gonna be two kind of separate things, okay? So if you click on your, your top option, your video option, once you do that, a little menu option down beneath will, will pop up. So you have split, you can change the speed, you can adjust the volume, you can rotate it, and ultimately you can delete it.
Nick Clason (16:20):
Uh, split is a great way. If you have like one big, long thing, um, and you're trying to do a little cuts, you drag to the spot, you split it, and then you delete the rest of the video, then you may add in another video that, that same video, probably do another cut, split delete on the front, delete it on the backside. I hope that makes sense. Um, so then to the right of your video bar option, right? You can click full screen and then there's a plus button, and that's where you can then add that video. Like I was just talking about. If you select the audio, you got your video bar, your, your audio bar, if you select audio, you can add your audio option. Once it's added, you can either replace the sound, adjust the volume, or choose to delete it. You save at the top right and you cancel at the top left.
Nick Clason (17:05):
Moving back out to our editor, um, beneath that you have your captions option A recommend a caption for almost any talking head video on TikTok. That's how, uh, SEO and search is gonna find certain topics. Beneath that, you have your Noise reducer, then your audio effects, and then finally your privacy settings. So once you're done there at the bottom, you then have two options. Bottom of your, your screen on the left, you have the stories option. And then to the right of that, you'll have your next option. Next is where you go to kind of tap to get to your final step before you actually post it. Okay? And so, um, there is where you would type in your caption, different from your captions on screen, right? But your caption of your actual video, the one that kind of like floats up, and then the likes and stuff stuff, follow it.
Nick Clason (17:50):
Um, you would also include your hashtags there. And then to the right of your, uh, caption box is where you would select your cover. If you click on that, you can drag your finger to a certain part of the video. You can also add title and text on top of it. Um, the, the title and text, it should be noted that those don't show up when someone's swiping through and just finding your video, those are mostly seen when someone lands on your profile and you want them to know what the video is. Okay? So those, those could be helpful. Also, if you do have onscreen things different from your, your text option, your title, text options there, like I showed you, um, those will also show, um, if someone land on your profile, they'll just be in a different type of format than, than TikTok has to offer.
Nick Clason (18:36):
Um, if they're, uh, like I said, if they're scrolling past, so they won't display on that screen. Also, there you can tag people, you can add a location, you can add links, and here's what it's available on the links. You have books, minigame Alpha by Titan Breathwork, Buzzfeed Quizzes, Contra Profile, disco Loco, 3d, I R L List with Two Eyes, Quizlet, rotten Tomatoes, stat Muse, and Whisk. Um, never use any of those. So you can check those out. You can then choose, um, who can watch the video, allow comments, allow to, uh, allow, allow Stitch, allow high quality, upload more options, save to device. If you click on the more options, save to device, which I just finally turned off by the way, I couldn't figure out where to get that. That's where you get that. You can select your caption language, um, branded content and ads, and then there's an automatically shared to IG or text ig, ig stories, Snapchat.
Nick Clason (19:30):
And then the last thing is, um, you can either put it in drafts or you can post it. Last thing I'd recommend, if you are uploading this to other places, um, once you upload it, click uh, go back into your profile, click on the three ellipses option, um, click copy link, and then go to your browser on your phone or on your computer, and type in to Google save TikTok without video watermark or save TikTok video without watermark. If you copy and paste that link into there, it will then download you an option from TikTok without the TikTok watermark all over it. Then you can take that same video and you can post it to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube shorts. Um, one thing I've noticed personally, just very anecdotally, is that every time I would post a TikTok, um, and then Instagram with the watermark, Instagram would give me almost no views once I started removing that. Um, we, we've had videos go, you know, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 views because we removed the watermark. Um, I think that the two are kind of competing against each other. Instagram wants to use them, TikTok wants you to use them, so just confuse them and think that they're both being used even though you, you are using both of them. And, uh, they, they just aren't seeing that. Um, and that's just algorithm and kind of AI
Nick Clason (20:46):
Stuff. All right, so, hey, thank you so much for hanging out and getting that guide if, uh, or getting this guide on how to, how to post TikTok, um, on your account. Listen, if you found this helpful, like subscribe, share, rate, review, all the things, check us out, hybridministry.xyz and check out the description for, um, not only the, the social media checklist, but also the checklist on this, um, the written form of this video on how to post a TikTok, download that, put it on your desk, put it above your, your computer so that when you're posting, you have it as a reference. And until next time, we'll talk to you later.
22 min
January 05, 2023 Episode 025: The Ultimate 2023 Social Media Calendar, Strategy and Posting Guidelines
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick sits down and fleshes out a weekly social media posting calendar. How often do you post? What types of content and ideas can you post? How frequently? Where and what? This is your FREE 2023 posting guide!
To gain access to the FREE "Have I already RUINED my TikTok account? - A guide to posting TikToks from start to finish" next week, subscribe to Nick's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
ShowNotes and Transcripts available at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Or come hangout on TikTok at: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
SHOWNOTES
Previous Episodes Mentioned:
TIKTOK POSTING IDEAS
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/023
ROB'S INTERVIEW
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/024
TIMECODES
00:00-01:22 Intro
01:22-02:48 YouTube and Podcast Strategy
02:48-11:33 TikTok, Reels and Shorts Strategy
11:33-15:10 Instagram Feed and Facebook Page Strategy
15:10-16:30 Instagram and Facebook Stories Strategy
16:30-17:42 Facebook Groups Strategy
17:42-18:49 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I am your host, as always, Nick Clason. Excited to be with you. And in today's episode, I wanted to give you your custom 2023 social media framework for your ministry, whatever style ministry you lead. Uh, I am pulling this directly from, um, the ministry that I am a part of. And just so you know, I am a youth pastor, and so it may be a little bit different for you, and you may make a few tweaks based on the area of ministry that you lead or if you're navigating an entire church, uh, social media. But honestly, like, I think, um, some of the things I might say, if you're leading your entire church student minister or your entire church social media, you might think that's a little bit too silly. Can't be whatever.
Nick Clason (00:56):
Um, I'll just encourage you, like, I think people jump on social media to be entertained. And so, um, even if it feels a little bit, uh, student ministry esque, like, I think people are gonna find it fun, especially if you're incorporating your pastor or other, like church people, parishioners members, like, uh, it can be fun. So, uh, hang with me, but here's my recommended 2023 social media strategy for you. All right, so the first thing I would recommend is post all of your sermon content to YouTube. If you don't have a YouTube channel, create one. Um, if you live stream already, just use that. If you're not live streaming, um, and you, and, or you don't wanna pay for the, uh, the equipment that it takes, then I would recommend pre-filing your talks, your message content. You can shave the content down from, you know, typically a sermon's 25 to 45 minutes on the longer end, maybe even longer in some of your cases, if you can shave your message down to somewhere between 12 and 17 minutes, that's the sweet spot for YouTube's videos.
Nick Clason (02:03):
It also lets you have whoever your primary communicator in is speak directly to camera, which is another thing that YouTube is gonna prioritize and promote, um, and make more. You know, uh, he help you index better, uh, in your, uh, in your YouTube search. Um, and so then if you pre film all of your stuff, you can post that to YouTube, um, as well as it gives you the option to rip off just the audio and save your mp3, uh, out as a podcast, which, um, I would a hundred percent recommend your church starting an audio sermon podcast. And that can come from your custom YouTube channel or, uh, uh, shorter form video content, right? For, uh, like the pre-filed thing, all right? Once you have the bedrock of your weekly messages on some sort of rhythm, uh, then from there you're going to be looking at your TikTok, Instagram, Facebook reels, and YouTube shorts strategy.
Nick Clason (03:05):
Here's the thing that's unique. In the past, uh, social media would ding you if you posted something, um, for Instagram on Facebook because they're built differently. Or if you posted something for Twitter on, uh, TikTok, right? Like, they're not, they're not the same social media platforms. However, we now live in a world where every single platform is trying to catch up and keep up with TikTok. And so here, soon I'm going to be releasing a video and an ebook. You can head to the show notes, or you can go to, uh, my YouTube channel, my TikTok, um, or hybrid ministry.xyz to grab a copy of that. I believe that's going to be launching a week from today. When this episode drops, it is your custom how to build a TikTok from scratch 2023 guide. So if you've never started on TikTok yet, uh, create an account, and then this will help you walk step by step through filming, editing, posting all on your phone, uh, so that you can make it, um, you can make it happen from there.
Nick Clason (04:06):
But everything in 2023 is going to be all in on short form video content. Facebook is, Instagram is YouTube, shorts is back, and so is TikTok. So in all of these platforms, you get the unique privilege to be able to record vertical video, short form video content, and post it in, in four places all at the same time. And so you really have a unique opportunity as a content creator, as a church social media manager that you've maybe never had before in the past. Now leading into 2023, it's all about short form videos. So go all in on it. And here's the thing, if you are pre-filing or live streaming your videos, it only gives you a base of content. You can go there and you can start from there to start pulling out sermon nuggets and content that you can post out to these short form video algorithms.
Nick Clason (05:00):
So here is what your, uh, posting strategy is gonna be. I'm going to recommend that you post five, uh, or I'm sorry, three times a day, five days a week. All right? So pick two days to be your quote unquote weekend. Um, I make my weekend Friday and Saturday. And church, I, I typically am off Fridays and Saturdays. So I post three times on Sundays, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Okay, pick whatever that is that the, someone out there like Gary Veer or something might tell you that that's a bad, uh, strategy. You should be posting every single day. And if you want to and have the margin bandwidth to do it, do it, but honestly, don't like take your days off, right? Like, that's that I, my boss challenged me. He's like, stop working on Fridays, bro. And I was like, you know what? You're right.
Nick Clason (05:42):
I'm not gonna do that. So I'm not gonna worry about it. Sometimes I post if I'm on TikTok and having fun just myself, um, to my ministry page, but more often than not, I'm not, all right. So, um, you're gonna be posting three times a day, five days a week. You figure out what your, your week is as a social media church ministry manager. Um, but you're gonna be posting, uh, Monday or whatever your day is, right? In the morning, afternoon, evening, morning, afternoon, evening. And the way that I notify myself is I just put it in Google Calendar. I'm sure there's a social media app up there, base camp, or some like project management software that can work. The only thing that really like alerts me to something that I'm paying attention to, i e my phone, um, is a Google Calendar, uh, invite.
Nick Clason (06:23):
So I just, I set that in there, it notifies me, and boom, off I go. So, um, you're gonna be shooting for 15 pieces of short form video content. If you're pre-filing, or if you've been live streaming, I want you to get three sermon clips, two of your pastor or whoever talking a short 32nd to one minute clip, go into whatever video software you have and shave it down. So it's 16 by nine. And, uh, find a good application piece of content. One way I do that is I like to, I like to go towards the end, um, and go more towards the application side of things that find better, um, more maybe applicable pieces of of sermon content to, to pull out there. Another option you can do is you can take like a stock video, um, with like a mountain landscape or something like that, and then some nice music behind it, and then put the quote, a quote from your pastor, uh, on there.
Nick Clason (07:13):
Uh, and you, I'm sure you've seen this before, but like, uh, tweet screenshots, they perform really well for whatever reason. Um, then I'm also gonna have you do a ministry recap. So if you're a youth group, for example, uh, get some short videos on Wednesday night, throw it in a TikTok, do an auto cut, and create a recap of whatever the night is. I post that every single Wednesday night. If you meet on Sunday nights, do that, uh, if you're a children's pastor or whatever, like do that on Sunday afternoons, okay? Whatever, whatever works in the rhythm of your thing. If you're overall church, uh, social media manager gets some clips from Sunday morning and post that Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening, um, as just a recap of great week today, loves hanging out, love seeing all the people, all the smiling faces, all that type of stuff.
Nick Clason (07:55):
Do three games. Um, couple episodes ago we dropped nine ideas for TikTok, short form video content that is, uh, there was all kinds of different things in there. Also, my most recent interview with Rob Shepherd, I'll drop both of those links in the show notes so that you can find those. But those are just full of ideas. You can follow him, uh, to get some great ideas of things that you can do. But three games, challenges, competitions, things that you're asking your audience. Who do you think, what do you think? How's this gonna end? Right? Like, give them a chance to interact with your algorithm, with your content, have them start commenting in on those videos and stuff like that. Um, I want you to do a one blind ranking a week. I'm sure if you've ever been on TikTok, you've seen those things where they'll put a filter on your forehead and it'll just filter through. Um, they have, I, I literally, I went into TikTok just a minute ago in the search, and I, I searched blind ranking. And so in that, you can find like restaurant blind rankings, movie blind rankings, shoe blind rank, like all kinds of different, like brands
Nick Clason (08:54):
Of things. And what you do is you just do one through five, um, on your screen, and as they come through, you try and rank where it's gonna be, not knowing what's gonna come next. That's where the fun kind of falls into it, right? So like, if you're doing fast food, you start with subway, where are you gonna put it? One through five mm, 3, 4, 2. You don't wanna give it to one. There's gotta be something better, right? Like that's kind of the whole thing. And then people can just laugh and have a fun time watching you interacting with it and whatever the case may be. Um, so do one blind ranking a week. Do two DeVos, two DeVos that are either attached to the message, but not exactly like clips from the message. So this is your pastor sitting down and talking directly to the camera, expounding upon it, or do two standalone devotional contents.
Nick Clason (09:36):
Find something about prayer. Find something about idols in your heart. Find something about rest and boundaries, and just do two, uh, DeVos and make 'em like a mini-series. That part one, part two. Um, I want you to do two spiritual practice videos. You can do like a, Hey, read scripture with me. You can do a guided prayer, you can do a meditation thing. Uh, you can do a verse memory type of challenge and all of that. Just find creative ways to do that into the camera. Um, that right there, if you add all those up. So three sermon clips, a ministry recap video, three different games, one blind ranking, two DeVos, two spiritual practice. That, that's 12 right there. You're looking for 15 total pieces of content. What that leaves you with is three trends, trending audio, trending dances, things like that. Um, and attach those to just funny things.
Nick Clason (10:22):
Invites come to church, right? Um, you can do p o v point of view type videos, um, or you can do, uh, those can also be things that you're going to be promoting towards future events. And in student ministry world, uh, d nows winter weekends, camps, like those types of things. I'm, I'm hitting stuff on camp, basically all summer long or leading up into it, right about like missing out on camp or point of view. Middle school boys cabinet smells like poop in here. Like, uh, all, you know, meeting someone in a small group for the first time, and there's, I don't know if you've ever heard that audio, but it's like, I do cuss a little. Oh yeah, what's your favorite word? Mm, probably crap. Or now there's a, a Christmas one, right? It's like probably cotton head and any moins, right? And so you could like, play around with something funny like that, like POV joining a new small group.
Nick Clason (11:07):
And if you're a church, uh, a church-wide social media manager in your fall launch, big push into getting people into small groups or connect groups or Sunday school classes, whatever the case may be. Just use something like that as a silly thing. You can be the primary person on camera. You can get your pastor, you can get some volunteers, you can get students, you can get teenagers. They can help especially help you find some of those trends. Uh, also, so then that's all of your short form video content. That's TikTok, Facebook, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts. All right? So then beyond that, what are you gonna do on your Instagram feed? Okay? So on your Instagram feed and your Facebook page, if you're a church-wide social media manager, um, if you are a youth pastor, uh, Facebook page I would say is optional. If you're, uh, running it for a whole whole church, you probably want to do it and just let it be duplicate of what's going on on your Instagram.
Nick Clason (11:57):
Um, Mondays, do a meme Monday, curate memes all throughout the week. Save them in a Google Drive or share Dropbox folder. Put a bunch of people on it. Like, Hey, you, when you're on social media and you find funny things, post a meme, um, screenshot it and drop it in here for me. You can have a cover thing that just says me Monday, or you can just post 10, um, in a carousel post. And they're just a funny way to engage and get people laughing and all kinds of fun stuff. Tuesday, post a message recap clip from whatever your most recent thing is. If you preach last Wednesday, post on Tuesday, preach on Sunday, all right? Or you can maybe flip flop. What I'm gonna suggest for Thursday, if you're a Wednesday, uh, youth, youth ministry, um, but post your, uh, uh, your reel, um, to your profile grid, okay?
Nick Clason (12:42):
When you're posting reels, I recommend not posting everything to your profile grid. You don't wanna flood it too much, and I'm gonna tell you why here in just a minute. But for this one, I do want you to post it to your profile grid. So crop it ice, maybe get another photo of your pastor preaching as your, uh, cover. So people look on your profile. It looks like a, a photo, but then they click it and it's actually a video. Put captions into it. Um, follow my, my ebook that I'm gonna drop next week, um, and go, you know, go make that happen Wednesday. Um, if you're a youth ministry, I would do a recap video right there of your night. If not, um, if you're a church, maybe make that, uh, your Sunday post. Um, and then reserve, you know, some of the other things that I'm doing, uh, here later, like you could do, um, like a worship Wednesday or something like that on an Instagram reel, uh, Thursday, that was, that's where I would put a spiritual practice post again.
Nick Clason (13:32):
So this is a Rio. So all the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all reels. Okay? So the rest of the reels that you're posting those days, they're not posted to your profile grid, but your message recap, your Wednesday night recap, and now your spiritual practice post all those select on, which I think Instagram, when you're posting it in the post feature, um, it automatically selects post profile grid. So you're gonna have to select those off as you do those. Um, so go ahead, drop that in on Thursday, spiritual practice, read scripture with me, guided prayer, meditation, scripture, memory accountability, journaling, some type of thing there. Um, just challenging your people. Hey, pause for a minute, take 60 seconds, meditate on this first. The last thing I would do there, um, is on Saturday or Sunday morning, do some sort of, uh, invitation post invite to church. Like, Hey, I'm saving a seat for you.
Nick Clason (14:21):
Or tag someone who you want to come to church with you, or Sunday is the best day of the week, or something like that. Some sort of reminder like, Hey, we got a big event coming. It's church we did every week, right? But we got a thing coming up. Wanna see you wanna see you. So all that can be done on your Instagram feed and your Facebook feed. Um, and if you'll notice, most of your real content is going to help supply your feed stuff as well. Okay? So, uh, you're making 15 pieces of content back on the, the TikTok, Instagram real shorts and stuff like that. You're like, I don't know if I can keep up with it. You're kind of, you're probably dropping a lot of the static image stuff that you've been doing and you've been posting. And if you already have a framework for that, like a photographer or a graphics person or whatever, making those things, keep some of those going and filter those in and just pull them back a little bit more and then push forward more of the short form video type content.
Nick Clason (15:12):
Finally, um, on your stories in Instagram, I would, uh, I would say post reels, right? So you post reels and then go to your reel and click the share button. Share the story. So for example, if you're doing like a competition, like, um, whip cream or sour cream, who got the sour cream? Post that, and then just do a poll sticker on top of it, who do you think got it? Was it this person, this person, or this person? That's a way to use story framework while also letting the real content supplement what's going on in the stories. And it's going to keep, um, your story stuff fresh, but you're, again, you're not creating more or additional content, right? Another thing I do, me, Monday I post it and I do a slider and I say, which one was your favorite? 1, 2, 3, professors command nine, 10.
Nick Clason (15:55):
And they can slide it there to say, which of the memes is your favorite? If they're a story, first person, they're gonna find your thing on stories. But then like that one, right? It's gonna say, Hey, which was your favorite? And it's gonna cause them, if they're gonna want to interact with it, they have to click on the post to go see, swipe on the carousel, go back into your story and then slide. It's a lot of interaction with your account that's gonna index you higher in your story ranking for people who are, uh, looking for your stuff or see your stuff, if they're interacting fully, all of that's gonna be beneficial for their algorithm as they're trying to find, or as they're seeing you, as you post more and more stuff. Finally, Facebook groups, what do you do with those? Um, I would recommend sending a churchwide email or a ministry wide email.
Nick Clason (16:38):
If you're like a youth pastor, children's pastor, one time a week, whatever day you're sending that, I would post that exact same email into the group with some sort of photo to go along with it. Um, like if it's for camp registration, post a graphic of camp or a photo of students at camp or whatever, um, on Wednesday, I would share that recap reel, um, or some sort of recap reel from your Facebook reel account, share it into the group. Um, and then finally on Friday, I would do some sort of like fun Friday question. Just like, Hey, post a picture of, you know, we just got a Christmas season post a picture of a Christmas tree. Hey, Thanksgiving, hammer, Turkey. Hey, new Year's. What's your New Year's resolution? Okay, just some sort of fun question. One time a week. So you just need to queue up four of those.
Nick Clason (17:21):
And really, you just need to copy and paste a question. Um, you can put it into the Facebook thing that like builds the kind of like graphic looking picture post thing. Um, and post that in there. Um, do all that type of stuff. And, uh, then let, let the people supply the rest of the content in a Facebook group. You're just keeping some stuff kind of active, minuscule announcements, types of things. Hey guys, that's it for today. That is your 2023, uh, social media posting framework. I hope you find that helpful. Take that copy and paste it, implement it into your church social media framework and strategy. If you hear people talking, it's cuz it's Christmas Day. I'm recording this, uh, in, in my spare bedroom. Um, and so there's people on FaceTime calls and stuff out there. So thanks for muddling through that. Appreciate you guys and we will talk to you, uh, again next time.
Nick Clason (18:08):
Oh, hey, don't forget if you found this helpful, share it like it, rate it, be super helpful for us, and head to hybrid ministry.xyz. We're gonna be posting that ebook next week. Get on the list for that. Uh, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like me on, on TikTok so that you'll see that one it drops. Um, and just so you know, this message or this podcast is gonna be, uh, transcribed, uh, a hundred percent free for you hybridministry.xyz. I'll go to the episodes tab and you'll get the free, uh, complete transcript. Um, hope that that is helpful and beneficial for you. Blessings on your ministry, and we will talk to you again next time. Happy posting here in the new year.
19 min
December 29, 2022 Episode 024: Rob Shepherd on Starting, Growing and Making a Viral TikTok Account and Videos
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick sits down with Pastor and TikTok Creator, Rob Shepherd. They discuss how he started out on TikTok, where his ideas come from, and the boundaries he needs to set up so that he doesn't become addicted to the TikTok world and keeps it all in check!
Full episodes and transcripts available at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Come hang with Nick on TikTok http://www.tiktok.com/users/@clasonnick
Or subscribe on YouTube for his new e-book coming out soon! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
SHOWNOTES
Follow Rob on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@robshep
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. I am your host, Nick Clason. Excited to be along here with you and I'm excited today to bring you a guest. And so, um, this, this is Rob Shepherd. Um, he is pastor at Next Level Church out in Virginia. And, uh, Rob and I connected, you'll hear a little bit about how we connected, uh, but we connected cause uh, we have a mutual, um, friend, coworker. I mean, it's his sister, um, who, uh, I worked with his sister at a church I worked at in Ohio. And, um, we came together through just like some circumstances of, uh, doing a thing for his nephew. Um, a kid that was in my, uh, student ministry for a while. So, um, we met and just kind of became friends on Facebook or whatever. And then recently connected, um, more on TikTok.
Nick Clason (00:56):
I saw just a bunch of what he was doing on TikTok and, uh, kind of got onto his account. And, uh, I told him last week, Hey, I am stealing all of your ideas, uh, for our student ministry account because we needed a little bit of a refresh, um, in our posting, uh, rhythm, I would say. Uh, we had, we had done this thing where we were all kind of in charge of a segment of our, our TikTok posting calendar. Uh, but my, my coworkers were just having a hard time staying up with it. They weren't and aren't as, uh, TikTok and, you know, creating of TikTok savvy. Um, they just didn't do it as often as I did. And so, uh, posting would take them longer and they would avoid doing it cuz they didn't want to do it. Um, and it would take 'em longer than they wanted to, all these things.
Nick Clason (01:46):
So, uh, I started seeing Rob's videos and he had tons of fun stuff with just his kids and little games and competitions, a minute to win at stuff. And, um, so I went to his profile. I stole a bunch of his ideas. We started doing a lot of his things and then I just reached out to him. I was like, bro, you should come on my podcast. And he's like, I would love to. So I'm excited to bring you this interview with Rob. Excited for you guys to get to meet, uh, him. He personally has a TikTok account that's really active. He has a lot of followers, a lot of viewers, a lot of action, a lot of traction. So if there's a new for you, um, he has a kind of a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to, uh, run, manage, and grow a TikTok account. So, without any further ado, here is my interview with Rob Shepherd. Hey Rob. How's it going?
Rob Shepherd (02:37):
Awesome, man. Thanks so much for having me. I'm honored.
Nick Clason (02:39):
Absolutely. Hey, give uh, all tens and tens of my listeners. Just a quick, uh, overview who you are, where you are, uh, to what you're up
Rob Shepherd (02:48):
So. Yeah, I'm, I'm Rob Shepherd. I'm the lead pastor at Next Level Church. It's a church plant that I started 10 years ago. Um, I'm an author. I've written three books. My fourth book will be coming out in 2023. I have a wife, Monica, we've been married for 22 years and we have twins. They're 11 and they're in the sixth grade.
Nick Clason (03:06):
Awesome. So, uh, you and I connected cause uh, uh, your nephew was in my youth ministry in Ohio. Yeah. Um, and we did this super fun thing that I preached about and then your sister actually took me up on where, uh, a bunch of different people kind of invested in, in his life. And so we had this kind of culminating moment, uh, and that's where, that's where you and I met and I think we became friends on Facebook or something like that. And so I, I get on TikTok, um, when I moved here to Texas because I, before that I was just using my ministry TikTok account. Sure, sure. And I figured like, oh, I should probably make my own since I can't keep using my old ministry's algorithm anymore. Um, and you know, of course TikTok does that thing where it's like, you might know this person. Yeah. And so that's, that's how I, uh, you know, found you on there through that, through some linked contact thing, which I keep telling them not to do that yet
Rob Shepherd (04:01):
Somehow. Yeah, me too.
Nick Clason (04:02):
Here we are.
Rob Shepherd (04:03):
Yeah, it's so weird.
Nick Clason (04:05):
It's sketchy or something. I don't know. That's how they're, they're learning all of our information. They're gonna take over our world
Rob Shepherd (04:10):
A hundred
Nick Clason (04:11):
Percent, but that's fine. It's okay. It's okay. Um, and so, actually, you know, Rob, I just started watching your videos cuz so much fun. Oh,
Rob Shepherd (04:21):
Thank
Nick Clason (04:21):
You. Um, yeah. And, and then of course as a youth pastor, I was like, I'm gonna steal all of these ideas, . Um, and we did, but, uh, tell me just a little bit, how did you end up on like, TikTok? Was it like just for fun or are you doing it for like, ministry reasons, purposes to get your author like information out there? Like what's your, what was kind of your reasoning behind all that?
Rob Shepherd (04:45):
Yeah, so a hundred percent it was 2020. The whole world shuts down . Um, and like I have more time on my hands than than normal. Um, cuz we're not having public services. We can't be in the office. Um, like literally everything is shut down. Yep. And I kept seeing people post TikTok on Facebook and Instagram and I was like, what is this? Like, I don't get it. Like, how do they know these dances? And like, , how, like, what I don't, I don't understand. Like, it, this app doesn't make any sense to me. So I downloaded it out of boredom. Okay. And the first, I mean, the first few times looking at it, I was like, this is a, this is an app for 12 year olds. Like, I'm not, you know, there's no way. Like, yeah, I'm just not interested. But then, you know, there was like a couple nights where I couldn't sleep or whatever, and I would just like, let me see this TikTok thing and, and I would get sucked in.
Rob Shepherd (05:39):
And then you start watching videos and you're like, why is it two in the morning? Like, yeah. What is happening here? Um, and so after about a week of just kind of stalking and watching videos, I was like, you know what? This looks like some fun. And so 2020 was stressful for a lot, lot of people. Mm-hmm. , um, as a lead pastor, navigating, shutting down church when to reopen, um, it was very stressful for me mm-hmm. . And so starting to make these videos was a creative outlet. So I just started making, um, literally just to have fun. Just something to get my mind off of the stress. And then one thing led to another and we got a couple followers and that's what happened.
Nick Clason (06:19):
And there we are. Yeah. So that's your, like, that's like your personal, like that was something that you just kind of did for fun. Yeah. Have you dove into it, uh, at like a ministry or church-wide level yet? Or is it mostly just something you're doing on your own?
Rob Shepherd (06:33):
Yeah, so, um, TikTok is interesting to me because if, if you start it like, like your youth group's, TikTok, you can gain a following because people that are gonna follow you are probably other youth pastors or churches or they're interested in it. Mm-hmm. , because I started, um, doing just silly like games and, and that kind of stuff. My out of, you know, my 157,000 followers, they don't give a rip about what I do. Right. Um, anytime I post personal things, videos, tank mm-hmm. and no one's like, oh, you know, um, there's a few times in lives, like any, anytime I go live, I I'll tell people, Hey, I am a pastor and um, you know, and you don't have to be a Christian to follow me, but, um, and you know, there'll be some people who will say, oh wow, that's interesting that you're a pastor. But like, I've posted about my books before. Nobody cares. Yeah. Um, posted about our church, nobody cares cuz I didn't start it as that ministry, the ones that have success on it. Start it with like, the intent of I'm gonna start it for ministry or, you know, books, selling books or, or whatever.
Nick Clason (07:38):
Yeah. Absolutely. Um, I, I, yeah, I've even noticed that too, you know, with my own, like, it's, the thing that the algorithm has done is like TikTok has absolutely changed the game on social media, right? Mm-hmm. , so like before a church would have a page or an Instagram account or whatever, and then they'd tell their, their church people come follow us. And then we would all just post announcements about like our church potluck and Yeah. Doing things like that. And now TikTok and subsequently reels on Instagram and Facebook, YouTube shorts, like they're all about just like discovering people that you've never discovered before. Yeah. Like, you know that on your homepage there's the following and the four uab and like I'm never in the following.
Rob Shepherd (08:25):
Yep. It
Nick Clason (08:26):
Only puts me there after I post a video and then I'm like, these are a lot of people I know. And then I'm like, oh, that's cuz I'm in the following section. And they just did that to me. Yeah. So it's, it's such a different, and so from a like a ministry standpoint, it's such a different mindset of like, what are we doing on here? Sure. And like, who are we trying to serve in a lot of ways. Sure. It'ss almost like a, it's less of like nurturing your own people and more of like trying to reach people, you know? Yeah. And is there merit to it? I don't know. It's so, so new. Yeah. And that's the thing. Sure. So
Rob Shepherd (08:57):
Yeah. I I think, oh, go ahead. Do you have a question? Nope. I don't wanna interrupt you. Go ahead. Yeah, I, I think to that point, um, so, you know, in Jesus' day and age, the gathering point would've been like a well mm-hmm. and it's where the people went mm-hmm. . And so we see at times Jesus would go to where the people are. He would go to the well, like, you wanna go and gather an audience. Well, for a lot of a long time the church has acted like our building is a well, but no one in the community is coming to our, well no one has. That's
Nick Clason (09:27):
Good. Yeah.
Rob Shepherd (09:27):
But where is everybody? They're at the well called TikTok. Mm-hmm. There's over a billion people on TikTok. Mm-hmm. Over a billion. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, you know, I've had some success on social media, on, you know, Facebook or Instagram, but nothing like TikTok. Um, you have the greatest chance to reach people now. It's a lot of hard work. It's not a guarantee that you'll reach people, but you have a greater chance to reach people and influence people and be around them. And so my TikTok is not explicitly like, I'm not a Christian TikTok, um, but I will subtly try to, you know, I'll wear a a a t-shirt that says, you know, a Christian message on it or, um, you know, I'll try to highlight in kind of a subtle way to say like, I've got all these thousands of people watching, um, let me try to gain influence. It's a long game. It's, it's slow. It's, you know, it's not a, a quick, you know, thing, but that's where people are. So I wanna gather around them and try to gain influence with them.
Nick Clason (10:20):
Yeah, absolutely. Like I, and like I said, it's, you know, how, so someone's scrolling through, they stop on your video and then the next one they're onto some like, stupid trend or stupid dance. So yeah, I think there's the pushback, you know, from other people is gonna be like, well, are you really making a difference? Or, you know, whatever. Like, is that 32nd clip enough to like influence and change someone's life? And like I said earlier, I don't know, um, sure. But what I do know is that the, a the landscape of social media is changing. B the landscape of our culture post covid, gen Z and the digital mindset is completely shifting. So this is the, the direction everyone's headed. And I'm sure there'll be some adjustments and pivots along the way. But for the first time in like social media history, every major platform is all in on this style of video. And I think the unique position that churches find themselves in is that, uh, this actually lends itself very well to what pastors, speakers, church people do on a regular basis. We create and produce content on a weekly basis. So for the first time we can take snippets of what we're doing and re-broadcast it. And also for the first time we can do that basically across the four major platforms without any consequence. Cuz they're all sure they're all going all in on this, you know? Sure,
Rob Shepherd (11:40):
Sure.
Nick Clason (11:41):
So the thing, like, the thing that stood out to me about you, uh, was like just the amount of fun that you have on it. Right. And I think a lot of times in this conversation, it depends where you land, right. But especially if you're like a church trying to like do digital ministry, you feel this need and this pressure to like share this deep theological truth, um, on TikTok. And if you don't get millions and millions of views, like you're, you, you didn't do it. It wasn't sure. Beneficial, advantageous. Um, so what, like, what predicated for you? Just like going all in on like, just the jokes, the fun stuff, the games, the competitions. Like I just love watching your family, like just having a blast together. Yeah. You know, doing things.
Rob Shepherd (12:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, for us it was just really natural. It was, um, we like filming these type of things. Um, we, we like doing, uh, coming from a youth ministry background there, a lot of the stuff that I do is recycle games that I used to play with, you know, my students and Yeah. Now my, my kids are, you know, 11 years old, sixth grade. And so, uh, we recycle, uh, uh, a lot of that. But I will say bigger picture for me is that there are a lot of church circles where it, it, it is almost like, uh, it's almost like God doesn't have a sense of humor. Like Yeah. Everything has to be serious. And, and I think there is a seriousness and there is a, a reverence that we should have towards God. But if you read through the scriptures, there's, there's whole festivals that God told people to have.
Rob Shepherd (13:15):
Mm-hmm. And in our culture, we have lost, uh, no one looks to the church to have fun. No one looks to the church to have fun, like parties. Like, if you wanna have fun, go get drunk, go out to a club. Yeah. But like, why, why shouldn't we set the standard towards no. Like, we've got the greatest news in the world. If anyone should be joyful, it should be Christians. And so let's have, let's have some fun, um, and, and do and show people like, Hey, you can have a great time and you don't have to cuss. Um, you can have a great time. You don't have to be half naked. Uh, you can have a great time and, and you, you don't have to be drunk. Like you can have good, clean, wholesome, fun and do it in the name of Jesus.
Nick Clason (13:50):
Yeah. No, that's really good. So, uh, couple, I now just want to get like specific and ask some like, just kind of fun questions. So what is, what video, uh, have you posted on your TikTok that has gotten like the most traction, the most likes? The mo went the most viral.
Rob Shepherd (14:07):
Yeah. So, uh, so, um, uh, you know, I was on TikTok for, uh, I wanna say, so I got on in 2020. It's 2022. So going on two years, it'll be three years I guess next, next March or, um, so for my first year, um, I had decent success, but it was nothing crazy. Um, I gained, uh, in, in year one I got up to 10,000 followers. Um, but I never had a video that had a million views. I had a few that like, were close 800,000, 900,000, but I never hit a million. Um, year two, uh, it was the summer, uh, Olympics and my wife said, Hey, we should do an at-home Olympics competition with our family. And so we invited a couple friends over and just did like, almost minute to win it type games. Yeah. But we called it at Home Olympics.
Rob Shepherd (14:58):
And I did like eight of these videos. And, uh, most of them didn't do great, but like, one of 'em was like the fourth one, uh, it, it took about two or three weeks, but it, it hit over a million views. Yeah. Um, and that's when I was like, okay, people like watching us play these, these games. And so we started doing some more of those. And then, uh, by November of of that year, um, I, I posted a, um, there was this trend that kind of went around, uh, like imposter where you have like, uh, you know, three waters and one vinegar mm-hmm. , and, you know, people gotta, you gotta guess who, who drank the, the vinegar. Um, so we were like, Hey, that would be fun to do with our family. And when I was a youth pastor, um, years ago, I, I used to do this thing called Dr.
Rob Shepherd (15:45):
Dare, where I would trick the students. And so, uh, if you take, uh, like a, a tub of vanilla ice cream and you scoop out all the ice cream and you fill it with mayonnaise and then you freeze it, it scoops just like ice cream. Okay. So back when I was a youth pastor, I would say, Hey, we're gonna have a ice cream eating competition. And, you know, I'd get my two volunteers and I'd scoop it out and they would think they're eating two scoops of vanilla ice cream. But then I would say, ah, you know, Dr. Dare gotcha. This is mayonnaise. Let's see who can eat the most mayonnaise. And then, you know, set a 32nd timer and they have to eat the most. And so, um, I was thinking about this imposter thing. I was like, you know what, we could freeze, uh, mayonnaise and do three ice creams, one mayonnaise, um, and let's just, let's just do an imposter.
Rob Shepherd (16:26):
Yeah. Um, and so we did this imposter video and I closed my phone and we went out shopping and, uh, we were at Target and I was like, I told my wife, I said, Hey, can I, can I look at your phone real quick just to see, uh, I wanna see how our TikTok is doing. And, um, it was like an hour later and it had like 17,000 views. And I was like, wow, okay. That's, that's pretty crazy. Uh, by, by like, you know, that night, um, it was like 800,000 by the next day it was, uh, like up to 2 million. Yeah. Um, that video currently, I don't look at it, I, I've kind of lost track of it, but last I checked it was at like 59 million views. Wow. Um, and so it has gone, it like there's people that are speaking Chinese and German, like there's all sorts of languages that have hit on this video in the comments Yeah. In the comments . Yeah. But that, so that imposter one, um, we've, we've had multiple now that have gone over a million. We've had a few that have hit, uh, you know, 10 million, uh, 6 million. Uh, but the biggest was that imposter one with the mayonnaise and it, it's at like, I think 59 million.
Nick Clason (17:33):
Yeah. And like I was telling you this week, like we, we tried a couple year of those. Right. And so we've, uh, we've done a few of those like on our team. Yeah. Um, and so our first one hit this week and we had an event last night and it was just fun cuz there's a lot of people like kind of talking to us about it. Yeah. Like, I totally thought she had it, I didn't Yeah. Like, you know, all that type of stuff. And so I think, you know, sort of like my heartbeat, uh, behind this podcast right, is like, I don't think that, um, digital ministry only is necessarily the best way to approach reaching people. I think it can happen. Um, but I think it's difficult. I think Covid showed to us like some of the limitations of it a hundred percent.
Nick Clason (18:19):
However, like the completely reliant on, on, uh, in-person, um, without any sort of digital expression at all, um, is very much like, Hey, come, like you said, come to our gathering place once a week and then we'll see you next week. Right? Yeah. Like, people still live lives 367 other hours of their, their week. And so how do we show up in, in those spaces, in those dead sort of spaces? And like you said, where people are, they're online, they're, they're jumping on their phones. Um, oftentimes, let's be honest, they're jumping on their phones to be entertained or maybe inspired. Um, but they're not jumping on their phones to be reminded about the church potluck in two weeks. A hundred percent jump. They're jumping on their phones to watch something silly. Like, I don't know about you. Like me and my wife will just get on our phones after the kids go to bed and she'll be on hers, I'll be on mine and we'll share stuff to each other like across the couch.
Nick Clason (19:12):
Yeah. Like, Hey, did you watch that thing I just sent you? Um, or we'll, you know, I'll turn it and show it to her. And so I think that sort of archetype of just like fun, entertaining, um, your church can, can be that, you know, you can set that example, um, and do it, uh, just for fun. Like I said, if nothing else, not even necessarily to try and go viral. Um, sure. But for your people, it's a way to, to engage. And like I said, so one of the way, one of the things I'm doing is I'm taking all that TikTok stuff. I'm also putting it on reels. Yeah. But then I can use that, uh, on our, our Instagram feed or our Instagram stories, which is often we're more of our actual followers are coming across our content. Yeah. So like I shared that imposter video that we did, uh, but I shared it to our story and then I just put like a, uh, the poll question sticker, like, who do you think it was? Yeah. And let people vote, right? Yeah. And so it's just another kinda layer way to like engage with your people. So even if you're listening to this, you're like, I don't know, I don't know if my goal is to reach 12 million people, like you don't have to like, that doesn't mm-hmm. that doesn't have to be the end game or the end No. The end goal in all this, you know, so
Rob Shepherd (20:19):
Well, and I, I would say to that fact, if you go chasing views, TikTok will drive you crazy mm-hmm. . Um, because the videos that I've put a ton of time in and I'm like, this is great. We've edited this. Like I've spent so much, I scripted this out, they flop mm-hmm. , um, you know, and a video that you don't even think about. Like I, I had a video, we did a video, we, we do this thing for my kids' birthdays, for all our birthdays where we flip a birthday cake. Yeah. And, um, my daughter flipped hers and her, her facial reaction was so great cuz she didn't, she, she caught it upside down. And I posted that video on their birthday, which is March 30th. Um, it did nothing mm-hmm. Like literally did nothing. Two months later it went viral. Hmm. Um, and it's that 6 million views right now, but if you chase views, if you do something for the views, you'll be so disappointed.
Rob Shepherd (21:08):
Yeah. Or I, I would say for anyone listening this, um, you don't have to duplicate someone else's TikTok, be authentic to who you are. Do what, what interests you. My family likes doing these games. Yeah. So it's very authentic and real to us. But if you don't like doing those games, don't go chasing that. If you don't like dancing, don't do dances on TikTok. Like Yeah. Don't do that. There is a niche for almost or niche, however you say it. There is a, a, a niche for almost everyone. Yeah. Um, you've gotta find it and be consistent. And when it's authentic to you, you can find an audience. But it, it takes, it takes time and a lot of work.
Nick Clason (21:39):
Yeah. All right. So that, so then another question I have, so those are your most viral videos. Yeah. What's your favorite video? And maybe like you said it, you put a lot of time into it, effort into it, and it didn't, it didn't do anything like, but what's a, a favorite video or two that you've done that maybe didn't go viral, but you're like, yeah, this is really cool. I still really liked it.
Rob Shepherd (22:00):
Yeah. Um, so I might have like recency bias, but there's one that I filmed a few weeks ago, uh, with my kids and my son does not love being on camera. Um, my daughter will, will she, she's more of a little bit of a ham, so she'll, she'll jump on with me. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we did a video to, uh, uh, a sound, we, so we didn't create the sound. Um, but she is playing, um, she has wrapping paper rolls and she's hitting my head and it's making like the drum noise. And my son took a cardboard cutout that we have of elf and he puts it into the background so he's controlling that she can't see him, but it gave him something to do. And, uh, it was just the three of us that, that made it. And it was so fun to make. Yeah. Um, it has not taken off at all. Uh, and so first I posted it once and it, it, it did not take off. And so like a week later I posted it a second time just hoping it would like, kind of take off. It hasn't taken off either, but that was the, probably the most fun I've had. And, and one of the ones that I'm like, I love that cause I did it with my kids.
Nick Clason (22:59):
Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit like just nerdy kind of like strategy stuff with that. So yeah. Uh, talk about what you've seen in the algorithm and um, and views and whatnot about, you know, you said like re reposting it. So are you like deleting the original video or are you just never taking it back onto your feed to try and like catch catch that lottery ticket again? Yeah. Um, and like, how, how many times would you do that with a certain video? Would you do it more than two times? Um, or what have you done, you know, that you've seen work?
Rob Shepherd (23:35):
Yeah. So here's the thing about TikTok, what you said earlier is what almost everyone does. No one hangs out on the following. They hang out on the for you page. Yeah. So if, if your videos don't get on the for you page, people aren't seeing them over and over again mm-hmm. . And so it doesn't hurt you to repost something and just see like, Hey, did this, you know, did it flop because no one, you know, is the wrong time of day or whatever, or Hmm. You know, whatever. So it doesn't, it doesn't hurt you to repost. And if you'll notice the people that consistently go viral, they repost the same type of video over and over again. Yeah. It may have a new tweak to it, but once they find out what do people like, they just do that over and over again. And then eventually they'll come up with a new, you know, twist or whatever.
Rob Shepherd (24:19):
Um, but there's a family that I, I follow that they've got, you know, like 2 million followers and when I scroll through their page, like I go to their direct page, it's the same video once every four videos. There's like, they just repeat it over and over again. Yeah. Um, and so yeah. I, I think, I think go for it. If you, if you, it's not like Instagram where people will, will criticize you or say, I've already seen this or Facebook, uh, it's all reliant on the for you page. And so if it didn't go viral, probably no one saw it on the for you page. You just repost it again.
Nick Clason (24:52):
Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Man, that's so, that's so interesting to think about cuz we've been so conditioned by the curated feeds, you know? Yeah. And everything that Instagram and Facebook were like, it's just, it's an, it's a brand new day out there on social media. And, and the reason I can say that like confidently Yeah. Is cause every other platform is ripping TikTok off right now. Like mm-hmm. , every other platform is going all in Instagram about three months ago, converted every video to a reel. Yep. Um, YouTube tried shorts didn't work and they, they took it down and they're tweaking it and bringing it back. Not because they don't want to work. They, they did some stuff I think on their backend to promote it even more. So everyone is saying this is, this is the new wave. So it's it, but it's a new wave of thinking too. Right? Yeah. Um, yeah. So it's, I that's so, that's so crazy to think about. Um,
Rob Shepherd (25:49):
Yeah. And I, as far real quick, as far as taking, taking down a video, um, so I know Instagram ingrained in a lot of, especially teenagers, that if it doesn't have a certain amount of likes take it down. Um, cuz they're like mm-hmm. a ashamed of it or, or you know, whatever. Um, do not do that on TikTok. I think it is a massive mistake. Mm-hmm. Very few people are just scrolling your profile and give a rip about how your videos are doing. That's good. Um, but what happens is, especially now, cuz this year TikTok has converted itself to be more of a search engine. Mm-hmm. , it wants to be more like YouTube. So like I have videos from last Christmas games that we played that are going viral right now Mm. Because people are searching for Christmas games. Mm. And so, like, I had a video that had a few thousand views last year. Right Now it's, it's, I mean, it's got thousands upon thousands of views from this year, year a year later because people are now searching for Christmas games or, or, or whatever. Mm-hmm. So I, I don't delete, I don't delete anything. There's been a couple that I have privated or I've turned to like friends only mm-hmm. , um, you know, but, uh, I, for the most part, once it's out there, just like see what happens and it could be six months to a year and then it'll take off.
Nick Clason (27:02):
Yeah. That's so good too. Think about it, the, it's come in like a search engine, so churches, church leaders, like you can answer questions that people might search like Yep. Questions about God, about faith, about theology, about like, some deep existential things that, like
Rob Shepherd (27:21):
Marriage relationships
Nick Clason (27:21):
You're all going to be looking at. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you can show up in Yeah. In those searches. So that's good. Yeah. All right. So the last, just the last little thing I wanna touch on here before we we sign off is how do you personally, uh, not get sucked into the addict addictive side of social media? Like the fact that, you know, you can be chasing likes, views, like it's, I mean, it's scientifically proven that they're built, our smartphones are built to be like dopamine hits, which are the same things that like drugs, uh, or pornography give us, right? Yeah. So like, what are some just sort of personal guardrails or things that you do to protect yourself or your family or your screen time or those types of things as you're, um, also producing different and lots of content?
Rob Shepherd (28:10):
Yeah, yeah. You know, so I a hundred percent got sucked in, in, into that, um mm-hmm. . And, uh, I would say the, the first thing that really, uh, impacted me is when we first kind of started going viral. Um, I thought, you know, this is it. Like, and it was so nice. Every time I opened my phone I had 99 notifications and it was so cool. It was like, man, you know, people are loving it. But then after a couple months I hit a dead zone and my videos, everything I posted, it didn't matter. It just flopped and it messes with your head. It's like, well, what's wrong with me? Does my content stink now? And like, it's not the case. Like, I don't know what happens with the algorithm, but the algorithm giveth and it take it away. Like there are, there are just seasons where it's like, no matter what you post, no one's gonna see it.
Rob Shepherd (28:57):
No one's gonna care. Mm-hmm. . And then there's other seasons where like you could sneeze on, on camera and it's gonna go viral. And so, um, that kind of seasoned learning helped me say, okay, I, I don't need to, I need to get off my phone. I don't need to be obsessed with it cuz I can't control it. Mm-hmm. , once the video is posted, I can't control if it goes viral or not. And so typically when I post a video, I shut my phone off and I don't get on TikTok for a while. Um, and just kind of let it sit and then, you know, I'll, I'll open it later. Um, also try really hard, uh, for family time. Um, which the nice thing about making tos with my family is that we get to do something together. Yeah. Um, before they started making 'em, it was me by myself.
Rob Shepherd (29:39):
Yeah. And that, my wife and I, we had to have some hard conversations cuz it's like, you know, we're watching TV and I would go make a TikTok and it would only take 15, 20 minutes, but it's 15, 20 minutes away from them. Mm-hmm. now we make a lot together. And so that, that's also been, but yeah, trying to shut off the phone. Um, trying not to, to let it consume your, your mindset and it'll make you go crazy if you're, if you're looking for likes or looking for, how's this video doing mm-hmm. now I just post and, uh, just let the album do its thing. Yeah.
Nick Clason (30:09):
No, that's good. I think, I think it's just acknowledging like they are trying to suck you in. So Yeah. A know that and then b like as a social media creator, pastor, producer, whatever, ministry leader, just have this self-discipline to put it down, walk away. Yeah. Maintain that walkaway power. So yeah. All right, man, let us know, uh, where can people follow you on TikTok? Tell us about Yeah. Your book coming out, like where they can grab all that type of stuff.
Rob Shepherd (30:39):
Yeah, so, um, I am, uh, at Rob Shep on TikTok, uh, Instagram. It's at Rob underscore Shep. Um, Facebook, I'm Rob Shepherd. Um, so, and I'm on all those. Uh, I don't ever check Twitter, but you can find me on there too, . Um, but, uh, yeah, so TikTok is at Rob Shep. Um, new book will be out, uh, hopefully by February, um, February, March. And you'll be able to find it on Amazon. But it, uh, all my books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere you go to buy books, especially online. Yeah. Um, you, they, you can get a copy of, of my book. And so I've had, uh, three books out. The first one's called, even if You Were Perfect, someone would Crucify You. The second one's called You Misspelled Christian, and the third one is called Kill the Jerk. And so, um, those are my three books. And then, uh, fourth one is about, uh, when offense knocks and about not getting so offended. So,
Nick Clason (31:31):
Mm. That's good. Love it. All right man. Well thanks so much for your time
Rob Shepherd (31:35):
During Yeah, thank you. Crazy
Nick Clason (31:36):
Busy Christmas week. Um, for sure. Appreciate you making some time for it. Talk about TikTok a little bit. Um, yeah, some fun stuff. So, and uh, yeah man, we'll talk to you next time.
Rob Shepherd (31:45):
All right, sounds good. Thanks for having me on.
Nick Clason (31:47):
Yeah. Later, bro.
Rob Shepherd (31:48):
All right.
Nick Clason (31:50):
Well man, I hope that you guys enjoyed that conversation. Uh, I know even as I was having the interview with him, I learned a couple of things and he made me think differently about a couple of things in managing, uh, my TikTok reels, YouTube shorts, all the different accounts that, um, are promoting short form videos. So I hope that was beneficial and advantageous for you. Hey, if this was helpful, go uh, share it with a friend. We're gonna be posting some clips of this over on my personal TikTok at Clason, Nick, uh, check that out. And here soon. Um, I will be dropping a video, um, I believe next week, um, at the start of the new year on the framework, um, for posting a TikTok. It's called, have I Ruined My TikTok account yet? A guide for posting a TikTok from Start to finish.
Nick Clason (32:38):
Uh, it's gonna be complete with an ebook, um, as well as a tutorial video. And so excited to have you guys check that out. You can head, uh, to the show notes hybrid ministry.xyz/ 0 2 4, uh, to subscribe to my YouTube channel and, uh, to join my TikTok follower list, if that's something that interests you, or if you just want transcript notes from the show. We provide transcripts for every single episode completely for free at zero cost to you. We hope that you find it beneficial and advantageous. And also, would you just do us a favor, share this podcast with a friend, subscribe, rate. All those things will be an incredible gift to us here in the weeks after the Christmas season. Um, our gift to you is to continue to deliver meaningful and useful content every Thursday. Um, and a gift back if you so desire would just be, uh, a rating.
Nick Clason (33:35):
You would love that so much. Just open your purple podcast app on your phone, give us a five star and, uh, that would be incredibly generous and we would thank you so much for that. So, um, like I said, anytime you need anything hybridministry.xyz, there's also a, um, articles tab there. We're gonna start posting some more articles and writings and things like that. So, um, that's where the ebook is gonna be found. So just check that out. That's so interest to you. But until next time, we'll talk to a happy New Year and see you in.
35 min
December 22, 2022 Episode 023: 9 TikTok and Instagram Reels Videos to use at your church this week!
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick sits down and gives 9 different short from video content ideas for TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and YouTube shorts. These are a pairing for both fun and serious. A great way to engage with your audience during the week in a hybrid setting!
Come hang out at http://hybridministry.xyz
Or follow me on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Or on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Grab the FREE Social Media Checklist: https://merry-swamp-3547.fireside.fm/articles/free-social-media-checklist
TIMECODES
00:00-01:59 - Intro
01:59-02:46 - 1) Trends and Dances
02:46-03:52 - 2) Guess Who
03:52-05:00 - 3) Blind Rankings
05:00-06:22 - 4) Competitions
06:22-06:56 - 5) Recap Video of Events
06:56-07:52 - 6) Devotionals
07:52-08:34 - 7) Sermon Clips
08:34-09:46 - 8) Read the Bible with Me
09:46-10:17 - 9) Practice Prayer
10:17-11:07 - Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. So excited to be here with you. My name is Nick Clason, and I am of course your host. Glad to have you today. You know, I wanted to talk a little bit about, um, a little bit different of an episode today. I wanted to look at an episode from the American TV show, the Office. Now obviously, like many, many of us are very familiar with this television show, right? Um, and you know, it's actually really funny. I have a coworker who's younger, she's in her twenties, and she didn't even know that the show ever even aired on like Network tv. She thought it was always a streaming show. So anyway, so I'm, I'm doing a little re-watch of this show, and I mean, here's the thing, like truth be told, I'm kind of like always doing a re-watch of this show.
Nick Clason (00:53):
I'm always, it's always at some level or some layer available to me. But the episode in particular that I wanted to focus on was from season four, episode two. It's called Dunder Mifflin Infinity. And if you're not familiar with the show, let me just bring you up to speed a little bit on it. So, Ryan, new manager at Dunder Mifflin. Um, Michael is still the, uh, the regional manager, the guy that everyone's kind of like used to and, and no, and he's famous and whatever and whatnot. Ryan is now his boss. And so that lasts for about a season. But Ryan is this new kind of young, up and coming guy. And so Ryan's entire like focus and identity and purpose is, he wants to bring D Mifflin into the 21st century. He wants to digitize them. And so Ryan is sort of this all digital, this all kind of person, right?
Nick Clason (01:40):
Online is the future. This is how it needs to happen, this is how it goes. Eventually, Ryan ends up in jail for fraud. So it doesn't exactly end up well for him, but let's just take a look at this episode in a microcosm. Um, conversely, there's Michael, who's old school. Michael's all about relationships. Michael's all about customer service. That's always sort of been done. Mifflin's calling card in the office is they're able to, um, out customer service, the big box retail guys. So what they're doing constantly in all of their sales and all those things is they're saying like, Hey, we're better than Staples. We're better than Office Depot, and we're able to supply you guys with the best possible customer service. And so we have Michael, basically we have Michael versus Ryan, right? In this, in this episode. And as I was watching it, it made me, um, it made me really like interested in this juxtaposition that we find ourselves in the church, in digital versus in person.
Nick Clason (02:41):
All right? And so, um, basically to, to summarize, uh, the rest of the episode, Ryan's pushing everyone to be more digital, gives everybody blackberries. Like that's the whole thing. Michael is opposing it. Jan, his now, uh, girlfriend is telling him that, um, he can sue Ryan for being, um, ages istic, um, and pushing out all the old people. And so, um, in an attempt to win everybody back over, Michael takes gift baskets to 10 clients that they've lost and that have, uh, switched over to other companies. And in that, while he's doing that, right, people are like, Hey, um, thank you so much for this gift basket, but that website thing that you're talking about, that's actually quite interesting to me. So let me know when that's a, when that's up and running. I'll be interested in exploring coming back to your company. And so there's wins for them, um, but there still are wins in the kind of like customer service side of things.
Nick Clason (03:41):
And so if you're a fan of the show at all, uh, just real quick, Michael drives his car into a lake because he is following a GPS way too closely and way too literally. And, um, he comes back to the office soaking wet and he thinks that he's lost. And, but in the meantime, for some reason, Ryan doesn't have the kones to stand up to Michael and just put him in his place, which I always find odd and interesting, but it's just this kind of weird tension between the digital guy and the in-person guy. So let's explore digital real quick. So Ryan is the digital guy where online is the future. And, and it's where everyone's going. I mean, that's kind of the entire thrust of the entire nine seasons, right? Is that this company is becoming so irrelevant with how they're doing things that like all the other guys are, are passing them.
Nick Clason (04:28):
Like even in the beginning of this episode, there's a funny kind of bit where Ryan is talking about the overhaul of the website, and Jim goes, well, I don't know what's wrong with our website. And he goes to it and it's got like this little, uh, stick figure animation that says under construction coming soon, and it gives like a year. And like at the time of the airing, like that year had already passed. And so therefore it just goes to show that they had not at all and in any way been investing in their website, which is such a wild thing to think about how recently this show aired. Like that was, that's an, that was a necessary thing for people back then, or at least I feel like it should have been. And maybe, um, I'm forgetting how much older that show is, right?
Nick Clason (05:08):
But anyway, so Ryan's coming in and he's ready to overhaul this whole thing. And I, I see elements of myself in Ryan, um, and how I viewed digital ministry, um, very recently, and even maybe still a little bit if I am being completely and totally honest, right? So, uh, in the ways that I, I see myself like Ryan, I'm pushing all my chips into the middle, uh, saying I'm all in on online because I look at all the stats. I see that generation Z millennials, uh, high percentage of people are living their lives on Facebook. Uh, gen Z spends five to eight hours of screen time a day. And so therefore I'm like, we need to show up where they are. And I still believe those things, by the way, right? But sometimes at the, at the downfall of what happens on, uh, in an in-person experience or an in-person ministry type of moment, um, I forget that like there are valuable things, um, that can happen in the in-person type of moment.
Nick Clason (06:09):
And also, uh, the way I am, I'm, I, I often play devil's advocate. And so I feel like in uh, organizations, I kind of come in and I end up sort of taking the role of the change agent. And so if everything is, uh, a pendulum swing to, um, all the in-person style of ministry, I'm trying to push them to think about things another way. Not that I don't agree with these things, but just that like this church or this organization that I'm working in, they don't need more of that, right? They need more of this. And so my attitude and my posture becomes one of kind of all in and continually pushing in that way. So, uh, definitely in the last church I worked in, like there was this big argument on the heels of Covid. Covid was over. People were done with it.
Nick Clason (06:52):
They were ready to either come back or be in person or give up online, whatever. And I thought we were doing some valuable things online. And so therefore, I was making an attempt to continue to remain online. And so all I talked about all the things, I said, all my arguments were online, online, online. And I wonder if people that I worked with, like, do you, do you even care about some of this other in-person stuff? And the answer of course is, yes, I did. Right? But like, because of my personality and my devil's advocate this, I needed to keep pushing about it that way.
Nick Clason (07:26):
So let's look at Michael. Michael, anti-d digital anti online wants to be all about in-person, right? He's saying customer service still matters. He brings the gift baskets to all of his customers. I would say that I resonate with Michael in this episode very much like when I, uh, was back in Bible college, right? Um, in a lot of ways when I'm in college, I didn't have the ability to kind of nuance or think about things or see things in other ways. And so like this, like this is the way that it has to be. This is the way it's supposed to be very like dogmatic, right? Like I would say you can't do church without being together. Um, and I've even had conversations with, uh, former students of mine who've said those types of things, like, well, preaching has to be in person. And maybe one day I'll do a deep dive.
Nick Clason (08:14):
Um, first of all, I need to do some study into the theology of preaching in the theology of proclaiming God's word, right? But like, I need to look into that and say like, can preaching and can the exposition or delivering of God's word be done in a different way than behind a pulpit? And I guess I would have to say, I think it has to be, because biblically speaking, most pastors, exhorters teachers, overseers, shepherds, were not behind a pulpit. Like that's, that's a much more recent phenomenon. And so to say that that's the only way it can be can't actually be true. Cuz if you look at the Bible, that's not the way it was back then. And if we wanna wanna be true to what the Bible has to say and what the word of God has to say, then I don't know that we can make that, that, you know, conclusion.
Nick Clason (09:03):
Exactly. And so we see Michael very much in that like, this is how it has to be unwilling to kind of move and change and flex and adopt and become different, right? Like with the times and like, what's going on? All right, so that was Ryan. That was Michael. Well, now let's look at a hybrid approach to this, right? Because as I was watching this, obviously it's for comedy and obviously, right, it's for show, but Ryan and Michael, in my personal opinion were both right, but both of them were so consumed with winning, right? That like, it became, uh, comical about who is gonna win this guy or that guy, right? So, so Michael didn't want to go online at all. And I think that's dumb. Like there is going to be value in that, especially when you're watching the episode and some of the customers that he's seeing are like, uh, yeah, let me know when your website's back.
Nick Clason (09:57):
I think that they could do both, right? They could, they could have good customer service and have a good online sort of port, uh, portal, right? And make those things marry together. I think that, um, they could really serve their customers well cuz they are still small. And so if they were able to come up with a relevant, useful, good, uh, website, then could they bring that to their customers? And I think the answer to that is yes. And I wish that they would've, uh, seen that and that Michael and Ryan would've come together and willing and were willing more to work in like, sort of like a hybrid sort of way. I think. Um, Ryan wanted to go strictly online and was not concerned about losing the touch of, uh, their personal, uh, customer service, their personal touchability that Dunder Mifflin had. And I think that that's a big loss for him.
Nick Clason (10:47):
I think he's missing out on a pretty important moment. Why? Because, uh, Ryan, uh, didn't know what d mifflin's as up the sleeve was. The asep the sleeve was their customer service. So the people that were choosing to be with them did not want to be with them because of a nice new flashy website. Of course, he's thinking about reaching people, but how do you retain the people that are already there, um, as customers of your paper company? Okay? So I think both of them play a role. I think they mesh together really well. And at that intersection is where we find hybrid ministry. So let's explore in church, um, the pairing of the Ryan and the Michael, and where can some live things that we have a church have adopted or have become customary or we're just so used to, where can some of those live things be made more digital?
Nick Clason (11:39):
Okay, so number one, we have sermons. Let's talk about sermons again. I think one day I'd love to do a deep dive, maybe that'll be a future episode here of, um, sermons and exposition of the Bible and teaching and proclaiming of, of God's word. Um, where can some of those things be made into a digital format? Well, first and foremost, if you are preaching a sermon every single week, you can record that audio and immediately turn that into podcast. I read something that, um, the majority of adults, uh, listened to eight hours of podcasts a week. And so, um, I know like last week, for example, let me give you an example of my own life. I went to like a membership class at my church and I've told you guys, I'm new at my church. Um, and we weren't able to go to service or we were, but we kind of chose not to.
Nick Clason (12:28):
So hopefully anyone who like, um, I work for, sorry about that. Um, and guess what I did? I, I went and I was like, I'm gonna listen to this podcast, uh, later throughout the week. And so that is a really easy way for, for people in your church who miss. And it might even be, uh, easy way for people, um, who are unconnected to your church to come to, uh, at least an awareness of your church at a very like elementary level. And all you need to do is some simple plugin things into your audio board, capture your pastor's audio, some pretty basic mixing on the back end. You maybe don't even need to do a ton, as long as it doesn't sound horrendous. And then just upload that thing to an iTunes, um, apple podcast, Spotify podcast capture so that people can discover it.
Nick Clason (13:15):
Another layer to that of course could be to create like YouTube sermons. So to record your, um, sermon and your audio and pair those together. Of course, if you listen to my last episode, um, my 2023 and Beyond YouTube strategy for churches, I highly, highly recommend pre-filing your content, pairing down your sermons. Cuz most sermons or lectures are anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes long. And that's a little bit too long for the YouTube algorithm. You want to try and slide somewhere between that 12 and 18 minute range for videos on YouTube. So of course you could do that as well. Again, all you're doing is taking your content from your sermon and you're overlaying it and creating an opportunity for it to be digital, right? So like then another option is you have your sermons. So break those up into small short TikTok clips.
Nick Clason (14:07):
Like if you're not good at video editing, an option that you can do is you can take, uh, just a camera like I'm doing and talk directly into it and create 30 to 62nd clips from your message. Like you already have the content. So even if you can't get a clip from the actual pastor preaching a sermon, you can still use the same topic or the same content or the same passage and rip that post that and do 3, 4, 5 different little like sermon clips throughout the week. You can use that in short form video and everything, every single platform, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are all about the short form video content. So use those things to your advantage. So with your sermons, you got got audio podcasts, you got YouTube videos, and you also have short form video. TikTok style clips. Another option for a thing that, um, is done live, but can be made.
Nick Clason (15:03):
Um, digital is a group finder. Most churches are all about community, are about helping people get connected, find their place, find their place to serve, uh, find, have something on your website that operates as a connection portal, uh, connect group, a small group, a grow group, or whatever you call your small groups. Have people be able to go on there and browse and search, make it user friendly. Uh, a lot of church management softwares will have those things as an available option that you can use some sort of group finder type of thing or just build something on your website. But the reality is, is like in my personal life, if I can't get an appointment with a dentist or a doctor or whatever through creating an appointment online, I don't want to use them. So I'm probably not gonna call, I'm probably not gonna email.
Nick Clason (15:51):
I might email. Um, but if I can have a full service, create an appointment type of thing online, I'm gonna do that. And I think the same is true for churches, especially for finding community, for finding groups, for finding places to jump in, uh, and be able to serve. So create something that's full scale, full service and available for your people to use, uh, to find community. The last option is daily devotionals. We all know the importance of getting people in the word, but there's a recent stat out there that said 8% of Christ following Christians, uh, read the Bible only one time a week, 8%. So how can we as a church, help give our people the tools that they have? There are an unlimited amount of tools. Now think about before the printing press. What did they have to use? They had to go to church to get the Bible, but now they can access it on their phone.
Nick Clason (16:45):
Probably many of us have multiple Bibles on our shelves at home. So how can we help get people, um, using scripture throughout their week? So a couple of options are, uh, the U version Bible plan, uh, u version Bible app on people's phones. They have plans, you can read things together, you can also put sermon notes on there so that people can follow along. And then when they're done at the bottom, you can link out to a plan to read together or to encourage people to read through on their own u version. Done by Life Church is an absolutely incredible tool for churches and it's only getting better. So use that as something that you can help promote scripture and um, bible literacy with the people in your church and in your congregation. Another option, of course, like I said, is um, you can use devotional type content.
Nick Clason (17:28):
So this is different than sermon content, but devotional content or going deeper on the sermon or something like that. And you can do that in TikTok, real short form video. Uh, you can even do like a little mini-series, like how to read the Bible and do a three-part series and post it, uh, on your social media for the week. But what are different ways that you can use social media, short form video, TikTok and those types of things to create devotional type content. So like I said, I think that there's been this, this fight between digital Ryan Howard and in person Michael Scott in the Dunner Mifflin Affinity episode. And I just wish I could have got together and helped counsel them. Been like, this is how you can marry those two things. And I find that to be true in the church community and coming together and praying and crying on each other's shoulders and carrying one another's burdens.
Nick Clason (18:21):
That's so important. And it cannot be done digitally, but people also need to be discipled. People need to read Bible content. People need to hear the truth from God's word, and they're not always available to show up to your in-person event in a physical form. So what are ways that you can support people in your church to help them, uh, through the means, through the the phone that's sitting in their pocket to help coach them and and teach them what it's like to live a life? Um, that's not just digital, not just physical, but it's hybrid. Hey guys, once again, thanks for hanging out. Uh, we've, we have full transcripts for every single episode over hybridministry.xyz I'd love to encourage you to go check that out. It's a great place to find some stuff there. Also, um, on my personal TikTok at Clason Nick, c l a s o n n i c k, uh, posting little clips, um, from podcast episodes, um, current and past. So go check out on, hang out with us there. Love to connect with you in that way. Until next time, we'll talk to you all later.
12 min
December 15, 2022 Episode 022: Bridging the Generation Gap by using an episode of the Office.
DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Nick dissects an Office episode that he recently was viewing and correlating that to how older and younger generations often approach the discussion around "In-Person" and "Digital" ministry. His proposal, was less "Either/or" and instead it was a "Both/And" approach. One that he likes to call "Hybrid"
What can the church take that is set to defacto "In-Person" only and create digital versions and digital access points for those same elements? Such as sermons, community and Bible reading.
Full transcripts and other resources available at: http://www.hybridministry.xyz
FREE Social media checklist at: https://merry-swamp-3547.fireside.fm/articles/free-social-media-checklist
Or come hang on TikTok at http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
TIMECODES
00:00-04:12 What we can learn from The Office
04:12-07:24 Digital - Ryan
07:24-09:16 In Person - Michael
09:16-11:21 How to make those two become Hybrid
11:21-14:57 Sermons
14:57-16:12 Helping People Find Community
16:12-17:53 Bible Reading
17:53-19:38 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. So excited to be here with you. My name is Nick Clason, and I am of course your host. Glad to have you today. You know, I wanted to talk a little bit about, um, a little bit different of an episode today. I wanted to look at an episode from the American TV show, the Office. Now obviously, like many, many of us are very familiar with this television show, right? Um, and you know, it's actually really funny. I have a coworker who's younger, she's in her twenties, and she didn't even know that the show ever even aired on like Network tv. She thought it was always a streaming show. So anyway, so I'm, I'm doing a little re-watch of this show, and I mean, here's the thing, like truth be told, I'm kind of like always doing a re-watch of this show.
Nick Clason (00:53):
I'm always, it's always at some level or some layer available to me. But the episode in particular that I wanted to focus on was from season four, episode two. It's called Dunder Mifflin Infinity. And if you're not familiar with the show, let me just bring you up to speed a little bit on it. So, Ryan, new manager at Dunder Mifflin. Um, Michael is still the, uh, the regional manager, the guy that everyone's kind of like used to and, and no, and he's famous and whatever and whatnot. Ryan is now his boss. And so that lasts for about a season. But Ryan is this new kind of young, up and coming guy. And so Ryan's entire like focus and identity and purpose is, he wants to bring D Mifflin into the 21st century. He wants to digitize them. And so Ryan is sort of this all digital, this all kind of person, right?
Nick Clason (01:40):
Online is the future. This is how it needs to happen, this is how it goes. Eventually, Ryan ends up in jail for fraud. So it doesn't exactly end up well for him, but let's just take a look at this episode in a microcosm. Um, conversely, there's Michael, who's old school. Michael's all about relationships. Michael's all about customer service. That's always sort of been done. Mifflin's calling card in the office is they're able to, um, out customer service, the big box retail guys. So what they're doing constantly in all of their sales and all those things is they're saying like, Hey, we're better than Staples. We're better than Office Depot, and we're able to supply you guys with the best possible customer service. And so we have Michael, basically we have Michael versus Ryan, right? In this, in this episode. And as I was watching it, it made me, um, it made me really like interested in this juxtaposition that we find ourselves in the church, in digital versus in person.
Nick Clason (02:41):
All right? And so, um, basically to, to summarize, uh, the rest of the episode, Ryan's pushing everyone to be more digital, gives everybody blackberries. Like that's the whole thing. Michael is opposing it. Jan, his now, uh, girlfriend is telling him that, um, he can sue Ryan for being, um, ages istic, um, and pushing out all the old people. And so, um, in an attempt to win everybody back over, Michael takes gift baskets to 10 clients that they've lost and that have, uh, switched over to other companies. And in that, while he's doing that, right, people are like, Hey, um, thank you so much for this gift basket, but that website thing that you're talking about, that's actually quite interesting to me. So let me know when that's a, when that's up and running. I'll be interested in exploring coming back to your company. And so there's wins for them, um, but there still are wins in the kind of like customer service side of things.
Nick Clason (03:41):
And so if you're a fan of the show at all, uh, just real quick, Michael drives his car into a lake because he is following a GPS way too closely and way too literally. And, um, he comes back to the office soaking wet and he thinks that he's lost. And, but in the meantime, for some reason, Ryan doesn't have the kones to stand up to Michael and just put him in his place, which I always find odd and interesting, but it's just this kind of weird tension between the digital guy and the in-person guy. So let's explore digital real quick. So Ryan is the digital guy where online is the future. And, and it's where everyone's going. I mean, that's kind of the entire thrust of the entire nine seasons, right? Is that this company is becoming so irrelevant with how they're doing things that like all the other guys are, are passing them.
Nick Clason (04:28):
Like even in the beginning of this episode, there's a funny kind of bit where Ryan is talking about the overhaul of the website, and Jim goes, well, I don't know what's wrong with our website. And he goes to it and it's got like this little, uh, stick figure animation that says under construction coming soon, and it gives like a year. And like at the time of the airing, like that year had already passed. And so therefore it just goes to show that they had not at all and in any way been investing in their website, which is such a wild thing to think about how recently this show aired. Like that was, that's an, that was a necessary thing for people back then, or at least I feel like it should have been. And maybe, um, I'm forgetting how much older that show is, right?
Nick Clason (05:08):
But anyway, so Ryan's coming in and he's ready to overhaul this whole thing. And I, I see elements of myself in Ryan, um, and how I viewed digital ministry, um, very recently, and even maybe still a little bit if I am being completely and totally honest, right? So, uh, in the ways that I, I see myself like Ryan, I'm pushing all my chips into the middle, uh, saying I'm all in on online because I look at all the stats. I see that generation Z millennials, uh, high percentage of people are living their lives on Facebook. Uh, gen Z spends five to eight hours of screen time a day. And so therefore I'm like, we need to show up where they are. And I still believe those things, by the way, right? But sometimes at the, at the downfall of what happens on, uh, in an in-person experience or an in-person ministry type of moment, um, I forget that like there are valuable things, um, that can happen in the in-person type of moment.
Nick Clason (06:09):
And also, uh, the way I am, I'm, I, I often play devil's advocate. And so I feel like in uh, organizations, I kind of come in and I end up sort of taking the role of the change agent. And so if everything is, uh, a pendulum swing to, um, all the in-person style of ministry, I'm trying to push them to think about things another way. Not that I don't agree with these things, but just that like this church or this organization that I'm working in, they don't need more of that, right? They need more of this. And so my attitude and my posture becomes one of kind of all in and continually pushing in that way. So, uh, definitely in the last church I worked in, like there was this big argument on the heels of Covid. Covid was over. People were done with it.
Nick Clason (06:52):
They were ready to either come back or be in person or give up online, whatever. And I thought we were doing some valuable things online. And so therefore, I was making an attempt to continue to remain online. And so all I talked about all the things, I said, all my arguments were online, online, online. And I wonder if people that I worked with, like, do you, do you even care about some of this other in-person stuff? And the answer of course is, yes, I did. Right? But like, because of my personality and my devil's advocate this, I needed to keep pushing about it that way.
Nick Clason (07:26):
So let's look at Michael. Michael, anti-d digital anti online wants to be all about in-person, right? He's saying customer service still matters. He brings the gift baskets to all of his customers. I would say that I resonate with Michael in this episode very much like when I, uh, was back in Bible college, right? Um, in a lot of ways when I'm in college, I didn't have the ability to kind of nuance or think about things or see things in other ways. And so like this, like this is the way that it has to be. This is the way it's supposed to be very like dogmatic, right? Like I would say you can't do church without being together. Um, and I've even had conversations with, uh, former students of mine who've said those types of things, like, well, preaching has to be in person. And maybe one day I'll do a deep dive.
Nick Clason (08:14):
Um, first of all, I need to do some study into the theology of preaching in the theology of proclaiming God's word, right? But like, I need to look into that and say like, can preaching and can the exposition or delivering of God's word be done in a different way than behind a pulpit? And I guess I would have to say, I think it has to be, because biblically speaking, most pastors, exhorters teachers, overseers, shepherds, were not behind a pulpit. Like that's, that's a much more recent phenomenon. And so to say that that's the only way it can be can't actually be true. Cuz if you look at the Bible, that's not the way it was back then. And if we wanna wanna be true to what the Bible has to say and what the word of God has to say, then I don't know that we can make that, that, you know, conclusion.
Nick Clason (09:03):
Exactly. And so we see Michael very much in that like, this is how it has to be unwilling to kind of move and change and flex and adopt and become different, right? Like with the times and like, what's going on? All right, so that was Ryan. That was Michael. Well, now let's look at a hybrid approach to this, right? Because as I was watching this, obviously it's for comedy and obviously, right, it's for show, but Ryan and Michael, in my personal opinion were both right, but both of them were so consumed with winning, right? That like, it became, uh, comical about who is gonna win this guy or that guy, right? So, so Michael didn't want to go online at all. And I think that's dumb. Like there is going to be value in that, especially when you're watching the episode and some of the customers that he's seeing are like, uh, yeah, let me know when your website's back.
Nick Clason (09:57):
I think that they could do both, right? They could, they could have good customer service and have a good online sort of port, uh, portal, right? And make those things marry together. I think that, um, they could really serve their customers well cuz they are still small. And so if they were able to come up with a relevant, useful, good, uh, website, then could they bring that to their customers? And I think the answer to that is yes. And I wish that they would've, uh, seen that and that Michael and Ryan would've come together and willing and were willing more to work in like, sort of like a hybrid sort of way. I think. Um, Ryan wanted to go strictly online and was not concerned about losing the touch of, uh, their personal, uh, customer service, their personal touchability that Dunder Mifflin had. And I think that that's a big loss for him.
Nick Clason (10:47):
I think he's missing out on a pretty important moment. Why? Because, uh, Ryan, uh, didn't know what d mifflin's as up the sleeve was. The asep the sleeve was their customer service. So the people that were choosing to be with them did not want to be with them because of a nice new flashy website. Of course, he's thinking about reaching people, but how do you retain the people that are already there, um, as customers of your paper company? Okay? So I think both of them play a role. I think they mesh together really well. And at that intersection is where we find hybrid ministry. So let's explore in church, um, the pairing of the Ryan and the Michael, and where can some live things that we have a church have adopted or have become customary or we're just so used to, where can some of those live things be made more digital?
Nick Clason (11:39):
Okay, so number one, we have sermons. Let's talk about sermons again. I think one day I'd love to do a deep dive, maybe that'll be a future episode here of, um, sermons and exposition of the Bible and teaching and proclaiming of, of God's word. Um, where can some of those things be made into a digital format? Well, first and foremost, if you are preaching a sermon every single week, you can record that audio and immediately turn that into podcast. I read something that, um, the majority of adults, uh, listened to eight hours of podcasts a week. And so, um, I know like last week, for example, let me give you an example of my own life. I went to like a membership class at my church and I've told you guys, I'm new at my church. Um, and we weren't able to go to service or we were, but we kind of chose not to.
Nick Clason (12:28):
So hopefully anyone who like, um, I work for, sorry about that. Um, and guess what I did? I, I went and I was like, I'm gonna listen to this podcast, uh, later throughout the week. And so that is a really easy way for, for people in your church who miss. And it might even be, uh, easy way for people, um, who are unconnected to your church to come to, uh, at least an awareness of your church at a very like elementary level. And all you need to do is some simple plugin things into your audio board, capture your pastor's audio, some pretty basic mixing on the back end. You maybe don't even need to do a ton, as long as it doesn't sound horrendous. And then just upload that thing to an iTunes, um, apple podcast, Spotify podcast capture so that people can discover it.
Nick Clason (13:15):
Another layer to that of course could be to create like YouTube sermons. So to record your, um, sermon and your audio and pair those together. Of course, if you listen to my last episode, um, my 2023 and Beyond YouTube strategy for churches, I highly, highly recommend pre-filing your content, pairing down your sermons. Cuz most sermons or lectures are anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes long. And that's a little bit too long for the YouTube algorithm. You want to try and slide somewhere between that 12 and 18 minute range for videos on YouTube. So of course you could do that as well. Again, all you're doing is taking your content from your sermon and you're overlaying it and creating an opportunity for it to be digital, right? So like then another option is you have your sermons. So break those up into small short TikTok clips.
Nick Clason (14:07):
Like if you're not good at video editing, an option that you can do is you can take, uh, just a camera like I'm doing and talk directly into it and create 30 to 62nd clips from your message. Like you already have the content. So even if you can't get a clip from the actual pastor preaching a sermon, you can still use the same topic or the same content or the same passage and rip that post that and do 3, 4, 5 different little like sermon clips throughout the week. You can use that in short form video and everything, every single platform, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are all about the short form video content. So use those things to your advantage. So with your sermons, you got got audio podcasts, you got YouTube videos, and you also have short form video. TikTok style clips. Another option for a thing that, um, is done live, but can be made.
Nick Clason (15:03):
Um, digital is a group finder. Most churches are all about community, are about helping people get connected, find their place, find their place to serve, uh, find, have something on your website that operates as a connection portal, uh, connect group, a small group, a grow group, or whatever you call your small groups. Have people be able to go on there and browse and search, make it user friendly. Uh, a lot of church management softwares will have those things as an available option that you can use some sort of group finder type of thing or just build something on your website. But the reality is, is like in my personal life, if I can't get an appointment with a dentist or a doctor or whatever through creating an appointment online, I don't want to use them. So I'm probably not gonna call, I'm probably not gonna email.
Nick Clason (15:51):
I might email. Um, but if I can have a full service, create an appointment type of thing online, I'm gonna do that. And I think the same is true for churches, especially for finding community, for finding groups, for finding places to jump in, uh, and be able to serve. So create something that's full scale, full service and available for your people to use, uh, to find community. The last option is daily devotionals. We all know the importance of getting people in the word, but there's a recent stat out there that said 8% of Christ following Christians, uh, read the Bible only one time a week, 8%. So how can we as a church, help give our people the tools that they have? There are an unlimited amount of tools. Now think about before the printing press. What did they have to use? They had to go to church to get the Bible, but now they can access it on their phone.
Nick Clason (16:45):
Probably many of us have multiple Bibles on our shelves at home. So how can we help get people, um, using scripture throughout their week? So a couple of options are, uh, the U version Bible plan, uh, u version Bible app on people's phones. They have plans, you can read things together, you can also put sermon notes on there so that people can follow along. And then when they're done at the bottom, you can link out to a plan to read together or to encourage people to read through on their own u version. Done by Life Church is an absolutely incredible tool for churches and it's only getting better. So use that as something that you can help promote scripture and um, bible literacy with the people in your church and in your congregation. Another option, of course, like I said, is um, you can use devotional type content.
Nick Clason (17:28):
So this is different than sermon content, but devotional content or going deeper on the sermon or something like that. And you can do that in TikTok, real short form video. Uh, you can even do like a little mini-series, like how to read the Bible and do a three-part series and post it, uh, on your social media for the week. But what are different ways that you can use social media, short form video, TikTok and those types of things to create devotional type content. So like I said, I think that there's been this, this fight between digital Ryan Howard and in person Michael Scott in the Dunner Mifflin Affinity episode. And I just wish I could have got together and helped counsel them. Been like, this is how you can marry those two things. And I find that to be true in the church community and coming together and praying and crying on each other's shoulders and carrying one another's burdens.
Nick Clason (18:21):
That's so important. And it cannot be done digitally, but people also need to be discipled. People need to read Bible content. People need to hear the truth from God's word, and they're not always available to show up to your in-person event in a physical form. So what are ways that you can support people in your church to help them, uh, through the means, through the the phone that's sitting in their pocket to help coach them and and teach them what it's like to live a life? Um, that's not just digital, not just physical, but it's hybrid. Hey guys, once again, thanks for hanging out. Uh, we've, we have full transcripts for every single episode over at hybridministry.xyz. I'd love to encourage you to go check that out. It's a great place to find some stuff there. Also, um, on my personal TikTok @ClasonNick, c-l-a-s-o-n-n-i-c-k, uh, posting little clips, um, from podcast episodes, um, current and past. So go check out on, hang out with us there. Love to connect with you in that way. Until next time, we'll talk to you all later.
20 min
December 08, 2022 Episode 021: Social Media in 2023 with new rules, remaining healthy personally while using social media as a tool, and the Best YouTube strategy of 2023 and Beyond!
SUMMARY
In this episode Nick discusses how to approach the new wave of social media, which is more about discoverability than it is about a custom curated feed. Additionally, Nick wades into the topics about remaining personally healthy while managine a social media profile and strategy. Finally, Nick discusses his personal favorite YouTube church content strategy for 2023 and beyond.
Follow along at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
Or on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
TIMECODES
00:00-01:59 - Intro
01:59-10:46 - How do we approach this new wave of algorithim based on discoverability?
10:46-17:31 - How do we navigate boundaries with social media?
17:31-23:30 - The Best Church YouTube strategy for 2023 and beyond
23:30-24:48 - Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
What is going on? Hybrid Ministry podcast. My name is Nick Clason. I am your host. Excited to be back with you again. In today's episode, I wanted to just touch on three different topics. Number one, how do we as content creators, as social media managers, as uh, church marketing, uh, aficionados, though none of us really probably went to school for church marketing. How do we handle the new phenomenon that we are in with a discoverability algorithm as opposed to a curated four year followers type algorithm that we used to experience or we were so accustomed to experiencing with Facebook and Instagram? The other thing I wanna look at is I wanna talk about how do we handle and navigate the fact that these, uh, phones and social media apps are so, uh, addicted, they literally mess with our brains. How do we navigate that? How do we handle that?
Nick Clason (01:02):
And is the means with which we are using to push out our content, is that the actual message? And what does that communicate to our church people? And then lastly, uh, I want to, I wanna lay up for you what I think to be the best small church and potentially even bigger than just small church YouTube strategy for churches in 2023. So let's get this thing started, but before we do, don't forget, like, subscribe. Um, you know what I switched over from, uh, focusing on my attention over on Twitter? We are now, um, at my personal Instagram, um, @ClasonNick, uh, on TikTok for, um, all the things that we have. Social media, also swing by hybridministry.xyz, which is the home of this podcast where you can find everything that you ever need, including show notes and transcripts. Those are there every single episode for you for free.
Nick Clason (01:56):
Let's get this thing started. So, how do we handle, how do we approach a discoverability algorithm? So the first thing you need to know is what is a discoverability algorithm? TikTok is the, um, is the platform that made this discoverability algorithm famous. You'll know if you're on TikTok, that there's a friends panel and there is a fyp or a four you panel. The reality is most of the content that you see on TikTok, it's probably done by people that you have discovered as opposed to people that you are actually friends with. What that means is the algorithm is smart and it understands that it knows who you interact with, what videos you watch the longest, which ones you share the most, which ones you like the most, which ones you save the most. And it highlights those. It indexes those and then it comes back and it feeds you more of that content.
Nick Clason (02:44):
It's honestly astonishing and bewildering and a little bit frightening how smart it is at knowing you and knowing me. So how do we as churches in 2022 and beyond handle, uh, approaching platforms with discoverability algorithms? Cuz here's the thing. You at the church might be thinking, well, that's fine, but I'm not on TikTok. The problem is every social platform, YouTube, Facebook, and now Instagram are going all in on short form video discoverability platforms in an attempt and in an effort to keep up with the phenomenon that is TikTok. So what do we do about that? Because, uh, you can choose to ignore it. And I would imagine that some churches are going to do that because, um, they might see TikTok is dangerous or it's perilous, or it's just another platform that they have to manage and they don't have the ability, effort, bandwidth to go in and make it happen.
Nick Clason (03:41):
But what do you do? Because honestly, it's a very different approach. Let's think about Facebook circa 2008. You would get people to like your page from your church, Hey, go like us on Facebook, click on notifications. And then what churches auto almost automatically did was they used and viewed social media as an extension of their communication strategy. So then churches, um, and organizations like churches got very, very, uh, complacent to just simply post announcements, Hey, come to the church potluck, Hey, come to the, the live nativity that we're having. Hey, come to the, uh, churchwide, you know, Frisbee golf championship. Yeah, I don't know, whatever. Right? And it's just announcement, announcement, announcement. Why? I think a couple of reasons. I think number one, um, the, the whirlwind is fierce in churches, you got an event once a week that you are hosting and pulling off.
Nick Clason (04:36):
That's not to mention any of the special events that you have all throughout the year. And so it can feel like you're in the event planning and facility rental or facility usage environment or, or space. And so those things are, um, just fierce. They're just coming at you hot every single week, sometimes multiple times a week. And so then therefore, as opposed to crafting and curating a tailor made for you social media, um, first strategy, it's just like, oh, the Johnson said they didn't know about the Frisbee golf tournament that might they follow us on Facebook. I know that you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna post an announcement, make sure I never miss an announcement. Here's the thing. The reality is those aren't the type of fees that we have anymore. If you as a page want to get seen, in most cases, you're gonna have to pay, and that's gonna be a sponsored thing.
Nick Clason (05:28):
It's advertisement at that point. So, uh, and you can't do that as a church if you have the budget dollars to do it. And it's advantageous to you to get more people to the Fri be golf tournament. But here's what I would argue. If you are going to start paying, um, then, then what you're looking to do is you are looking to reach a unique audience. And that's the thing that this discoverability, this fy p this four you type thing that TikTok has made famous but has since been adopted by all these other platforms. Um, that is what you have the opportunity to do. You have an opportunity to reach a different audience than those who already follow you. So what you need to know is, number one, uh, it may not be the most advantageous for you to go into your TikTok and just continue to post a video announcements from your church to the things that are aimed at your inside people.
Nick Clason (06:19):
You're gonna wanna post things. If you do, do any sort of announcement type things, um, that are hopefully able for other people that do not go to your church to discover it, to find it, and to hopefully then take a, a next step, an action step towards you or towards your church. One of the other things that makes it fun is that TikTok is all about trends. And so one of the best ways to get discovered is show up in people's FY P is do the things that are already popular on TikTok. And so grab a trend and, and, and put your church event kind of stamp on that thing. If you do want more people at the Frisbee golf tournament, then go on, find what songs are viral, find what trends are happening a lot, how do you do that? Spend time on there.
Nick Clason (07:04):
And if you spend a little bit of time on there as a consumer, um, all you gotta do is just click save, save, save, save, save. Then they'll save onto your profile, whether that be your church profile or your individual profile. Either way, you can kind of go back and create an archived kinda library of things that you don't want to forget. Then use those throughout the week as you're posting. But here's the other thing, beyond just like announcements or beyond just like events, is you now have the opportunity to sit and speak into a camera and broadcast the message of Jesus to those around you. Now, you might be thinking like, that's not a very advantageous strategy because I'm a church located in the local demographic, and I don't want to just reach people that are miles and miles away from my church and will never have the opportunity to attend.
Nick Clason (07:48):
I get that. One thing that's actually really cool that we've discovered about the TikTok algorithm is it actually does prioritize and highlight a local geographical spreading. It's a little bit like a bullseye, and so it'll pump it out to people that follow you first, and if it performs well, it'll pump it out to people in your local geographical region. And then a little bit further and a little bit further, and finally a little bit further can tell you're like all the way viral. If you're obviously all the way viral, it's not, it's gonna be reaching people yes, that are far away from your church, but know that those first couple of layers are a little bit more like localized to where your environment is. And so as we are pro uh, producing and putting more content out on these platforms, I just wanna encourage you to think a little bit differently, think less about the Johnsons who missed the announcement for the Frisbee golf tournament, and be thinking about people who may be far from God, who may not have a faith background just yet.
Nick Clason (08:42):
And how can your church help spread and share the message and hope that's found in Jesus through a simple means and a simple unpolished not, uh, super well produced or super organized selfie style cell phone based video that honestly doesn't take that long for you to do. The opportunity is amazing. I'll just say anecdotally speaking, I started doing this stupid thing on my TikTok where I try and get, um, 2000 total touchdowns from, uh, players who played in the nfl. So I saw a guy do it, and it's got this filter where it puts a team and they cycle through the teams. They go on my forehead and it stops. And then I pick a player, any player that ever played for that franchise, and then I go and I like look up how many total touchdowns they've ever had in their career. My goal is with two quarterback slots, two running back slots, three receiver slots, and two tight end slots to be able, uh, to, to come up with 2000 touchdowns.
Nick Clason (09:39):
It's honestly quite hard. And really, like you have to, you have to get the heaviest hitters, like the top of the quarterback position, top of the running back, top of the receiver to even ever get there. I've done the math, like, is this ever gonna be possible? But those videos have gone freaking bananas, like, I don't understand it. And more and more and more and more and more people are following me and, and like coming into contact with my content. And so now I'm like, Hey, wait a minute. Like now there's a little bit of an audience here. So what if I use this to start helping show, push, promote, and talk about this hybrid ministry digital ministry type of ID idea? And so it's just so fascinating to see how that algorithm works. Like once something catches, it catches and you have absolutely no rhyme or reason or understanding of why that might be the case, but if it does, it does. And so, uh, don't get discouraged. Keep producing, keep saying faithful. Um, and eventually something's gonna pop. And um, it, it's never gonna be the thing that you expect it to be, but once something does, then the things that you do want pushed the things that you do wanna put on your channel, uh, those will become more and more and more accessible, findable, adaptable to your audience.
Nick Clason (10:48):
All right, so what do we do? Uh, with the fact that we, uh, know that our cell phones, we know that our devices are smart technologies are literally flooding our brains with dopamine every single time that we open unlock, um, and light our brains up with just this hit of like, Hey, this is, this is a good thing. And how do we handle that? I wanna approach this on two fronts. Number one, how do we personally handle that? And then number two, um, what does it communicate to the people that go to our church that follow us, that we're trying to promote good, solid, um, healthy practices, not just spiritually healthy, but but physically healthy and emotionally healthy and, um, you know, healthy, uh, like purity wise, like all those types of things. Like how do we handle that is the means. TikTok, for example, probably first and foremost, which has a very addictive, uh, sort of, um, framework built into it.
Nick Clason (11:46):
Does that communicate something that we don't really want to be getting behind or that we want to get, um, that we wanna be, be promoting, uh, to the people that follow us? Well, first and foremost, you need to know, right? That like, that decision lies squarely on a couple people's shoulders, your own that your own personal convictions, um, need to be kinda weighed out and, and challenged, I would say. And also if you go to a church where it's very much frowned upon or you've even been told not to, um, you know, en engage in that sort of platform, um, then those things are gonna kind of be done. Like for you, those decisions have been made for you, especially if it's done at the church level. Um, but how do we personally handle it? I would, I would say that, um, it's probably pretty, uh, tempting to spend just a lot of time on your cell phone, uh, because you are the social media content person.
Nick Clason (12:42):
And so what are the personal boundaries that you need to put in place for that? So, um, just this week, uh, I got a, I got a new phone recently. A couple of things I've tried. I have a Google Pixel, uh, pro seven and every night, 10 o'clock, I turn my phone to a nighttime mode and it turns everything gray, which is an absolutely maddening thing to have happen when you're on your phone and all of a sudden it just flips to gray. But it does, it turns off all that, all that blue light stuff, right, that we know keeps us awake, that keeps our brains kind of like firing and stuff like that. And it hopefully calms it down. It also to me sort of signals like, yo, I start to wind, it's time to start to wind down, you know? Um, and, and it is not an enjoyable thing to look at my phone when it's gray.
Nick Clason (13:26):
The other thing I did was I put timers on certain apps, apps that I was spending, um, more time than I wanted to. You know, you get the screen time report or whatever, so you can put timers now on apps. And so as my, as, uh, in my ministry, I'm the primary content person, so I need to have those social media apps on my phone. Um, at least right now, unless, you know, I get a phone that's purchased only for the church or whatever, but like for right now, I need those on my phone, but I'm only limiting myself. It's like a half an hour a day because, uh, I can get everything I need. I can find content in the future and I can even spend a little bit of time like personally perusing social media. But if I'm on longer than an hour, cuz honestly, um, Instagram a half an hour and TikTok a half an hour, that adds up to an hour.
Nick Clason (14:10):
That's, that's a good chunk of my day, honestly, probably more than I need it to be, you know? Um, and so I may even evaluate that even after talking into this podcast here and, and back that down a little bit. But here's the thing, the reality is this, is that there are tools built into the phones and the devices that, um, that will help you maintain those boundaries. What, what then it really comes down to where the rubber really does meet the road is are you going to honor the, your own boundaries that you at one point in time set for yourself? Or are you gonna break them? Because you can of course go in and change the time or turn it off, snooze it, whatever. Um, but I would challenge you, I would challenge you to do that because we know that, um, it is not better for us to be people that are reliant upon technology.
Nick Clason (14:57):
Technology is a tool. And I would argue that, um, I'm very passionate about this hybrid, um, approach, this digital ministry sort of, um, phenomenon. But the reality is this is, it is simply a tool to share the message and hope of Jesus. And that's it. And if it is abused, then that is, that's not obviously the goal. And so, uh, it's simply a tool. It's simply a vehicle. And you know what? One day there's gonna be something that's more effective. Back when the Apostle Paul was writing the method and the means were letter writing, nowadays we don't really write letters. It would not be that effective for me to write a letter to a 15 year old to try and tell them about the gospel of Jesus. But it might be effective for me to post a 5, 10, 15 second, uh, video that talks about Jesus that they can, um, check out and that we then give them another kind of opportunity to then take a next step and to learn and dive deeper into the message and hope that's found in Jesus.
Nick Clason (15:49):
And so, uh, then that leads me to the next question is the means the message. And I think, yeah, that is a dangerous and potentially very slippery slope. And that's again, something that you have to sort of navigate and wrestle to the ground at your own personal context in which you serve. But if we are wanting to reach people and if we are using this platform to reach people, is it a tool that can be harnessed for good? Absolutely. It absolutely can be used and harnessed for good. Is there evil in it? Sure. Is there bad stuff that you can find on the internet? Absolutely. Is there, uh, evil, evil and and danger when you do, uh, an overnight lock in with a bunch of teenagers and the potential risk for promiscuity and misbehavior and drugs, alcohol and stuff rises also? Yeah. Is it dangerous to get in the car every day and drive to work?
Nick Clason (16:44):
Yeah, it is, right? Like, so there are dangers and so you personally need to be smart. You need to model good digital hygiene. And I would also argue that we should be teaching our teenagers how to do that as well. We should be using that and viewing that as a discipleship moment to help craft and shape them. Like, Hey, how would Jesus handle technology? And um, I think he, I think he would, I think he would use it to exalt and glorify God the father. And honestly, that's what I want to do as well. But as I'm doing that, I don't wanna lose myself. I don't want to become addicted. Um, and I know, like I said, I just got a new phone. I know how addicting it has become. And so that's why I wanna put in more safeguards, more practices for me, uh, to navigate and handle those things well.
Nick Clason (17:33):
Or I wanna talk about the best church YouTube strategy that I can think of. If you don't wanna go all out on a bunch of crazy gear, um, I would recommend this. I would recommend, and I talked about this a couple episodes ago, but I would recommend pre-filing your YouTube, um, your message content. So everything that you deliver every single week, sit down, get in front of the camera that is on the back of your cell phone that is sitting in your pocket right now that you're probably using to listen to or watch this video, okay? And then I would buy one, one primary piece of equipment that you need to get this thing started. A road video mic, m e c usbc, directional microphone for smartphones. Now, if you don't have a USBC connection, then just google the connection that you do have on your Apple iPhone pot, probably because you don't have an Android.
Nick Clason (18:24):
Um, and use that shotgun mic in a controlled environment to have someone sit down in front of a set that looks nice, that has some decent lighting. I guess another, uh, potential piece of equipment that you may need is, um, a tripod to hold your phone up to aim at you or whatever, but prepare your content that you're gonna preach and prepare and teach in front of your congregants, whether it be adult students, whatever your context and deliver it before you get up on the stage to deliver it to the live room. Why? Well, two things. Number one, unless you already have the infrastructure for live streaming, then if you do, I would ignore this part, but if you do not, which, um, I talk to a lot of youth pastors who their churches may be live streaming, but they themselves are not live streaming.
Nick Clason (19:10):
And I would argue that if there is a demographic that's worth, uh, putting content out to it is teenagers, it's Gen Z and soon to be, by the way, cuz they're right on the cusp. Generation alpha, okay? And so we should be trying to reach the natives, our, our teenagers, gen Z Alfa in their native tongue. And that's video that's digital. Now the thing is, you, if you're a youth pastor specifically, you're probably not meeting in the main room where you have access to all the live broadcast equipment. And if you are a church that you are the main pastor and you don't have that equipment yet, then I don't think that that's an issue. Cuz here's a couple of things that we know. The best performing YouTube videos fall somewhere between 12 and 18 minutes. So if you get up and you preach a 35 minute sermon and you post that entire thing to YouTube, that's not exactly, um, optimal for YouTube.
Nick Clason (20:03):
And so what you can do when you pre-fill is you can adapt it so that what you're preaching, you're still preaching the same content, but you're pairing it down so that it fits into that 12 to 18 minute video. It's gonna perform best on YouTube that way. The other thing that it does is it lets you, um, focus on the camera. If you're watching this right now, you're watching me focus directly into the camera. I'm not preaching to a room of people behind me. You have no idea that behind me is, um, a giant bean bag and a chair and a dresser and a baby's crib. Um, that's not what you see, right? You're seeing what I want you to see, which is myself and the chair that I'm sitting in. The reality is that you can do all that. You can create a set, you can create something that looks kind of nice, something that's gonna catch a watcher's eye on, on a platform like YouTube.
Nick Clason (20:47):
And you can speak directly into the camera when you just rip off your live stream, you're catering to the room. I remember when this happened to me one time, I was preaching a large, uh, multi megachurch from the broadcast location. And um, after I got done, the feedback I got was, Hey, pay more attention to the camera, right? Like, when I got up there, my natural propensity was to preach to the people in the room, which is what most of our natural propensities are, but they had a camera in the back and they were live streaming it. And so they're like, don't forget, you need to look down the barrel of that camera. That wasn't a natural experience for me. And if you're gonna start live streaming, that's probably also not a very natural experience for you, I would argue. Um, or at least I, I would make the bet that that's the case, right?
Nick Clason (21:32):
And so what I want to propose and what I want to promote is I want you to just consider and think about what would it look like if you pre-filed your stuff. It would help you, uh, get it to the time and length that it needs to be to perform best on YouTube. And then it would also, uh, help you focus on the audience that's right there on the other side of the camera. The third thing that it does, and this is just um, something that I've, I've personally been experiencing learning and using is, um, it helps me get familiar with my content. So by the time I do step foot on the stage, I'm actually much more comfortable with the content cuz I've already dealt with it. I've already been in it, I've already delivered it one time. Um, and so then that way all I need to do is get up in and deliver it again, live to the room.
Nick Clason (22:18):
But I'm not as, um, I'm not as tied to my notes like I maybe would be otherwise because I've gone through 'em. I'm aware I, you know, I mean like, I get the flow, I get the rhythm. And so if you're a primary communicator, you, you probably understand that being more familiar with your notes than, as opposed to being less familiar. And I mean, a lot of pastors, a lot of good preachers, they do sit down, they do spend some time pouring over their notes before they get up live on the the stage. Why not have just one of those times? It's you doing it to a camera. So then what that does with the, the nice microphone, it gives you good audio, decent video. Even if you don't have the most up to date smartphone. There's a lot of really, really good, um, there's a lot of really, really good, uh, camera phones out there that take really good videos.
Nick Clason (23:02):
And here's the thing, the reality is this video's probably gonna be consumed on a phone, you know what I mean? So, uh, you're shooting it on a phone to another phone, I don't think that's gonna be a gigantic deal. Um, don't let your creative department tell you otherwise. Uh, and then, uh, what that does is that then also helps you as a communicator get another shot at it. So that's my personal right now. Favorite YouTube strategy for 2022, 2023 and beyond. Hey, once again, thank you guys so much for hanging out on this episode. I cannot believe we are into the twenties already. Uh, had had fun having Kerry on the last couple. Um, been fun having a couple guests. Probably gonna try to get a few more guests here and there, but love having this, love having these conversations. Appreciate you all man. It would be amazing if you could give us a, like a rating, um, subscribe so that you get this delivered for free every time to your inbox. Check us out at hybrid ministry, um, on, uh, our hybridministry.xyz on website. Like I said at the top of the show, we have free transcripts that we provide to you for every single episode. Hopefully you find those, um, helpful. Go check them out. And until next time, talk to you later. See you.
25 min
December 01, 2022 Episode 020: Kerry Ray on the limitations of digital ministry, can we overcome it, and how do we help digital immigrants make an impact with digital natives
SUMMARY
In this episode, Nick finishes up from part 1 of his conversation with Kerry Ray, director of editing and publishing at YM360. Kerry talks about the limitations of digital ministry and how to best navigate some of the new challenges of digital ministry. In addition Kerry shares some of the resources that are available through YM360 for youth pastors who are in the trenches doing ministry.
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Or any and all other resources at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
For resources from YM360 head to http://www.ym360.com
SHOWNOTES
YM360
YM360
http://www.ym360.com
MINISTRY TO PARENTS
https://ministrytoparents.com/
MY YOUTH MIN
https://myyouthmin.com/
TIMECODES
00:00-03:01 Intro
03:01-05:41 The Limitations of Digital Ministry and How to use what we learned from our time in COVID
05:41-11:10 How do we show up to a place teenagers are native to?
11:10-22:00 If you had a crystal ball, how does digital and hybrid ministry need to adjust as we go forward?
22:00-26:55 What resources are available to Youth Pastors?
26:55-27:53 Final encouragement from Kerry to ministry leaders
27:53-31:07 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
What is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. And hey, if you were here for episode, uh, 19, the most recent one that we dropped, it was a part one of an interview with my great friend, um, Kerry Ray, who was on staff at YM 360. He, after 30 years of work inside the local church, has decided to step into more of a role where he's, um, serving the youth pastor, um, and people who are in the trenches doing ministry. So not only does he come with a wealth of personal hands on, boots on the ground, kind of firsthand experience and knowledge of reaching teenagers, um, and seeingDigital Ministry, Contact Work, Relational Ministry, Discipleship, Student Ministry, Youth Ministry, META Church, Streaming Church, TikTok, Social Media life before digital was introduced. Uh, the way he puts it was, um, I'm a digital immigrant versus now doing ministry to people who are digital natives. And so, uh, we're gonna dive into part two of this interview, but I would recommend if you have not heard, go back to part one because he introduces this idea, um, that's not, you know, it's not from him alone, right?
Nick Clason (01:08):
But like, he introduces this idea of a thing called contact work. And contact work is basically the basic premise of going to where people are as opposed to hoping that they will always just come to us, right? If we build it, if it's so beautiful, if it's so shiny and amazing, they will come to us. So he introduces that idea. Um, and now we're gonna kind of explore is that idea of ministry possible, uh, to do digitally. And I would argue that him and I agree for the most part, but I think that, um, we have to sort of like nuance our way into it. Which honestly, it's an interesting dichotomy. And even in having the conversation, I think is how most people feel about digital ministry. I think at a knee jerk reaction, there's this, oh no, you can't do that digitally because discipleship and ministry is best done life on life.
Nick Clason (02:00):
And for the record, I agree with that. Like, I want people that I can physically touch, hug, like sit and eat a knee, have a cup of coffee. Like, here's a great example. Right now, my wife is gone. She's, uh, visiting her mom back home in Ohio. I'm in Texas. We have a relationship. We've video or FaceTimed four times this week, uh, or four times a day, I should say. Um, every day that she's been gone, we've texted late at night, like, we have a relationship, but good grief, like, I wanna give my wife a hug. You know what I mean? Like, there's, it's obviously better together. However, my cell phone is making it possible to remain in contact with my wife. And, and so I think like when you put it that way, you're like, well, yeah, of course. Like, so then how do we add some intentionality?
Nick Clason (02:47):
And we talk about safety, some parameters. What does it look like, um, to do ministry in this way? So I'm really excited for you to check out part two. Again, if you haven't checked out part one, go back and listen to it. Um, and without any further ado, here is part two of our conversation. I mean, honestly, the entire basis right of this podcast is, is what's called the Hybrid Ministry podcast. Because I think what we've learned, at least the way I felt, and I was a part Kerry of an attractional based church during C and so we put together, in my opinion, the best youth ministry online experience that existed. But no one cared because the contact work didn't exist. And so it's, but then what happened right, was this argument, this tug and this tug and pull, like in c everyone was forced to go all the way digital.
Nick Clason (03:37):
And so we all did, we all went all in to the best of our abilities. And then once the restrictions started to lift, the pendulum swung almost so hard because we all saw the effects of not being together and how valuable that is. And so it almost swung like, let's, let's throw the baby out with the bath water and all the good things that we learned from that time period from being fully digital and having, you know, our like proverbial hands tied behind our back. Like I, so I went to a place where a, um, I was a campus student pastor. I didn't speak. Um, and we didn't speak even pre covid. We had a video speaker, um, every week cuz there's universal across all campuses. And I can give you my opinions about that later. But that was, that was one hand tie behind my back.
Nick Clason (04:26):
The second hand tie behind my back was that I wasn't allowed to meet with students. So Ty, what I feel like both hands tie behind my back, all right, now you're the youth pastor here, go do youth ministry. And I was like, how? But that literally forced me right? To just rethink everything. And for literally six months to nine months, I had to navigate that world with both a handstand behind my back. And maybe that is what, and as I'm talking this out with you, maybe that's what has prompted my passion around this because I realized there's some good things you can do digitally, but it can't replace what's done physically. And so I think we gotta find that, that hybrid I think contact, I think, yeah, yeah. At its core happens in person. But think about, you know, when you started out in ministry, you couldn't grab a phone and text that student and be like, Hey, how'd that test go?
Nick Clason (05:20):
You didn't have that. You had to rely on a physical meetup, the football game, youth group, whatever, to make that happen. And so we, we can live in that digital space and bow borrow off the equity that we have from what happens in person. And so how do we enter into there effectively, like you said, cuz that's what Jesus did. He showed up. We can now show up in ways that teenagers are, to your point, native to how do we do that? What are the, what, what does that look like? I think we're all trying to figure that out.
Kerry Ray (05:53):
I, I think we are A couple of things. You, you said one I wanted to say, I don't know if your, your listeners understand or know about you that you walked into a church as a youth pastor, right? As this whole thing started, or that whole thing started. And so immediately you were trying, you, you, they didn't even know who you were. So you were trying to introduce yourself in a digital way, uh, to a group of people who didn't know you at all. Um, and that was interesting. Um, but the other thing you said, um, you mentioned about, um, we snapped back, the pendulum swung back. Mm-hmm. , can we be honest? I think the reason why the pendulum swung back so quickly is because we were so many people were terrible at one of it, at one side of it. Yeah. And it was failing so badly and they were terrible at it.
Kerry Ray (06:40):
Well, it's not familiar. The second well, yeah. And the second that that ended, they they run back to what, you know Yeah. As fast as you can, because I'm terrible at this. So we did, you threw the baby out with the bath water because you were like, one, I'm not good at it. Two, um, nobody likes to do stuff. They're not good. Right. So I'm not good at it. I don't wanna do it. I just wanna get as far away from it as possible. Let's go back to what we know when it was working. Let's go back to the stuff that I was confident in doing. Let's just run back to that. But if Covid showed us anything, it is, there needs to be, to your point, a hybrid. There needs to be both. And there are students that are out there that we can, you know, need to say hello to digitally.
Kerry Ray (07:22):
We do need to learn how to utilize that digital space better. Um, and this is another thing I was thinking as you were, as you were saying that is, you know, in the physical contact work mm-hmm. , there were boundaries and rules. Um, uh, especially in ministry. You know, you, you had, there's, there were certain things you could do and you, there were certain things you put boundaries on and said, Hey, contact work means this. It does not mean, you know, driving a female or even a male by yourself and go, oh yeah, that's contact work. No, that's, that's potential jail time. That's what that is. . Um, so you don't, you don't do those things. I think in digital. Um, you mentioned texting a student, Hey, how'd that test go? Mm-hmm. . Um, I know with our small group leaders, they were very nervous mm-hmm. and still are.
Kerry Ray (08:12):
Cause we don't know the boundaries. Um, do you text a student? Is that okay? Um, because what if their parent is not cool with, um, you know, a 35 year old texting a 14 year old mm-hmm. . Um, how was your day? Um, you know, that can, that can kinda be weird. Uh, so there are some boundaries there. Do you hang out? You know, I can go to a football, I can go to a middle school football game and I could be there as a student pastor and I can see my kids that I see, I can meet their friends. This, there again, young life does a great job of this. You know, I can be intentional about meeting people. I'm in a public space. There's other people around. Yep. That is very different than me logging into Call of Duty intentionally and playing in a chatroom of, you know, a bunch of 14 year old guys and girls that I don't know.
Nick Clason (09:06):
Yeah.
Kerry Ray (09:06):
That's, that's different. And maybe the digital immigrant in me has that trigger goes, this is weird. Yeah. Uh, maybe that's the digital immigrant in me versus the digital native, but there's some oddity there. And so we've gotta figure out not just a balance of how do we, how do we engage that way, but what are the boundaries? What are the best practices? What are the safety protocols that need to be in place in a digital format to where you're not the weirdo, you're not the weird old guy or the weird old girl hanging out, you know, in a chatroom or in a, in a digital space. Um, the internet has been great, but it's also shown us that it's highly dangerous and that it is full of predators. And not to say that the football, the middle school football game stands, that there's not predators out there as well sitting in those, in those bleachers.
Kerry Ray (10:02):
But it's, society sees it differently in a digital space. Um, because right now that is where a lot of the ugly stuff is happening. Um, so all that to say is we don't need to abandon it. We do need to be careful. Mm-hmm. , we do need to engage, but to do it with boundaries and guidelines in place. And we need to, if you're in the church world, you need to set your people up well because they don't know. And they're trying to do what you're, you're telling them, Hey, do contact work. Hey, engage, Hey, be a part of these, these students' lives. And they do. But you gotta give them the boundaries of the protocol so that they know and they have confidence in how to interact in that digital space. One, they're already digital native more than likely. And two, it's an awkward space that they're unfamiliar with. And three, they need to feel safe. Just like if you sent them into a football game and said, Hey, I want you to hit at least one football game. Here's what you do in that space. Here's what you don't do in that space. You need to do the same thing with them in a digital context.
Nick Clason (11:10):
Yeah. So, from the seat you're sitting in now, um, what, if anything, like do you see about how covid, digital, hybrid, any of that stuff, how is it influencing and impacting ministry leaders? Cause you're sitting in a unique seat where you are helping serve the type of person that you were for the last 30 years. So what are you noticing? What are you hearing? What are the pain points? What are people asking? What are people trying to figure out? What are things that you're seeing? And then what do you maybe envision or see as, uh, a future maybe, maybe in like a year, but also maybe in the next five, 10 years of ministry, student ministry and all that stuff?
Kerry Ray (11:55):
Yeah. What I'm seeing is I get to speak to youth pastors in multiple states, in multiple denominations. Um, people who have been doing it for 20 plus years, 10 years. I was at Arkansas this past weekend and a room of, you know, 25, 30 guys and girls, um, who do youth ministry. And, um, there were some that were full-time. There were some that were, you know, part-time. There were some that were bivocational. Um, there were some that had been doing this for 10 years, eight years, 20 years. And then a couple of the couple of them are like, yeah, this is month three. Yeah. Um, , you just go, woo. Um, but I think they're all struggling with the same thing, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, is how to balance, um, how to juggle the digital aspect versus the physical aspect and, and what is contact work and how to, how do I create things that people wanna be a part of that students wanna be a part of?
Kerry Ray (12:55):
How do I program? Um, you know, a lot of 'em are just trying to figure out, how do I do any of this? I'm just winging it. How do I get support and momentum and, um, those pieces without even the digital piece involved. Um, but yeah, that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing people struggling. I'm seeing people trying to navigate this return from shut down to non shut and the, and the damage that has been done in the, in, in that. And I am seeing people try to figure out how to engage in a new way, a new group of people, um, being, you know, this, this group of, um, of Gen Z students who are still around, and then this incoming crop of generation alpha students who are currently, uh, sixth, seventh. And depending on the age, you've got a couple eighth graders that are young ones mm-hmm. .
Kerry Ray (13:48):
Um, but just trying to, how, how do I, how do I engage them? How do we, how do we, um, provide them with, with the things they need? And there again, I know this has nothing to do with digital, but what I'm really seeing the most, uh, in the youth ministry space is the audience has shifted so much in that culturally it's a different world. Um, there's a lot more questions. They're open to a lot more things. They, um, and, and pastors are trying to figure out, for example, you know, how do you teach in a ministry context? How do you teach a teenager about the word of God? Which is absolute truth when the generation doesn't believe in such a thing is absolute truth. Mm-hmm. , how do you do that? Um, how do you, you know, how do you, so many youth pastors are preaching about characters in the Bible or things that were happening scripturally.
Kerry Ray (14:45):
And they'll say, you know, well, well, Moses, so and so and so and so and so and so as if the people listening to them know who that is, is without stopping to say, let me tell you who this is, because they're, again, the nuns in os they were raised by a group of parents who didn't grow them up in, in scripture. So they don't know. And so our, our mistake is, or the mistakes I'm seeing, or pastors speaking in a, in a phrase like, say, like I said, well, Moses, you know Moses, they don't, yeah. They're like, yeah, the guy with the boat, they're like, no, that's Noah
Nick Clason (15:16):
,
Kerry Ray (15:17):
But we have to pause. We have to slow down and teach mm-hmm. . And I think we have to do that. I think technology, um, Instagram, social media, TikTok, I, I love, I love, and I hate what I'm seeing right now on TikTok. Um, and if you're not on TikTok, you need to at least look at it. Mm-hmm. . Um, if I can encourage, if a youth pastor's listening, if I can encourage you, I know it's, you know, it's the devil. I get it. But at least be familiar with it. Yeah. At least engage. And I know your church probably has a stance on it. And, and I'll warn you, there's things, you're gonna see some stuff on there. That algorithm is incredible. Um, you only need to pause for a second and it'll feed you more of that. Um,
Nick Clason (15:59):
So yeah, listen, here's the best TikTok hack, by the way. If you start it and they start feeding you stuff you don't want, hold your, hold the video down, click, not interested, do that two or three times and it's gone forever. Like I'm telling you, can, you can game that algorithm, uh, the way each can, the way you'll, you want,
Kerry Ray (16:17):
I'll see a better TikTok hack. Don't sign up for an account
Nick Clason (16:21):
or
Kerry Ray (16:22):
That, cause that way every time you, every time you log off the, turn the app off, you turn it back on, you get the most stuff. It's new every time. Um, but what, what I was gonna say about, about TikTok was some of the greatest things I'm seeing is, is student ministries, youth pastors, pastors utilizing that technology and teaching theology. Yeah. And, and, and, um, you know, there's a couple guys that do like the, you know, one minute sermon, um, and stuff that excellent content mm-hmm. this, the negative side of that is I'm seeing that the same thing with terrible theology mm-hmm. . Um, and I would say that group of people are using it very well. And our students, there, again, keep in mind your kids don't know the difference. They don't. Yeah. Um, and so they're watching things on TikTok that are, let's call it, you know, 30% true.
Kerry Ray (17:22):
Uh, and then it just kinda hangs, hangs hangs the right or hangs the left and, and goes crazy. Um, you know, I watched somebody the other day talking about, you know, Jesus, you know, Jesus's name wasn't Jesus. And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, good. This is good. And then they kept going. They kept going. They like, so Jesus wasn't really God, he was just the, and I'm like, oh, no, no, because it started off, it started off really strong and going, yeah, this is good. This is good. Let's teach them these things. You know, there weren't really three wise men as far as we know. There were, there were wise men that showed up. Great. Great. So, you know what they were, they were really these things. They were Illuminati No, they were not Illuminati. You know, just, just crazy stuff. Um, where do I think it's going?
Kerry Ray (18:08):
I I definitely think, you know, the, the, those of us who are digital, uh, immigrants we're aging out. Um, more and more digital natives. Um, that's the way the world works, right. You know, more kids are being born more, more babies and children are being handed iPhones and iPads as pacifiers and are growing up with it. And that is a thing. And it can be good or it can be bad. And, and I guess my biggest takeaway would be, or challenge would be this, don't build a moat. There's no mo big enough. Whether you're talking to parents or whether you're trying to do your own ministry piece. Don't build a moat and try to protect everybody from technology. That's, it's foolish. You're not, that's, that's not a winnable battle. No. Um, I think what we need to focus on is redeeming that culture and redeeming technology and saying, how can I take what is, what is, how can I take who these students are and meet them where they are versus where we wish they were?
Kerry Ray (19:11):
Um, meet them where they are and redeem this technology and utilize it in a way for the glory of God and for, for the, for the right reasons. The right purposes. And try to try to really point to him using technology and use it to reach students. Use it to disciple students. Use it to, um, bring and share Jesus to students who may never, ever step foot in your church door, but they may be scrolling through TikTok and just happened to come across a video where you talk about this God man who loved you so much that he gave himself for you on your behalf, so that you could have eternal life. And it may, here's what I find interesting about students in this generational speech that we're in right now. There's no reason for a teenager to show up to the things you're doing.
Kerry Ray (20:05):
Mm-hmm. , there's just no reason for it. Yeah. But they still are. They're showing up to these things. And it's not because you got a great Instagram account. They're showing up to these things because they have an internal intrinsic curiosity about spiritual things that I believe that God has placed in them from creation to seek him out. Yeah. And they're showing up because that curiosity is itching and they're trying to figure out a way to scratch it. And they're just curious enough to still listen and use, use Instagram and TikTok all you want, but use it to scratch that curiosity in them that is God given. And let God be God and God do the things. We don't save people anyway. We never have, we haven't done it physically and we're not gonna do it digitally. Um, that's not, that's not for us, but utilize the, the tools that we have in front of us to continue to do the things that we are called to doop.
Kerry Ray (21:06):
Um, so yes, technology is out there. It is, it is doing its thing. Um, don't run from it. Don't build a mote to protect people from it, whether they're your own kids or not. Utilize it. Teach people how to use it. Teach people how to be safe with it. Set your volunteers up to utilize it. Well give them boundaries. Help them to, to do this thing well. Um, you know, show them how to do it and show your church how to do it. Show all the digital immigrants how to do it. Um, and lead, lead there. Lead from lead from the backseat. Um, especially if you're watching this, listen to this. Sorry. If you're listening to this as a, as a digital, uh, native, help people learn how to do this and to do it right. And to do it well. And not to be afraid of it. Cause I think the biggest thing is fear. Um, but yeah. Mean, sorry, man. I got, I've got on my soapbox for a minute, but
Nick Clason (21:58):
No, that was really good. I just, that was a great, that was a great place to land it. Why don't you, uh, you know, this has been a very youth ministry centric conversation, which admittedly so, and we, we let you guys know that at the beginning. Tell 'em about, uh, everything, you know, what, how can they engage with stuff over at YM 360. What are some of the resources that you, you all are producing to help, to help people in this space right now?
Kerry Ray (22:20):
Yeah. For, um, we, we create things. Our, our whole point is to make the things, to make youth ministry youth pastors wear a lot of hats. It's, it's hard. Um, I told those guys in girls in Arkansas, uh, this past weekend, youth ministry's harder than it's ever been. And it's not easy. Yeah. But we have more opportunity than we've ever had had because there are so many blank canvases out there who don't know. There's not a lot of, um, church baggage in teenagers right now, cuz they never went. Um, they read about it, they see it online, but, you know, they see people deconstructing and talking about it, but they don't have it themselves. A lot of them, because they, they haven't engaged yet. So, gosh, there's so much out there. Um, and why do sixty.com if you wanna check that out? Uh, there's tons of resources, uh, for you.
Kerry Ray (23:10):
There's, we post blog articles every single Monday. You can check out that kinda stuff. Um, I think that the, the best things that you can be a part of right now that we work on is we have two big platforms that we put out every month. New content for one of those is called ministry parents.com, ministry to parents.com. And it's not for parents, it's for you to help parents. So if you're in ministry, uh, and you're trying to help equip parents to be better parents in their home and to be, and to help those no e s's raise students in a way that points them to Jesus, um, we provide you with all the stuff. We do it all for you. Uh, we write all your emails, we, we curate all the content for you. It's really just point and click and paste and send.
Kerry Ray (24:00):
And we do it all for you. Uh, all of us know that we're supposed to partner with parents. None of us really know what that means. Um, and so and so we're trying to figure it out. And you know, what usually keeps us as student pastors from it is either we don't have kids of our own. And we go, well, I'm not legit. There's no way I'm gonna look at a parent and go, you know what you should do with that 14 year old? Cause they're gonna look at me and go, yeah, you tell me about that buddy. Or by the time we are legitimate, we realize that curating content for parents as far as what they need is a full-time job. Yep. And we can't do all that. And so that's what ministry parents does. Ministry parents.com. And then we just launched a brand new platform for training and development of youth pastors, um, that talks about all of this kind of stuff on the regular, every month we provide you with, gosh, 2026 plus pieces of content that's brand new every month that talks about everything from volunteers to parents, to technology, to other disruptors that are in that you're dealing with.
Kerry Ray (25:04):
Um, the whole point of it is to help you grow, lead and thrive in ministry. It is, it is all about developing you as a person. Um, you could check that out as well. It is my youth min.com, my youth min.com. It is, it is worth it. It's worth checking that out. Um, all those are subscription based stuff, but it's, it's not expensive. So whether you're full-time, part-time, uh, big church, small church, um, multi-site, multi staff, or you're flying solo, um, it is something that you can utilize. Um, and anytime, you know, my I am available, like I said, I tell people all the time, let me be that guy. Let me be the person that when you're struggling and you need somebody to talk to, when you are excited, when you're new and, and going, I don't know if this is the right way to do this or not, uh, I'm available.
Kerry Ray (25:54):
And, and more than happy to talk to you, I, I stepped out a student ministry proper to take this YM 360 role to give myself the ability to have these conversations like we're having the day, uh, with youth pastors, youth workers, uh, all over the place. So my email address is Kerry kr y com. Um, or you can catch me on Twitter and Instagram, uh, K R two, and then the letter you k um, I, I don't have TikTok. I just have a blank account so I can keep up with what's going on, but nobody wants to see me do Renegade or any of the dances anyway, so I know Charlie de that's, it's true, it's true. I should be on Dancing With the Stars, but I'm a, I'm no TikTok dancer day. So Yeah, day one day it's my aspiration. . Uh, yeah. So please, please hit me up and lemme hear from you. Any questions you ever have, anything you ever need, or if you just need to be encouraged and say don't, because here's, here's the deal, Nick, I just want people to know that there's less people joining into the student ministry rights than there used to be. Hmm. And, uh, we need more people than ever before. And so, yeah.
Kerry Ray (27:10):
You know, um, gosh, I'm going blank on that. Josh ship is the guy who said, you know, every student needs one caring adult. Yeah. Every student is one caring adult away from being a success. Um, and so, man, we need so many caring adults out there who are willing to see students, to love students where they are versus where they wish they were. That's good. And, and just to jump in and say, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm willing to let somebody show me the ropes. So
Nick Clason (27:43):
This stuff, man. Hey, I appreciate it. Thanks for your, uh, absolutely your time today from, uh, Birmingham Hotel Room. It's been great.
Kerry Ray (27:51):
. Thank you very much, man. Thanks for having me.
Nick Clason (27:55):
Wow. Well, man, I hope that you guys found that interesting and fascinating. Uh, hey, uh, in the show notes, wherever you get podcasts, you should be able to, uh, see the links to all the things that Kerry was talking about and all the resources that are available. If you are not a youth pastor, thank you for sitting through just a couple of old timey youth pastors chatting up, doing ministry, talking about ministry. But if you know someone who is in, in particular, man, I would really encourage you to share with him the ministry to parent and the, um, my Youth men, um, platform. Share those links with them. It's something that can be really, really helpful. Uh, we talked about this a little bit, um, off off Mike, Kerry and I, well, once we hung up. But my youth min, honestly, guys, it is conference level training.
Nick Clason (28:42):
And so if you're a youth pastor and you're in a small church without a giant budget, like it's behind a paywall, however, it is far cheaper than if you got a plane, got a hotel, um, and paid for a conference ticket somewhere across country or whatever, and you have access to it. Like, I don't know if you heard, he's like 20 something pieces of new content every single month. So there is conference level training very available at your fingertips, very accessible. Um, and so that's a budget saver, you know, and so I think leaders who wanna be learning, um, are growing super helpful. So check that out for sure. I am a, I'm a contributor to it, so, um, shamelessly love to have you check it out. Um, but anyway, uh, appreciate you guys, uh, listening. And if you're anything like me and you listen to podcasts on the go, I do it when I'm, I'm running, I do it when I'm driving, and I do it when I'm on the lawn doing the dishes.
Nick Clason (29:37):
The reality is, um, Kerry said so much good stuff in there and I would hate, hate for you to miss it. And so we, for free provide, uh, transcripts for every single episode. You can check those out at hybridministry.xyz or just, uh, read through it in your podcast catcher so that you're able to just see what's going on and, uh, hear what's going on and maybe take some notes, um, and take some of the things that you heard in your ears and put it to paper if you need it. Um, for conversations or for meetings with, uh, upper level leadership or whatever the case may be. We just wanna serve you and help you win in your area of ministry. So you can check that out at hybridministry.xyz. We're also on Twitter at hybrid ministry. We'd love to have you come hang out with us. And hey, listen, if you found this helpful one way that you could really help us out, um, a gigantic favor for us would just be male.
Nick Clason (30:26):
If you could give us a like, or a rating or a review, that would be very beneficial, help us pay it forward, um, and help you maybe pay it forward even to some other people who, who wanna help uncover and find this information. So, once again, grateful for you, thankful for you. Um, hope you guys have a great rest of your day, wherever you are, whatever you might be doing, and we pray that this is helping, um, make digital discipleship just a little bit easier for you in your ministry context. Until next time, talk to you later guys. Bye.
32 min
November 24, 2022 Episode 019: Kerry Ray on doing ministry like Jesus did, and how technology has changed the way we ministry and communicate to teenagers in Gen Z and Gen Alpha and beyond
SUMMARY
In this episode Nick sits down with his friend, and YM360 General Editor and Content Director, Kerry Ray. Kerry is a veteran with over 3 decades of experience in church ministry, all in student ministry. Kerry and Nick talk about the ways in which technology has changed and shaped the ways of doing ministry. And Kerry also talks about the importance of going to a teenager's "turf" or showing up in their life, relationally.
Come hang out with us on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/hybridministry
Or grab show notes and transcripts at http://www.hybridministry.xyz
SHOWNOTES
YM360
http://www.ym360.com
MINISTRY TO PARENTS
https://ministrytoparents.com/
MY YOUTH MIN
https://myyouthmin.com/
EPISODE 016 ON HOW THE IPHONE CHANGED THINGS WITH DERRY PRENKERT
https://merry-swamp-3547.fireside.fm/016
TIMECODES
00:00-02:49 Intro
02:49-05:55 Kerry's Intro and Experience
05:55-09:12 What it's like no longer being in the trenches of ministry
09:12-13:44 What was life in ministry like before the cell phone and after?
13:44-16:22 Is technology what created FOMO?
16:22-21:00 What is contact work?
21:00-32:58 Can we use technology to our advantage in ministry efforts?
32:58-34:27 Outro
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast, episode 19. We've been doing 19 of these. I can't freaking believe it in your catcher. It might be 20, because we posted as Double Zero pilot. I kind of hate when people do that, and then I, I went and did it. So, anyway, uh, as always, I am your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And today you're in for a treat because number one, I'm not just gonna ramble in your ear holes the entire time, like I have been for the last several episodes, but two, I'm bringing on one of my really good friends. His name is Kerry Ray. He is the director of editing and publications right now at YM 360, which is, YM Youth Min, right? Youth Ministry 360. And he has 30 years of church ministry experience, particularly in the student ministry and youth ministry space.
Nick Clason (00:58):
So, let me caveat all of that to say this is a ministry podcast, not specific in particular to youth ministry. However, that being said, um, you know that I am a 12 year youth ministry veteran, and so a lot of my connections and conversations come in the youth ministry space. And so, um, I just will caveat all this to say that today is going to be a very youth ministry centric conversation. Um, but all of it is going to be couched sort of in, uh, digital, right? And, and so what Kerry is gonna be talking about, um, and what I did is I, we had an interview and it went really well, and it went really long. And so I decided, I think I'm actually gonna bite, uh, split this up into two more bite size pieces. And so, episode one is gonna come out this week, episode two, or part two of this, I should say, is gonna drop on Thanksgiving Day, so you can enjoy it on the way to your, um, grandmother's house over the river and through the woods.
Nick Clason (01:59):
So in this first part in particular, he's gonna talk a little bit about his experience, um, what he's seen and how he's seen digital play a role in that. And then he talks about, um, a thing that I first learned from him, but he says he's still primarily from young Life called contact work, right? And if you've been around this podcast at all, you've known, we talked about showing up where they are, um, which is what Jesus did, honestly, right? He, he showed up where we were, he put on skin, he became human. And so that's what he talks about, and he kind of gives the basis for it and why it's important. Um, and so that's gonna be today. Um, so hopefully you enjoy it. And so, without any further ado, we're gonna get started. And you'll notice just how well I am as a host when we plan this thing, when you hear how we get started. So here we go. 3, 2, 1. Check it out. Hey,
Kerry Ray (02:50):
Is whoa gonna go first on,
Nick Clason (02:53):
Man? Come on. Doesn't even listen to instructions.
Kerry Ray (02:57):
I did. I thought you said, I'll do a thing later. And then you go ahead and introduce
Nick Clason (03:02):
Yourself. I'm keeping all this in. This is Kerry, everybody. Kerry, introduce yourself to the tens and tens of listeners that I have.
Kerry Ray (03:10):
Hey, tens of listeners. My name is Kerry Ray. I am the director of publishing for Y M 360 in Birmingham, Alabama. Uh, YM 360 Youth Ministry 360. Uh, before that, uh, this is my first year actually as a director of publishing, whatever that means. Uh, I did, uh, before that, I did, uh, right about three decades in the student ministry seat, um, in multiple denominations of churches, in churches, multiple states, uh, different sizes, churches, different size, not sizes, different size churches, um, multisites single sites, uh, single sites that wanted to be multisite, uh, . I've been, I've been around the block and, and seen a lot of things, man. Um, but yeah, I've been in the youth ministry for right at 30 years. And, um, this was my first, actually at the time of this recording, this was my, this last Easter was my first Easter, uh, in, in here in 2022, was my first Easter in 30 years, not to be on staff at a church.
Kerry Ray (04:15):
So it was quite the different thing to sit in there as a regular person who could see all the things going wrong, but uh, was not responsible for, for fixing any of them. Um, and so it was great. It was, it was really great. Um, it's weird now on Saturday nights after, you know, you get in a routine for 30 years. Uh, Saturday nights are kind of a weird thing because you go to church on Sunday mornings, but you're not going to work, you know, to do all the things. Um, so, and you go with a family on, on a Sunday morning, it's whole thing. Just a different world, man. So I've, uh, like I said, I've been, I got to wife 360 in October of 2022, um, and started a, a new thing. We, we work in, uh, Y 360, if you don't know, we're, we're part, um, publishing.
Kerry Ray (05:06):
And, uh, we create content for student ministries, youth ministries, all over the world to use. Um, and we also do camps. We have a, a generate by Y 360, uh, which does camp all across different locations. We had this last summer, summer of 2022. We, I believe we were in 20, 23 or 24 locations, um, running camps, 20. We had three different teams spread out all over. Uh, so it was great. My, my section of that, we create all of the, uh, written material, all the devotional material, all of the, um, all the written material for camps. Um, so yeah, it's been a lot of fun. It's very different. And then I get to, uh, coach student ministries, youth pastors, all across the place. Um, I've been doing that for around seven years, so, yeah. Nice. Yeah. Lot of fun. Lot of fun.
Nick Clason (05:59):
So let me ask you this, just, this isn't one of the questions I sent you. I'm already going off script, but, uh, do you enjoy Saturday nights and Sunday mornings not being responsible for stuff, or is there like an element of you that misses it at all?
Kerry Ray (06:15):
Oh, absolutely. I think anytime you do something for a significant amount of your life, um, there's a part of you that missed that, um, that misses, um, you know, just being around and, and, and knowing all the faces and knowing who's where. And, um, yeah, there's just part of it that you kind of miss a little bit of it. There's some part, and maybe this will make sense for some of you listening who've done anything for a significant amount of time, there's parts that you miss that you don't know why you miss, or you don't even know what you miss. You just say something's weird and off and just seems a little different. Um, yeah. But yeah, there, there's pieces and parts. There's definitely pieces and parts that I don't miss.
Kerry Ray (06:56):
You know, I don't miss, you know, being gone all day on a Sunday. Um, I don't miss, um, I the whole getting to be a part like you go as a family and do stuff with as a family, uh, that's really brand new. Yeah. Um, and, and it's, it's been great. My, my kids, I, my wife and I have two kids. We have an eight year old and a 14 just turned 14 a couple days ago. And so this is such a significant time in both of their lives mm-hmm. that it is great to be, you know, just a dad and not a staff member. Um, and to get, to get to sit in, I'll tell you, you know, a little bit of a confession. It's also difficult. Um, we're at a smaller church now, and, um, having been in large church ministry for so long, um, now that my daughter is participating in ministry, and, you know, that ministry is, you know, trying to figure itself out and mm-hmm. and, and go through all the, you know, all the growing pains of, of a growing ministry. And I'm sitting on the sidelines and thinking, gosh, , that's awkward. I can help that, but I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna white knight, you know, come in when my, on my high horse and, and quote unquote fix it for them. Especially with,
Nick Clason (08:16):
You're fixing it as the YM 360 guy. Are you fixing it as Madison dad, as dad? Are you fixing it as a church volunteer? Like, what, yeah. What's
Kerry Ray (08:26):
Your role, right? Or are you fixing as the guy that quote unquote knows it all right. So, you know, you don't, you don't wanna be that guy. Um, so yeah, it's, it's just been, it's been weird. That's, that's kind of the honest thing is to have done a thing, and I think this is true at anything, not just ministry, but having, you know, if you were, if you were a cabinet maker and you walked in and people were, you know, fumbling around with a hammer trying to build a cabinet, and you're just biting your, you know, biting your closed fist, going, oh, no, that's not how you, you do it . Um, so it, it's that, I mean, and not saying that they're not doing a great job. Um, they are, they're doing well in figuring it out. They're just, you know, figuring it out. Um, and they're going through some, some growing pain in that process. So yeah, that's, that's what we're doing as a family right
Nick Clason (09:13):
Now. So I'm, I'm curious, Kerry, like two or three episodes ago, I'll link it, you know, in the show notes, but I had, uh, my friend d Pinker on, and we talked about, um, how he, he has a similar longevity track record that you do, and he talked about how the invention of the iPhone was a pretty monumental, like, milestone marker for him in youth ministry. Like he kinda remembers ministry before the invention, um, and widespread use of the iPhone, and then post the invention and widespread use of the iPhone. Do you have, would you say you have a similar, um, experience with that? Like, did you, did you notice that being a pretty big milestone thing in student ministry and in your career noticing how students interacted? Did that change things? Did you, um, have to program or think about things differently because of technology and it's, you know, interwoven into the culture?
Kerry Ray (10:11):
Um, honestly, I, I think the iPhone changed not programming so much as it changed, um, advertising. And I know that's a big no-no word. You know, in the church world, you're not supposed to see the things you're doing as a quote unquote product or something you are promoting. Um, but you are, you're, you're promoting a thing, um, come be a part of this, whether it's a camp, a Wednesday night, a Sunday morning, you are trying to tell people this is a thing we have, um, otherwise you're sitting there by yourself. Um, and so I think it changed, I think it changed dramatically how we engaged with, with students. Hmm. , um, I don't think so much at all. It, it really changed programming. Um, but it definitely changed the way we engaged. It definitely changed, um, the level of intentionality that you had to put behind, uh, promotion and how you promoted and how you celebrated.
Kerry Ray (11:15):
Uh, it also gave you kind of an open door, you know, whether you want it to be or not. A lot of youth ministry is word of mouth. Yeah. Um, I always used to kinda call it the skating rink effect when I was a kid. You know, the skating rink was, was a thing. , sadly, that'll show you my age. The skating rink was a thing, and we didn't, in middle school specifically, you didn't know why it was a thing. Yeah. You just knew that's where everybody was. Mm-hmm. . And, uh, but it was word of mouth, you know? It was, it wasn't the, the skating rink when I grew up, the skating, it was called fun time, skate land. Uh, it wasn't that fun time. Skateland had this giant marketing, you know, this this monumental system or this, this thing that they were doing. They were like, come to fun time.
Kerry Ray (12:01):
It was just, it was word of mouth. And the middle school, you know, that that's where everybody was going on on a Friday night. They were going to fun time. And you talked about it in the hallways, and people do, and I think in cinema ministry, whether we want it to be or not, it, it's always been a word of mouth. You know, I'm, you know, why do, why do so many kids show up to this one event, this all nighter that you do? Well, because the word got out that these people are going and the other people wanna go. And then it snowballs into this thing. Um, and I think the word of mouth became digital. Word of mouth. Um, and you could, you could digitally have a megaphone to, to broadcast that thing versus just relying on word of mouth. Yeah. Um, and so that changed the game.
Kerry Ray (12:47):
So it changed. Um, the only thing I would say in programming, uh, uh, that it would change was that you had to be, or you started to be a little more intentional about recording the things that you were doing mm-hmm. and putting them out there for people to see later. Yeah. Uh, and to advertise with. Um, that's probably the only way it really changed. And I would say it changed programming. It would just, Hey, we want to capture certain things. And so we would talk about, as a team, uh, what are the things we wanna maybe capture tonight and, and broadcast so that people can see it and try to leverage the fomo, you know, the, the, that FOMO piece mm-hmm. is, is a real deal, the invention of the iPhone, Instagram, now TikTok, um, even, even be, you know, be real. It is that FOMO piece of what's happening in the moment. Who's doing what, Ooh, I wanna be a part of that. Mm-hmm. , that's what changed. I think that's what changed.
Nick Clason (13:45):
So would you say before that, that fomo for someone my age, who's only done ministry in an iPhone generation, is fomo a recent phenomenon since the invention of technology and things like that? Or was that always a part of it? Now you just can see it with your own eyes that you Oh, you're right now missing out.
Kerry Ray (14:07):
Yeah. No, FOMO has always existed. Um, it wasn't called that, but you know, there was always that, you know, nobody wants to be left out. Everybody wants to be, um, they did say it for hundreds, hundreds of years. They've been saying for years, you know, that, um, when you walk into a building, but think about yourself anytime, iPhone or not, you walk into a restaurant in a busy time of the day for a restaurant mm-hmm. , and you're the, there's maybe one other person in the restaurant. There's something inside of you that goes, it could be the greatest restaurant ever. It could be the best food, best atmosphere, but there's something inside you that intrinsically goes, huh, yeah, something's wrong. What's wrong with this, this ? And, and I think that's, I think that's who we are as, as human beings. When you walk into a store, there's nobody shopping there. When you, when you go to a gym and you work and there's, you're what, what's midnight? That's if you're doing it in a time where typically there would be people there, whether we walk into a church now, um, and there's, you know, there's nobody really attending. You go, huh? When you walk outta that, you don't say, you know, man, that was great. You go, man, that was great. I wonder why nobody goes.
Nick Clason (15:27):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting, right? Cause none of that's based on the actual content maybe. Nope. Of like, oh, that was a great message I really resonated with, or whatever. Like what you're noticing is like the social equity landscape of like, what's going on around you, looking around, no one's there. And
Kerry Ray (15:44):
It is a thing, and it is a thing. I think that thing has always existed. And I think whether it's the iPhone or social media, um, has just exacerbated that and made it, yeah. A more prominent thing turned the volume up, if you will, uh, has made it a more prominent thing, more obvious thing. Um, the, but I think it's always been there. Uh, I think it's, you know, when you were eight years old and didn't get invited to a birthday party and you knew other people did mm-hmm. , that's, you had fomo, you were missing out. Um, I think that's just a, a human thing.
Nick Clason (16:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So you and I connected, you were at a church in Cincinnati. I was at a church in Cincinnati, and we were on the doorstep of working together. Um, and so in that process, I guess, I mean, I guess it was even formal. We had formal interviews and stuff. Um, you explained to me, uh, a thing that, I don't know if you came up with this or coined it or whatever, but you called it contact work. Um, so explain a little bit to our listeners, like what that is, where it comes from, maybe the theological or biblical basis for it. Um, and, uh, like then I wanna kind of explore, is that type of work, is that type of ministry, is that possible more and more as we enter into this digital space? But first of all, give us just a little bit of like a background of like, what is it, um, what are you talking about with contact work? I think when I heard it, I never heard it called that, but it was very intrinsic to me. Like, I was like, oh, yeah, this makes sense, right? As a youth pastor, like, this is what I'm trying to do. I just never kind of put this label to it. So explain that a little bit.
Kerry Ray (17:32):
Yeah. Well, I definitely did not, uh, coin the phrase contact work. Um, that is, um, I served for a while, um, in young life, and that is a, that is a big, big piece of young life. If anybody's listening who has ever been a part or knows anything about young life, contact work is one of their core tenants. Um, they put a lot of, a lot of energy and effort and strategy
Nick Clason (18:00):
Into Andre good at contact work. That's, that's probably what they're best, I would say.
Kerry Ray (18:04):
Oh, they're, yeah, they're excellent at it. And it's because they value it. It's such a high value, um, for them. Like I said, it's one of their core tenants. Um, it's such a high value that they do it well. Um, and so borrowing that phrase from those guys, um, I just learned it and saw it done really well and saw it valued. Um, and so I, I kind of adopted it into early on into, um, what I was doing, and it was, it was going where they are versus expecting them to come to you. Hmm. Um, contact work at, at its core is, uh, young life would call it earning the right to be heard. Um, but it is, or maybe you hear them say, um, doing things on their turf mm-hmm. , um, so to speak. But basically it is, it is going to where the students are mm-hmm. versus sitting and expecting them to come to you, and then you're putting in the time with them in their places where they feel comfortable and confident, and where they maybe kinda run the show versus your place behind these walls, behind this door where you're in charge and are expecting them to, to do certain, certain things. Um, contact, contact work. Oops, sorry. Contact work is something that is something that we have done for years. It's an expectation.
Kerry Ray (19:37):
Sorry, my headphones went out for a second.
Nick Clason (19:40):
Oh, no, you're good. Contact work is sounds great to me. So,
Kerry Ray (19:42):
Okay. Contact work is, is something that, um, I have, you know, expected is the best word to use of any staff we have I've ever had on, on a, on a church staff. Um, it is, it's that big of a deal. Um, for example, when I had interns and, you know, we were only allowed, you know, what, 15 hours with an intern mm-hmm. mm-hmm. 10 of those hours with contact work, and I would ask them to, you know, fill out a form that tells me where they were going, what they were doing, who they, who they hung out with and talked to. Mm-hmm. , it was that big of a deal. I wanted them to value it. Um, that's when I first started in ministry. Early on, we didn't call it that. Um, but that was my role. Um, I had an older youth pastor who kinda looked at me and sat me down and said, Hey man, I, I'm too old to go run with the Bulls. Um, so , I'm gonna ask you to do that, and I'm gonna expect you to be in the school. I'm gonna expect you to be the one at the games. I'll still be the guy preaching, but, and you know, teaching, teaching you how to do those things, but, you know, you're the guy that's gonna run around with 'em. You can call it Tide Piper, whatever you wanna call it, but it is going and building relationships with students, with teenagers on their turf where they are at instead of expecting them to come to you.
Nick Clason (21:02):
Yeah. I think, and I think, like for me, man, the basis really of me starting this whole podcast is realizing that, uh, digital can play a role in that. You know, I think for churches, a lot of churches, uh, get stuck into their, like, programming schedule. It's Wednesday night, Sunday morning, whatever, and not realizing that there's another 167 unclaimed hours that students are living life doing their thing. Um, you know, so that can obviously be done in person, but how would you say, have you seen that be either possible, or would you say like, yeah, that's not even really a possibility, uh, to show up on their turf in like a digital or more of like a hybrid type of way?
Kerry Ray (21:53):
Lemme back up for a second first, and I can say that one, it's, it's part of what we're called to do. Mm-hmm. , if you're in ministry, um, we're supposed to be following and living as Jesus did. And what you never saw in the New Testament was Jesus just sit still somewhere and say, you know, everybody come to me. Mm-hmm. , I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna sit here , you know, in Jerusalem. I'm just gonna sit here and expect you to come to me. He traveled, he, he went around from town to town, place to place sharing and talking. And part of that was, you know, just getting around the people. Mm-hmm. , um, the people that, you know, he came to this place to die for was just to be amongst and, and interact with those people. Um, and that's part of our calling we're, we can't just sit in a church.
Kerry Ray (22:43):
You could have the greatest program in the world, but you sitting in a church and just expecting people to come to you is one arrogant too. Mm-hmm. , it's foolish. Three, it's ineffective. Um, it just doesn't, it's not the thing you can't, that's not who you're called to be. You're called to, to be out and about. And with people, people, these students are, you're calling, they're, they're coming to know Christ is your calling. And, and it can't be, I'm just sitting here and the kids that get here, that's great. The kids who don't hate it for them, um, that that's not okay. Yeah. So let's start there. Uh, number two, um, it, it matters to your community. Um, you hopefully want your church, your ministry, your student ministry. You want that to, to have such an impact on the lives of the people in your community, no matter their age, that if it disappeared, people would care. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (23:40):
. Yeah.
Kerry Ray (23:41):
And to do that, you can't sit in your ivory tower literally and, and expect that to happen. You've got to go out and make some sort of impact, some sort of influence. Uh, and I think in the world we live in the, with the, um, deification, if you will, you know, all of the, you know, I am, you know, de deconstructing my, my religious experience. Um, people are weary. People are weary, people are leery I'll rhyme there. Uh, they're both, they are, they're, um, suspicious mm-hmm. of church. Like, what do you, you know, what do you want from me? Oh, you just want my money. Um, and we've got, if you're talking about students and general teenagers, uh, we've got, this is the first group generation that was raised by students who bowed out years ago. You know, statistically they're, they're called the nuns. N o n E S, not n u n S.
Kerry Ray (24:42):
But the parents are the people who were in student ministry, you know, maybe. And then they bowed out and their parents didn't, you know, didn't raise them in church. And so now they're having kids of their own. And, and so it's, it's blank slates. So you've got parents who don't know, who don't know church. You've got students who don't know church. Um, they're blank canvases. And so, uh, we are, should be out and about if nothing else trying to, trying to show and be the hands of Jesus Christ, the hands of beauty of Christ in these communities in which we are called the love administer to, um, digitally, um, I, I, let's be honest, we watched these last couple years with Covid shutting everything down. Mm-hmm. , we watched the churches who, and the student ministries who had embraced a, a different philosophy versus the come to me.
Kerry Ray (25:40):
Um, they transitioned better. I won't say, well, I will say they had, they made it through the Covid piece a little better mm-hmm. than the churches and the student ministries who lived in the come to us mentality. Um, but let's be honest, I think everybody struggled with it. Uh, because even young life, uh, who is excellent at contact work, I watched Young Life struggled to find themselves because they couldn't do that anymore. Yeah. They couldn't do the face to face interaction, and they had to try to do it in a digital format, and it didn't work as well. Sounds, um, it, it failed. Um, yeah. And it struggled. I mean, some of it, I mean, he, it kinda worked. Not really. I, I would say it failed. Um, even, you know, the big players in, in student industry, the people who were doing this, the guys out like, you know, um, fields and Josh, Doug Fields and Josh out in California went to a digital format.
Kerry Ray (26:38):
And I don't know, I, I haven't talked to these guys about it, so I'm gonna assume, but I, I would assume if you, you asked those guys, they would tell you that it was not what it was. Mm-hmm. , did they do the big digital thing? Well, sure they did. Yeah. But I don't, I don't think it was what it was before that. Yeah. I don't think they got the same interaction. It's a, it's a lot of work for a little payoff. Um, I know at the time of covid, I was in, uh, church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and our middle school ministry was tied to the weekends mm-hmm. , and it was kinda a show up to church, and you go to this thing, but our high school was built offsite. Um, and we had had multiple years where the students had built communities, it houses across the city, and those communities met offsite, and it was in that community that those students lived in with small group leaders that lived in that community that those students lived in.
Kerry Ray (27:33):
And those students were showing up and inviting people into this thing because it was their thing. Mm-hmm. , um, it was kind of their turf, but with our, uh, blanket over the top of it. Sure. It was, but it was still their thing. Um, and when Covid hit, I got to see firsthand middle school, they come to us, we shut that down for a little bit, then we tried to do it digitally. It just didn't fly. Um, it was a struggle to put, you know, 10 kids in the room, in, in a digital room, uh, high school. I don't think, if I looked at the numbers, and I tracked them every week, I think in total we lost two students. Wow. Two, why? And we actually picked up a few. Why? Because they had already built this community that was not attached to the come, come and see mm-hmm. ,
Kerry Ray (28:31):
It was, it was a community. So when we took that community that already existed and just moved it to a digital format, they, they still do the same people. It was still, it was built on a different thing. Mm-hmm. , it was centered around community and not centered around come and see Yes. Or come and participate. Yeah. Um, so it, it, it, it mattered. It, it changed. And I, like I said, I watched, um, during those, during the covid years, got to see, you know, there were plenty of churches that that died. There were plenty of churches that are still, you know, where a year out now when this is being recorded. And they are still struggling with putting the pieces back together. I don't think, I don't think ministry, I don't think church will ever quite be the same. Um, post covid. Interesting. But, and I think youth ministry is harder, um, because I think students got realize they didn't have to be there.
Kerry Ray (29:25):
Mm-hmm. , uh, the church kids stopped going. The, the non-church kids never went. Uh, and we had a generation now that has been raised at least for a couple of years, you think of a sixth grader, they went through sixth, seventh, and part of grade without ever being in a so ninth grade in that time where it's already hard to be a part of a community because you drive for the first time, you've got some freedom in ninth and 10th grade. Yeah. Depending on your age and your state, uh, you start having freedom, you start working, um, you start doing other things. It's already hard in the, in the youth industry world. For those of you listening to this that are in, in ministry, you know, that time is already difficult anyway. But now you've got a group who went three years without engaging at all mm-hmm. ,
Kerry Ray (30:08):
Uh, and then behind them is another group that went three years without engaging at all. And behind them is another group that, you know, hey, which is babies at the time. So it's going to be a difficult dig out. Um, and I think that that actually makes this contact work piece even more relevant. Mm-hmm. . Now to your question, if, can it be digital? I don't know. I, I have not seen that work super well. Um, now I will tell you this, we all know that, um, for a teenager, uh, when you, and I think of the friends we make, you know, they say, well, my friend, you know, you like, you think my friend that I play, you know, call on duty with, you know, that lives in California. You're like, you never, you, you live in Alabama, you don't know that kid , but you're like, no, I play with them every day.
Kerry Ray (31:00):
I, you know, I spend hours with them on a headset, you know, shooting people and, and you know, talking about stuff over the headset to them that is a real friend. Yeah. Um, that barrier has dropped mm-hmm. to us as adults. You know, I think, you know, for those of you that don't know, those of us, you know, over the age of, let's call it 27 ish, you know, we're digital. We're digital immigrants. Mm-hmm. , we're, we come with baggage of how technology works and how it should be used and utilized, and, uh, where our teenagers and below, or digital natives mm-hmm. , there's never been a time where they did not know technology. There's never been a time where social media was not interactive for them. Um, and so we as adults, as digital immigrants, let's use that instead of adults, us as digital immigrants, we look at, um, online friendships, online relationships, um, and go, that's weird.
Kerry Ray (32:03):
Um, that's not a thing. But to them as digital natives, that has always been the thing that has always been very real. Um, dating apps and, you know, swiping left and right. And I mean, that went from like a silly thing. Like, you know, this is those of us, again as digital immigrants, look at that and go, come on. Um, you know, you're just, you're just, you know, trying to find a hot dude or hot girl and hook up. But for them, they're like, no, I, I'm trying to find a relationship. I get to know people this way. Yeah. Um, it's, it's fascinating. Yeah. Um, so I think there is, there, there's gotta be a way for that to happen mm-hmm. , and we've gotta figure out this, and I'd go back to contact work. There's gotta be a way for contact work to happen in a digital context. But there is some, there is something to set for a loss of the, the face to face because the face to face is so significant.
Nick Clason (32:58):
Wow. Well, wasn't that awesome? I'm so excited for you to hear and learn from part two. Um, anything and everything that Kerry mentioned, uh, YM 360, my youth min, um, all those things. Um, and also Derry's episode. I'm gonna link all of those in the show notes, which you can grab a in your podcast catcher or be over at hybridministry.xyz. And I would really encourage you, because he said a lot of really good things. And if you're like me and you listen on 1.5 or two times speed, uh, you may have not caught it, or you're driving or you mowing the lawn or whatever you're doing, head to hybridministry.xyz and you can grab a full transcript of this episode so that you can have and use to utilize at your discretion. That's a thing that we do and produce for you, um, for a hundred percent free.
Nick Clason (33:49):
So we just wanna let you know that that is available there for you to check out at http://hybridministry.xyz If you found this helpful and I'm sure that you did, please give it a share. Send it to someone that you know, maybe in youth ministry, um, and leave us a rating or a review. That would be really, really helpful for us. We would love to, uh, hear that. So, um, we will chat with you guys next time. Excited to share with you part two of this episode. But until then, we'll talk again later by.
35 min

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Hybrid Ministry is complicated and hard. Or is it? How do pastors and youth pastors create a vibrant extension, not replacement, of what's already happening during their weekly church services? To…

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