Hybrid Ministry

By Nick ClasonBusiness Religion & Spirituality Christianity Technology Marketing

Hybrid Ministry episodes

May 01, 2025 Episode 147: From No Budget to Pro - Summer Camp 2025 Photography & Videography Setup Guide
Want pro-level camp content without a pro-level budget? In this episode, Nick Clason, of Hybrid Ministry, breaks down the exact gear, tips, and hacks you need to capture incredible summer camp photos and videos—even if you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re using a phone, DSLR, or just your creativity, we’ll help you level up your visual game to create that momentum back at your church that camp deserves!
📋 "PICK NICK'S BRAIN" Coaching Call
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching
📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/147
🎧 [BONUS PODCAST] Become a “Hybrid Hero"
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https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry
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Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications!
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//STUDIO GEAR SHOPPING LIST
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/studio
👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
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Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
--------------
🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉
We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!
https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick
--------------
🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid
BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym
OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit
--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Why Summer Camps Matter
01:14 Why Camp Videography & Photography Matter
03:16 Step #1 No Matter What
04:37 Easy Camp Media Strategy
06:25 Medium [& FREE!] Camp Media Strategy
11:11 Most Difficult [But Best] Camp Media Strategy
--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;22 - 00;00;28;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So when I first started in youth ministry, I was like a mission trip guy. All about mission trips. Took my students on their first mission trip, charge them around $1,000, travel, lodging, all the things that you need to do pretty cheap for a mission trip, honestly. And then I was getting ready doing my budget and calendaring process for the next year, and I started thinking, like in the current context in which I was in all the same students, we're going to go back on the same mission trip.
00;00;28;03 - 00;00;56;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're going to write support letters to all the same people. And I was like, it might be too soon. So decided to do a camp, stumbled into an amazing camp experience that we did and produced all by ourselves, trying to keep it dirt cheap and thus invented my love for summer camp at that point. Now, some of you have been all around summer camp, but what became so necessary was the need for amazing videography and amazing photography at summer camp.
00;00;56;09 - 00;01;21;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this episode, I want to tell you how I stumbled into it, and I want to give you three ideas of how you can have amazing camp content that is going to help, reinforce and help your church get on board with your summer camp experience. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So the continuation of that story is I start going to camp, we start adding more and more students, and I'm at my business meeting.
00;01;21;05 - 00;01;42;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like, if you've ever had to go to a congregational business meeting. And I had a few naysayers who were like, this is an astronomical amount to spend for camp. What I felt like they may not have been taking into consideration is the fact that, like, I had to get approval to spend the entire amount of money, including the money that students were going to be paying into it.
00;01;42;01 - 00;02;02;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, like the total amount of money out of the budget was like five grand. But in totality, I was requesting something like $46,000 to be spent, but that included the $300 student registration, you know, or whatever it was. And so with those naysayers, I then was like, I need I need them to see why this is worth it.
00;02;02;13 - 00;02;23;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I need them to get on board. And I need I want the church to support what the student ministry is doing. And so I went to my friend who was my roommate in college and I knew had a degree in like digital media. And I was like, bro, what do I need to pay you to come to camp and create amazing recap videos that are going to make people cry.
00;02;23;06 - 00;02;47;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, the very next Sunday, we were back at church and we shared like a testimony recap video that was like 12 minutes long. And some kids were like, I accepted Jesus at the altar the last night of camp. And I mean, I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye in the room. Camp media is an amazing tool to help your parents, your church, your pastor, your boss.
00;02;47;29 - 00;03;08;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
See what's going on at camp. And in this video, I want to share with you an easy way to do it for basically free. I want to share with you a medium, difficulty level of doing it. And then I want to share with you a higher level of difficulty and perhaps the most expensive, but probably, as always, as you know, the more you pay, the better the product.
00;03;08;07 - 00;03;35;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's hop in. Welcome to this edition of How Do I Do? Camp media on the Hybrid Ministry show. So first and foremost, you want to have some sort of text message or, channel back to parents. Okay. So you can send them links to your videos, links to albums, links to photos, whatever it is that you take. And so, like I said, we're going to do an easy a medium and a higher level of difficulty in this episode.
00;03;35;19 - 00;03;59;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But first and foremost, philosophy, basically, no matter what level of difficulty you do, you need to have some sort of, channel back to parents. That's going to be your number one advocate, especially for the week while you're at camp. Now, once you return, if you have like a student take over Sunday or whatever, like you can you can implement some of these things that you've you've pulled together at camp and find a way to package them and show them to the rest of your congregation.
00;03;59;09 - 00;04;17;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But while you're at camp, if you want to have a buzz amongst your parents, you need to get it back into them. So, you can do some sort of text message group. You can do some sort of Facebook group. You can even post some of this stuff on your YouTube channel and then send the links to those in your Facebook group or in your text message group, or your parent email chain.
00;04;17;20 - 00;04;32;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Whatever it is, figure out what works best in your context, but have something easy and preferably something that you can use on your phone. So as soon as you get a link, you can copy the link, you can send it out and you do it all on your mobile device. You don't need to sit down at a computer and try and find a way to do it at camp.
00;04;32;12 - 00;05;00;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, how do you do easy videos at camp? Let's hop in. So the first way that you can do it is you can walk around with your camera, vertical based video, and you can, very simply, you can, auto cut those videos in an app like TikTok or in your Instagram Reels editor, and you can send out daily, shorts, daily TikToks, daily real type videos.
00;05;00;22 - 00;05;19;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can send the links to those in text groups or, in some sort of Facebook became post posts in Facebook. That's super easy. You or leader walk around vertical based video and all you need is clips of anywhere from 5 to 8 seconds. You don't need any longer because you're just going to overlay it with music and maybe some captions on screen and off you go.
00;05;19;27 - 00;05;38;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You want to keep those 60s or less. And so the quicker and shorter the videos. So if you have the wherewithal in your mind to walk around, play your camera out five seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds, nine seconds, three seconds and then stitch all those together in like an auto cut feature in TikTok. You're going to be going in and off to the races.
00;05;38;26 - 00;05;58;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now. How do you easily, source photos? You tell your students, hey, send pictures on this hashtag, or if they're not going to post on like, Instagram, like that, send photos in this text group and this DM thread, whatever you choose to use some sort of, function to get those photos back to you, create a shared Google Photos album, whatever.
00;05;58;25 - 00;06;15;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Put all your pictures in here, and then you can crowdsource those, and you can create a slideshow at the end of the night. Or if you're at some sort of camp, like a, like a generate or a feud or a lift or something like that, where you don't have control over what ends up on screen, then you create albums and you send those out in Facebook groups to parents.
00;06;15;02 - 00;06;36;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. Okay, now what about medium? And this is honestly, this is a big step up and it's going to cost you next to nothing. Let's check it out. So genuinely I've done this before okay. And if you want to create daily recap videos again you have control of the screens. So daily recap videos that you can show in your sessions.
00;06;36;21 - 00;06;53;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you don't have control of the screens at a minimum daily recap videos that you can post to YouTube. Let me show you how you can do it on Cap cut. All right, so if you're watching here on screen, this is what I did, a couple years ago, we didn't hire and have money, for a videographer.
00;06;53;17 - 00;07;13;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I would do daily recap videos in the cabin at night, throw my headphones on, and kids are all sleeping. And so I'm here on cap cut out, hit new project. And let's just do these, videos of my dog, okay? And so I would click, all the videos I want to add and I'd click add three.
00;07;13;25 - 00;07;40;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here I am now and I can create some sort of video. So there's my dog and there's another video of my dog and there's another little video of my dog. Now, what you can do is you can add animations, and anything if you are doing like a free account, anything with like the little like pro features or things, there.
00;07;40;16 - 00;08;06;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Those don't use those. But if you find any of the ones like this one right here, that is free, okay, it'll come right in. And there you go. Boom off you go. And if you want to like add a text that says, you know, like day one recap. Put it right there and hope I'm exporting. Don't want to export quit.
00;08;06;21 - 00;08;25;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So there it is. Day one recap. Now I can edit this text click style. And once again you want to make sure you don't add a pro feature. So see those little corners right there. So this one's this one's free. Day one recap. Change the font. Find one that's not a pro font. And off we go.
00;08;26;02 - 00;08;47;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right right there. All of these are not pro fonts. And so the main thing if you want to keep it free is that you don't add anything. Pro font. All right. Right here I can add some sort of transition. So here's a transition that's not that is pro don't remind me again. I might not. Oh here's one pull in.
00;08;47;17 - 00;09;15;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And there we go. And I go all the way through at the end. I can also add things like, stickers. I can add text to audio, and I can add music. And that's what I do when I add some audio. And so if I want to go to some sounds and find something like this one here, that's not, that's not, pro.
00;09;15;24 - 00;09;41;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now I got a video and then I hit export. And we are off to the races. And you'll see here on screen, if you're watching, you can see the finalized video of my dog. It's beautiful. Who doesn't love it? This would take me about an hour after lights out, but I want to let you know that it is completely free, so after you've done your capture video, what if you want photos?
00;09;41;08 - 00;10;01;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, what if you took a leader, not someone who's have an elite? A small group would be a cabin leader, and they're just a dedicated photographer. You're only cost in that. Give them a cell phone. Have them take it on an iPhone. Google pixel, a nice phone. You're only cost in. That is your perhaps payment of their registration fee.
00;10;01;00 - 00;10;25;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Unless, of course, you're charging your leaders to go, in which case you're good and you say, hey, listen, your only job is take photos and send these daily recaps back home to parents, and you give them that job. And so all week, their entire sole focus using just their cell phone is to take good photos. And so then with your daily recaps and your lidar photos, you can, bring those back and you can present those to your church.
00;10;25;24 - 00;10;42;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, the last little bit in this is if you want and studio, link down below. You can grab some Bluetooth microphones. You can also take some video on your cell phone, just like I showed you. Stitch it together and cap cut. But you can take students testimonies and tell them, hey, what, what stood out to you?
00;10;42;23 - 00;11;00;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How to God move in your life this week? Like all that type of stuff? And you can create a recap testimony video and you can show that on screen the quality is great. You saw the export quality was like 1080p. You can export it even up to 4K, and you can shoot it in 4K on your camera if it if it's able to handle it.
00;11;00;20 - 00;11;20;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then you can show that on a screen. You can also post that to something like YouTube and then share it in your Facebook group. But what about the best and probably most expensive? Well, let's dive in. Your final your best is you want those daily recap videos. You want that final big testimony video. Your best bang.
00;11;20;07 - 00;11;38;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, not bang for your buck, right? This is going to cost you money, but you hire a videographer. Maybe you're church or something. Maybe you know someone, but you bring someone in, they bring all their own gear and they, follow students around. They capture footage, and their entire job is to create daily recap videos for you on the big screen at night.
00;11;38;22 - 00;11;59;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you have control of that, or post them to YouTube and then create that testimony video. And if you can hire that same person, or maybe hire a second person to take photos on a good camera that they have, that's going to be your highest barrier to entry. You're probably going to have to a pay for them to go to camp, be pay for their lodging and all that stuff.
00;11;59;05 - 00;12;18;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So let's say that's anywhere from 3 to $400, and then you're going to pay them a fee, 800 bucks, 1500 bucks. It is expensive. But if you have the budget, I'm just telling you like it does end up being worth it and you end up with much higher quality footage. And what you can do on your phone and much higher caliber photos.
00;12;18;11 - 00;12;44;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you're like, bro, I can't even get anywhere near that, then that medium range won't for you. As long as you're willing to put the work in. As long as you're willing to use cap cut, you can do it for very cheap and frankly, very free. And still get a very, very good result. Now, listen, your camp experience is very important, and students lives are often marked and changed at camp.
00;12;44;16 - 00;13;12;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what's also very important is that your people back home support you. Your parents know what's going on, and they can advocate and create a buzz around your student ministry. So don't fumble the bag. This summer on creating amazing camp media and amazing camp content. I'm rooting for you, have an amazing camp and crush it with a digital media this summer so that your church can get on board and support what your student ministry has going on.
00;13;12;29 - 00;13;16;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Thanks for being here. We'll talk next time and don't forget to stay hybrid.
14 min
April 24, 2025 Episode 146: How I Produce a Weekly Leader Podcast
You need to train your volunteer youth leaders, but how do you produce a podcast, which gives you the outlet to offer more trainings than you even know what to do with? And how do you not lose your life to it?
Here's how I produce a weekly leader podcast with only one hour per month of a time committment!
Yes, I'll show you everything I do from getting started, the gear, and maintaining it!
Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show!
We discuss all of this, and MORE on my weekly [BONUS] podcast, check it out here:
🎧 [BONUS PODCAST] Become a “Hybrid Hero"
https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry
📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms
SHOW NOTES
Shownotes & Transcripts
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/146
//DARREN’S EPISODE
https://youtu.be/XU9J2S4oJAU
//NATIONAL DAY TRAINING
https://www.trainmyvolunteers.com
//NEXT GEN COACHING PODCAST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVLuq7Wg_ds&t=510s
//GEAR RECS
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/studio
//SEE OUR PODCAST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQNSuUuvDIg&list=PL_FbsNmRvDjfJ1ehYNxtH10bhHrndhdV0
//NUCLEUS
https://www.nucleus.church
//CROSSCREEK LEADERS WEBSITE
https://www.crosscreekstudents.com/leader
//PODCAST HOSTS
https://libsyn.com/
https://www.podbean.com/
https://www.buzzsprout.com/
https://www.spreaker.com/
https://www.simplecast.com/
https://blubrry.com/
https://transistor.fm/
https://castos.com/
https://www.captivate.fm/
https://rss.com/
https://open.spotify.com/genre/podcasts-page
https://www.acast.com/
https://megaphone.spotify.com/
https://www.podomatic.com/
https://soundcloud.com/
👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry
Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
--------------
🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉
We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!
https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick
--------------
🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid
BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym
OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit
--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How I Produce a Weekly Leader Podcast
01:17 Why you need a leader podcast
06:28 Getting Started: Gear & Platforms
12:28 Show Format & Topic Ideas
18:06 Launching Your New Podcast!
--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:08 - 00:00:45:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Are you looking for and longing for? Youth ministry, leader development that is not dependent upon a leader's attendance to an individual meeting. You know, I even once heard Kurt Johnston, the, famous, like, youth ministry guru from Southern California. He said, you know, your trainings aren't as good as you think. And that was a gut punch, man. Do you want to be in a position where you've communicated to your leaders everything you could possibly ever think that you need to, and still be struggling to find more things to say at your next leader meeting?
00:00:45:02 - 00:01:09:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, let me tell you how I, as we are rounding out the final episode of this mini series that we've been doing, how I in an individual solo pod, how I produce a weekly leader podcast, and all of the things that I just teased are true of what we have going on in our student ministry and on our weekly leader podcast.
00:01:09:18 - 00:01:34:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, there are chapters listed down below in a podcast catch or here on YouTube. Welcome my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry show. What's up everyone? Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show and the completion of our little mini series, how I. And in this episode, we will talk about how I produce a weekly leader podcast, which is a small sliver to a bigger leader culture strategy.
00:01:34:08 - 00:01:54:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if you want, like all there is to know about youth ministry volunteers, youth ministry leaders, recruiting, retaining all of that, you need to check out the episode that I just most recently dropped with my boss and friend, Erin Sutton, linked right here at the top of the screen. You can go check that out, but this is a small segment of what we do to help create the leader culture that we want.
00:01:54:25 - 00:02:23:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With our leaders. And so why a podcast? So let me just back up real quick philosophically and say this. Like, why are we determined and decided that we wanted a leader podcast was we had a monthly leader meeting in our context, and there felt to be so much pressure on that one meeting, for example, like at the August leader meeting or, you know, September leader meeting, we would be like, we need to make sure that we hit all of these onboarding things.
00:02:23:29 - 00:02:47:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We need to make sure that our leaders know about all of these resources that we have to offer. We need to like, make sure, make sure, make sure, make sure like give me a like or a subscribe. If you've ever been in a position like that where you just feel like there's so much pressure on your one time once a year, or maybe twice a year gathering of sorts, and then, you know, if you're doing anything which you should, by the way, lean into the download Youth Ministry, National Day of Volunteer Training.
00:02:47:23 - 00:03:09:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like those those pieces of content and those like events are fantastic momentum builders for you and your team. We're a part of it. We're a customer, so you should check it out. Getting zero kickback from promoting it, but link down below if you're interested in the National Day information. But like if you do those things, you also feel the pressure at those leader meetings like, oh, I got them all together.
00:03:09:08 - 00:03:32:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I got them all in the room. I gotta make sure I cover all the things that I need to cover. And because of that tension that we felt and we were experiencing, finally I proposed and pitched this idea to my bosses like, let's what if we came up with a weekly leader podcast and I was on an episode, of another podcast, the next Gen coaching Podcast with, Ryan Manning?
00:03:32:29 - 00:03:52:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'll link that episode down below. And I told him we had a weekly leader podcast and that it's video based, and he was like weekly, And you could tell his wheels are turning because he had a podcast, but it wasn't weekly. And the reason that I push so hard for weekly. And before you turn this off, like, remember the chapters down below if you wanna skip this part.
00:03:52:23 - 00:04:14:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the reason I push so hard for weekly is because that is your best chance to actually create a little bit of momentum and actually get your leaders to begin adopting the rhythm and the practice, if they can expect it weekly. Now, what we as churches often default into is we don't think we have the ability to produce it weekly because let's be honest, we're producing a lot of other things weekly.
00:04:14:00 - 00:04:29:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've got a weekly program and a weekly sermon and a weekly worship service, like all those things. And so we're like, let's not let's start with what we know we can achieve. Not a bad strategy, but let me tell you how we do it and how we can achieve it with only one hour per month worth of work.
00:04:29:20 - 00:05:01:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, so, I went in for the weekly, push and we wanted to make the podcast less than 15 minute weekly commitment for our leaders, and we wanted them to hit it. You know, we drop it every single Monday morning. They can consume it whenever they choose to, but the idea is if they are like avid listeners or they're listening regularly, they're getting it on their, you know, first 15 minutes on their way to work Monday morning, it drops super duper early, like 5:00 in the morning.
00:05:01:15 - 00:05:20:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So hopefully that catches any leader on their commute. You know, we live in the DFW area, so a fair bit of our leaders commute pretty far. And so we wanted them to be able to catch it in their car on their way to work. All right. And within that, within us doing it weekly, we were able to hit because of the frequency.
00:05:20:16 - 00:05:43:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're able to hit so many different training topics, and we're able to cover so much more ground on the information or the communication or the announcement side of what we wanted our leaders to get with just simply choosing to do it weekly. And by doing that, it also has had some other side benefits, such as help reinforce and build the culture that we want within our youth ministry.
00:05:43:20 - 00:06:04:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's brought our group chat to life because there's a weekly piece of content being delivered directly to them that they interact with, and then they'll make fun of us and throw jokes and memes and all the things that serve to build and reinforce our leader culture. So that's the why. That's why we chose philosophically. Those were our goals, those were our desires with it.
00:06:04:24 - 00:06:22:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so because of that, if you're interested, if you're like, yeah, I got it, I'm in I my trainings aren't as good as I think they are. Thanks Kurt Johnston for that. But I want to offer some, some ongoing kind of training for my leaders on the go as you go. How do you do that? How do you do it in less than 15 minutes?
00:06:22:27 - 00:06:41:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How do you do it in less than one hour per month? Let me tell you how. Let's happen. You ready to start a podcast? You need to determine a podcast host. And here, just down below, there's going to be links to all of these and a list of them. And then I'm going to tell you what we use in our context.
00:06:41:04 - 00:07:08:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you need to choose some sort of podcast host that's going to have some sort of monthly fee associated with it. Less than $20, $20 is probably the absolute cap. But you could look into, service like Libsyn, Podbean, Buzzsprout, Spreaker Simple cast blueberry transistor casters captivate rss.com, Spotify, a gas megaphone, paddle matic and SoundCloud. I don't use any of those.
00:07:08:04 - 00:07:34:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, we actually use is we use nucleus. And if you've been listening to any of my, things on communication, nucleus is our website builder. And nucleus has a built in podcast catcher and RSS feed creator. And now if you are using nucleus for your wider church podcast, they only give you one. So if you're already using your utilizing some sort of podcast RSS feed, then you're going to need to go and get another one.
00:07:34:28 - 00:07:58:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And nucleus doesn't offer the ability to have a second, podcast or a second RSS feed. However, if you are in a bigger church and they do have some sort of like podcast hosting thing, just think for like your past their sermons and let's say they're using something like a Libsyn go talk to your communications director or explore what, account features are available to you, and see if you can add on a second podcast on your podcast hosting feed.
00:07:59:03 - 00:08:20:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
What you need from your podcast hosting feed is what's called the RSS feed. The RSS feed is how podcasts are distributed to their catchers. And so there's essentially three main podcasts, services out there. There's YouTube, which is honestly not very good, but YouTube is kind of taking over the world. So I'm just not I'm not ignoring it right now.
00:08:20:02 - 00:08:47:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you can use YouTube's RSS feed, but you're going to need to get that unique RSS feed from your podcast host. There's also Spotify, and then there's also Apple Podcasts. And those are really it. Now you might be thinking there's other podcast catchers out there like I used for something called Castbox. And yes, I do. However, Castbox uses the Apple RSS feed and converts it over so I can get it on an Android phone because I don't have access to the Apple Podcast catcher.
00:08:47:12 - 00:09:09:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So like I said, the main ones Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. Okay, and so you're also going to need to create a show, create a podcast in those individual things, and then you're going to need to take your RSS feed from your host and import it into those things your Apple Podcasts, your Spotify, your YouTube. Now listen, you will hate your life the day that you choose to do that.
00:09:09:21 - 00:09:31:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You will hate your life. You're going to need emails and you're going to need two factor authentication. You're going to need phone numbers. Let me just give you a quick tidbit on that. Create something that is not dependent upon you. Don't use your personal email. Don't use your personal phone. If you need to set up like a Google Voice number that you can receive text messages from.
00:09:31:02 - 00:09:54:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For the codes for your new Apple podcast, sign on things and off you go. All right. And then save those in a spreadsheet because heaven forbid, I know you're not thinking about leaving your church anytime soon, but one day you might. And you don't want those codes coming to your personal cell phone because the fact is, you're not going to need to log into these things are much of a regular basis.
00:09:54:00 - 00:10:12:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You need to get them started, kind of set it and forget it. But when you're setting it, just make sure you set it up in such a way that it can live beyond your tenure at your church. That's small hack. You'll thank me later. And then once you get those things set up, you're ready to get going. You're ready to make it happen.
00:10:12:14 - 00:10:31:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you want to do some sort of ramp up launch, I have, in just second chapter down below how to launch it. Well, and how we did it and how we got the word out and all those things you are going to need a show to be on your RSS feed. You are going to need some sort of show to to kind of trigger the beginning of your thing.
00:10:31:21 - 00:10:52:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So consider a trailer, consider some sort of like, teaser of sorts. You know, we I have my boss shoot like a selfie style video less than 60s. And that was our very first episode. But then we use that kind of as promo. And I also got the feeds for Spotify, for Apple Podcasts, and for YouTube kind of started so that we could start pointing people to those things.
00:10:52:29 - 00:11:13:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They could start subscribing and they could start bookmarking and all those things on their devices. All right. Now, what about gear? Well, you're in luck. I have, a blog and, former episode on my podcast listed down below in the show notes hybrid ministry that xyzzy slash articles slash studio. And in that you're going to want to scroll to the podcast Mike section.
00:11:13:24 - 00:11:41:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And those are the microphones that we use. We also use videos so you can see the the camera that we use there on that same blog. Or you can set up a cell phone camera, which, by the way, full disclosure. So what I'm using right now here on this episode, and you can set up, a camera if you do want to have video, we use, so we do use the YouTube RSS feed, like I said, but I also post individually in its own YouTube playlist, our videos.
00:11:41:06 - 00:12:00:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So our leaders have the option for audio. They also have the option for video. And there are some things that are fun for them to see on on video. Like one time every episode, me and my friend Darren, we cheers like 3 to 1 cheers. And then one one week we did like, we were like, let's break these mugs.
00:12:00:18 - 00:12:14:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So we went cheers. Because they're almost always empty. Because we act like it's the morning. But we often film like in the afternoon or whatever. And so they're almost always empty. And so we'll like clink real hard and like, you can tell there's no coffee. And, you know, we'll joke about how there's no coffee and then we're faking it or whatever, all the things.
00:12:14:19 - 00:12:29:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But the last time we crashed the mugs together, and then we'll just say something like, if you're not watching, you're definitely going to want to go back and watch that one, right? And so if you want a camera, get a camera. If you want the podcast mix, just check those links out down below and we'll get you taken care of for that.
00:12:29:13 - 00:12:47:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. So what about the format. What do we do on our show? Like I said, our goal is 15 minutes or less. Honestly, we almost always, go ten or less. And so part of the way that we're able to do it is we don't sit down. We don't do a new half long form podcast, no Shade to carry.
00:12:47:01 - 00:13:09:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
He's the goat at what he does. But we our goal is 10 or 15 minutes or less with a nugget of training. Okay. And so here is our, format. So when we sit down to record, we batch record, we record for at a time essentially a month's worth of podcasts, and we sort of create little mini series within those four months.
00:13:09:05 - 00:13:29:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Here's the thing. You're a youth pastor, you're in on church communications. You are good at creating series. So create a series of training topics. Let me just give you a few of the ones that we've done in our context. So we've done a podcast called The Secret Stuff, like the Secret Sauce to having a great youth ministry small group.
00:13:29:25 - 00:13:47:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And there's like, you know, your quiet time and your prayer life and those types of things. We also did a let's envision a students experience from the parking lot to the front door to in our main room to in a small group. And so those are all four different little episodes, right? They all kind of build off each other.
00:13:47:21 - 00:14:05:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We did this little series on why certain stuff matters. So we do yearly debriefs with all of our leaders. So why debriefs matter? Why fun matters like camps or retreats matter. Why group covenants matter? This was sort of during the holidays. We did a bunch of one offs like five tips for caring for Hurting Teens. The ten Minute Rule Ministry.
00:14:05:21 - 00:14:30:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
During the holidays, we did a little four part series on on Generation Alpha and what makes them different. We talked about, some like group tips, like how to lean into the awkward silences, how to, when you're allowed to skip the lesson, this game changer that you won't want to miss? We have, like, a little, moniker in our student ministry where we say students are welcomed, wanted, needed and known.
00:14:30:27 - 00:14:54:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so we did an episode on welcome to didn't episode on wanted. We did an episode on needed, and then we did an episode Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry. Right. So as you can see, those are just some ideas for content that you can use. And so we, we block them like that, we sit down, we record in a one hour block, we record all the audio, we record all the video, we don't break, we, we start recording.
00:14:54:17 - 00:15:10:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then when we're done, we're done. And we keep everything rolling. The video is still rolling, the audio is still rolling. And then we'll talk for a minute. We got a little, you know, a little table or sheet you can see down below. Our at all let you see like our videos and stuff like that. You can go check out what we do.
00:15:10:25 - 00:15:26:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We got a little sheet. So we'll talk for a minute. We'll, we'll make sure. Who are we? You know, shouting out all the stuff. We'll get to all that in a minute. But that's, that's how we block record. Then the format of our show is in three parts a shout out, the piece of content or the little nugget of training or whatever we want it to be.
00:15:27:05 - 00:15:49:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then finally we'll end with, some sort of story and we call it story time. And so those are our three segments. And so, any time we, we start in our four part series, the very first episode of that, our shout out is for anyone who's new to our team. And so, whenever someone would join our team, historically, we would want to like at the next leader lunch or whatever, say, hey, thanks so much for being here.
00:15:49:07 - 00:16:03:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is so and so. Here's a little leader gift for them. Welcome to the team. Right. Well we were forgetting that. Sort of like let's just add it to the podcast and then we take their little leader gift which is a mug, and we store it for them in our leader work room, we have a little whiteboard we write, welcome to the team.
00:16:03:16 - 00:16:23:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So and so we draw a little arrow, grab your mug okay. And we actually kind of create a little section in our, our leader room. Like our workroom which is all like podcast prizes. Okay. So after the first episode, then we do some sort of shout out, so what's a leader that's been crushing it? We shout them out and we'll often give something away.
00:16:23:20 - 00:16:42:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's, you know, around Christmas we'll give them, like, a silly mug. Recently we got some, like, free ice cream gift cards. We'll give away the ice cream gift cards, like, whatever we kind of have laying around. You don't have to do that, but we'll do some sort of giveaway. I use sidekick for that, put all of their names into the picture, and I just create some sort of criteria.
00:16:42:11 - 00:17:00:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So like, hey, if you came to the last leader lunch, your name is in the picture. If you've already, RSVP to the next leader lunch at time of recording, your name is in the picture. You get the drill and then sometimes, instead of creating shout outs and doing a giveaway, we will do leader Roulette. So we'll put their names in for some reason.
00:17:00:06 - 00:17:19:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
RSVP to the thing, right? And then, their name pops up. We don't know. We run it on sidekick. Whoever pops up will say, hey, you want ice cream? And, here's a shout out. And so we call it leader Shout out roulette. We tell them like, we don't know who's going to pop up. So we're going to be coming up with these shout outs kind of on the fly.
00:17:19:14 - 00:17:39:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it's a fun little challenge. Then we hop into the content. You heard some of the content that we've done over the last year. And then finally we end with some sort of story. And that's a way for us to, you know, think youth group chronicles, like it's those, those types of stories that are happening within our youth ministry or a funny story that we have heard about or something that's even happened in our past.
00:17:39:22 - 00:18:05:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And those are, hard to to get at first. But once our leaders start listening, they start telling us stuff and we always blur and bleep out all of the students name. So if a student ever runs across this on our YouTube channel, they're not feeling like isolated or whatever, and we make the stories vague enough that they're not going to know, and, and, you know, we just kind of go from there and students don't really listen to these anyway, but if they do ever stumble across them, they're not going to be hopefully embarrassed.
00:18:05:20 - 00:18:23:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, last thing you've done all the work you've bought, all the gear, you've come up with, the format, you've started filming all those things. How then do you launch it? I'm glad you asked. Let's check it out. Last section. So this is what we did. We created a little stickers on Sticker Mule with a QR code that took them to our website.
00:18:24:00 - 00:18:43:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'll link the website down below, which pulled in a section of our playlist from our nucleus, sermons kind of database. And then, and the way that I schedule that is we schedule, like I said, a weekly message. And so the leader podcast drops at five on a Monday. And then the the message of the week drops at six.
00:18:43:05 - 00:19:03:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's our sermon that we're teaching that Wednesday night. But remember, we pre-filled those that drops at six. And so when you go on our main page, the most recent message is going to be there because it posted one hour after the Leader podcast. So the only time the Leader podcast is highlighted on the main section of our website is from 5:00 am to 6 a.m. Monday morning.
00:19:03:18 - 00:19:25:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you go to the leader page on our website, it's highlighting the leader podcast playlist. So we make sure whenever we post that it's leader podcast playlist and that that little, playlist is a featured section on the website there. But so we, created a QR code to that section of the website, to that playlist.
00:19:25:14 - 00:19:50:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then we also put a little piece of copy like, hey, make sure you subscribe, make sure you whatever. And we did a giveaway, right. The first round of podcasts I put in like our group chat screenshot that you are subscribed to our leader podcast, and anyone who screenshotted it and posted it in our group chat, they had an opportunity to win something, to put their names in sidekick and that honestly, that kind of started the whole giveaway thing and now it's just kind of a staple of what we did.
00:19:50:00 - 00:20:10:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We didn't go into it with that. The that being the intention, but that's kind of how it started. And then we did three weeks worth of like promotion around it. And what's funny is my boss was like, let's do this at our next leader launch. Let's launch it there. But when we recorded our first batch of episodes in July, I was like, are we really?
00:20:10:04 - 00:20:27:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Do we really want to sit on these pieces of content for that long? And he's like, no, not really. I was like, do we need an in-person event to launch it? He's like, dude, you're the hybrid guy. You tell me what we should do. And I was like, all right, so, one week, let's buy, like, you know, elevated breakfast.
00:20:27:15 - 00:20:46:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You know, we give donuts every Sunday morning. Let's do, like, breakfast burritos just for our leaders in the later work room. And let's have a little, like, sign in there. This is leader podcast is coming. And then the next week I can't remember what we did. We did something else food breakfast related. And then the final week we blew it up only for our leaders breakfast all the way around.
00:20:46:10 - 00:21:18:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And we brought in like, espresso coffee cart. And on the sleeve of the coffee cups, we printed a sticker with a QR code that said Leader Podcast, you know, and so they could scan that so that they could subscribe and all that stuff. And then all those three weeks were doing, like, weekly giveaways. One of the things we did during that three weeks or month of ramp up of launching is I took the the pilot episode and, which is just, you know, my, my boss, selfie style video.
00:21:18:16 - 00:21:36:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I put that video on loop on a TV in our leader workspace. So they walked in and they saw it. And so for three weeks or a month, everything was leader podcast, so everybody knew about it. And then as we've gone as people win stuff and whatever, we'll shout them out. We'll say, hey man, great job. So and so.
00:21:36:20 - 00:21:53:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They got the shout out this week on the podcast that'll be in our leader group chat. And so if they're active in our leader group chat and like they're coming every Sunday to our leader workroom with the prizes on the on the wall, they're they're gonna know about our leader podcast. And so that's how we kind of keep it in front of them.
00:21:53:24 - 00:22:16:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And like I've said, it is is built an amazing amount of camaraderie around and among our leaders. And so that's why I think you should do a weekly leader podcast. It's a month out of our our schedule to film it. And then a little bit of time to edit it and then boom, off we go. So thank you so much for being here at the Hybrid Ministry Podcast.
00:22:16:14 - 00:22:23:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is how I do a weekly leader podcast. And till next time, as always my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.
23 min
April 17, 2025 Episode 145: 10 Simple & Effective Partnering with Parent Tips that REALLY work!
In this conversation, Nick Clason (Hybrid Ministry) and Josh Boldman (Download Youth Ministry) discuss the importance of partnering with parents in youth ministry. Josh gives 10 tips from the perspective of a parent NOT working at a church. Several tips are incredibly Hybrid, and best of all, it's not going to add anymore work to your plate!
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Why Partnering with Parents?
02:52 Tip #1
4:34 Tip #2
05:22 Tip #3
06:04 Tip #4
08:55 Tip #5
10:18 Tip #6
13:02 Why does starting on time honor parents?
14:26 Tip #7
15:03 Tip #8
15:47 Tip #9
17:33 Tip #10
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TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00.93)
Well, so here we are. And Josh, you might be the most frequented guest now on the Hybrid Ministry podcast, which with all I would, I think I sent you one actually. So, so yeah. But today I've been asking people like, what do you feel like you're kind of like an expert on? So we're in this kind of mini series called How I, and so you said, let's talk about partnering with parents. And so.
Josh Boldman (00:06.494)
Yes Do I get a jacket like do I get a like there's like a that's true actually, you know, that's fair
Josh Boldman (00:29.991)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (00:31.124)
over all your different years of experience, what do you feel like uniquely positions you from a mindset or experience-wise or whatever about this idea of partnering with parents?
Josh Boldman (00:38.9)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, over the course of 20 years in youth ministry, I did the traditional route of before I had a kid, feeling like I knew everything more than any of the parents. Like I was way smarter than them. And then I had my own kid, and then I was able to actually have the blessing of having my own kid in my own ministry. And then recently have now,
Nick Clason (00:55.712)
yeah.
Nick Clason (01:03.937)
Mmm.
Josh Boldman (01:08.465)
like a life stage where my kid is a part of a ministry that I do not lead. And so it's like, there, that's what I should have. Okay, those are the questions that I now have that I should have been answering.
Nick Clason (01:13.358)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (01:19.904)
I do actually think that's a really, really fascinating perspective and one worth exploring. So what are a couple of principles or takeaways, especially in the lane of I'm a youth pastor veteran, I work for a youth ministry company, but as a parent, as a customer, so to speak, of this youth group, like what do you wish you were getting back from the youth ministry?
Josh Boldman (01:23.826)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Josh Boldman (01:35.303)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Boldman (01:42.291)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something that every youth minister needs to remember is that you are ministering to a family and not just to a student. Hands down, because like a student is a product, I mean, not entirely, but like they're a product of their family, right? Their parents. when you talk, you talk to a kid, half the things they say are things that they have either heard their parents say or they've
Nick Clason (01:53.965)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (02:02.028)
Yeah.
Josh Boldman (02:11.835)
or are in like rebellion against something that their parents have said, right? So like, so like the better that you know the parents, the better you are going to know the student. And whether that that kid has a awesome relationship with their parents or a terrible relationship with their parents or no relationship with their parents, whoever it is at home that takes care of them, that makes them feel safe. You are on the same team with that person, whether you know them or not.
Nick Clason (02:15.598)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason (02:22.446)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (02:30.702)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Boldman (02:41.583)
And it, it, it, I will be as blunt as I can be in saying if, you're on the same team as that, of those people and you don't know them, that is dumb. Like it just don't, don't put yourself in a position of being on a team with someone you don't even know.
Nick Clason (02:50.563)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (02:56.28)
So you've worked in some larger contexts, let's say. How would you recommend someone who has a youth group of 50 students with, let's say, 50 unique family units? so probably more than 50 because siblings, whatever. How do they get to know parents? Because I would imagine the pushback from a youth pastor is like, well, I try. have a well, and we have meetings and they never come to the meetings and all this stuff like what. So.
Josh Boldman (03:00.646)
Yep.
Josh Boldman (03:08.23)
Yeah, yeah, Uh-huh.
Josh Boldman (03:17.757)
Yep, I can't know them all yet.
Josh Boldman (03:24.465)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Clason (03:24.812)
We've all been there, we've all experienced it. what, as a parent now on the other side, give us some tips.
Josh Boldman (03:30.418)
Yeah, yeah, I would say one, especially if you're talking about a middle school ministry, do check in at the beginning of the night and be at the check-in station. And I know that seems so like antithetical to like, I should be hanging out with the kids. you know, yes, that's great. Go play nine square, go play gaga ball, whatever, but spend some time at check-in because especially if they're in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, their parents are going to probably walk in with them.
Nick Clason (03:42.775)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (03:51.938)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (03:56.471)
Right.
Josh Boldman (04:00.274)
Like, so that's a great opportunity. but even if it's not then like clock the times that, know, like, Hey, when are my best opportunities to meet this parent? And it's, it's almost always going to be a drop-off pickup. Um, we, know, sometimes we'll do like, uh, you know, depending on like the layout of your building and how close the room is to the actual parking lot. Like, um, we used to do a thing where we'd have somebody inside with a walkie talkie and somebody outside with a walkie talkie. So what a parent would pull up.
they would say, hey, I'm here to pick up Johnny. And so the person on the radio would be like, Johnny. And so then we'd call Johnny's name inside. I was like, why am I not the person outside with the walkie talkie? Like go be that person talking to the parent. you know, that, you know, and, plus one of the best things you can do in that situation is they're like, Hey, I'm here to pick up Johnny. You can be like, dude, Johnny's awesome. Like, let me tell you about Johnny. Johnny is so stinking cool. Yup. Yeah.
Nick Clason (04:30.774)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (04:40.906)
Yeah, that's so smart.
Nick Clason (04:50.902)
Yeah, and what parent doesn't want to hear that about their kid?
Josh Boldman (04:56.562)
Oh yeah, cause think of every time a parent gets called by a teacher, it's to tell them that their kid's not doing great. know, so like if you can be like the one time that you like, or I mean, if you're open enough to literally calling parents, like go call a parent and be like, Hey, I need to tell you something about Johnny. And they're like, what do you do now? They're like, he was amazing. Like, you know, and I mean, don't lie about Johnny. Like if Johnny's a little turd, like, know, you can be honest about it, but like, don't, but don't drag Johnny through.
Nick Clason (05:02.294)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (05:14.924)
Yeah, yeah. That's cool, yeah.
Yeah.
Josh Boldman (05:26.62)
You know, go out of your way to tell them how awesome it is.
Nick Clason (05:26.872)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (05:30.284)
Yeah, that's so good. It's like the whole idea of positive reinforcement versus negative, so much more powerful. And we can just be strategic and intentional to position ourselves to do that. Even if you're like, I'll give myself 20 minutes on the calendar a week and I'll try to call as many parents and just say something nice about their kids. And if they're quick conversations or even, bro, leave a voicemail. Maybe they don't answer, whatever. It'll still be awesome. can be like, okay, no need to
Josh Boldman (05:33.859)
Mm-hmm. Totally, totally.
Josh Boldman (05:46.779)
Yeah. yeah.
Josh Boldman (05:56.422)
Yeah!
Nick Clason (05:59.67)
No need to call back, just wanted to let you know whatever, that'd be really good.
Josh Boldman (06:01.999)
Yeah. Yeah. And especially if you know, you have a kid who is, you know, mean, gosh, I don't know what it has been about the, you know, the 20 years I spent in ministry, but it was like, it was just like every kid with an attention deficit of something, something, something like they all just showed up at our ministry. Right. It was grabbing it, which is a lot of fun. I'm just like, I'll be the first to say like, it is a party, but yes. man. Until the broken arms, but
Nick Clason (06:16.854)
Mm-hmm
Nick Clason (06:26.348)
You had fun during the games.
haha
Josh Boldman (06:30.781)
you would, but the thing was, is you would see parents drop off their kids and those parents were exhausted, right? And they were just like exasperated. Like they are saying like, Hey, please help. And also please give me a break for a minute. And so like, if you can call and like, if they, you know that they're having trouble with their kid at school and you can then brag about something awesome about that kid, like I cannot tell you how that feels. you know, just to be able to know like, cause
Nick Clason (06:36.013)
Mmm.
Nick Clason (06:44.053)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (06:49.464)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (06:56.216)
Yeah.
Josh Boldman (07:00.066)
And you know, let's call it what it is. Parents need to hear that not everybody hates their kid. Like, I mean, I know that sounds harsh, but like...
Nick Clason (07:05.15)
Mm-hmm. Well, no, you're always questioning, like, are our kids weird? are they? You're always asking that thing.
Josh Boldman (07:10.244)
Right? Yes. It's like, it's like my own kid. Like I love my kid, but I don't know how other people feel about him unless they tell me, you know? So yeah.
Nick Clason (07:17.634)
That's it, yeah, no, you're so right. Yeah, so, so far, you know, it's interesting. Like nothing you've said had anything to do with like the youth pastor's sermon or cue cards or so like, what else, man?
Josh Boldman (07:27.48)
Not even a little. yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not, yeah, it's not the, every year we do a message series where we talk about be nice to your parents. Like, no, that's not, that doesn't help. mean, can't, please do that. yeah, but some things that I have noticed, you know, in times, especially when I started in a ministry where I followed someone who left poorly.
Nick Clason (07:38.958)
Yeah, yeah, it sure can help,
Josh Boldman (07:54.064)
what I almost across the board saw was that that person, especially when it came to parents, was disorganized and did not communicate well. So like, and this may sound so minor, but like send an email every week. Like even if it is literally the same email, like it's the same template, just change two things, whatever. But that way when parents are trying to figure out what's going on, they can always look at the last email and see what it was.
Nick Clason (08:10.382)
It's not that hard.
Nick Clason (08:15.02)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (08:20.92)
Yeah.
Josh Boldman (08:21.668)
Don't expect them to open it and read it right when you send it and be like, this email was great.
Nick Clason (08:26.05)
Well, and that's what I would say with our, even the little bit of hybrid strategies, make sure your website's up to date, because how annoying is it when you have a question about what time does that event start, and you go to the website, and it's not even there. And it's like, I send it in the email. It's like, do you know how many emails I've gotten? And so I recommend a do that, do both. Just keep both things, yeah, keep both things updated.
Josh Boldman (08:30.669)
Yeah! Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yup.
Josh Boldman (08:39.76)
huh. Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Boldman (08:47.184)
All of them.
Yeah, anything you can do. Yup, 100%.
Nick Clason (08:55.308)
because they may not be hanging, like you said, on your every word. like, give me your outline from your last 10 messages so that can go over them with my kid. But no, the parents, they do just want to be able to stay in the loop, and they got a lot going on, just like you do. so help them figure out where they can snag that info, for sure.
Josh Boldman (08:59.021)
Right.
Josh Boldman (09:08.898)
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm, yeah, totally. Another good one that we do, and this is literally every place that I started, this was something I instituted within the first month. And I got most pushback from volunteers, which is interesting, was we start and end on time, every week, period. And my gosh, mean, to tell you that, so I was at a place once where when I came in,
Nick Clason (09:25.441)
Yeah.
Interesting.
Nick Clason (09:32.915)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Josh Boldman (09:40.751)
We started youth group at seven, which really meant it was 7 15. And then youth or the small groups went and they started at like eight 30, which is too late. And that meant that they went until nine on a school night. And then the, the, the overall ministry philosophy was we don't start cleaning up until the last kid leaves because we don't want them to feel like we're like, we're pushing them out. And my thing
Nick Clason (09:44.642)
Right.
Nick Clason (09:51.35)
Yeah, on a school night. Yep.
Nick Clason (10:03.618)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (10:07.19)
Which like I get the sentiment.
Josh Boldman (10:08.846)
I totally get it. and it does, it makes so much sense. But at the end of the day, think, think this through. Like we would have students there till like 10 30 and 11 and then we would clean and I'm there with my own son. So I can't even go home with my own kid and get him to bed. And he's got to go to school the next morning. Right. And so, so now if I'm a parent and I notice a pattern that my kid keeps getting in trouble on Thursdays and
Nick Clason (10:23.806)
Mm-hmm. You're in prison. Yeah, you're locked up like.
Josh Boldman (10:38.221)
then I also piece it together that they're out late every Wednesday, I'm gonna start putting two and two together and I'm gonna start blaming somebody. And so like...
Nick Clason (10:41.762)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (10:46.2)
Bro, that's, I mean, we don't, we, so we homeschool our kids this year, first year. They couldn't go to like Wednesday night activities at the church, because it was too tough of a turnaround for their like first and second grade bodies. Like the alarm goes off at 6 a.m. after church on Wednesday night. was like, exactly, it was brutal. And so it's like now the nice thing is like, hey, we're homeschooled and you know what's cool? We can take our kids to church.
Josh Boldman (10:50.126)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Boldman (10:53.901)
Yeah!
Josh Boldman (10:57.645)
Yeah, dude!
so hard.
Which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And what it let us do is we said 8 45. That's when we start cleaning up whether students are there or not. And any student who's still there gets to help. And, and so one that actually taught the students that, okay, I'm going to go ahead and leave it at 30. But yeah. But, then when parents would show up and they'd see their kid helping, like even that was like, my gosh, this
Nick Clason (11:18.296)
Mm-hmm.
gets to help.
Nick Clason (11:26.734)
Or the good ones will, you know, how can it help?
Nick Clason (11:34.999)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Boldman (11:37.858)
what are you doing here and how is this magic and how can I do this at home? And so suddenly that just creates so many more opportunities for conversations with parents and for us to say, we're doing this and we're keeping a tight schedule so that you know what to expect and what your kid knows what to expect at school the next day.
Nick Clason (11:54.946)
Yeah, so good. When you say start, how would you see it being helpful? Maybe I understand the ending, the beginning. How is it helpful starting on time as opposed to like a delayed 15 minutes? I feel like that's a staple in youth ministry.
Josh Boldman (12:02.541)
Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So like same thing. Like I know it's a hard turnaround. Like if you your kid gets home from school, you get home from work, you're trying to get dinner, all that. You rush, rush, rush, rush, and you rush to get them there at seven. And then you just see everybody just sitting around and you're like, why did I rush so hard to get here? And yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Clason (12:27.906)
So it's like an honoring of the effort that it took to, yeah. So like you actually, yeah, it's good, it's good, I like it.
Josh Boldman (12:35.118)
You know, mean, it's never perfect, right? know, mean, you stuff's always gonna go sideways, but like, if you, if you can give them what to expect, then when it does go a little long or, you know, things don't quite work out the way that then it's like, it's not their, their internal monologue is like, again, you know, it's just like, oh, okay, yeah, get it. happens, you know, yeah.
Nick Clason (12:43.949)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (12:54.678)
Hmm It happened yeah, you have the kind of credibility of like we always end on time Sorry tonight went five minutes late and that's I mean I'm with you like if you're gonna go like late like five minutes is your Absolute max like that's my that's my absolute max. I'm like and I'm sweating bullets in the back like Band we don't need you to play that interlude again. Just pray. Let's go get him out of here. Yeah
Josh Boldman (13:04.119)
Yep. Yep.
Josh Boldman (13:11.958)
Totally. yeah.
Josh Boldman (13:20.652)
Right, please actually don't. Please don't. Yeah.
Nick Clason (13:24.24)
alright, anything else?
Josh Boldman (13:26.413)
I would say, so something we did was we started a text chain where we would send parents discussion questions during the lesson. So that if they were picking their kid up later, they'd be like, instead of saying, how was youth group? They could be like, hey, I heard you were talking about Joshua chapter two. would you have? Yeah.
Nick Clason (13:35.456)
I like it.
Nick Clason (13:41.654)
Yeah, it's good. And it goes right to them. Being on the phone, that, as opposed to a cue card, you know, we posted on a Facebook group and I still don't even think that's the most effective place for it. And even, yeah, exactly, that's really good. That's good.
Josh Boldman (13:54.529)
Right, mm-hmm, yeah. And it lets them opt in. Man, mm-hmm. Two other kind of small things that we used to do is we created an observation deck where it was like a row where parents could come and sit and watch. But it was where, and we always had a volunteer assigned to them, so it was like, you know, we always said, if you're gonna be around kids, you gotta be background checked, yada, yada, and all that. like, but, but.
Nick Clason (14:11.186)
that's cool.
Nick Clason (14:20.63)
Yeah, all the things,
Josh Boldman (14:22.461)
If you're a parent, you're just like genuinely curious about what happens here. You don't have to go through that whole process, but we're going to stick a volunteer with you that has, and they're going to be with you the entire time. and, that at least let, let parents know that, this is not a secret. What we do here. We're not, you know, trying to like turn your kids against you or anything like that. yeah. And then, last bit of advice I would give is just when you are talking to parents,
Nick Clason (14:32.012)
Yeah, come hang out.
Nick Clason (14:36.622)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (14:41.836)
Yeah, that's just like a full transparency moment. So that's cool.
Josh Boldman (14:51.38)
Remember that they are adults and not students. And it's hard to turn that, know, you'd switch that, you know, flip that switch or whatever. Cause you can be really quick going from talking to a bunch of kids to then talking to parents and that same, that same demeanor, that same way, you know, you're addressing, like there's a, the parent that brought the kid and the parent that wants to take that kid home needs, needs respect. And you know, that
and it needs respect shown in a way that's different than the way you show respect to a student. So I say, just remember that, remember you're on the same team. It's not you versus them, it's you and them trying to help the kid.
Nick Clason (15:24.995)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (15:30.732)
Yeah. And I think the, as I listened to every single thing you said, right? I think the encouraging part is nothing really added anything to your workload. You're not creating some crazy parent seminar. You're not adding some big once a year conference. Like you are subtly shifting your positioning at the beginning and end of service. You're subtly shifting your mindset and your organization and
Josh Boldman (15:45.833)
Right, no.
Nick Clason (16:00.214)
you're adding maybe a text thread, right? Which like, it'll take you less than 10 minutes for your entire series to type out two questions per message. You know, like.
Josh Boldman (16:02.9)
Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Josh Boldman (16:10.503)
yeah, well, and what we do, we use questions that were small group questions anyway. Yeah, sure.
Nick Clason (16:15.596)
Yeah, yeah, and you can copy and paste or reframe slightly and you're right there. So that's so good. Josh, anything else that the people need to know about partnering with parents or anything else they need to know in general?
Josh Boldman (16:20.393)
Yeah, uh-huh, Yep. Totally.
It, I will say this, okay, and because this is the mistake I made and I think a mistake so many people make, if you don't have kids, do not assume that you know better than the parent. Assume that you are, you can help the parent, assume that you are, you are still a resource and you know, you know students. But just parenting is hard, dude. Like it's so hard. And by, you don't know what, what that parent,
Nick Clason (16:40.194)
Mm, that's good.
Nick Clason (16:53.32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Josh Boldman (16:58.333)
is walking in with or what they're walking out with. You might think that that kid is just the golden child, but that might not be what is happening at home. Just don't assume. So go into any conversation with parents, I think, with a posture of learning and a posture of, want to support you, I think is good. Yeah.
Nick Clason (17:09.228)
Mm. Yeah.
Nick Clason (17:16.248)
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, all Josh social media, all his stuff's linked down below. Go check him out. But for Josh, this is Nick. Thanks for being here, guys. We'll talk to you next time.
Josh Boldman (17:29.042)
Later. Bye.
19 min
April 10, 2025 Episode 144: How I Recruit Awesome Youth Volunteers that Stick
In this episode, Nick sits down with one of his best friends, and also, boss, and they discuss volunteer, not only recruiting, but also how to create such a strong volunteer team that volunteers would never choose to leave your team. Be sure to stick around for the surprising strategy that actually keeps volunteers on the team longer!
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Meet My Boss & Friend, Darren Sutton
01:02 35 Years in 35 Seconds
04:10 Shocking Bar Raising Leader Strategy
05:33 What if Leaders Don’t Respond?
07:56 Start Recruiting Leaders from Scratch
19:33 How do you keep good leaders?
21:57 Conducting Leader Debriefs
25:45 A Complete List of Roles
31:20 Final Encouragement
--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:01.036)
We've recorded so many podcasts together. I don't even know how I feel like we're supposed to Well, everyone here we are. I am with my boss, Darren Sutton, who has his youth ministry till I die shirt on, which I was wearing yesterday. So I'm glad that we coordinated this. But I wanted to get on here and I've been working for Darren now for five years, two different places.
Darren Sutton (00:04.982)
Welcome back.
Darren Sutton (00:20.691)
Thank you.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:29.72)
And aside from having written a book, I would also say practically speaking, Darren has a lot to say about volunteers. But Darren, first, tell us a brief overview. Distill your 35-year youth ministry journey down to 35 seconds. But why in that did volunteers become such a thing for you?
Darren Sutton (00:53.484)
Yeah, I don't know if I can say that in 35 seconds, but I will say this. I was pretty much the Lone Ranger youth pastor who would just grab chaperones when I was absolutely desperate for adults to be in the room or whatever. I would have adults lead Bible study classes and go to summer camp with me and the stuff where you know you can't do everything, so you have them there. But I didn't realize the...
extent of needing people to carry the mission forward and to lean into their own calling until I was about maybe 10 years in and we were having our yeah we were having our third baby and my lead volunteer was like I can't do this and you need you need more people you're not doing this right so my wife basically was like listen you're you are
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:32.354)
Did something happen?
Darren Sutton (01:48.29)
fantastic and you have lots of adult leaders, but you're not equipping them for ministry. You're just having them hold down the pieces that you can't hold down and they have more to offer than that. And you're not, you're not giving them, you know, the runway to do that. And that changed everything. It totally transformed my whole philosophy about why we use volunteers and how we keep them and why that matters.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:57.676)
Mmm. Mmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:03.98)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:16.982)
Okay, so yeah, so like I would imagine that, you know, average youth pastor listening is like, you know, they have that mentality, right? The volunteers are a necessary like evil, I don't wanna say, you know, but like they just, know they have to have them. There you go. They're a necessary component, but maybe like, maybe they don't even know what to do with them.
Darren Sutton (02:36.088)
Component. Let's go with component. They're necessary component.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:46.028)
You know what mean? like that, would imagine maybe some of that was your story too. Like maybe control a little bit, but also like, what do I even do with these guys? So yeah, so how did you, before we dive into kind of the recruiting conversation, how did you mentally release yourself and be able to trust that you could actually hand off like meaningful things to said volunteer?
Darren Sutton (02:53.294)
You worked for me, you know part of it was control.
Darren Sutton (03:13.89)
Yeah, great question. This, I mean, you know, this is gonna sound like a no brainer, but 25 years ago it wasn't. I started writing job descriptions and I just sat down and said, okay, if I was handing off deeper parts of this, or if the people who were already serving were gonna own it the way I wanted them to.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:23.96)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:35.0)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (03:37.58)
What did I want that to look like? Like, what did I want them to do? Part of the struggle is that I wasn't recruiting them to anything other than filling the spot and hanging out with kids. And so if I wanted them to be at football games and, you know, choir performances, and if I wanted them to be writing cards to kids who weren't there, and if I wanted them to be reaching out to parents on the regular and all that, I needed to spell that out, and I hadn't done that. And so I was doing all that part, and they were just showing up.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:46.978)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:01.261)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:05.622)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (04:05.866)
And as soon as I kind of raised the bar and said, here's what I really need you to be doing in this role. If you love Jesus and love students and you want to make an eternal impact, it looks like this. It changed everything. So job descriptions were my number one thing. And again, that sounds a little bit like a no brainer now, I think for a lot of people, but we weren't doing that back then.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:25.962)
Yeah. So and then they did they did race to the challenge, right? Were you nervous that they wouldn't or couldn't or didn't have the time to or was there any of that?
Darren Sutton (04:31.902)
yeah. Yeah.
Darren Sutton (04:37.71)
You know, I don't remember being nervous about it as much as I was just, was at a point in my ministry and in my family life where I was like, they have to do this. You know, so it never dawned on me, I think, and also young and arrogant. Like it never dawned on me that anybody would say, I don't want to do that. And to their credit, nobody did. Like everybody rose to the challenge. And I really think that
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:56.802)
Sure.
Darren Sutton (05:07.32)
we sell the body of Christ, not volunteers, they're the body. We sell the body short when we assume that they won't invest more. Give them a chance to show you that, right? And if they do, then you know, like they might be better suited for a different role in your ministry, but this role with the job description as it's written, they're just not good for that. And it also gives you a great entry point for a conversation when you do need a leader to level up.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:18.348)
Hmm. Yeah, that's good.
Darren Sutton (05:37.078)
to say like, listen, here's what we signed on for. Help me understand what's a struggle for you in this. Because it seems like these components aren't happening. And I'm just wondering, is that because you're unsure of what to do? Is that because you don't want to do that? You've had bad success with it? Like, help, teach me. Teach me what this, you know, where the holes are here.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:41.944)
Hmm
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:56.672)
Mm, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:00.844)
But then you have, like you said, have teeth, right, a little bit to go back if volunteer's not performing and there's nothing more awkward than trying to fire someone who's not getting paid. So.
Darren Sutton (06:04.152)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (06:10.798)
I'm sure. Helping them find their fit in the body of Christ.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:17.46)
Yep. So, okay, so aside from, you know, someone just buying your book, which is linked down below in the description, obviously.
Darren Sutton (06:25.514)
hey, thanks. I don't even know if I have a link to my book. Yeah, probably. Maybe the three people who bought it are done with it.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:27.956)
Yeah, well, we'll scrounge it up. It's on eBay or something. What? So if you're if someone's just, know, regular old youth pastor and they're like, just like, OK, I hear you. Yeah, I'm doing too much. I'm spinning my wheels. Job description, maybe step one. Step two. Let's talk recruiting like because you.
you may not even have any leaders to write a job description for. So help someone start. Just rattle off the best recruiting strategies, methods, ideas, and I'll take notes for our own ministry as we're trying to also recruit some people.
Darren Sutton (07:00.908)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (07:08.172)
Yeah.
because there are always holes. Well, where I started was I'm not a big fan of cattle calls from the pulpit or anything like that. Yeah, that's a struggle. Yeah, or you don't get anybody because nobody listens during announcements.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:21.686)
Yeah, the youth need volunteers. You're gonna get weirdos.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:29.047)
Yeah.
Well, it's a plural you, right? So it's like, you all interested? And so the individual you assumes one of the other ones is gonna take it and they're off the hook.
Darren Sutton (07:36.118)
Yes, exactly. So let me tell you guys, so here's what I did, Nick. Like I, you're right. The individual ask is everything. And I don't mean a fly by, you know, I don't mean a fly by conversation in the hallway on your way to the bathroom. I mean a sit down, real talk. but it takes a minute to get to that, right? Especially if you don't know everybody in our current context, the student ministry is literally a
across a creek from the rest of the building and so.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (08:07.372)
Yeah. It's one of the most distant locations I've ever served and I would imagine the same for you. So us being a part of the rest of the life of the church, we have to be incredibly intentional to overcome that for sure.
Darren Sutton (08:16.588)
Yeah, for sure.
Darren Sutton (08:22.27)
Exactly. And that's true everywhere, especially if your facility or the space that you occupy is siloed from the rest of the church.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (08:31.372)
Yeah, because it's great to have the youth space, but that their inherent challenge of that is you're in the youth space and not, yeah.
Darren Sutton (08:37.132)
Yeah, it's a youth space. Yeah, it's a youth space. So if you're not a youth, you're not in it. So, yeah, the first thing I did was I went to my senior pastor and said, our students need more visibility. And, you know, in in that church, like where this whole philosophy of how I handle volunteers was born, my space was was attached, but it was up and to the back on a second floor in the far corner of the property. Right.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (08:50.253)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:06.06)
Yeah, so was separated.
Darren Sutton (09:07.362)
Yeah, exactly. Like you would see kids coming down from the upstairs and be like, my gosh, I'm glad I'm not serving up there. And that was it. So we started using students to take the offering, serve communion, do greeting. And I just, you know, kind of poached a dozen of my highest capacity students and said, let's help the church understand why youth ministry matters.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:13.334)
Right? Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:31.405)
Mm.
Darren Sutton (09:31.854)
And that didn't require them to be on the platform. We did have some on the platform. We had some students doing worship. We would occasionally do a youth night or youth day at church where students would speak and, or I would speak and all of that. starting there was actually the most critical, I think, the most critical component because people started seeing teenagers.
And it's a little bit like, you know, trying to acclimate people to wild animals. Like you got to get them a little bit close while they're in a cage and then you stick a little, you stick your hand in the cage and then you're in the cage, you know? And so that was the start of it. Also helping my senior pastor catch the vision that student ministry is not babysitting.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:07.682)
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:18.04)
Yeah, how do, can you talk about that for just a quick second? how do, I would imagine, you someone might be listening and they're like, oh yeah, I love that, but I'm either A, getting or I'm anticipating that I would get pushback. How do you lead up in that?
Darren Sutton (10:32.994)
Well, if you're anticipating, stop doing that. Like give them a chance to say, you're a babysitter. But also I think storytelling is the most critical component. We had this kid come in, let me tell you this story about this student who shared their faith at school and not necessarily about what student ministry is doing in the building, but what student ministry is doing outside of the building.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:35.992)
That's good, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:41.105)
Heh.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:51.405)
Hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:59.608)
That's good.
Darren Sutton (11:00.908)
you know, was super helpful. It also helped that I had a very open senior pastor. You know what? I didn't turn my phone off.
Sorry, Nick. You probably couldn't hear that, but I could. Okay, sorry. Are you editing this? I'm assuming you edit. All right, I'm gonna go back then. It didn't hurt that I had just a really open senior pastor. I think he hired me with the babysitting mindset, but it didn't take him long to see that student mystery could be way more than that. So I was fortunate in that way.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:11.224)
That's good.
No, I heard it. It was great. It was a great sound.
I mean, I will, yeah. Yeah, okay.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:34.548)
Mm. Yeah, that's good.
Darren Sutton (11:36.3)
So once we had students kind of operating around the building, it made it way easier for me to go up to randos and say, hey, so and so told me you'd be great. Or I'm gonna out myself with some really shallow things. I'm just gonna say. So if we were in worship and I saw folks who I felt like were truly connecting with worship.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:52.856)
lol
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:04.663)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (12:05.132)
That mattered to me, not because we had a worship ministry, but because I felt like those people were intentionally trying to connect with the heart of God when we were doing, you know, church. And so I just started introducing myself and doing a slow kind of a slow ask. Some might call it chess, where I would, I know you would, you know, where I would just go introduce myself. I'm a student pastor. Hey, just, you know,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:07.703)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:12.354)
Hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:24.472)
I would call it chest.
Darren Sutton (12:32.429)
appreciated your investment in church today or whatever. And then a of weeks later, I asked them how they were doing. Like I would start trying to build a relationship knowing that my end game, which didn't always work out, but my end game was to get them involved in students. The Lord might've had a different end game and sometimes he did, but I did that. I made sure that this was easier.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:57.282)
So this is everyone's permission to keep your eyes open during worship.
Darren Sutton (13:01.228)
Yeah, 100 % 100%. And you know, not to say that hands raised means anything because it doesn't, but I looked at people and went, look, their hands up. They're volunteering. Another thing that was again, a little easier in the context I was in, I got involved in a in a connect group and a life group Sunday school class, whatever your know, whatever your church calls it. And while
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:07.884)
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:11.584)
you
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:22.614)
Yeah, A D group.
I wanted to keep rattling them off but my brain went completely dead.
Darren Sutton (13:31.534)
While that didn't, I wasn't necessarily pulling people from that group. That group of all kind of young parents, it was early in our ministry, like they were the movers and shakers in our church. And so they were talking up the student ministry. I was able to talk it up in my small group. And then the last thing I did was done a little bit because I...
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:47.949)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (13:59.936)
you know, because I just felt stubborn about it. We had a set of senior adults in our church who were fantastic. I mean, you know, they did everything. They did all the serving. We had a Wednesday night meal. This is a long time ago. We a Wednesday night meal and they cooked the meal and they ran the kitchen and they just did everything. And I intentionally started developing relationships with those ladies.
and started trying to get them involved in doing some things. And I have always kind of felt like senior adults make some really great student ministers. And so I was intentionally going after them and there was a lady, her name was Belle. Belle was a little bit of your typical cranky church lady. And I said something about, you know, being involved in student ministry or whatever. And she was like, I'll never work with students. And I just went.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:35.028)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Darren Sutton (14:55.148)
before I die, you will, whatever it takes. And so a little bit, I would target people, I think that way. don't, target's probably not the right word, but I would just, I would set my sight on somebody that I really wanted and I just kind of wouldn't let it go. Didn't harass. Sometimes that took a long time. It took me maybe like three-ish or four years before I finally got Bell to start something in students. And by the time we were,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:04.152)
lol
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:09.089)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:22.861)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (15:24.84)
She was all in like she was hosting D nows at her house and you know all kinds of stuff. So I just think that it is not being afraid to ask, making sure that your students are visible so that people know that teenagers don't bite. They're not scary and then not counting anybody out. I mean from from 21 we are our age range started at 21. We wanted to give kids some separation from student ministry, but from 21 to death.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:28.258)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:36.482)
Mm-hmm.
Darren Sutton (15:54.208)
It didn't matter who you were, parent, not a parent, old lady, college student. Like we would go after everybody and did. just never, I never met a person that I didn't think was called. And you know, my dad, yeah, I think there was a book title and a full philosophy. And I just wouldn't, I mean, I took no for an answer. I didn't try to get people to serve who didn't really didn't want to.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:54.242)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:02.476)
Yeah, that's good.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:08.29)
Some might say there's a book title in that.
Darren Sutton (16:23.148)
but I wouldn't take no as the first answer. So Belle said no and I was like, well, will you make sandwiches for Wednesday night? We didn't need sandwiches for Wednesday night. We already have Wednesday night supper, but she did it. You know what I'm saying? She started there. And then I would get some of those key students and say, hey, you guys make sure and thank Ms. Belle for these sandwiches. so, you know.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:33.431)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:43.032)
Well, and I think there's a, probably a principle in there of like, if you only ever like recruit to the need, then when the need is great, then your anxiety is high because you have like a lot of, a lot of need and a lot of holes to fill. But if you're always have your eye on this sort of like recruiting or onboarding mindset, even if you are onboarding them and there's nowhere to put them, like it's better.
Darren Sutton (17:10.733)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:12.044)
to have an overabundance, a wealth of riches, than to just be like, well, I'm fully staffed, quote unquote, right now. But in a few months you might not be, and then again, you're like, man, I'm failing again. So I think the good principle is for anyone in youth ministry who feels like they're struggling with volunteers, just start asking people and keep asking them.
Darren Sutton (17:14.091)
percent.
Darren Sutton (17:35.852)
never, it didn't matter how full I was, I never told somebody no. And in that church specifically, and in several of my churches, like I would have every spot full and I would be creating roles because I just wanted to make sure that people who wanted to be involved in the next generation could be.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:40.087)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:47.928)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:54.7)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (17:54.894)
And I tried really hard to not enlist them to a position, but to enlist them to a vision, to a purpose and what their life could mean, even if all they were doing is making sandwiches. And sometimes that's what it was, right? I don't have a spot for this person, but hey, could you go shopping for me on Tuesday? I would find things for them to do so I didn't have to tell them no. Because you might be fully staffed today and tomorrow, you know,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:02.102)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:10.828)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:20.342)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (18:24.848)
your leader has a parent who has to move in with them and their whole life changes and they need to step out. So I never counted on being fully staffed. And when I was fully staffed, I felt like I was always kind of back filling with the people who were the next to step in.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:41.58)
Yeah. So that's a flex, being fully staffed or being so staffed that you have volunteers that you're just like making stuff up. So that leads to like, in my opinion, the next sort of like big bucket of this conversation is like, how do you, how do you keep good leaders so that they don't dip out on you?
Darren Sutton (18:51.255)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (19:03.405)
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. You know, I think this just happened because a little bit it's my personality bit. I wasn't being intentional about this. I just felt like, you know, as I knew that volunteers were important and that part of my job was shepherding them and it wasn't just about hanging out with the kids and you know, all of that. So I was very...
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (19:15.512)
You
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (19:26.306)
Right.
Darren Sutton (19:32.066)
what's the right word? Pastoral is the only word I can think of. I knew my job was to shepherd them. It wasn't just to enlist them and get them sitting in front of teenagers, it was to help them along. So, you know, I...
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (19:39.159)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (19:48.148)
I'm pretty good at sending notes of appreciation and not generic notes. Hey, I saw you talking to this kid. Hey, I heard a parent say this about you. Hey, you know, so that they would know that what they were doing was being seen. And I think that's a piece of it. know, gift cards go a long way, even if it's five bucks to Starbucks, because we all know five bucks isn't going to buy anything at Starbucks. But it's not that it's not that it is.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:01.826)
yeah
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:15.625)
Mm-hmm.
Darren Sutton (20:15.936)
it is noticing them that matters, right? I was a little bit of a bulldog, absolutely insistent on leader training. Not necessarily to make them better, but to make them better, but more to build community among our leaders so that they didn't want to leave.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:24.971)
Hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:33.048)
Mm.
Darren Sutton (20:36.91)
Often volunteers who serve in students sacrifice a community group of some sort in order to serve so they don't have that. And a lot of times when they don't have that or they don't sense the feel of community, they'll dip so they can go be in their own Sunday school class or, you know, life group or whatever it is. And so I even though we weren't that we weren't doing Bible studies together every week, I wanted them to feel like, man, if something happens, my student
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:43.052)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:55.607)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (21:07.044)
team has my back and so and you know this because you work with me I'm pretty intentional still to this day about making sure that those leader training times are as much about building community and connection as they are about becoming a better you know volunteer.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:08.152)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:19.544)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:23.041)
Yeah, for sure.
Darren Sutton (21:24.416)
And then I'm a big fan of not recruiting people until death. So we actually recruit to a cycle. So we're gonna ask you to step in here and we're gonna ask you to go until this point. And then if you wanna step out, we'll embrace you and be sad when you go, most of you. You you occasionally have that one leader where that ending date really helps you.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:37.536)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:43.606)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (21:49.966)
what you said earlier, like kind of helps you fire somebody. Like, hey, it's coming to the end of your term, thanks so much. Like, here's a Sunday school class for you to go to, you know, whatever. But largely, it was an opportunity for me to be more mindful and intentional about recruiting division. So if they didn't hear it any other time, once a year in the kind of re-recruiting phase,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:53.431)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:56.856)
Yeah
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:07.233)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:16.823)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (22:17.33)
They were going to be reminded of what they were doing. It was an opportunity for me to say, tell me, tell me what to struggle. What? How can I help you? Do you still love this role? Is there another role that you've seen other people performing in that you would like to try out? Would you so they don't feel like, hey man, if I say yes to leading this, you know, home group, I'm going to be leading it until I die. Yeah, exactly. You know.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:26.295)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:31.894)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (22:38.018)
I'm stuck for life, yeah.
But I think that might give some youth pastors listening hives, because they're already feeling strapped with leaders, and then they get good ones and they're like, wait, you give them an end date? And the irony in that is that doing that, again, I won't put words in your mouth, but doing that helps them feel like seen and appreciated and that you value them. so rather than them leaving at the end of the term,
Darren Sutton (22:55.148)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:11.562)
they like immediately re-up and come back.
Darren Sutton (23:13.612)
Yeah, yeah. And the truth is when you're when you have equipped them well, they know what their mission is. They feel supported by their community. They don't want to leave. We we in all kinds of different ways for the last 25 years, I've tried to give my volunteers breaks, whether that was a bucket of time like, hey, everybody's off in the summer and we'll take care of it. Or, know, what we currently do is
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:32.311)
Mm.
Darren Sutton (23:40.672)
a day off about every six-ish weeks where we just say to our volunteers, don't come, the student ministry's got it, students got it, you know, whatever. Giving them those moments basically to come up for air helps them stay in the water a lot longer. So yeah, we do give an end date, but I have only had a few people take advantage of that. And when they have, it's never been because they didn't want to do student ministry anymore.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:44.343)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (23:54.413)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:09.89)
Right.
Darren Sutton (24:10.228)
It's always been because my life circumstances have changed and I need a break. And, you know, the other piece of that that is helpful is when life circumstances do change, most of them won't dip until they get to that end date. And so even though their trauma, you know, whatever it was, their job change, their, you know, sickness, their parents or kids or whatever happened in November.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:15.074)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:34.367)
Mm. Yeah.
Darren Sutton (24:39.63)
They know they committed until June 1st and they're going to say occasionally, occasionally, you know, to be a good pastor, you're going to say, listen, I know your life is upside down right now. Uh, just go ahead and step out. Like let's take a break. And then you're going to bring in, you know, somebody who's on the bench, who's been begging to be involved, who you've got in a, you know, maybe a less influential position, but who's ready to step up. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:41.666)
and they'll still ride it out. Yeah, that's good.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:49.409)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (24:52.78)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (25:03.35)
Yeah, so real quick before we leave, let's just make a big list of volunteer roles that are a little bit, because I think, again, Average Joe, Normal Youth Pastor, Normal Youth Ministry in America, every volunteer that they have is to lead discussion, small group, school, whatever you want to call it with students.
Darren Sutton (25:29.134)
Yeah, for sure.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (25:31.064)
But there's a million other things and some people don't want to do that. Like we have a guy on our team right now who's awesome. He's like, I don't want to lead a Bible study, but he loves teenagers. He's like fun at heart. You know, like he's, he's the type of guy you'd want on your team, but he, he felt disqualified because he's like, I'm not equipped for that slash don't want to do it. And so like, to your point, there's a million things you can do. can make sandwiches. So what are some over the years, you're 35.
Darren Sutton (25:53.112)
Right.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:00.28)
plus years of experience. What are some of the different roles that you've had created, invented? Like give us some of the funniest best ones you got.
Darren Sutton (26:09.102)
Oh, I don't know. I have some that you couldn't do anymore. You know, I mean, I love that the, you're just going to show up at their like, you don't, you don't have to lead a Bible study, but I want you to show up at every single basketball game this kid has, you know, as just kind of a, you know, a big brother figure. You know, we had a lot of over the years had different
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:12.024)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Share those two from the the crypt.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:29.464)
Mm.
Darren Sutton (26:39.53)
spots had a lot of rec space. and so, you know, listen, I don't want you to do anything except play basketball. That's all you have to do. Play basketball and talk to students. you know, we also had the proverbial like set up chairs and, you know, come in and create, you know, new student, new student guest kits and, know, that kind of stuff. Probably the funniest one that we had was, in one church that I was in.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:41.816)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (26:48.534)
I love that job.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:00.684)
Yeah. Yeah.
Darren Sutton (27:09.224)
our student center was a kind of refabbed pavilion on the back of an acre and a half plot. So the church was at the front right and the student ministry area was at the back left and no lights, barely electricity. We threw up fake walls. We had window units kind of shoved in the corner and you know, as janky as it could be.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:16.578)
Okay.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:23.755)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (27:38.478)
and so every week we would have fire ants that were building in the building, right? Like building these nests in the building. So we had our, our guy who would come in and kill the fire ants every week, and sweep it all out. That was his only job. Like he didn't want to hang out with students and all that, but he felt like that was a contribution he can make. had people in that same church, like one of the ways that we
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (27:53.046)
You
Darren Sutton (28:05.814)
kind of lighted the path in the middle of the night to that back area where with tiki torches. And so we had folks who would come in and, you know, light the tiki torches and sweep the pathway off and, you know, that kind of thing. So those were kind of unique. We had for a time, folks who would be, you know, kind of the bus run, except in their vehicles, we, don't do that anymore. Just generally for ministry safe purposes, but
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (28:10.359)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (28:28.941)
Right.
Darren Sutton (28:31.822)
Their only job was to pick kids up and drive them back and forth to church. They didn't stay in the youth ministry. didn't, but we gave them like in that job description, here are some questions you can be asking when kids get in your car to get the conversation going and you know, make sure you meet the parents and you know, things like that to help them be a little bit more invested in real life with kids. Had some volunteers whose main job was to reach out to parents.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (28:37.016)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (28:59.886)
and make sure that, you know, hey, we know parenting teenagers is tough. Is there anything the student ministry can do for you? That was their only job to just keep a list of parents would love this. Parents would need that. And they pass that over to me and I'd figure out what we could do and you know, what was a really stupid idea we had to throw away. So some stuff like that. Once, you know, this one is selfish, but was important.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:07.672)
Hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:18.136)
Yeah, nice. keep going.
Darren Sutton (29:27.694)
uh, more important than I realized, I think at the time, uh, I enlisted somebody to pay attention to my kids. Uh, your job is and not just mine, but in that, in that church, just mine. But if we were in our context, we're having multiple staff members, it would be staff kids. Uh, but I, I was like, you know, my kids sacrifice a lot for me to be in student ministry and they were not teenagers yet. They were, you know, I don't know, 11, nine and seven, they were young. I just said, can you
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:35.063)
Uh-huh.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:42.646)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (29:53.708)
Yeah. Yeah.
Darren Sutton (29:56.792)
Can you just notice my kids? Like they're here a lot. They sacrifice a lot for ministry. Their dad's a pastor and so I'm sure that they're they need adults who are not their pastor. You know as well and your your jobs to just notice my kids and they crushed that like our kids to this day feel like those people are their grandparents even more than their actual grandparents. So that's another one.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:02.263)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:10.028)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:21.4)
It's cool.
Yeah, that's cool.
Darren Sutton (30:25.21)
You can come up with everything. Host homes and sandwich makers and so many ways to get people close enough to see what Jesus is doing without them having to lead a Bible study ever.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:27.832)
.
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:37.335)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (30:43.512)
Yeah, that's good. So, okay, last thing. Talk to the youth pastor who's struggling, floundering, drowning. Find a word of encouragement about the importance of leaders and maybe just a basic for them next step. Hey, if you're gonna do anything, first thing to do is just do this. Don't feel overwhelmed by all of this. Maybe you don't have the...
Capacity to get a fire ant guy yet. Okay, that's fine But speak speak to that speak to the guy who's just like man. don't leaders are killing like it's just the hardest, you know part of my job, whatever like Encourage them for a second
Darren Sutton (31:22.712)
Yeah. Well, let me just say first, it's not your job. That's not your job. That's the job of the Holy Spirit. And he's very clear in scripture that we all have a part to play.
and that our job as pastors is to equip the saints for the work of service. Our job is not to make sure we have plenty of volunteers, not to make sure every hole gets filled. Our job is just to equip the people that the Holy Spirit brings. We can be more proactive in bringing them, but the Holy Spirit is the one who quickens their heart to be involved. So that's not your job. Your job isn't to convince them. Your job is to shepherd them and to give them an opportunity to step into what God is calling them to do.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (31:39.352)
Mm-hmm.
Darren Sutton (32:04.718)
Don't take the whole burden on yourself. And I mean that in two ways. It's the Holy Spirit's job and also you have some people, you definitely have some people who care about student ministry who will help recruit for you. You utilize that, whether that's other staff members, folks that are currently on your volunteer team, a parent who just happens to take a particular interest in what's going on in student ministry.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:20.792)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:31.224)
Teenagers.
Darren Sutton (32:32.364)
Yeah, for sure. 100 % ask a kid who they think would make a great youth leader. They'll have a list guaranteed. So.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:34.519)
you
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (32:38.742)
Yeah, yeah. I had a teenager one time go and list the head usher on his own. Yeah, I was like, well, I'll talk to him too. But it was great.
Darren Sutton (32:44.891)
Poach them from other ministries? I love it.
That's fantastic. But just don't feel the burden that it's all on you and don't feel the burden that it all has to happen right now. For me, it was a slow, kind of a slow burn into that whole idea that volunteers could be more and I needed to ask them to do more and be more. That took time. And it's not a foolproof, like,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (33:16.502)
Yeah.
Darren Sutton (33:21.322)
I mean, we serving in church right now and across from this podcast, there's a big sheet on my door that lists every volunteer hole we have right now. And we have a lot. There's probably 20 people on there that we need to fill. So, you know, you're always going to have the need. You can't let the holes be what drives you. You've got to let the people who are in the room, you know, a little bit.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (33:31.384)
Yeah. Yeah.
Darren Sutton (33:47.384)
be what drives you. So, and it's totally doable because Jesus wants those kids even more than you do. And he's gonna raise up the people that are needed to help get them where he needs them to be.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (33:48.984)
That's good.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:01.304)
Nice, that's good. All right, anything else? Did we get it all?
Darren Sutton (34:05.312)
Yeah, think we, I mean, I'm sure we didn't get it all, but we got, you got all I got.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:08.28)
Well, that's a lot it's helpful so where do people find you Darren?
Darren Sutton (34:18.03)
listen, I'm everywhere. I'm, I'm almost like the Holy Spirit everywhere you are. am, I'm on all, I'm on all social stuff. if you're, yes. Well, actually I can't, you can't say that anymore. I deleted my account after it banned.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:22.039)
Woo!
That's scary.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:29.738)
including band TikTok. If you'd like to send...
It's back, it's back now.
Darren Sutton (34:38.464)
I know I'm trying to decide like, listen, I had so this whole podcast, I had so much time open up in my life that I'm like, maybe I don't want to, I'm not sure if I want to, if I want to take it back. But yeah, I mean, you know, Insta and Facebook and Twitter and you know, all that, I have a blog. everyone's called the youth ministry.com and, I'm not, you know, I have, I'm just like you. I'm an in the trenches youth pastor. So if you're looking for a regular, like,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:42.712)
You
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (34:56.856)
Nice. We'll link it down below.
Darren Sutton (35:08.184)
podcast and a blog post. I don't do that. But I've been in this thing for a few minutes and I'm not planning on going anywhere. And so I love talking to you pastors. And if you ever need a guy who has made as many mistakes as you feel like you're making, you can reach out. Cause I got a whole list. Lots of stories. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (35:24.856)
You
There you go. That's big right there. All right. Well, hey, for Darren, this is Nick signing off. See you guys.
Darren Sutton (35:33.944)
Bye guys.
37 min
April 03, 2025 Episode 143: How I Avoid Burnout with Derry Prenkert
In this Episode Derry Breaks down 3 principles to avoiding burnout.
From Self-Awareness, to Working Genius to Sabbathing Well this episode has it all!
Derry's take on Vacationing is worth the entire episode.
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Introduction and Background
04:37 Principle #1 - Self Awareness
05:54 Personality Profiles
14:08 Refueling Strategies
17:54 Get a Hobby Out of Church
19:47 Be Aware of Seasons
25:03 Balance over Time - Grading Principle
30:06 The Walk, Sprint, Rest Explained
33:21 Find your True Unplug - Sabbath
34:32 Maximizing Vacation Days
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TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.178)
Well, what's up everyone? Here I am with my friend Derry, who we're just, what were we doing? Like last week we were like counting it out. We've known each other now like nine years, I think it is, which is, that's actually like a weird number to say. That makes me feel old. And I don't think of myself as old, but I think I am now. So Derry, how you doing this morning, bro?
Derry (00:23.319)
I'm good. You're not old. You're like my youngest brother old does that make sense? I can't be I could be your uncle, but ultimately
Nick Clason (00:27.654)
Sure, I'll take it. Yeah, so give us like a 30 second flyover, like who are you, in, know, what qualifies you to talk about this topic today of burnout?
Derry (00:43.758)
I am a youth pastor at heart that served in traditional youth ministry in a youth pastor role for 26 years, 23 of those at one church, three at another. And now I work with ministry leaders as a whole, but really it's all next gen people is where my heart is. And that's what I do through an organization called Standing Stone Ministry and run that in a lot of different formats. And it's all free, confidential, all about coaching, consultation and care.
And why I can talk about this is because I've had incredible victories in it and deep, massive failures when it comes to, I think, avoiding burnout in a lot of places, but also coming face to face with burnout, because it sneaks up on us. And so I can speak from both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, which is an old ABC-wide world of sports thing. If you've never seen it, watch the YouTube clip. It's amazing.
Nick Clason (01:37.946)
Well, I'll listen, I'll just say, for those of you who are like, you know, later on in maybe your youth ministry career and you're trying to create like coaching and cohorts, like Derry is the guy that is throwing a wrench into all of your plans because, I'll just plug like the youth ministry leader cohort, which is incredible value, which people would pay typically thousands of dollars to be a part of your offering now for somehow free. And I don't know how you're doing it.
but I've been a part of it, I've helped facilitate one. I mean, it's awesome. So there's your plug and that's at least a step in this whole burnout deal. So.
Derry (02:10.958)
Yeah. Thanks, man.
Absolutely, it's huge. how we do it, you just said part of it, because there's some amazing people that do it where by payment is friendship. And then there's a group of people and organizations that believe in this stuff. They love the church and they love the next generation, and they are footing the bill for us to do this. And I hope that alone brings hope to this youth ministry world. Like we just sometimes feel like, you know, everybody's against us. And it is, there's parts that are lot against us. There are people that are
Nick Clason (02:23.982)
Hahaha
Nick Clason (02:29.988)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason (02:35.27)
Which is really cool.
Derry (02:45.95)
So no, they just so know the value. They're either paying it forward from their youth ministry experience, they just recognize that the church and the hope of the church is found in this next generation, and so why not invest in the people investing in them? so, yeah, that's how we do it, but also it's just a reminder to anybody listening to this. Because if you're watching this and you're thinking you're burnt out, part of it is I just, don't make a difference and nobody sees what I'm doing. No, that's seen.
Nick Clason (02:48.998)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (02:59.302)
Yeah, it's good.
Nick Clason (03:07.056)
Hmm, that's good. Well, so Derry has like kind of like a three step sort of framework or little outline, I guess, of what we're gonna kind of walk through today. So what, Derry, take us through like step number one of this whole burnout conversation, where does someone start?
Derry (03:24.942)
Yeah, yeah, think, you know, it's so hard because burnout comes in so many forms. I mean, there's I'm just way overworked burnout. There's I'm not fulfilled burnout. There's relational burnout, which I don't think I'm to be able to hit that one a lot, but that's big, you know, and that's that's a little bit different. And then there's just like I'm in the wrong kind of work burnout, you know. So so it goes all these different ways. So ultimately, I was just thinking like you said, how do I? And I would say here's how I either have burnout.
or in the midst of burnout, caught it and recognize and put in practices, not so much to get out of it to avoid it the next time. Because I have burnout multiple times, you know? And so people are like, yeah, you lasted 23 years. OK, so three things. they're not like steps, but just like I guess I'd go principles and then some ways I do it. The first, I think, a key to avoiding burnout is self-awareness. I mean, it's just a simple thing. It's self-awareness because we're all wired in different ways.
Nick Clason (04:02.021)
you
Nick Clason (04:10.576)
Okay.
Nick Clason (04:16.39)
Hmm.
Derry (04:21.326)
that we will find our fuel, we'll find our exhaustion, we'll find ourselves caught up in our head and we'll refuel in different ways. And so that's a big one and I'll give you three pieces inside of self-awareness and you can stop me and ask me along in this. I would say the first one that I would throw out is your personality and your working genius is what I throw out. There's profiles out there that help you just learn.
what, like who you are. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, they're, they're profiles, right? They're not, they're not like, I got really tired of the Enneagram when it hit because I, I was into the disc profile. Others are Myers and Briggs, Myers Briggs. And I got annoyed with the Enneagram because people were like, this is the answer to everything. I never forget. sat in this like a millennial group and a person said, Enneagram is like a color wheel. And I was like, you just basically said this thing.
Nick Clason (04:52.592)
Like who you are, how you work, how you recharge, all that, yeah.
Nick Clason (05:02.726)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (05:15.206)
Ha
Derry (05:20.856)
can say whatever you want. Like there is a reality of that, but no, like there is absolutely wiring inside of it. So I don't care what it is, if you take it and it resonates with you, pause and say, okay, if I am a personality that comes alive when I'm helping people versus I'm a personality and it's behind the scenes and I don't want credit versus I do want to be out front. Well, then when you're aware in that and you're catching that, you recognize.
Nick Clason (05:22.435)
You
Nick Clason (05:39.942)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (05:48.854)
man, I gotta find myself over toward the work that's gonna bring life to me. And if I'm living too much over, and those profiles help you a lot with that.
Nick Clason (05:55.43)
Well, and then conversely, right? Like how you rest too, right? In that, so even like, like I'm a task type person. Like I'm an Enneagram one, my wife is an Enneagram two, so she likes to help people. So like she recharges a lot through like relationships where like I not quite as much. And so even within our own like marriage and relationship, understanding like a thing that might bring her life might drain me, you know? And so we kind of need to know even how to strike the balance like within that too.
Derry (05:58.772)
Exactly right.
Mm-hmm.
Derry (06:23.822)
Yeah, and Nick, for those that are married, personality stuff and I'll talk about the working genius in a second, awesome to do with your spouse because let's be honest, when they're out of whack, if our spouse is not in a good space and they're burning out, it burns us out too. And it's not their fault. It's actually maybe we gotta take the responsibility to go, am I aware enough?
Nick Clason (06:29.902)
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason (06:41.826)
Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah.
Derry (06:47.586)
I'm telling you, man, I've dove into the working genius side a whole lot more. We're getting ready to learn more on some personality profile stuff, my wife and I to help people. But it makes sense, right? Like the love language talk, you're going to tend to express love in the way you want it. But if that's not somebody's love language, they might not receive it to the level you think they can. so so so that it is just big. So personality profiles really good. If you aren't aware of this thing called working genius, it's a lot like if you've ever heard of strength Clifton strength finder. It's a similar thing, but it's a work.
productivity tool. wish it was called like working energizing or working joys because genius can throw you off. The idea is there's these six different parts to work and all of us come alive in two parts to it. It might not be step one. It might be or step one and step two. It might be step one and step five. So it mixes all around, but we come alive into, we can get by into and we die into meaning
Nick Clason (07:18.8)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (07:29.082)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (07:37.914)
Mm.
Nick Clason (07:45.636)
Yeah.
Derry (07:46.146)
There's two of them that like when we're in it, we're like, we're Captain America. I could do it all day. So like work, if you're a creative person that then loves to track down the creatives, your invention to nasty. I don't know anybody like that. Yeah.
Nick Clason (07:50.288)
You
Nick Clason (07:55.738)
Give us yours, like what are you, like what, talk about a project that you're Captain America in, like you could do all day, and then talk about a type of project that like you can't, you don't wanna do, or you wanna hand off, or you just wanna like, you know, be done, cause it's the worst.
Derry (08:01.026)
Yeah. Yep.
Derry (08:06.658)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me help you with it even. Because I think there's that way to do it. There's also just the, it's every work involves all six of these steps. And so it's also an awareness of if I have to do this from beginning and end, when I'm aware of that, I can do that. But also you're usually working in a team. So there's wonder, which is you love pondering the possibilities. There's invention where you're the, me a blank whiteboard and I come up with ideas. There's discernment where I'm processing through.
Nick Clason (08:15.696)
Yeah.
Derry (08:34.926)
what ideas have merit, where there's themes, and just kind of catching what goes on. There's galvanizing, where it's like the cheer everybody, bring everybody together and go, let's go for this. It's the rally cry person. A lot of youth pastors are galvanizing geniuses, because they love to rally the group together. It's that, like the greatest accomplishment is we're all excited, don't know what we're doing, but we're all, no. No, but that's galvanizing. Then there's enablement, not the best name for it, but that's where you want to come alongside.
Nick Clason (08:50.923)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Derry (09:03.926)
and help whatever the vision is happen. Also, youth pastors are enablement geniuses, especially if they last a while, because you're often having to fulfill the mission of the greater church and then come alongside. you're the moment when they go, we're looking for volunteers to help with. you might not, you just go, would love to, yes, thank you, let me do this. And then there's tenacity. And that's like the hit the deadline, nail the detail stuff, right? So my genius is invention and discernment.
Nick Clason (09:08.251)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (09:13.638)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (09:20.132)
Yeah, let's the youth pastor. Yeah.
Nick Clason (09:28.87)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (09:33.154)
give me a blank whiteboard or a brainstorm session and I come alive. Because not only like you present and the second, they call it the genius, competency and your frustration. So my genius is invention and discernment. They are back to back. My competency is wonder. So I don't mind pondering the questions and galvanizing is my other competency. So I can rally the team together. But I'm at my greatest on service, like semester planning.
Nick Clason (09:45.168)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (09:53.062)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (10:02.85)
When we would do that in my team, it was the greatest day in the world because that was our time where we were going to brainstorm. We were going to identify possibilities of what we could do. We were going to try to see how the Holy Spirit would bring together all these ideas we put up on the whiteboard and find the themes and go, there's a series. Here's the scripture we're going to come out of, or here's the scripture we're going to start with. But here's how we can flesh this out for students. Here's this new idea we have on something. I mean, like you can see me like talking about, right? And then.
Nick Clason (10:28.996)
Yeah, but as someone that is like tenacity, like a whiteboard meeting's great, but I feel like I'm losing a day's worth of work.
Derry (10:36.052)
Exactly right, right? So that's the key in this thing is because there's that part for you where your genius is dying when you're in that one spot because you want to get to it. But then there's also your frustration that when you get into that portion. So my assistant for years, best assistant in the world because she was amazing and she wasn't an assistant. She was like a co-pastor. She just loved the behind the scenes and getting things done.
Nick Clason (10:41.83)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (10:59.974)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (11:03.138)
Okay, I wish we had a map, but wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing. Remember, that's all the beginning of the work. And I am either good to go or fully alive in that. And then my frustration is actually the enablement piece of being delegated out to me, especially if it's not my idea. kind of like, gosh, don't call on me to do it. It sounds so selfish, but I get it, I'll do it, but it kills me. And then finish the project. So my big joke I tell people all the time is I'm amazing at starting things.
Nick Clason (11:09.296)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (11:23.078)
No, I get it.
Derry (11:32.846)
period.
Nick Clason (11:33.476)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (11:35.278)
Um, but she was enabled into nasty genius. So she's dying in these brainstorm meetings. I'm frustrated in part because like, why aren't you excited about this? And she's like, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And then, and then she's coming back to me and going, give me the details. like, I just gave you the big vision. I, know, I don't want to get in your way. Well, that's because I don't want people to get in my way, but we, we also found ways to work together. So that's team side. Personally, here's why this is so important in burnout. They've done a ton of study on the thing, like 2 million assessments and
Nick Clason (11:39.366)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (11:45.83)
Mm.
Nick Clason (12:03.334)
Hmm.
Derry (12:04.738)
Remember, there's three areas. There's the place you're a genius where you come alive fully. There's then your frustration, the one where it's like, just get me out of here. Then there's like, yeah. Then there's your competency, where you're actually good at it. People affirm you, you know you're good at it. But the trick is over time, it loses its fulfillment. That's where people burn out. Because if you're not aware of that's like my competency space, and I'm hitting resistance again and again on that, or
Nick Clason (12:11.802)
Yeah, you know you hate it, don't wanna do it, yeah.
Nick Clason (12:18.438)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (12:23.108)
Hmm. Hmm.
Derry (12:33.518)
I'm living all my tasks. For me, I was in a place where I needed to galvanize in the midst of COVID, a team that wasn't all together on stuff and didn't have a ton of trust in me yet. And I burn out. I burn out inside. I was at a church for three years. Remember, I was at the other one for 23 years. And this is not the fault of anyone. In fact, I think the Lord led me toward it, but a piece that happened that if I could go back over again, I would go.
Nick Clason (12:45.466)
Yeah, you were pretty new at your role. Yeah.
Nick Clason (12:51.429)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (12:59.938)
Who's the galvanizer on my team that I'm gonna go to and say, I need you when it comes time to bring us all together. I wanna work on our relationship so you can trust me, I can trust you, and I need you to step up and galvanize and help me out. So the awareness in that is huge. And I know we dove into that a little bit more. Anybody wants to know more about that, I actually am. I got a certification and facilitation for that. I will be happy to like, you the first five people that.
reach out to me that watch this. I'll do a free assessment and a free debrief for you because there's something to be learned in this. Yeah.
Nick Clason (13:34.33)
That's huge value too, so yeah. We'll link stuff down below in the show notes. can reach out to Dairy for sure. So let's talk about how you then, how do you refuel? How do you refuel in your self-awareness piece of this?
Derry (13:39.352)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So.
Derry (13:46.636)
Yeah. Yeah, this is really good. Yep, yeah, and I think the biggest one, and this is just simply being aware, are you an introvert and an extrovert or an ambervert? You know, and I don't even know if that's scientific. I haven't done a lot of study on it. It's just the ultimate question is what really refuels you when you need to unplug, which we'll talk about un plugging a little bit, but in the moments of unplug, when work needs just be shut off, what is it that actually refuels you? Not what
Nick Clason (13:57.52)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (14:04.805)
Yeah, yeah.
Derry (14:16.46)
What do you, what you do to cope or just zone out? You know, cause people are like, yeah, doom scrolling video games, you know, for some people, man, it is, I just sitting by myself or I, our buddy, Josh Griffin, he is an extrovert off the charts. People refuel him. And I remember he loved online gaming. So video games, it wasn't about the video games that refueled him. was plenty, but he loved video games too, but he was playing with others.
Nick Clason (14:21.712)
Doom scroll and eat pie.
Derry (14:44.59)
I don't even know. I'm saying video games that shows how lame I am in that world. I am a creative in nature. love I love like try and I love like seeing creative and trying to pull themes from it. So movies are a great thing, but I'm also I I love people, but I actually refuel when I'm on my own. And so for me, a long there's a long season, the dumbest thing that I think this would help people. So if that's the reality, I kind of refuel on my own, creative things.
Nick Clason (14:47.366)
You
Nick Clason (15:04.806)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (15:14.168)
I'll give you two moments where I'm most greatly refilled that you go, that's stupid. Why would you do that? One was I would weekly on Thursdays pick a movie that had been out for about two or three weeks and go to a local movie theater that I knew it had like daytime matinee times. And this was before kids. And I would try to go to the movie. And my greatest accomplishment was when I got to sit in the movie theater all by myself and watch that movie. Like that was my goal. Yeah.
Nick Clason (15:29.412)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (15:38.71)
You create like a little bingo card of it. Like, you know, how many times do I get to go to this movie by myself?
Derry (15:43.884)
Right? Yeah. And it was weird. It was like this one. was just really cool when I said when I would get to that point, because I was just sitting there. It was also a little sense of accomplishment with it. What was really awkward is a lot of old ladies like to go watch movies at that time, too. So it often end up with me and two old ladies in the same studio. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And a lot of old ladies really like action movies. That's another thing. So but that was just that to me, like
Nick Clason (16:00.634)
Which who knew, right? But now you do because that was your goal.
Nick Clason (16:06.886)
You
Derry (16:12.334)
A joke. mean, my wife would laugh at me. People would go, you don't do them movies by yourself. I'm like, I do. You know, I could watch them at my house and do the same. But there was something about that. The other one was for my 40th birthday, you and I both are Disney lovers. And I think I helped you fall in love with Disney. I apologize to your bank account for that. But for my 40th birthday, we spent a lot of time going to Disney World. I was going out to California to a DYM event. And Janelle said, hey, for your birthday, if you're interested, treat yourself to a couple of days at Disneyland.
Nick Clason (16:24.858)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (16:29.346)
Yeah, I need it.
Derry (16:42.378)
And so I did, I flew out early and I spent a full day and then a half day at Disneyland all by myself. Nick is so dumb. I was walking through the Magic Kingdom purposely wearing headphones so nobody would talk to me and I started crying because I realized it was the first time in a long time where I was just on my own at nobody else's agenda. I didn't have to worry about anybody else's agenda.
Nick Clason (16:59.206)
You
Mm.
Derry (17:10.862)
Now that's partly because I was in the season where I was leading team. had little kids. My main role was helping others. Yeah. Yep. And so, so I needed a refuel in a creative space. Like that's what I For me, it's not about the rides. It's the design. It's the creativity. It's the brilliance of a guy like Walt Disney that the single lives on. And so I got it there. So, so that's for me, how I refuel. That's not going to be the same for you. That's not going to be the same for somebody else that's listening. Another person's like, I need to join a book club.
Nick Clason (17:16.474)
A lot of people vying for your, just your attention, yeah.
Nick Clason (17:28.166)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Derry (17:40.718)
because I love reading, but I love talking with people about it. Others, might, you whatever it might be.
Nick Clason (17:44.634)
But I think within that though, right, like one thing that's really key for youth pastors, I would say, is like try to find that community or if you do need like people to recharge, like try to find that, but try to find it in like a lane of like a hobby and not like by being a part of a church small group. You know what I mean? Or like where you're around church people and you still have to sort of like lean back into your role, like find something that truly genuinely like allows you to
Derry (18:00.141)
Yes.
Derry (18:04.492)
Yeah. Yep.
Derry (18:13.742)
That's good, Nick. That's good. You even got me just thinking out loud right now of that moment. I'm sure there's many couples that have set together and said, man, I'm just burned out by this place and we need to find fellowship. And then the next thought is we need to find fellowship in here because that will make us fall back in love with place. And that might be true, but it also might be the greatest mistake you could make is actually, no, we need to find community by going and joining a gaming like board game group.
Nick Clason (18:14.318)
separate.
Derry (18:43.022)
or forming a board game group with people, maybe a couple people from the church, but outside the church, but we make it really clear upfront, this is not sponsored by our church whatsoever. Or if you're feeling a level of burnout because you're always leading, what's the thing you can go join that's a group where nobody even knows that you're the leader? Because you walk into your church, and I did it, part of some awesome small groups, but the minute a big theological question came up, or a question about the church, even though I wasn't leading the group, where did all the eyes go? Boom.
Nick Clason (19:01.55)
Yeah, you're not the leader.
Nick Clason (19:11.11)
All eyes on you. Yep. Yep.
Derry (19:12.588)
You know, so yeah, that's right on. like there's a lot of layers we could take that. How do I refuel introvert extrovert? What brings life to you? What type of seasons you're in? I mean, I just thought about this. was telling you part of that Disneyland moment was I needed a space because I was on so many on the demand of so many people. And my wife and I just hit this. She's heading down to Florida with a good friend because she's been in five years of just just always being there for others.
Nick Clason (19:30.576)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (19:38.969)
on. Yeah.
Derry (19:39.864)
So even our vacations, she's still on, she's gotta be mama. And I'm like, babe, you are gonna go and it is treat yourself, you know? So there we go. that's self-awareness is key, personality. And then let me give one last one. We can do this one really quick, but it's important. If you've been in ministry for a while, be aware of the seasons that hit extra hard and the seasons that you just come alive in. And if that's the case, then you wanna be aware of it. So like there's season, like we have seasons.
Nick Clason (19:42.726)
100%, yep.
Nick Clason (19:46.95)
haha
Derry (20:09.006)
that will hit literally in the calendar. If I were to talk to somebody who's been in ministry five or six years or longer and say, tell me some of the toughest times you've gone through. And we were to list out like 15 of them. I guarantee you will notice something that it hit in a certain month or right after a certain event or just in a fall time. I was talking with a counselor who works in the same church I worked in. My season was February, March. And I think a lot of youth pastors do that. February.
Nick Clason (20:11.044)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (20:19.866)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (20:29.03)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (20:38.86)
And March is like halfway through this year. Students are kind of like in the doldrums of things, especially in where I live. I'm in the Midwest where the official colors of February and March are brown or gray. And so there's that piece.
Nick Clason (20:53.144)
And it's just a long, I've learned too, from a youth ministry standpoint, it's a long stretch of nothing. Like the fall, you get to like come back from summer, but it's a quick, honestly, two to three months sprint until the holidays. And that's exciting. But then you come back in January and there's really nothing until like, know, Easter, but that's not for us. That's not for youth pastors.
Derry (21:07.788)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not January. Yeah. January is kind of the joy of getting back together, kicking off here and then it hits. And I just would love for you, you pastors, think about the times where you had to like do an intervention on a suicide, a call to Child Protective Services because of something that came up in the group or a really weird situation where you're like, gosh, that was heavy.
and ask yourself, how many times did it fall right in that time? I would like literally tell my team guys, it's February. Once you'd be ready for an extra late night coming up somewhere, cause we're to have to sort through something. Now that, now the counselor that I was working with, he talked about how October was his time, which I love October around here. It's beautiful for him. The trick is it's like, he's in a lot of adult ministry stuff. Groups get kicked off. It's like, he's going, going, going, going. And then it's done. And it's just like a crash time. And so he just hits really, really hard. So
Nick Clason (21:45.083)
Mm.
Nick Clason (21:52.026)
Hmm. Yeah.
Nick Clason (21:58.906)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Derry (22:06.926)
The fellow youth pastor with me who was very like contemplative in nature it was right after summer camp and right there's like this short gap between summer camp and starting for the fall where he would just like struggle and want to quit. So it's different for all of us and I just would say be when you're aware of that one just the awareness alone helps you go. I'm not burning out right now. I'm just in a tough season.
Nick Clason (22:14.18)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (22:22.118)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (22:31.734)
Mmm. Mmm.
Derry (22:34.698)
Also, maybe this is the time where I need to book a vacation or get away, you know, so there's that. So be aware of those areas.
Nick Clason (22:38.316)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, when we lived in the Midwest, we were like, we gotta get outta here in January, February, March. Especially March, because March, when we lived in Chicago, March was like fake spring. It tricks you and you're like, it's spring now, but no, it's not, still in the 30s, it's still in the 40s, and it's still very gray. And you're like, dang, it never switches to spring until really like May. And so that's where we were like, we need to,
Derry (22:47.544)
Yep. Yeah.
Derry (22:52.718)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (23:07.746)
What we would always do, we weren't good at getting in front of it, is during that time, that's when we would book a vacation. And then we'd book it for like September when it's like beautiful. like...
Derry (23:14.498)
Yeah, right. Good.
Yeah, but the anticipation of that and that's probably somewhat inside of how do you refuel? I also refuel on the planning of the vacation almost as much as going on it. And so, yeah, yeah, right, right. So yeah, that's good. And I'm officially lobbying for a fifth season and the season is called Blah. It runs from February up until either Easter or spring break. It's one of those two.
Nick Clason (23:21.84)
For sure.
Nick Clason (23:26.47)
Hmm, especially if you're a Disney person that you gotta like you gotta get nerdy about it. So Yeah
Derry (23:43.842)
The mascot's a leprechaun that's angry, kicking a groundhog. I've got colors, I've got the general, I mean, like, I think we should do it. Name it that and call it what it is.
Nick Clason (23:50.596)
Listen.
We already have it. you, yeah, it's not on the calendar technically, but like it's already there for real. like consider it done. The club is formed. You have your season. Yeah.
Derry (23:58.53)
Yep. Yeah.
There we go. We did it. We did it. Okay, so there we go. That's all I, but that's all inside self-aware for me is know your personality, working genius, recognize how you refuel and then pay attention to where the seasons hit. And we didn't hit it, but where do you come alive and be aware of those times and make sure you're capitalizing on those times in what you come alive with.
Nick Clason (24:08.282)
You gotta know. Yep.
Nick Clason (24:16.262)
Mm.
Nick Clason (24:21.348)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, okay, so all self-awareness, like the piece of like burning out into your point, like as people in ministry and maybe even families, like you have a lot of responsibility. And so it almost sometimes feels like even selfish to consider who am I, understanding yourself, where do I come alive, and what do, like this question, what do I need, right? And so part of that burnout piece is like being bold enough
to declare what you really need in order to stay healthy. And so, all that being said, that's step one. What's step two?
Derry (24:53.422)
Mm-hmm. You're still the right...
Derry (24:59.118)
Yeah, yeah. in that, and then I'll go right into step two out of that. Give yourself permission to speak up for yourself with this mantra in your head. A burnout me is not a successful me. And so you go, man, I can't do that. And grit, yeah, dang it, grit yourself through. There's some of us that are being lazy. We're giving this as excuses. We're saying, need more time off. And it's on us. But also recognize, there's a legit.
Nick Clason (25:11.951)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (25:19.184)
For sure.
Nick Clason (25:22.886)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (25:27.15)
breaking point at times that can happen in some of the stuff. so advocating to say like, hey, I need to schedule a little lighter during this time. I need to... Okay. So with that, that leads great into the next part is recognizing that balance is something you find over time, not in the moment. Yeah. know, balance gets used a lot. am I in balance? And yeah, work-life balance.
Nick Clason (25:34.586)
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that, which is so good.
Nick Clason (25:45.84)
Hmm. Flush that out.
Work-life balance.
Derry (25:55.086)
You know is just like I got it I can't I feel so out of balance and I was feeling that for so long and I remember I was sitting with a in a network valuable that also helps you avoid burnout I was sitting in a network and a guy that been a little longer the topic is balance He goes I've just learned balance is a pipe dream. It's a pipe dream I'm never gonna get it and I was like Balaan. That's ridiculous now. He unfortunately didn't Yeah, he didn't He didn't really flesh it out over time. I'm like
Nick Clason (26:13.478)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (26:17.798)
You're like watch this I'm gonna get balance
Derry (26:25.314)
But I started thinking through it and I was talking to with my mentor and he said, I agree with him if you're looking at it on a day by day basis. The real question is how do I find balance over time? We're gonna probably, like today, my day will be out of balance when it comes to time with my kids because they're at school and it's church tonight and we all head off to our different spaces. But Saturday,
Nick Clason (26:46.886)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (26:50.54)
areas,
Derry (26:54.112)
As it sits right now, my daughter has a musical that I'm gonna go, she's three days with a musical for a middle school musical. We've learned. Whole family's going Friday. I'm going Saturday. Wife's going Sunday. Now people that might wanna get mad at me, she's like prop crew. I'm only gonna see her foot once. So Saturday is a ton of family time. But I'm not gonna work at all. That's out of balance, right? My work home life in Saturday.
Nick Clason (27:13.626)
Yeah
Nick Clason (27:20.304)
Yeah.
Derry (27:22.316)
So the whole idea is what does it look like over time? And two tools that I would just say I've learned. One was I taught it to myself. The other was a really brilliant man with wonderful calves named Josh Griffin. I was talking to him right at the time he was finishing up at, what's that one? Saddleback, yeah. I don't know if you ever heard of it. Small church out in California.
Nick Clason (27:40.537)
Ever heard of it? Yeah.
Derry (27:43.88)
And he was also starting up DYM, student leadership conference was running like crazy. He was traveling around and doing stuff. And he had like four kids all in like, I got to be on. And I just said, dude, how do you do it? You know, like how in the world do you work this whole balance of stuff? And he goes, no, not great. And then he said, but what I've learned to do is I'm constantly grading myself in those categories. I'm just constantly giving myself a grade. I stop, I pause, I reflect, you know, so saddle back.
Nick Clason (27:54.224)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (28:06.374)
Hmm.
Derry (28:13.774)
How am I right now? know what? Camp just finished up A minus. Like I've given them my best and I feel like I'm crushing it there. How am I doing on the DYM world? You know what? It's a B minus, but the reality is we're in summer and a lot of stuff can go on autopilot there. So that's totally fine. How am I on my own soul? Man, I'm really good. I'm gonna live. I'm gonna give that an A because I got great times with Jesus at camp.
Nick Clason (28:17.67)
Mm.
Nick Clason (28:32.869)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (28:43.726)
He didn't tell me this. I'm making this up, but this would be like I could see this be like he didn't tell me these grades, but but then he said, you know, but man, my wife and my kids, I'm going to see minus. And so that's now time where I need to shift over there. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And he said, and that's that's the recognition. And I recognize, you know what? I can go ahead and let Saddleback get down to a BB minus right now. I can I can continue to. Yeah, right.
Nick Clason (28:49.114)
Bye bye.
Nick Clason (28:54.982)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (28:58.914)
There's self-awareness, right? Like that goes back to that first step there.
Nick Clason (29:10.758)
Yeah, my job's safe. Not getting fired.
Derry (29:13.74)
Yeah, and let me tell you that like youth pastor, not every not every program has to be an A. There are times where it's OK for it to be a C. I know that's hard and you might have your bosses tell you otherwise. Well, I'm telling you it's OK. It's going to happen.
Nick Clason (29:26.852)
Yeah, we talk about all the time the principle of good enough. it's like, we've been having this conversation with some of our residents and say, hey, listen, I appreciate how much time you're pouring into message prep, but it's taking away from the other things that we need you to do and that you're really also very good at as well. so like make this message be, or for the love of all that is good, just use co-leader, which is already like better than anything you and I are gonna come up with.
Derry (29:43.97)
Yep. Yep.
Derry (29:51.362)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Nick Clason (29:54.062)
Just use it, because sadly the kids aren't gonna remember it. so fudge so that you can give yourself other places. I love that principle, because you gotta find that, like you said, you gotta find that balance over time. You gotta.
Derry (30:03.363)
Yeah, yeah.
Derry (30:08.846)
Yeah, yeah. So it's yeah, as you're grading, sometimes it's, oh, this grades low and I got to get it back up. Other times it's this grades low and that's really OK. Like we have misapplied. I don't get it wrong, but that Colossians passage about whatever you do, do it all for the glory of the Lord, that that that doing it for the glory of Lord equals one hundred and fifty percent. And I absolutely would say, no, that's actually not to the glory of the Lord. You're burning yourself out. And if I give one hundred and fifty percent to make an announcement video where I spend 30 hours turning it into like, you know,
Nick Clason (30:13.144)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Derry (30:38.67)
MCU movie trailer quality. I was actually wasn't to the glory of the Lord. That was actually to the glory of me or to the glory. And it was a loss that I could have been spending that time with students listening to their struggles and praying and you know, so I think that's really important in it. So there's that grading thing. This is the other one. This one has been huge for me. I we joked about it. I do have a podcast that set dormant forever. And I did a whole episode on this principle. And it's the idea of
Nick Clason (30:43.609)
Hmm.
Interesting.
Nick Clason (30:53.808)
Mm.
Nick Clason (31:07.654)
Yeah, we'll link it. We'll link it. What's it? 2018 when it aired? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derry (31:10.874)
It. 2018, 2019, but it is one of my favorite episodes I've ever done, to be really honest, because it just walks through this idea is simply walk, sprint, rest, understanding that that I need to have seasons of all three of those in my own life. And also in my actual ministry flow. And what do I mean by that? I think most of us live with the idea of it's sprint rest more times than not, or if we're lazy.
Nick Clason (31:20.422)
Mm.
Nick Clason (31:25.702)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (31:37.499)
Hmm.
Derry (31:38.978)
We do walk and then rest. But what do I mean by sprint? Sprint is when it's all hands on deck. I'm not gonna fit inside of the 36, 50 hours or whatever that are expected of me. It's gonna be more than that. And it's worth it. Summer camp for me, I recognize that was the time where I got the full group together. We would build vision and we'd do a mission strip before that and something after it. That was a sprint time. Like right around October in our ministry, was outreach season.
Nick Clason (31:42.278)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (31:50.95)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (32:08.203)
be able to just have our kids grab ahold of evangelism. And so it was worthy of the extra time. And so that was like that sprint and it needed my best efforts and the ministry needed my best efforts. But then there's also times like where it stop and ask, wait, do we just need to walk right now? And this is almost going back to this is okay if we're at B level or C level here. And in my ministry, December was that time. We would shut down, we would like,
Nick Clason (32:33.701)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (32:37.006)
December leading into Christmas. We would shut down the ministry pretty much at Christmas, so that was even rest. You the only thing I had to do was show up to Christmas Eve. But in December, we recognized like, man, if we just hand things over to small groups, that we're gonna crush it, and that takes less planning for us. Like all we have to do is just make sure we've set up small groups well. And so, and we didn't add, like I remember we were wanting to add a fall retreat, and we couldn't find a November, we started to move it to December, and I was like, no, nope, no, that, we were gonna walk in December. We're not gonna throw one more thing in.
Nick Clason (32:38.406)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (33:06.19)
And then, and what's crazy, now recognize this, that is a walk season for me. And then my worship pastor, total sprint season, right? But June and summer camps, almost like a rest season for him, right? So, so it's, it's, it's different. So being aware of that, looking at your calendar and even like marking it out and just knowing like, Hey, if there's a sprint season, sometimes it might be, it might be two weeks. It might be six to eight weeks. Now, if they're all like six to eight weeks and you don't see it.
Nick Clason (33:13.902)
Exactly, yeah.
Nick Clason (33:19.206)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (33:30.363)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (33:34.19)
But this is the idea, like, I think we get into this idea, sprint, rest, sprint, rest, sprint, rest. I don't think we're resting. We're sprinting and then we're crashing. Rest actually involves rejuvenating. And then if we're sprinting and then we say we're resting, but all we're doing is walking, we're not taking any time off, then we're in trouble. So finding those things where those come into play and remembering the seasons. So if it's a season where it gets really, really rough, I might personally...
need to get the ministry at a walk pace so I can hand it over and I can truly rest and go take a vacation. Honestly, sometimes during a sprint season in the ministry, if you get there long enough, you might actually be able to, again, rest some. I got to the point where I planned some of my vacations over that October time because I had residents that would run without reach, they got the vision, and we'd get away. And it was really, really good for me. again, that grading system and that walk sprint rest system were huge and have been huge for me in helping learn.
Nick Clason (34:06.714)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (34:20.272)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (34:32.152)
to avoid burnout.
Nick Clason (34:34.256)
So then that's, so step one, be self-aware. Step two, aim for balance over time using those two things, walk, sprint, rest, and the grading system. So then your third one, how do you do, how do you manage and avoid burnout? What's this last piece here?
Derry (34:51.406)
Yeah, Yeah, and this is where the rest part is key is finding my true unplug. That's the way the principle is the idea of find my true unplug. Rest is unplugging, especially, let's just look at it from ministry, unplugging from the church and the ministry so that I can truly rest or in that rest invest into my soul, my family. And two things for me that are big, and I'll be honest, the one,
I'm learning more now over the last couple years that I didn't do well in my ministry life. And that Sabbath, understanding the principle of Sabbath, if you've not read or listened to anything from John Mark Comer on just the idea of the ruthless elimination of hurry and the difference between a day off and Sabbath, there's some great principles in there to hit and what it means to truly just stop, to stop and find joy in the day.
Nick Clason (35:36.507)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (35:49.986)
been rediscovering that dude and it's wild and that's a lot more for me that I need that. With the recognition of my family. But the one that has people would ask me all the time. How'd you last 23 years at one church? And I'd say all the time. This is not the reason, but it's the number one thing that I think gets missed so often. And it was huge for us as vacationing. We are in a small town at a very large church that
Nick Clason (36:14.694)
Hmm.
Derry (36:18.498)
that just goes, I loved and still love youth mystery. And so I can't stop thinking about it. It's on my mind all the time everywhere I'm going. And so the ability to truly unplug from the church, I needed to get away. And so my wife and I learned, yeah.
Nick Clason (36:24.762)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (36:31.728)
Mm-hmm. Because you can't just do it in town because it's the church is such a big component of that area. Yeah.
Derry (36:38.53)
Yeah. Yeah, we would literally have to go on dates if we wanted to like get away. We would go like two towns over just so we wouldn't run into people. And and and so the idea of a prolonged time to truly get a week to go on vacation. I some people do staycations didn't work for us because my mind was too on. so getting and traveling somewhere and we got pretty pretty dedicated and it was huge. It became significant before kids. We went six years without kids and we had
Nick Clason (36:44.292)
Yeah. Yeah.
Derry (37:08.974)
two significant vacations a year most of the time. And some people would go like, can't afford it. Well, we found ways to do one.
Nick Clason (37:17.296)
That's, I was gonna ask that, like, youth pastors notoriously, I can't do it, I don't have money, like, how do you do it?
Derry (37:22.668)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll say there's two things. One would be you find creative ways, you know, my parents, I'm fortunate my parents had a cabin up in Michigan that we would go to and that was a much cheaper vacation. But Dave Ramsey would get mad at me for this. But I say, I think you got more money than you realize. It's just where you spend money. And so we committed to run our cars into the ground and not like do a new
Nick Clason (37:38.438)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (37:50.949)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (37:52.59)
new lease. We dropped a lot of subscriptions other people would have because we said, man, this is where the money goes. But this is my Dave Ramseyism. would I so believe in this. would have even risked debt in that area to go on a vacation because I don't think this money we're spending on vacations is spending, it's investing. And so Disney, like you and I have talked about, Disney became our thing. Well, there's not a way to do Disney cheap. There's a way to do
Nick Clason (37:56.486)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (38:06.288)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (38:12.215)
Yeah, that's good.
Derry (38:20.728)
There's a way to save money on Disney if you learn how to do it. And so we did, we found ways to do that. And but what we did with that, was a couple key things we learned over time. One was Janelle would say it all the time. First, that's my wife, by the way. She would first say it was just the two of us. It's like, that's the one time where I have you. Like I have you. Like you're totally there and present with us. And it's not like she was saying you're a terrible husband who never does, but.
Nick Clason (38:22.048)
Do it cheaper. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Clason (38:39.174)
Hmm.
Derry (38:47.906)
But I know you love the ministry and I love the ministry too. She worked at the church as well most of time. so that was so significant. But also man, memories that have been built. With my kids, we sit around the table lot of times and we just do a, hey, share a favorite family memory. Do you know how many of them are tied around that one time at Disney when my youngest who had always walked into the house after swimming in our backyard and just pull his shorts down? like, know, so we were like.
Nick Clason (38:54.928)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (39:02.372)
Mm.
Derry (39:15.842)
done in the way pool, gonna go grab lunch. And we just look over and he's like walking naked in the middle of a water park at Disney because, know, we're like all laughing and remember like you just the memories, the piece of that so key. But this is the other part and a key rule we did. We set a 30 minute, 30 mile rule where because we were both working in the church, it was like, once we get to a certain point, we don't talk church at all. And we kind of got really belligerent with it where it was like, we aren't even gonna talk about.
Nick Clason (39:23.565)
Thank
Nick Clason (39:32.144)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (39:42.374)
Hmm.
Derry (39:44.268)
our friends who go to the church. Because we were just so enveloped in it. was like just such a part of like we both worked there. We loved it, but also it drove us nuts at times. so.
Nick Clason (39:45.892)
Hmm.
Nick Clason (39:51.312)
Yeah. Yeah.
That, I've tried that too, like I tried implementing that and it's hard, bro. Like it's really difficult to do and I actually like failed a lot at it.
Derry (40:00.212)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we've been able to hold. She's great at holding me accountable to it in a loving way. But also there were moments I needed it. And so so we would we would stick to it. We didn't like, you know, when we fail, we'd go, OK, tomorrow we pick back up again. But what that did would often lead to some really awkward. don't know what to talk about time. And then on the other end, it would lead to I wouldn't call it like.
Nick Clason (40:13.381)
Yeah.
Nick Clason (40:25.51)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (40:29.858)
deep, rich, like all of sudden, you know, we're burying our souls to the, you know, the Lord's speaking new vision to us. Sometimes it was, but sometimes it was just, we just got to like talk about random things from our childhood that we never knew before, because we needed to find a topic to talk about. We just like watched some really, really stupid videos together because we weren't sure what to do and laughed a ton. And so things like...
Nick Clason (40:46.394)
Hmm. Yeah.
Derry (40:56.854)
just other topics and other things and zeroing in, been enormous for us.
Nick Clason (41:00.164)
That's so good. Yeah. think, I think, like listen, if you're watching, listening, maybe for some of you, like this is your next step, like plan a vacation, right? I know you might not feel like you have money, the means, whatever, but like you have vacation time. And one of the things you said on a podcast years ago that resonated deeply with me is don't leave any vacation days on the table.
Derry (41:16.386)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (41:21.485)
Yeah.
Derry (41:26.146)
I'm so glad you just said that. Yeah. Explain it. Explain it.
Nick Clason (41:27.524)
Yeah, because like here's the thing. What I now tell people is like, you're if you get two weeks of vacation, you are being hired like in America, we stink at this, first of all, but like you're being hired to work 50 weeks out of 52 weeks. So if you work 51 weeks because you only take one week off, you gave your church a free week of your work and that's not fair to you. And they're taking advantage of it. And nobody is going to say anything. Like if you have a great manager who's
Derry (41:40.888)
Yes.
Derry (41:47.96)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (41:56.326)
pushing you to do that, that's fantastic, but that's typically the exception, not the rule. And so if you get 50, if you get two weeks of vacation, you better only work 50 of them. And even if like you, even if you said, do a staycation, don't go anywhere, but like don't go to the office. it's, the job will get done without you because the other thing that I hate to break it to you is one day you're gonna leave cause you're gonna resign, you're gonna retire, you're gonna die and they will figure out.
what to do with that position. But you will never be able to be the husband to your wife or the wife to your husband or the father to your children or any of those other relationships like you uniquely can only invest in those places. And so don't leave days on table.
Derry (42:39.278)
Yeah, yep. thank you. Like you're right on, that's so key. It's, you know, like I would just love people to reflect. Are you at a church where when you do your all staff and you come together and you go through and you just celebrate everybody that worked extra hard, right? And everybody cheers. Why doesn't the church ever go, hey, it's the end of the year. We just want to celebrate the following people that used up every one of their vacation days. You know, they're not going to do that, but actually they'd be smart.
Nick Clason (42:56.249)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (43:04.548)
Yeah. No.
Derry (43:08.312)
What you're saying is true, but the reverse is true as well. If I haven't taken that time to unplug that 51st week and probably the 49th, 48th and 47th aren't even going to be the best versions of me, right? Like you're, you're, you're actually making it suffer because there's, we could go forever in this. When you're away, you have to delegate. So you now are living out the Ephesians four principle that you got to equip people for ministry. And then also you're reminded, I love this place, but they don't need me. Everything. Nothing fell apart.
Nick Clason (43:17.238)
Mm. Yeah, they suffer a little bit, but...
Nick Clason (43:27.194)
Mm-hmm.
That's it. Yeah.
Nick Clason (43:35.76)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Derry (43:37.154)
And so now you get to do it out of joy, not out of obligation. And then here's, let me give one more on top of this. This is what people are doing that are listening to this right now. I've really sucked at this. I really need to do it. And then if their vacation recycles in December or mine always recycled in June, they're like, I'm to do that. But then there's a real problem you've got probably where you're, moving toward burnout. If you find yourself every year when it's about time to recycle that you have to all of sudden cash in all your vacation days or you lose them.
Nick Clason (43:39.662)
Absolutely.
Nick Clason (44:04.432)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (44:04.834)
And so you're saying, no, I take all my days off. But what you do is not spread them out. Well, go back to the walk, sprint and rest. Look at that plan ahead, block out where the times are, find what works for you and recognize that I got so sick in the team. I was leading that I, I put my money where my mouth is on this, where I would say, how many vacation days are you at? And like, I'd celebrate it, but it also they are vacation time would recycle in June. And we had till August to use it.
Nick Clason (44:09.03)
Mm.
Yup.
Derry (44:33.56)
Well, that was all our summer camp season that went right into the fall break. And I would have like people gone in between camp and fall. And I was like, listen, I believe in this so much, we're gonna figure it out. But next year, please think through, you know, cause this isn't good for you. So there's like, I would just say that's really, really important to think through with it all. And again, find your true unplug. Nick and I love Disney.
Nick Clason (44:36.09)
Yeah, can't, you can't. Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason (44:44.794)
Yeah, do something in March, bro. Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason (45:00.358)
Mm-hmm.
Derry (45:01.016)
That might be the worst place for you to go do an unplug. And quite honestly, I'm not doing it much now because my oldest son, he's too cool for it. We've made the shift over to national parks because our kids can walk. And my word, man, like I'm exhausted, but God is alive in the beauty of it. So find your unplug.
Nick Clason (45:14.896)
But it's good, yeah.
Well, and I would say for us, the reason we like it is because it keeps us so busy, we don't really have time to sit around and talk about work. You know what mean? That's one of the reasons that we like Disney so much is like you said, it's just our family, it's just us trying to accomplish the thing and with all, trying to get the schedules and everything locked in.
Derry (45:26.21)
Yep. Right.
Derry (45:36.664)
Yeah, your boys are at a spot where like they you get to see there's nothing quite like seeing your kids overwhelmed with a joy. Yeah, like man, I'm getting flooded with even great memories right now of some times with that. Yeah, man. I love it.
Nick Clason (45:42.798)
See Mickey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so true. Yeah, yeah. Man, Derry, you crushed it. Thank you. People wanna do some of the stuff you got offering, like plug it up, plug it up here real quick before we wrap up.
Derry (45:53.57)
Thank you, man.
Derry (45:59.992)
Yeah, yeah, still working on the best way. don't, you know, I'm not, I don't have a great corporate master plan in this all, but I would say the first thing to check out from a website is YML cohort.com. That's Y is in yodel, is in marry, L is in ladle. I don't know. cohort. Yeah. Youthministereleadercohort.com. That's something we're doing that Nick talked about. and we, we run them in winter, spring, and in the fall and they're 10 weeks long.
Nick Clason (46:15.993)
or youth ministry leader.
Derry (46:28.97)
I'm toying around with maybe a summer one. I don't know. But check that out. But even if it's like in the middle where there's not one, there's an interest form you can fill out there. Always reach out to me anywhere on social. Like I offered that working genius thing. It's just at Dairy Prinkert. So D-E-R-R-Y P-R-E-N K-E-R-T. Find me. I'm not on TikTok.
Nick Clason (46:51.77)
That's okay, people aren't finding people on TikTok anyway. They're just watching funny videos, yeah.
Derry (46:53.612)
Yeah, it's hard to find. I'm on Instagram and I'm on Facebook the most and so find me there. And if you don't like anything, go post it over on X and I won't read it.
Nick Clason (47:06.544)
There you go. Love it, man. Hey, thank you so much for investing in youth leaders in this way and how you avoid burnout. Absolutely. Thanks, dude. All right. Hey guys, until next time, we'll see you. Bye.
Derry (47:09.602)
Thank you, dude. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for your investment, man. I love what you're doing.
45 min
March 27, 2025 Episode 142: How I Got Started doing Youth Group Social Media from scratch with Andrew Ostrander
In this episode, I interview Andrew Ostrander, who shares his journey from education to youth ministry, discussing the challenges and surprises he faced during the transition. He walks you through the importance of engaging social media content to connect with students, detailing his approach to creating interview-style videos that resonate with youth culture. Andrew also highlights the benefits of delegating tasks, the significance of personal connections in ministry, and his future plans for expanding social media efforts. The conversation concludes with encouragement for new youth pastors to embrace social media as a tool for building community and fostering relationships.
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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/142
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How I Run My Youth Group Social Media
02:16 How did you end up here?
04:42 Tell us your social media journey
06:39 What Type of Content do you Make?
10:31 What Equipment do you use?
12:36 In-Person Benefits Have you Seen?
14:55 Do you have Future Plans?
17:20 What Would you Tell a Hesitant Youth Pastor?
--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:29.856)
Well hey what is up everybody I am here with none other than Andrew Ostrander did I say that right? Yes! It doesn't feel like it's that difficult but it feels like it might trip some people up you know what saying?
Andrew Ostrander (00:47.413)
You nailed it.
Thanks.
I've gotten Ostrander more than I've ever gotten Ostrander. So you're in the right.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (00:57.918)
Really? Yes, okay, nice, good. My gut, my intuition was right. So you and I, met through a youth ministry leader cohort and we were in that together on calls together and stuff like that. But I started just kind of noticing and paying attention to you and your social media, because that's really the only way to like...
pay attention to some thing from someone who lives over a thousand miles away. And so, but I started noticing, I was like, I like what this guy's doing. And so that's why you're here. Talk to me, you know, we're gonna talk a little bit about your social media, but before we do, why don't you let like the people know like, who are you, where are you at, how long you've been in youth ministry, all that, you good stuff.
Andrew Ostrander (01:29.518)
the
Andrew Ostrander (01:46.712)
Yep, so you've already touched on it. I'm Andrew Ostrander and I'm currently the director of student ministries at Waukerusa Missionary Church in a super small town, Waukerusa, Indiana. This is month seven or eight of my role in youth ministry. I had volunteered for multiple years beforehand, but I actually came from the education world. So I was a fifth and sixth grade teacher for three years before this position opened up and
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (01:53.396)
Nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:05.055)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (02:13.206)
was very clearly that God was shoving me through this doorway in youth ministry. And so that's how I ended up where I am.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:17.426)
Nice. Yeah, so you didn't even go to like school for youth ministry or whatever. And so here you find yourself now kind of like thrust into it. Before we hop into like the particular social media stuff, tell me what's been like the biggest shift or the biggest surprise or the biggest just difference that you've noticed between your two kind of careers if you put them side by side.
Andrew Ostrander (02:42.85)
Yeah, I think there's a glaring amount of similarities that people wouldn't expect between education and ministry, but those are definitely there. I think the biggest difference or thing that we weren't fully prepared for, I was to the point where after God had clearly guided me here and I knew this is where I needed to be, I was ready to switch jobs. But then the act of switching churches is what really hit us hardest. I had grown up and attended one church for much of my, all of my upbringing.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (02:59.637)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:02.912)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:10.098)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (03:12.396)
And then most of my adult life after college. And so that was just such a huge change of pace and where you're so used to being on Sundays, you're no longer there on Sundays. So I think that was the biggest.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:20.256)
Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah. One thing about it too, like, I mean, I've always said this, but like when you move and you're in ministry, like you don't just like move jobs, but like you move everything, like everything up roots, including your community and your, you know, your church, your, family, like your church family, all that type of stuff. So yeah, that's, that is so true and probably super relatable to, you know, most youth pastors. okay. But then go ahead.
Andrew Ostrander (03:47.79)
I know you've experienced that even way more than I have, so you can relate.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (03:53.2)
Yeah, yeah, definitely can. But if you're not used to it or know it, right, you're like, whoa, it is a little culture shocky or whatever, for sure. So, okay, then tell me then what sort of spurred you, led you towards what you're doing with your student ministry social media? Maybe first of all, what shone a light to you that was like, I should do more than just post announcement graphics on my social media feed.
Andrew Ostrander (04:21.868)
Yeah, so I was never a super avid social media user. Twitter and sports Twitter was where I was at in college and after. But I had just always seen the church. Like you said, it's like a hey, Wednesday nights coming up tomorrow, that type of thing, or ice skating this Friday. Join us for week three of this series. even even I was like, wow, that's not not that that's dumb, but I was uninspired.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:30.665)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:37.844)
Don't forget, yes, yeah. Yeah, no one cares about your series, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:47.944)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (04:50.986)
And so when I started here, I was interested in social media. But then as you touched on the way that we met through that cohort, you had given a specific lesson and not to stroke your ego or build you up. But it's a lot of credit towards you and just how you guided that. It's really stuck with me when you said, we know that the students are there and it doesn't matter how we feel about it or if we like it. Why are we not meeting them where they're at?
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:51.026)
Right.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (04:59.029)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:03.904)
Hahaha
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:13.215)
Yeah.
Hmm. Hmm, yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (05:18.722)
And so that was just a huge challenge to me of making engaging social media of some sort and really just trying to get students to buy in.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (05:23.946)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and you know, like the cohort was an interactive deal and you know, the kind of like lesson or whatever that I led on all that was made for exactly that. But I'll link down below an episode that's like really similar to like that conversation that we walked through on that. So if any of you are like, what was that? Like you can check that out down below. But so now you, that was your inspiration sort of.
And everyone does things a little different, know, and I my like ebook and stuff like that I give tips and whatever like what exactly Did you like or what have you sort of like stumbled into like doing that's like been working really well For like you and like your particular like church student ministry social media
Andrew Ostrander (06:13.944)
Yeah, so when talking about the sports social media background that I've interacted with, I never ran anything as myself, but I've just interacted with that a ton. And so one of the podcasts I had previously listened to talked about the difference of short form and long form video. And so I had really, and you had touched on it as well, the importance and prevalence of short form video. So that's really where we started to focus in and without having any...
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:18.302)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:23.402)
Sure.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:30.665)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:37.568)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Ostrander (06:42.964)
studio or recording equipment. Yeah. We really appreciate and love the space that we have. It's not set up for having a quiet, conducive recording area for anything longer or even anything specifically for social media. And so we really went on the interview style, man on the street style videos. And so when I transferred over here, one of my former students also came along with me as a now volunteer.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:43.976)
Right. Space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:52.864)
Right, right.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (06:58.73)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:03.017)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:09.733)
cool. That's awesome.
Andrew Ostrander (07:12.118)
And so I knew that I wouldn't have the capacity on Wednesday nights to record and do all of these. And so I proposed to him of a weekly routine of when students are welcome into the doors, but we haven't started programming, that I give him a question of the week and he goes around and asks random, funny, sometimes not as funny questions just to hear what students say. And the results are pretty amusing.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:18.154)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:25.321)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:32.766)
Sure.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (07:36.287)
Oh, bro, there's so much good in that, right? So like a couple of principles I heard. Number one, like, cause this is one of the common pushbacks I feel like I hear is like, I don't have time and you acknowledge that, right? You, you knew your limits already, but you were like, that's okay. I'm going to hand this off to somebody else. So like in and of itself right there, genius, like get it off your plate. You're
promoting it, facilitating an opportunity for it to happen. However, so like that's leadership, but you're getting out of the way and delegating and letting somebody else kind of like own it, which is just fantastic. And then the second is like you said, like you didn't let the constraints of what you felt like your space offered or maybe didn't offer like stop you. And that's again, another like thing that I think is so good because we oftentimes like, I don't have, you know, the best equipment or the, you know,
bougie is set up or whatever and it's like, who cares? We all carry around a camera in our pockets and the ability to use that to make content that ends up where students are, like you said, so, good. So tell us a little bit of what are some of your favorite questions or what have been some of the things that have maybe taken root culturally within your student ministry that people are like, that video was hilarious because X, Y, and Z. What are some of the...
The funniest ones you've had are the ones that have gotten the most talk about afterwards or just even been like, yeah, the most amusing.
Andrew Ostrander (09:07.736)
Yeah, the first one that we actually did, so I had wanted to do it after you talked about social media and I was just figuring out what I wanted to do. And then my wife and I were out to dinner with two of our volunteers, our sponsors, and we got into controversies or like conspiracy theories that this individual was bigly bought into. And so that actually stemmed our first question of, you believe in aliens? And so I think that question has provided the most like,
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:13.896)
Yeah. Okay.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:20.156)
Okay.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:25.728)
You
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:33.248)
that's so funny.
Andrew Ostrander (09:38.2)
people would pause and then they automatically had the answer that they believed in, but could not explain why or why not that they believed the way that they did.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (09:40.224)
Right, so funny. Yeah. yeah, that's funny. So then how, like, what are you doing for that? Like, tell me what exactly, you know, your volunteer is doing. Is he using his camera? Is he using any gear? you know, get kind of nerdy on us. Like, what actual stuff are you doing to capture it, record it, and then maybe even like edit it?
Andrew Ostrander (10:08.12)
Yeah, so it's about to be like the lamest set of nerdy equipment that we use.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:12.468)
That's okay. Here's the thing, before you answer, this is what the boat, almost everyone is in. And that's why I love it, is because you're not letting whatever constraints you have stop you, you're just going for it. And yeah, it might just be a cell phone camera or whatever, but that's okay. Just do it. So yeah, let us have it.
Andrew Ostrander (10:33.015)
so the compilation of questions that we've come up with is stored on my phone notes app. And then we, sat down and decide what question we're going to ask that night. And then it is just a cell phone camera. And so I had gone online and was looking out for mic options quickly realizing that most of them were super expensive. So we have, I think it was like a $10 pair of the, lav mics and it's so cheap and old that
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:38.857)
Yep.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:45.077)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (10:50.174)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (10:59.616)
My phone is the only one that we can use because it has the lightning connector. And so he takes my phone and those $10, $20 lav mics. And that is how it gets recorded. We just figured out how to change video settings to try to increase the video quality a little bit, but that took a couple of months before we got to. then editing is something that I set aside time for every week. So I've been using Final Cut Pro on my Mac and that's, go through and edit and.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:02.464)
nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:07.456)
A $10 microphone,
Okay.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:17.16)
There you go.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:23.88)
Yeah. Nice.
Yeah. And so then are you doing, are you just sending him around all throughout the program? Like is he doing it ahead of time, after, both? Like what's sort of like his schedule as far as like the interview person?
Andrew Ostrander (11:29.464)
change scenes how I want to.
Andrew Ostrander (11:42.318)
Yep. So we have like a team volunteer huddle every Wednesday night. So we're there until 6.15, 6.20. And then by that time, a lot of the students are here after our doors open. So he goes out from 6.20 until we start programming at 6.35, 6.40. So he only really does it for 15 or 20 minutes. So some weeks it's pretty limited if it's a longer question.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:46.196)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (11:51.124)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:01.76)
Okay.
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (12:08.11)
but it just has that time where students are roaming and choosing what to do before programming starts to get those interviews in.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:08.117)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:13.192)
Yeah, so okay, so now my question is, do you have students who seek him out now every week wanting to answer so that they can be on social?
Andrew Ostrander (12:22.993)
Yes, I have certain students that I see their video every single week after he records. I'm pushing like, hey, let's try to get some others. But there's clearly students that are super excited. And I see the students that run away from him as soon as they see the mic out.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:32.435)
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (12:36.648)
Sure, yeah, Yeah, that's been my experience too, right? Like we do a social challenge every single week and we try to like batch record as much as we can, kind of like you. And almost every week as I like look at the footage after I'm like that kid's always in there, you know? And that's fine, right? Like that's fine for them to want to do it because it's whatever, it's how they connect and how they want to connect. Have you noticed any like...
in-person benefits to what you're doing on social? Like anything that has camaraderie, even just creating conversation because of a certain video or topic or whatever, or the, I don't know, even like the feel and the vibe because you're filming something to go online. Has there been any in-person benefits that you've noticed?
Andrew Ostrander (13:23.16)
Yeah, I think absolutely. think the specific content or question that gets talked about for that day and then after programming a little bit, but then that conversation dies down. And there are a lot of different factors that I think have played into this, but since adding it and rolling it out and how our ministry has adjusted the pre-service time a little bit, students are really excited to be there and excited to interact whether or not it's with a camera in front of them.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:27.156)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:31.602)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:45.758)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:52.794)
Interesting. Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (13:52.812)
And so there's just been that shift of that vibe of being willing to be open or just hanging out together.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (13:59.88)
That's cool. like that's a really that not even when I started on this whole journey and podcast, whatever, that's not even a thing that was even like on my radar, you know, but I've noticed that too in our in our context. And it's it's really cool to hear that for sure. What would you say like is anything that you're maybe like thinking about for the future? Like this is kind of your current rhythm and iteration. Are you like
content with it and you just want to keep doing this or what if you had the capacity would be something that's maybe on the horizon that you've been thinking about or maybe wanting to do.
Andrew Ostrander (14:38.254)
So there are multiple different things that where I'm wanting to take it. And so I've created a weekly posting schedule that I want to figure out either for the end of the school year or just really gear up to do it next school year. We're redesigning a little bit of our space to better meet our needs. And part of that, I'm really trying to push or find a spot to create a more studio like area so that we could do longer form or like five, 10 minute videos.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:43.199)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:51.518)
Okay.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (14:54.952)
Nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:02.814)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:07.401)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (15:07.724)
while the interviews are happening elsewhere. And so there are lots of different places that I'm wanting to take in it, just seeing whether or not any of them are possible.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:10.089)
Nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:15.888)
Yeah, cool. So cool. What do you mind? Like, are you able off top your head or pull it up? Like, what is your proposed posting schedule that you want to aim for, you know, start the next school year?
Andrew Ostrander (15:29.1)
Yeah. So it would just be the weekdays because I know like content limits and I try to set time aside to network. Monday, we want to be doing a message Monday. And so that's just a one, two minute Devo, primarily probably just adults. And then I have a student intern. And so just whatever word is laid on our hearts or minds for that day for Monday, Tuesday would be one of our interview style videos. So that's the ones that we're currently posting most frequently.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:33.353)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's great.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:41.362)
Okay. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:47.689)
Nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:51.796)
great.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (15:58.463)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (15:58.994)
the Wednesday one would be dependent on having a space to record it, but I want to do like a Wednesday word from a student. there again, pretty similar to Monday minute or two, Devo reading scripture style video Thursday, my intern and I have been recording, what we think are funny videos when we have internships together. And so Thursday would be that type of video right now. We're asking chat GPT to create a video for us and we just.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:05.522)
Nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:09.289)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:19.072)
You
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:23.85)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (16:28.106)
acted out. So those will be Thursday and then Friday. My idea would be for the slightly longer form video like drafts or tier list type things if we have the capability of doing that.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:28.927)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (16:37.842)
Nice. Nice, cool. Okay, so like last little thing here. What would you say to anybody who was like you, you know, you're not even a year yet into like student ministry and all the demands and all the things that like come with the job are there and you know, have to.
manage it, schedules, manage relationships and personalities, and they just feel overwhelmed by even the thought of social. What would just be your encouragement to other youth pastors out there who are maybe on the fence or not sure if doubling down on creating social content is for them?
Andrew Ostrander (17:18.626)
Yeah, so I think a couple of things come to mind. The first one you kind of touched on, it's a mix of starting small and passing it off. So my church leadership, my bosses are huge on a leader doesn't have to do everything. Like we're to the point where it's better if you're training up other people to do it than doing it yourself. So start small or find someone to do it for you on your big programming nights. But then also find whatever part of social media sounds fun to you.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:25.382)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:33.119)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:37.812)
Yeah, it's great. Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (17:48.288)
start with that. Like I've loved editing so far up to this point because I'm amused by it. And so find whatever part of the process you enjoy and really just start and focus there learning how to do that so that it's more fun for you.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:49.151)
Hmm.
Nice.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (17:59.794)
Yeah, yeah, that's so true. Okay, is there anything else about what you do social media-wise that I haven't really asked you, but you're like, this is important, I wanna make sure I share that too.
Andrew Ostrander (18:14.382)
I think we've touched a lot on it. It's been fun. The personal connections that I form through it. So my volunteer that does the Wednesday night, we get to talk and reflect and discuss it a lot. And then my relationship with my intern has taken a huge upswing because of we're just hanging out together and making stupid, fun youth videos together. so like you asked about the in-person effects, even just on
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:25.78)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:29.386)
Sure.
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:39.007)
Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:42.654)
Yeah.
Andrew Ostrander (18:43.754)
on my personal and my perspective. It's had a huge impact on relationships that I get to form because of these seemingly what a lot of people would view as pointless or menial impact videos.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:46.942)
Hmm. Yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (18:53.64)
Yeah. No, that's really, that's actually really like profound. And I really appreciate you saying that because I do think it's more than just, you know.
satisfying social media algorithms or feeding the beast or you know, that's what I call it. Like you gotta keep feeding the beast. But I like that you're saying like, there's been some, you know, relational equity that kind of comes out of that. And that really is the ultimate goal. Like if you look at the inception of social, like it's social, right? In nature, like that's where it came from. And so if it's not at least, you know, playing a part in that within like the context of your local community, like you might be missing out on it, but it's,
The fact that you're doing it is creating a good vibe and good energy. that's, I think, one of my main goals always in social is not like to go viral on our church account and have a bunch of views and all that stuff. Like really it's to serve our community like best, you know? And then if it goes viral or if it gets a lot of views or whatever, like that's great, but that's like a secondary.
thing that I'm looking for. Primarily it's just like I want to serve the students that God has entrusted to me here and disciple them as best I can through the means and avenues of social. So it's great. Okay, so last thing, people want to know if they want to see what you're doing, they want to see some of the stuff you're doing, where do they go? What can they go follow and go check out online or whatever?
Andrew Ostrander (20:23.042)
Yeah, so right now I'm posting on two separate places, the YouTube channel, Walker's Student Ministries, and then the Instagram, which is either Walker's Student Ministries or Waukee with a Y Student Ministries. I would have to go shuffle check. I'm not sure that was created.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (20:35.936)
We'll link them both down below. We'll get it locked in. So if you're like, I don't know how to WakaRusa, the type text down below will be spelled hopefully correctly and it'll take you where you need to go. Nice. Andrew, anything else before we cut you loose?
Andrew Ostrander (20:47.438)
You
Andrew Ostrander (20:53.646)
I think just obviously with the people that you have or the following you have, it's either of interest to them or could be something that they're already doing. I think it is really just super important to try one. The first video I made lasted me for three weeks because you just had enough to work with from it. And so it feels like huge undertaking. It's not as bad as what I initially went into it expecting.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:01.152)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:05.6)
Mm.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:11.838)
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry (21:16.748)
Yeah, no, that's a really good point. It's a new skill for a lot of people. So it is gonna feel a little bit overwhelming. But like you said, once you kind of get into it, you might learn something like, like editing, like you said, and you'll find a new skill or at least something else that you enjoy. So it's awesome. All right, guys, well, for Andrew, this is Nick. We're signing off and talk to you next time. See ya.
23 min
March 20, 2025 Episode 141: How I Plan Events with Kaylen Adams
This episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show kicks off the "How I..." playlist with a deep dive into event planning with guest Kaylen Adams, an expert in coordination and logistics. Kaylen shares her step-by-step approach to organizing youth ministry events, covering everything from volunteer recruitment and communication to detailed schedules and contingency planning. Whether you're a youth pastor who struggles with organization or looking to refine your event strategy, this conversation is packed with practical insights to help you run seamless, high-impact events.
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 How I Plan Events like a Pro!
01:10 Kaylen, who are you?
05:06 What Lanes did you own?
07:03 How can you help someone think?
08:07 How did you communicate?
11:54 How did you determine call times?
16:30 How do you recruit for an event?
20:05 How many jobs do you give a leader?
21:24 How do you calculate for food?
24:21 What Else?
26:28 What if my church doesn't do all that?
28:34 Keep People's Personalities in Mind
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
For what is up everybody? Today I am going to introduce you and have you in for a treat, because I am going to be interviewing one of my friends and coworkers, Kaylen Adams, who's fantastic at event planning. This is going to be the start of a new little playlist series on my podcast, and here on YouTube, where I am going to introduce you to some of the people that I know who do things the best in youth ministry and particular lanes.
00:00:25:00 - 00:00:46:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And Kaylen is the queen of event coordination and event management. Not only is she like, really fun and have a really good mind, but she is fantastic at getting volunteers, recruiting them. And when a volunteer comes in just feeling like they know exactly what to do. And you will. If you implement these things, you will look like a rock star.
00:00:46:09 - 00:01:04:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So if you're a typical youth worker who's not very organized, this episode is for you because it will help you and if you think that all hope is lost on you, then this is a great, podcast to send to a volunteer or a high level admin who might step in and help you with some of the logistical things, but you are in for a treat regardless.
00:01:04:10 - 00:01:31:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With my interview today with my friend and coworker Kaylen Adams. What's up everyone? Here we are. I am with Kaylen Adams. Which yes, you don't even find that on your name on here because that's how that's how new this is. So it is formerly known as Maltais, not hyphenated. Straight up Adams. Which means you just got married and,
00:01:31:08 - 00:01:52:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you might not know Kaylen, but I know Kaylen. I worked with Kaylen. Worked in the past tense. We are still on staff together, but she has switched departments, so now she's in the kids department. And the reason I ask Kaylen on here is, what was it last weekend? Two weekends ago, we had our high school weekend.
00:01:52:02 - 00:02:14:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you still worked with me then, and, oh, my gosh, Kaylen crushed it. Like, you guys don't have any idea. And as she was, like, literally crushing every, like, logistical and administrative detail of the weekend, in the back of my mind, I was like, we got to get Kaylen on so I can ask her, how do you plan for these big events?
00:02:14:01 - 00:02:38:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So why don't you give us just kind of a quick overview? Kaylen, first of all, like a 20 or 30 second like synopsis of who you are, how we ended up working together. But then, like, what did you oversee, at these events? Like what particular? Like lanes and areas and avenues. And then I just think what you did is such a helpful tool to many of the youth passers that I've ever seen or worked with. And so I just think this would be helpful to get out, you know, to people. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:38:10 - 00:03:02:13
Kaylen Adams
So we've started working together because I, I went to college at the University of Wyoming and I got a degree in human resources management and entrepreneurship with minors in hospitality anthropology. There you go. So so that was. Yeah. Yeah. And so I did that.
00:03:02:13 - 00:03:29:13
Kaylen Adams
Fell in love with ministry there. And then around like my senior year, I learned the opportunity to do a residency in Texas, which I hate sweating. So my family was like, I was like, I think because I love Jesus, I don't know. So I applied and I ended up getting hired in January. And so after I graduated, I moved to Texas, and I did a residency at Cross Creek Church and guest services.
00:03:29:15 - 00:03:50:22
Kaylen Adams
But I love that, like ministerial aspect. And I still was kind of doing some of more of that support ministry with it. So needed and very, very special. Big shout out to everybody in support ministries. And so that's when I transitioned into students and I kind of brought a lot of my guest services and undergrad knowledge, which infuse that into what I was doing.
00:03:50:22 - 00:04:08:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And students. Yeah. So then like for the first little bit, I remember you're like, I don't really know exactly what you guys want me to do. And we were like, just keep doing like, I mean, like, you guys don't understand. Like, Kaylen was just she just knew what to do. Like, even if she didn't know what to do, she pretend like she knew what to do.
00:04:08:00 - 00:04:30:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it seemed like she's known what she she's doing. But it was this last high school weekend where, like, you were pulling out, like, spreadsheets and folders and instructions and, even, like, I remember distinctly I was talking with you about our t shirt order number, and, like, our student registration was, like, lower than anticipated. And you were like, no, we're going to need this many t shirts.
00:04:30:06 - 00:04:50:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, why? And you're like, because of all of our volunteers. And I was like, do you really like, do you really think that? And your confidence, you're like, absolutely. And you were right, by the way. So what like lanes did you let's talk about specifically our high school weekend, which for those of you who don't know the context, it's like a D now without the spending the night element.
00:04:50:22 - 00:05:10:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So it's like two days on campus. Yeah. Like Friday night, Saturday until like 3:00. And so it's probably like our second biggest event next to, like, a thing like summer camp, right? So yeah, in that event, what particularly did you own, like, what were those areas? And I just want to ask you kind of pepper you questions.
00:05:10:02 - 00:05:33:02
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. In that in those arenas. Well so this was we originally had one winter we to middle school and high school. Was it split into middle school night high school. Well for middle school night Darren, the student pastor at Rush Creek pitched and I met my boss, so he. Yeah. So he did a lot of the the directional things for that division.
00:05:33:02 - 00:05:56:21
Kaylen Adams
And then programing. And I took everything else and like, did the logistics of the event planned it all. So by the time high school weekend came around, because I wasn't middle school night, so I didn't play a part at all, which is relevant because when we played high school night, we did a lot of the same stuff. We just like copy and paste a lot of the stuff that worked and made it a little more, for high school and that middle school.
00:05:56:23 - 00:06:20:20
Kaylen Adams
Oh yeah. And then we had known, like, what worked and what didn't. So we're check in by the time we got to high school again. Yeah, that's good. But yeah, by the time we got there, Nick you did programing. So like everything that you were sitting in a session and watching and experiencing. Nick was all in of planning and talking to the people, like worship people and yeah, yeah, I did everything outside of that.
00:06:20:22 - 00:06:44:20
Kaylen Adams
So and how we move through the timelines, you know, when were kids eating, where were they going to be, what activities were they going to be doing. And then we had food making sure we had enough food, making sure. Yeah, we had t shirts. And there they were out and that, you know, we gave away a little like pin to all of our students, like, you made sure that that was where it needed to get and left, you know, passing out our note sheets and pens.
00:06:44:20 - 00:07:08:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, I mean, you just you thought of like, every detail. So, like, I know your background helps you with that, but like, imagine you're talking to someone who's not as organized as you like. So you come by that naturally, which is what was just like a marvel to behold. But like what? What would you tell someone? Or how would you encourage someone to think if they're like planning something like that?
00:07:08:09 - 00:07:29:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like what? What's the way that you help us get inside your brain for some of the logistics?
Kaylen Adams
Well, when you're planning an event, yes, for a job, for ministry, ever. You write down all of your ideas like, no one is like, I'm just taking this all right here. I will accept it later. It's going to be there like you always write it down.
00:07:29:11 - 00:07:54:20
Kaylen Adams
You make it through for you. And I just thought, you know, would probably be really helpful for a volunteers to see that map. Like, I don't know why I would keep it from them. They should know, like how we got from point A to point B, because by the time we're at point B and we're doing the thing, they deeply understand what they're doing and not only do what I'm telling them to do, they can actually take initiative and do the things that I missed.
00:07:54:22 - 00:08:13:05
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. And so that's a huge part of it is just like, if I were a volunteer, what would I want to know? So I could do my job? Well, I feel good about it. Yeah. So then how how did you go about communicating? Like, did you have a meeting? Did you send them a text? Did you send them an email?
00:08:13:05 - 00:08:31:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like what? Because that's probably, I would imagine, a lot of stuff. And I think again, most youth pastors are like, I don't either have the time or be want to overwhelm my volunteers, or maybe see just another reason I didn't actually write it down. It is all in my head. So, I mean, I would say probably for all of us.
00:08:31:06 - 00:08:55:12
Kaylen Adams
Step one is get it out of your head onto paper somehow. And then two, how did you communicate it? Yeah. So I communicated a couple different ways. So the only time that I was texting volunteers instructions or anything was a, when I was recruiting them. Okay. I never sent them like, all the information they needed individually because I needed them all to be kind of in one part.
00:08:55:12 - 00:09:16:24
Kaylen Adams
So I knew who was getting one information and it always the same. Yeah. If I ever was giving instructions, it was in a group chat or a group of people that had a specialized role. Those came last minute. They weren't actually accounted for. Next time we did an event, I probably would account for them in advance. So I'm not texting information because for the smaller like you're saying, the.
00:09:17:01 - 00:09:51:02
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, the smaller, more specialized groups groupings of people. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I like to create an escape room. We had game masters and we didn't know about that until like pretty close to the event. I probably would have included them into all the mass event communication before that time. Got it as okay. Got it. Yeah. Okay. So and then and then putting together all this information, I'm kind of stockpiling it in a folder called Volunteer Prep, and I'm organizing it by like, this document, they need to know this document.
00:09:51:02 - 00:10:11:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They need to know if they don't really need to know that, I'll pull it back. What are those documents? Can you give us just a few examples, like pull back the curtain a little bit?
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, yeah. So I'll make a volunteer schedule that's like five position. And then I sang people to that position per day. So it's not by time blocks, it's by day and what they're doing okay.
00:10:11:16 - 00:10:28:21
Kaylen Adams
And then I have a document a volunteer job description. They need to know what they're doing, why they're doing how they do it. Yeah. And then I do a document. If we're doing anything outside or in a weird space, I'll do an aerial map and I'll make, like, different stations and positions of where they're going to be.
00:10:28:23 - 00:10:51:09
Kaylen Adams
I'll give them a service order so they can see just how we do, how the whole day is going to go through. They even see like how different session parts are going to work, like what sounds work. It's going to do all the stuff because they help with transitions, like really help because it's easier to be like, hey, after they do a million little miracles, I need you to come out here rather than at 737.
00:10:51:09 - 00:11:11:20
Kaylen Adams
I need you to. Yeah. The more like more like, big landmarks on a map. Yeah. Once you get this song, then this is your cue to come out and help set up for lunch, like, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. That's why the service order is so important. And for them to see what's in Planning Center is for that.
00:11:11:20 - 00:11:34:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We updated everything for the whole event kind of revolves around that. And you're doing the same for your volunteers. And so because then I would imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, you're able to be like, hey, if you're in charge of lunch, like, these are your three areas or meals, I guess, like these are your three. So like Friday night dinner, Saturday morning breakfast and, you know, Saturday lunch.
00:11:34:07 - 00:11:56:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like at this time you need to be here for this. Because if we say lunch is at 12, let's say I'm imagining you're having your volunteer get there at 11:15 or 11:30 or something like that. So how do you real quick answer this question for me. How do you determine, what time to to call for them? Like, yeah.
00:11:56:10 - 00:12:18:11
Kaylen Adams
So when it comes to like food stuff because you're dealing with catering and vendors usually like I wouldn't have that start. So we had lunch at like, what was it this year? 12 I think it started and I don't remember the exact time. I just know we had it and it was ready. And that's why you're here. We had food dropped off at like 1115.
00:12:18:16 - 00:12:41:10
Kaylen Adams
Okay. So plenty of time. And most of that was not because I was worried about my volunteers because they knew what to do. And we're not in like the biggest space ever is to account for vendors being late or not knowing where to park and, stuff. Yeah. When it comes to other transitions, they're a lot tighter windows and they're a lot quicker usually it was like the song before something started.
00:12:41:10 - 00:13:04:10
Kaylen Adams
I would send them to go do something, but again, that's also because their space isn't really big and any materials they needed or resources. I set out in a central location, a table in the main space. We all were operating out of the auditorium, and I labeled everything with all the different times that it's going to be needed, and even put under, like during this song, you should take that, this place.
00:13:04:10 - 00:13:25:17
Kaylen Adams
So my volunteers knew to flock to that table when transition times are happening. Yeah, that was so good. So then are you. So you're just labeling those like yeah, color you label like for anything. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You label like crazy. If you think like oh that'd be really obvious for someone to know it's now you should label.
00:13:25:23 - 00:13:45:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Because again, your brain versus reality. Right. Like it makes sense in your brain, our brain as we're planning the events. But it might not make sense to volunteer. Yeah, because they're just dropping in. Right. You know. Yeah. After work. Right. They've been at work all day and their mind is in a million other places.
00:13:45:10 - 00:14:06:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so like, they're, you know, giving up their time and they're willing and they're helpful and all those things. But like I like that. I like what you're saying, like, almost, almost dummy proof it. Right? Not that they're dumb, but, like, make it so simple. Okay. Yeah. Do it. Yeah. Well, my volunteers, they do best when they're confident.
00:14:06:24 - 00:14:24:06
Kaylen Adams
When they're confident, they are empowered to take initiative, make decisions, do something really well when they're not confident in whether or not they're in the right place, holding the right thing, putting it where it should be. Then you have a lot of lag and you have a lot of like question. And that's when things start to like frame fall apart.
00:14:24:09 - 00:14:59:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. So your job as an event coordinator is just to how can I give my volunteers the most confidence they need in this decision. That's good. Okay. So then anything else on what you tell volunteers? I want to maybe go a different direction if you feel like you've kind of got everything in that lack thing is leading up to the event, you want to send out the longest email of your life, and then is where all of the equipment I talked about keeping in that volunteer folder and you go through, you give an overview and you kind of describe how the event's going, and they need to read those attachments.
00:14:59:24 - 00:15:26:05
Kaylen Adams
I sent it all beforehand because that's our big meeting, and they can refer back to you and have in writing. And then by the time we are at the event, like 30 minutes an hour before the start, that meeting is a refresher or a question. That's not the entire meeting. Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing you did, which I thought was brilliant, was you, taped all those attachments to a wall of one of our leader workrooms.
00:15:26:07 - 00:15:47:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, yeah, if they didn't want to, you know, fight with their email to find it again, they could just go reference quickly off a printed copy. So again, you don't like you think about your dummy proofing it like, yes, you communicated it in the email. And this is one of the concepts I talk about in communication a lot is like, we live in like a Netflix culture, so people live it with like an on demand mindset.
00:15:47:10 - 00:16:05:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so you sent it on like a Thursday at 3:30 p.m., but like, they were in the middle of like a business meeting. And so it wasn't in their mind then, but it will be in their mind when they show up on Friday at six. But like they've gotten 27 more emails since then and so. Oh yeah, where is that?
00:16:05:03 - 00:16:24:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think it's brilliant to put it somewhere just quick and accessible and maybe even another hack that we didn't even do or think about, but like maybe even having like a static like landing page or like QR code that they could like scan and pull open, like in a, just a tab in their safari. And then that gives them access to everything, you know, that they need.
00:16:24:23 - 00:16:58:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But yeah, I think that was that was so smart. So then how do you go about, like, help us get in your brain because, you know, you had a couple volunteers there that I was like, oh, like, I wouldn't have thought that they would be here. Not because they did, like a bad job or they're just they weren't like as maybe like involved or like, maybe they're only serving like once a month or once every other, week, like in our student ministry and like, you had the, like, in charge of, like, food or like certain like, you know, snack type areas, like, how did you go through and think, who am
00:16:58:15 - 00:17:16:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I going to recruit? Because I thought that was one of the other really special things was like, you asked a very particular or like, dedicated ask for like just very, again, very specific volunteers. You didn't I didn't feel like you did like an all call, though. You maybe you did to kind of pick up anyone who might be interested.
00:17:16:22 - 00:17:39:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But then I think you went particularly after, like certain names or certain individuals. How did you how did you like, think about them to, to ask them and like what goes into you? You know, determining this person would be good for that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you definitely do an all call because, well, we are desperate for people to help.
00:17:39:13 - 00:18:06:02
Kaylen Adams
We're not gonna act like or not, but, honestly, I just kind of go with a philosophy of I'll never say no for somebody like, you know, I think sometimes we do that even if we say that we're not like, well, they only serve on Sundays and they're very particular about their job. And I'm like, yes. But they also probably like high school is I don't know, maybe the chances are, and so I just kind of like we always have conversations for like, oh, that person would be like, so good at this.
00:18:06:02 - 00:18:27:03
Kaylen Adams
Or if only they do it. And I usually take that person and then ask, yeah, like I make a list of all. Yeah. As I am planning events and I just keep people's personalities in mind like I, we see them work all Sunday and we see them work Wednesday. And you kind of see like what things kind of light them up and what things they're like, oh can I do anything else but that.
00:18:27:07 - 00:18:42:18
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. And so I just kind of catalog that and that way. And I do kind of mentally. But it wouldn't hurt to like make a list of people like I love reaching out to this person for this. This is this. And I've noticed that they've done events. We have volunteers that really get fired up for events like that.
00:18:42:18 - 00:19:02:24
Kaylen Adams
Just being a part of a big beast of a programing thing, like kind of lights them up and exciting. And so I have people that I regularly reach out with, like Kyra Allen Love. She's one of our checking people. I remember when I came in, she was on like some sort of kind of understanding that she was only going to volunteer a couple times because she had some things going on.
00:19:02:24 - 00:19:26:20
Kaylen Adams
And I just remember, like, she was so stoked to do this back to school bash experience. That was like a Wednesday night special because, like, I definitely would love to do events and she's been my event checking person every single time I day. Yeah, yeah that's good. Yeah. She loves it. So you have like a you're very in tune to to them like just ongoing right.
00:19:26:20 - 00:19:44:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like you're keeping an eye as you're doing your job. And so that makes it easier obviously. Then when you go to to think and yeah I like that it is not creepy but it is. No. Yeah. But I think that's part of the that again I when I saw some of those people that was like interesting but also awesome and like that was all kudos to you right.
00:19:44:20 - 00:20:01:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like I'll kudos you because like I wouldn't have thought to ask that person. Like I would have thrown a link in our leader group chat. Hey, you know, want to volunteer? They did it. And now I'm desperate, you know? And, so yeah, I was we were more than fully staffed, you know, for. Yeah. And so that was the other thing.
00:20:01:11 - 00:20:20:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like how, like how many jobs do you try to give a leader? Like how many are you trying to, like, let people do double duty? Or like, hey, you're in charge of like, food and like, that's your job the whole weekend. Like, how do you make those decisions?
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, some of our jobs, like, they feel very crucial and important because they are.
00:20:20:13 - 00:20:40:05
Kaylen Adams
But they're not crucial. Important in that they happen the entire time of the program. Like right there. Yeah. There are a window a very important window. But then and. Yeah, and you have to remember, when you're dealing with these volunteers, they're adults with full time jobs are like at the leaders, if they're they're at your event, they are high capacity.
00:20:40:07 - 00:21:01:24
Kaylen Adams
They don't do well, bored or sitting and doing nothing. They want to do something. And if they're doing something that morale is high and they'll probably do another event because they're like, that was awesome though. So yeah, it's good. Yeah. So I assign generally like 2 or 3 roles throughout the service order to people. So they're like constantly transitioning and moving to do so.
00:21:02:01 - 00:21:22:02
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. And that comes back to your like schedule your map. And you're like you're thinking that ahead. Like okay. Do they after this window closes they can go to this, but then they maybe can't do this next thing because they're going to be busy doing that. Like, again, that's the next level stuff, Kaylen, that you're like, you're very good at.
00:21:22:02 - 00:21:44:02
Kaylen Adams
So, okay, so then, let's talk a little bit about like, food. Okay. How do you determine, how much to order? Like, is it just as simple as, like, as many as there are registered. How do you account for, like, walk ins at an event like this where we do leave registration open all the way up until you know, it starts.
00:21:44:02 - 00:22:05:20
Kaylen Adams
And so theoretically, a kid could walk in and do you have enough food for them, like how do you how do you kind of try and manage that or think about that? Yeah. It all it does depend on how, big of an invite event. This is like I think high school weekend was an invite like, but we didn't like push super hard and say like my friends going for it.
00:22:05:22 - 00:22:25:12
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, yeah. So always keep that in mind. Yes. You keep the registration number, but you also want to account for all of the adults in the building. Don't forget yourself or your staff then volunteers. And if you're providing food for tech and worship or if they're doing their own thing so that all is in that number. Yeah.
00:22:25:14 - 00:22:49:00
Kaylen Adams
But registration, I just kind of. I don't want to have too big of a margin because then we're spending a lot of money on food. But things that I can give out is like door prizes, like pizza. I'm a little more willing to have extra of because we could have done or do to make their night, but like, same with, you know, because no one wants like a cold, soggy sandwich by the end of like 12 of them.
00:22:49:06 - 00:23:10:08
Kaylen Adams
Yeah. So I would be a little bit more tight on food like that. And also keep in mind that everyone's like, kids are so hungry they're going to eat three slices of pizza. You keep in mind the girls, because girls don't eat as much food as boys. And, like, I definitely like they're just there's camping retreat food.
00:23:10:08 - 00:23:32:14
Kaylen Adams
That is great because you're hungry, but it's not a lot of kids. First choice. Really like one of it. Yeah, they'll like maybe one and a half will split with a friend. Yeah. So just keep that in mind. Like the ratio is not as monstrous as you think. Yeah, I think the ratio I've tried to use for pizza is, two and a half times your number.
00:23:32:14 - 00:23:51:06
Kaylen Adams
So, like, think you're big number of all the people including tech and worship and check in and staff and everyone. And then you multiply it by two and a half. That'll give you the total number of slices that you need. And then you can divide that by eight, because that's how many slices of pizza are in, your pizza box.
00:23:51:06 - 00:24:06:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then that'll give you a number with a decimal. And you can either round up around whatever you, you know, feel. And what's really nice is like, you know, you do the random picker thing, like, with their name. And for those who don't know, you picked the names and then they just get a random prize for doing nothing.
00:24:06:03 - 00:24:22:03
Kaylen Adams
Yeah, that great. Pick that food leftovers too, because you don't want to bank on having extra if you're just kind of guessing because kids might be really hungry and you don't have it, and then you just lost a prize for a game. Yeah. So you want that to be like a random moment that if they don't get it, they have no idea.
00:24:22:05 - 00:24:48:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. All right. Let's see what else. What else do you what else do you think about for an event that I'm not thinking even to, like, ask you? Listen, you have to know if your church has any sort of, like, admin team, administrative volunteers that help put these things together with your operations at all, like your facilities and your finance people or whatever it might be.
00:24:48:04 - 00:25:09:00
Kaylen Adams
You need to meet with them, like way ahead of time. So I see way ahead of time. Yeah. So I start meeting with people. We've been cutting it kind of close and cutting it close to meeting two months in advance. Okay. So you need to some of us that might be like, oh, that's when I start thinking about it.
00:25:09:02 - 00:25:34:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Yeah. No. Especially if it's like a really big event. Which high school weekend is a really big event for us? We need to start planning that month in advance. And depending on, like, the capacity of your team, that could fluctuate a little bit. Like if it's just you and one other person, I would say probably start looking at that at like six months and having if you have a couple other people who can share that, you could maybe do a little bit less.
00:25:34:19 - 00:25:59:21
Kaylen Adams
But you definitely need to start meeting with administrative people on your church staff that are handling this, because their personalities are a lot different than yours. As a ministry person, you're used to pivoting and being creative and all the things and pulling it off at the last minute. Yeah, they are not. They love systems and processes and if you break their system, it's going to be really, really hard to get them to like be on the same wavelength with you.
00:26:00:01 - 00:26:22:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Good. Yeah, yeah. And like in our particular, you know, setting, we have like our facilities people like they set everything up for us, which is fantastic. But to your point, like, only if we're on top of it, if we slide in in the ninth hour and we're like, this is what we want, they're like, yo, we're already on to like, stuff for like later, next weekend.
00:26:22:11 - 00:26:43:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like we've already, you know, planned our day. So, you know, to her point like, and whether you know so like, here's the thing I do know if like you're listening, you're like, okay, I don't work at a church anywhere near that. Has any of that. Like, I am the operations, I am the admin. And what I would say is, lean into your volunteers if you're like that sounds fantastic.
00:26:43:23 - 00:27:15:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I would love that. But I don't have anyone that works for me with me on my team. Anything like that like that doesn't mean you can't do it, and it doesn't mean you still can't delegate and dish out. You just may have to do that more of like a volunteer capacity. So find a mother. Or like someone who, like, works in like an administrative like role that has a little bit of, bandwidth and margin and like, ask them, you know, like, I'm sure if I'm saying that many of you right now, as you're listening, you're like, oh, yeah, I could probably ask so and so, like that person's come into your mind like, let
00:27:15:12 - 00:27:33:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
that person be your Kaylen for your event. And like, yes, we had the luxury of like Kaylen being on our team payroll, but like, you know, it doesn't it doesn't, they don't have to be right. And like. Yeah, setting up you can. I mean, we employ teenagers, like, students to, like, come early and do stuff like that.
00:27:33:00 - 00:28:00:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, you know, we call them what we call them. Simps. Yet SMPs student is tone texting is for like, student oh my gosh. Okay. Do not disturb do that anyway. Ministry student minutes protege. Protege. Yeah yeah yeah. Protege. Yeah. And so anyway, we employ them, they, get free camp, and stuff like that, but they come early in, like, sets, set things up.
00:28:00:12 - 00:28:25:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So, like, they can be like facilities team. So again, as we're saying it like, don't don't be like I had never be there like you for sure can like employ volunteers and people that'll do it for free. And they like to to Kaylen's point. Yeah they do. That might not be your gifting. And you're like, no one would ever want to run administrative or set chairs up like some people genuinely do.
00:28:25:02 - 00:28:47:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so don't rob other people of being able to serve your youth ministry, God's kingdom, whatever. By not asking them. What else Kaylen. Anything else or do we hit it all. I just would in mind people's personalities. You're going to have people who, when they're planning events, they just run just like that's just their personality and that's how they work best.
00:28:47:19 - 00:29:06:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so they're going to ask a lot of questions and they're going to want to meet with you last minute and their vibe might kind of like make you kind of thrown off because you're like, I thought we had all this plan. Why do you need to meet and double check? They've probably done a great job. They just want to make sure that they've done everything you need to help you.
00:29:06:14 - 00:29:25:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you have someone in your life who's like that, just remember, like, just have your questions kind of written out of what you know, that they text and have those input ready for them. And that's going to help those meetings a lot quicker. I had a at one churches I worked at, I had a volunteer like that.
00:29:25:20 - 00:29:47:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Her name was Sarah. And the way that I would think logistically when I was planning things because, like, I was a one man band, we had a church secretary 20 hours a week that served the entire church. Right. So, like, I could get some stuff, you know, to for her to do for the youth ministry, but not like she wasn't like, there to, like at my beck and call for everything.
00:29:48:00 - 00:30:12:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so as I was like dishing things off to volunteers and whatnot, like my, my filter in my head was always like, what would Sarah want to know? Right? It's I think that's a good like a good way to think about it is like, think about the volunteer who has the most questions for you. And then ask the question like, would the amount of information that I'm sending up, would it satisfy that person?
00:30:12:16 - 00:30:37:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And if yes, then you're on the right track. If not, then you probably need more detail. So yeah. Yeah, I love that. Cool. Kaylen, is that it? Do we hit it? Yeah. There's our all events for future and for always going to be planned, do you think? I think I think so well, yeah probably. All right. Well hey, this was how I plan events with Kaylen.
00:30:37:14 - 00:30:57:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Not Morty's Kaylen Adams. And, she's awesome. So, Kaylen, I mean, like, can people, like, follow you, like, on social media or anything if they want to? Yeah. Yeah. Where, where where can they find you? It's funny. I have to, like, go double check. Well, I can't fake my name. Oh, wait. What is it? Now that I just had to change my social media handles?
00:30:57:18 - 00:31:22:13
Kaylen Adams
Because I just got mail? I know well, and Instagram is actually really hard to change your last name on, so it hasn't been changed yet. My handle, but my name on there stage so you can find me at K Maltese Underscore on Instagram. It's cmake lta s underscore on Instagram Facebook Palin Adams look me up. I think that's all in I'm on because I'm old and TikTok that's okay.
00:31:22:17 - 00:31:32:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's banned anyway. So actually it's back. I don't know if you heard but oh all right people. Well I'm signing off for Kayla and this is Nick. Talk to you next time. Stay hybrid guys.
32 min
March 13, 2025 Episode 140: Social Media that [ACTUALLY] Works | Engage Don’t Broadcast
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DESCRIPTION
Struggling to make social media actually work for your youth ministry or overall church? In this episode, we’re breaking down a 3-step strategy to move from just broadcasting announcements to real engagement that inspires and connects. If your social feed is just a wall of static graphics, it’s time to rethink your approach—let’s build a social media presence that truly makes an impact!
📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/140
PLAYLIST
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https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms
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⌚TIMECODES
00:00 Is your Church Social Media on Life Support?
01:50 Stop Ignoring Digital Ministry
04:17 Step #1
06:23 Step #2
09:43 Step #3
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Is your social media account
00:00:02:24 - 00:00:03:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
on
00:00:03:06 - 00:00:10:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
life support, like just a bunch of pre downloaded graphics or things that you've made in Canva?
00:00:10:17 - 00:00:28:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If it is, rest assured you're probably in the majority of other youth workers or even church communications social media managers who know that there's more for social, but you just don't have the capacity or the bandwidth or maybe the desire to take it to that next level.
00:00:28:26 - 00:00:58:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this video I want to do is I want to help you take your social media from broadcasting a message to engaging the message and in the video playlists that we've been currently in, linked right here at the top of the screen. If you're watching here on YouTube, we've been talking about communicating in your church, communicating with better church announcements, and one of the key elements and areas I think a lot of churches wrongfully default to is posting their announcements to social media.
00:00:58:21 - 00:01:26:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's where you just broadcasting about you. But I want to shift your strategy to engagement. Social media's invention. Social media is existence. Its best existence is not for information transfer. However, it is a good spot for inspiration along with entertainment. So give me a like if you've ever had your social media account look like this that you're seeing here on screen, if you're watching on YouTube or give me a sub if
00:01:26:06 - 00:01:26:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
these
00:01:27:00 - 00:01:35:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
announcement based posts have actually returned and yielded good results for you, the fact is, it probably have it.
00:01:35:10 - 00:01:44:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that's why in this video, I want to lay out my three step social media strategy. And as always, here in the hybrid Ministry show, there are
00:01:44:13 - 00:01:45:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
chapters
00:01:45:11 - 00:01:56:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
linked down below. Welcome everyone to the Hybrid Ministry show flavor. Welcome back to the Hybrid Ministry Show. If you and I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Nick Clayson.
00:01:57:02 - 00:02:26:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I've been in youth ministry for 14 years, and I've always known and seen the importance of a social or a digital media existence and a present presence. However, Covid really, really ushered that in. And as sort of a result of what Covid did, not only like around me, but in me, I decided like, man, I really like I see churches going a certain direction up and down a certain path and like, I want to be a voice that has something to say about it.
00:02:26:09 - 00:02:40:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And interestingly enough, I was on a livestream not too long ago. If you want to go check it out with, download Youth Ministry. And Josh was like, why are you the guy we're talking to you? And I said, it's interesting because I just started recording videos in
00:02:40:11 - 00:02:40:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
my guest
00:02:40:21 - 00:02:41:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
bedroom
00:02:41:05 - 00:02:47:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
early in the morning, and, here I am now on a live stream answering more questions to other people.
00:02:47:13 - 00:03:16:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And it but it was because I was so passionate about this idea of social and digital media. And so, I don't think that when we're just posting announcements that we're doing, first of all, any service to our social platforms, to the algorithms, nor are we really serving our audience, especially on social in a, discovery era where people, stumble upon accounts that they've never seen before.
00:03:16:24 - 00:03:29:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But your Canva graphic for the chili cook off, that's only getting a handful of likes that that's not being discovered by anybody new, nor even probably your current church
00:03:29:27 - 00:03:30:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
members.
00:03:30:12 - 00:03:30:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so
00:03:30:21 - 00:03:43:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you really just making double the amount of work for you. And we've been discussing that in the last three videos about more effective communication, where I laid out better communication strategies for all churches and youth ministries.
00:03:43:27 - 00:03:55:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this video, what I want to do is I want to say, okay, so if that's what you're supposed to do, if you're supposed to kind of leaning on email and leaning on your website and leaning on social for inspiration and entertainment,
00:03:55:27 - 00:03:56:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
what
00:03:56:21 - 00:03:58:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
exactly should you be posting?
00:03:58:22 - 00:04:03:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm glad you have three steps for everyone and their social media is is, three steps.
00:04:03:26 - 00:04:21:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Social media checklist. Step number one is make sure that your website is up to date. I've said that in every single video so far that we've been in this playlist. And it's true because when you take away social as an avenue for announcements or when you
00:04:21:00 - 00:04:21:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
reduce
00:04:21:15 - 00:04:21:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your amount
00:04:21:24 - 00:04:30:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
of stage announcements, there's still has to be a full bodied, one stop, robust shop for your church people to fall to.
00:04:30:07 - 00:04:49:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I think the best spot for that is your church website. And the first video we talked about the difference between Netflix TV and cable TV. And so when your website is a great spot, it can be a Netflix type location, an on demand type location rather than
00:04:49:02 - 00:04:52:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
hopefully they see the graphic that has the info on social media.
00:04:52:06 - 00:05:18:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Hopefully they they saved the email that you sent with the registration link. Hopefully there just have a photograph or you know, whatever the the audio version of that is memory from your staged announcement to do exactly what you want them to do in that moment. And if any people don't have those things, they're just in deep trouble. However, if you have a great website, none of those things matter as much, at least on the information side, right?
00:05:18:25 - 00:05:42:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You can still inspire them with the stage announcement. You can still be witty on social media and you can still send a awesome email, but your website is the place where they can go to for that. That information that they really need to download and also move toward action them. And so as we've been talking about, I can actually if that's something anyone's interested in, I can actually do that for you.
00:05:42:28 - 00:06:04:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can build a website for you one time, or you can kind of contact me to just come on and and run that on an ongoing basis, as well as even potentially we can explore what it looked like for me to run that plus your social media. But step number one, regardless of if it's me, regardless of if you use groups, which I recommend your website, just very simply needs to be up to date.
00:06:04:22 - 00:06:27:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I don't care what you use, I don't care who you use, I don't care how you get there, but make sure your website is good and thorough and up to date. Okay, that's the first step in the social media strategy process. Let's move on here to step number two. So your website kind of being up to date, that sort of satisfies the first check in the process.
00:06:27:07 - 00:06:30:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that also makes what I'm going to recommend here on
00:06:30:17 - 00:06:44:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
social, which is the second step here. The second step is you kind of want to become enamored with shorts, reels, TikTok style videos, because when your website is good,
00:06:44:04 - 00:06:44:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
you don't
00:06:44:17 - 00:06:44:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
have to
00:06:44:28 - 00:06:54:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
worry about the information. So now you can leave that behind and you can now move ahead towards the era that social is really made for and meant for.
00:06:54:10 - 00:06:58:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, quick hit trip, quick hit, quick trip down
00:06:58:26 - 00:06:59:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
history,
00:06:59:29 - 00:07:00:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
memory lane
00:07:00:25 - 00:07:21:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
2020 TikTok ushered in this new era of of social called the Discovery ERA. It was made popular with an app called TikTok. It is now banned in the United States of America, at least in the App Store right now. But TikTok brought in this brand new style and archetype of video.
00:07:21:00 - 00:07:25:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In fact, it was so popular that not even four years later, according to
00:07:25:29 - 00:07:33:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video, 90% of the internet's traffic is found on short form, vertical based video.
00:07:33:26 - 00:07:34:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because
00:07:34:20 - 00:07:49:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
every other platform then was trying to catch up and keep up with this brand new one called TikTok shorts. Reels. Facebook has Instagram has YouTube has some and even other like places like, Twitter.
00:07:49:15 - 00:07:51:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're even on there, it'll it'll
00:07:51:08 - 00:08:08:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
be on a video, you'll be watching video and it'll auto scroll to the next one. They even built in the scrolling type functionality. And there's a couple pieces of relevant things with it. First of all, it's video based and it's short and it's quippy and it's fun. But secondly, like I said earlier, it said discover re era.
00:08:08:07 - 00:08:37:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you jump on Reels on Instagram, if you jump on your TikTok for you page more than I think 90% of the I believe that's the stat of the videos that you're served are from people that you've never actually even met. And so that's good news for you and I. As churches and youth ministries, we can get on to other people's for you pages without buying their attention or without having them have to follow or subscribe or or know about our channel.
00:08:37:05 - 00:09:02:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The key is producing good content. And so step one website. Step two start focusing on good shorts, which is why I've created down below my hybrid strategy. Got it will not only lay out my plan and what I do in my student ministry, but it will also give you different ideas and types of content that you can use for your social media and for your shorts, you know?
00:09:02:09 - 00:09:21:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like in our student ministry, I post ten different pieces of content, every single week. And it's all different. Kind of like styles of content. And so if you'd like more info on that, you definitely hop down and grab my free strategy guide. It will lay out how we do it, what we do, and how we capture it, how we batch record.
00:09:21:20 - 00:09:25:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I also talked about it in my live stream, a lot of different videos on my
00:09:25:13 - 00:09:38:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
channel. We'll kind of unpack it. And so I'm not going to, you know, bog you down with that info here on this video, but go, go check it out. Go subscribe. Go listen to some more podcasts and we'll get you covered on what exactly we do.
00:09:38:23 - 00:09:39:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Moving on to
00:09:39:28 - 00:10:05:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
step number three then is shorts are great, and if you don't have any capacity and you need to stop there and, and, you know, bolster your strategy and bolster your infrastructure to make that happen. And by all means do that. But then step three, the eye on the prize for all churches and youth ministries is you want your long form primary teaching content posted to YouTube.
00:10:05:18 - 00:10:18:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
90% of teenagers, according to Pew Research, are on YouTube, and so generation Z and Generation Alpha are landing in and making YouTube home. In
00:10:18:01 - 00:10:18:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
fact,
00:10:18:11 - 00:10:18:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
according to
00:10:18:25 - 00:10:40:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
a book called Meet Gen Alpha by Mccrindle and Fell, they said that YouTube is actually supplanting Google as the number one primary search engine for Generation Alpha. And so you want to be on YouTube, and if you're running your church, social media for, you're like overall church, you probably have some measure, some version of a live stream.
00:10:40:20 - 00:11:13:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's great. Put that on YouTube. If your equipment is good and working, then great. Put that on YouTube. In student ministry, if you have the ability to do that, then go ahead and put that on YouTube and anywhere else you want to put it. But you definitely have to make sure that you put it on YouTube. And then if you don't have anything, which my strategy guide will lay out exactly how we do this in our environment and in our setting, we don't have any live stream equipment, so we actually sit down before the message several weeks ahead of time, pre-record our message using like a teleprompter.
00:11:13:28 - 00:11:33:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And, we've built out like a full studio, so like, I can have all that stuff linked down below. You can check out my studio episode, and you can buy any of the stuff that we have that might be helpful for you. And I also have a Patreon where I'm talking about how I implement my hybrid strategy in my, environment every single week.
00:11:33:14 - 00:11:43:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And that podcast is $4 a month. It's one extra bonus podcast per week. Plus, literally, I think I throw in a freebie almost every single week. So
00:11:43:13 - 00:11:52:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I believe that that podcast is a very nominal fee for a lot. A lot of value. And so if you want to kind of go all in on this hybrid strategy, I would recommend that.
00:11:52:14 - 00:12:16:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But we sit down, we pre-record it, and then we post those to YouTube trying to answer some of life's hard questions with our titles, with our tags, and even with our thumbnails. And so again, comes for you. I can help you with that. But the goal then is to take your short content and build an audience that eventually promotes and and pushes people over to your in long form content.
00:12:16:08 - 00:12:45:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the that's the Mecca of your social platform. And what that does is that that reduces the anxiety, that reduces the pressure that is on your social channels to communicate your announcements. If your website's doing its job, then you're short form content, both fun and serious, can point to you and promote your long form content, which is serious, which will also then helps to help answer students big questions about life and faith, regardless of if they're in your context or not.
00:12:45:16 - 00:13:03:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
With an eye towards and with the focus on your students or your people in your context, and then like just, you know, a next steps form or some way for them to respond to whatever sort of like message that you have put on YouTube. And what I would recommend again, is that takes us all the way back to number one.
00:13:03:04 - 00:13:26:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Make sure there's a good like digital next steps form, one that's universally used and applied in all of your settings when you're teaching. And then with that link you can just post that in the comments of a YouTube video. And your website is helping serve your holistic hybrid and digital strategy. And that is my three step social media process.
00:13:26:15 - 00:13:27:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Make sure your website's up
00:13:27:17 - 00:13:46:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
to date. Lean into shorts. Start producing as many of them as you can that make realistic sense during your week? Just be. Just be consistent with it. Don't have a number in mind. And then all with an eye toward the prize of. Start posting your long form messages to YouTube and and all of that.
00:13:46:09 - 00:14:09:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I can help with coaching. I can help by running it for you. I can help on my Patreon. I can help on this channel for free. So give me a subscribe if you would like to hear more about that topic. But until next time and as always, my friends appreciate you being here. Appreciate you trying to communicate in a digital and noisy world, but I want to encourage you to stay hybrid.
15 min
March 06, 2025 Episode 139: The Best Communication Method for Your Church
📊 HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms
======================================
DESCRIPTION
Struggling to figure out the best way to communicate with your church? In this episode of The Hybrid Ministry Show, Nick Clason breaks down the most effective communication methods for parents, teens, and volunteers—backed by real stats and practical strategies. From email to social media to podcasts, find out how to make sure your church announcements actually reach the right people!
📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/139
//HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
//CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms
//NUCELUS
https://www.nucleus.church
//REMIND
https://www.remind.com/
//GROUPME
https://www.groupme.com
//CROSSCREEK STUDENTS LEADER PODCAST
https://www.youtube.com/@crosscreekstudents/podcasts
👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry
Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
--------------
🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉
We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!
https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick
--------------
🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!
Some of the below links are affiliate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid
BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym
OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit
//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup
⌚TIMECODES
00:00 The Best Church Communications Channels
02:14 Adult or Parent Communication Strategy
06:19 Student Communication Strategy
11:48 Volunteer Communication Strategy
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:28:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like if your church still produces a bulletin and give me a subscribe if it's completely quit producing a bulletin. You know, it's interesting. In my 14 years of youth ministry experience, the first two churches I worked at, they were all about those bulletins. Man, we printed those suckers. Every single week. Interestingly, though, the last two churches I worked at both also post Covid, which I'm wondering if that has something to do with it.
00:00:28:05 - 00:00:51:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Chose not to produce a weekly bulletin. You know, in one of the earlier on churches, there was a week where, like, the secretary was out and somehow I ended up not only producing the bulletin for me, like a graphic like design document standpoint, but then I was also in the office cutting them. And my wife, she called me, said, what are you doing at work still?
00:00:51:16 - 00:01:15:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, I have to cut the bulletin. And as I was doing that, I gave myself this thought. I was like, do teenagers even read this? And now, you know, I was producing this for the rest of the church. But in my mind, and as I was having this conversation with myself, I thought, I don't think that teenagers actually read this, but they're parents, right?
00:01:15:05 - 00:01:36:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's why we produce these things. And so we've been in this series called communication and the Noisy World. Slinked right up here at the top of the screen. And in this video we want to talk about is the particular channels that your churches should be leaning into. We're going to explore three different audiences. We're going to explore the adults in your church.
00:01:36:21 - 00:02:09:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to explore the students in your church. And then we're also going to explore the volunteers in your church and or in your ministry. And what I want to do is in each of those, I'm going to give you my favorite communication method and some statistics that back the reasons up for why you should be leaning into those channels and as always, I want to remind you that there are chapters down below or in your podcast catcher, wherever you're listening to this, so that you can hop ahead to the section of this episode that makes the most sense to you in your ministry and the context in which you're serving.
00:02:09:23 - 00:02:34:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody, to the Hybrid Ministry show. So I've been in youth ministry for 14 years, and so and in all of my experience of being in youth ministry, when I think about adults that I'm trying to minister to, those adults in particular are either parents or volunteers. And so in this particular section, let's chat about parents. And so these are parents of youth ministry students.
00:02:34:26 - 00:03:07:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, if you're a church communications person or a senior pastor watching this like these, what I'm about to share, I believe, also relates to just adults attending your church in general. Okay. Because what I'm going to say, we're going to talk about the adults in your church, the strategy that I believe that you should employ first and foremost and make your number one like major thing that you double down on, that you pour gas on, that you make work is an email strategy.
00:03:07:10 - 00:03:35:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. Here's a couple of reasons why over 4.3 billion people globally use email. Furthermore, 99% of consumers check their email on a daily basis. This is according to HubSpot, and 73% of millennials and Gen Z, which if you're in youth ministry, those are your parents. And if you're not in youth ministry, those are the future adults of your church.
00:03:35:10 - 00:04:06:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The largest based millennials are the largest in the workforce and the largest opportunity for your your givers. Okay. They prefer email communication from brands at a rate of 73%. This is according to Adobe, so email isn't going anywhere. Now. I also, if you have been watching in the last couple of videos in this playlist, like we link just a second ago, I have been and I've always been my strategy, my hybrid strategy, whether it's for students, parents, whatever.
00:04:06:16 - 00:04:27:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
First and foremost, make sure your website is good and remains up to date. So you want your email to be how you communicate and how you maybe market certain, like classes or events or whatever. But then you want to be able to take them to your website and or you want to send an email because think about user habits.
00:04:27:23 - 00:04:48:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're you're checking your email at lunch or on your work break, okay, on your lunch break at work and you see something from your church. You don't have time right then and there to stop and go sign up, but it jog your memory and you're there. So then you want when someone later just goes to your website because they're thinking, oh yeah, I need to go sign up for that thing after dinner.
00:04:48:06 - 00:05:19:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When they get home from work, they need to be able to discover that relatively quickly on your church website, even if the email had a link to it, even if they don't follow that link directly. You want your website to be clear and easy to navigate, which is why I continue to recommend nucleus. And also I just want to let you know, like if your website is not exactly up to it, I can create a couple of automated things for you, like updating your church Google calendar which will also naturally update on your website.
00:05:19:24 - 00:05:36:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you're interested in something like that, I offer a service called Church Communications done for you. I would love to explore what that looks like to either a build a one time website or be step into some sort of partnership sort of thing. But email is the way to get Ahold of the adults in your church.
00:05:36:07 - 00:06:13:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If if billions of users are using it and 99% of people are checking their email on a daily basis, then you as a church, you have the opportunity to get in front of all of your people, which diminishes the need for those church stage based announcements and diminishes the needs for those church bulletins. Okay, and I'm not necessarily saying that you should toss those things out and not even worry about them anymore, but what I am saying is that your primary strategy should be email and then those other pieces, stage announcements, bulletins, whatever you want to say, even social media.
00:06:14:01 - 00:06:36:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They should all supplement what's going on on email. The second category of people that we're going to talk about here are teenagers, students. Okay. So this is particularly aimed for youth pastors. Once again, if you're not in that then hop down to the chapters below and jump ahead to the next one you need. As a youth pastor, you want to try to get to teenagers phones.
00:06:36:25 - 00:06:55:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now you got to think about this. All teenagers are in a little bit of a different season of life, of adopting usage on their phones. So some of them aren't yet using, like text messaging yet. Right? So that's why I say a little bit more generically. You want to get to their phones because some parents let them have Instagram and some don't.
00:06:55:05 - 00:07:16:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Some parents let them have YouTube and some don't. Some parents let them text certain people and some don't. And so in some ways, somehow we need to get on their cell phones, which is what I'm promoting trying to do by using and utilizing, our hybrid strategy in our in the current student ministry that I serve in, this is our attempt and this is our, our play to get on to students cell phones.
00:07:16:11 - 00:07:31:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so my hybrid strategy is actually linked right down below in the description or on your podcast catcher. I would love to have you check that out. It's completely free, but it helps. It helps give you my strategy and also helps you implement some pieces and parts of that so that you can start trying to get onto their phones.
00:07:32:00 - 00:07:54:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's some reasons why it's valuable and important for us to get to their phones. Because 69% of students of teenagers own a smartphone by the age of 12, according to Common Sense Media, and also 90% according to Pew Research. 90% of teenagers use YouTube, so there's a couple of different ways to get to their phones. Number one, social, okay.
00:07:54:13 - 00:08:26:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And short form vertical based video is still king. Going to vertical in 2024, 90% of the internet's traffic was short form, vertical based video. And so you can employ that short form, vertical based video strategy on Facebook. So I wouldn't recommend that platform necessarily for students or these other through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. And if TikTok goes ahead and gets banned, you can still employ that that video based strategy by leaning into reels and TikToks and YouTube shorts by cross posting to places like YouTube and Instagram.
00:08:26:15 - 00:08:51:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And there are, you know, there are some TikTok like alternative apps being produced, like a lemonade app. And I don't know if that's going to take or pop, but but maybe go secure your church's handle on it. And then if it does, boom, you're there. And you can continue to employ that strategy. If it takes TikTok's spot, you know, once, like certain things get shook out here with the Congress ban or, you know, whatever is going on with that.
00:08:51:20 - 00:09:10:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the point is that short form, vertical based video while TikTok may not last forever, that strategy right now, that strategy is so, so clutch. And I actually I noticed it last night because here's the thing about that strategy. I was on Instagram and I was scrolling through stories, which are things posted by people that I follow my friends.
00:09:11:05 - 00:09:31:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a nod back to the social Graph era of friendship based social media. And I was scrolling through and I know friends, whoever I was, I was looking at your stories. I got bored, close it out, hopped into reels which then started showing me popular and like, entertainment based and reels that are actually getting a lot of views.
00:09:31:17 - 00:09:55:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And now all of a sudden I was, I was hooked. I was there for a while and that's going from that social graph era over into that discovery based era. And that's where we want to find ourselves in student ministry like we want we can. Here's the thing, though. You can post like a discovery based thing, and you can share that link to your audience so you can post that real on to your story so that all the students who follow you, they still see it.
00:09:55:19 - 00:10:11:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or you can even like yesterday I posted, a YouTube short, also an Instagram reel and a TikTok, and I sent the YouTube short link in our text group and I said, have you answered this crazy? Would you rather question yet? And I sent it to all the kids are sign up in our text group, which is the second.
00:10:11:10 - 00:10:32:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So socials one one way to get to their phones. The second is to get to text messages. All right. And so if you want like blasts I would recommend a service like remind. It's completely free for schools. Or if you want a group chat feature I would recommend a group me both of them listen to me. Both of them have their shortcomings I get it, okay?
00:10:32:11 - 00:10:59:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But it's a great, like, neutralizer. Okay. If you if you have Apple phones and Android phones, GroupMe can put everyone in a group, chat app without, like, the fuss of the blue bubbles and all the things, the compressed pictures that Apple won't allow to come through. Because RCS messaging, even though it's been around since 2007, like it'll do these things where it it will it will create like a level playing field.
00:10:59:01 - 00:11:18:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And you know, if you if your church communications database has some sort of texting service, that you already pay for, then by all means use that. Don't I don't necessarily recommend remind over something like that. Or if you've already dug deep to pay for some sort of texting service and continue to use that, probably better. But that that also goes for when kids are serving.
00:11:18:01 - 00:11:34:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like if you can send them text notifications instead of just email notifications. The goal again is to get to their phones, especially if almost 70% of 12 year olds in on up have smartphones. All right. And so I know you're going to run into because I run into this too. You're going to run into kids who don't have it.
00:11:35:02 - 00:11:59:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you always do have to have a small alternative for a more analog approach. But that's that's widely okay. Right. As we're trying to communicate with teenagers. And then the last area, the last area of ministry is what about your volunteers? What about your leaders? Okay. Now, this may not be, the highest or, like, email is still going to probably be what you're going to use.
00:11:59:02 - 00:12:20:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Just like going back to the, you know, parent adult section of this video, all the stats, all the reasons that's why email still is worthwhile for you volunteers. However, I will say in the last, six months or so, me and my team, me and my boss has started recording a weekly leader podcast. Yes, you heard that right.
00:12:20:10 - 00:12:44:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Weekly. Now we batch record, so we record four at a time. It's about an hour worth of our time. And then it takes me just a minute. Like, really not very long to just edit those suckers into, a YouTube video as well as an audio only podcast. And then we post those every single Monday morning. And so we encourage our leaders to, subscribe to that and listen to it.
00:12:44:27 - 00:13:25:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We try to make it like 15, no more maximum than 15 minutes. Usually they're closer to ten minutes each. And just, we've asked them to adopt that as their normal rhythm on their way to work, on their way on Monday morning to work, habit. And so what what this does is this reduces the pressure around a once a year or a biannual or even a monthly leader meeting to communicate all the big things that we need to communicate, because you know, that you need to, hook them with inspiration, but you also need to tell them, like, boring details like, hey, when you guys are like, checking in, you need to click this
00:13:25:07 - 00:13:43:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
little button here, and you make sure you check in to both of these groups so that our metrics above all, they don't care about that stuff. But the Leader podcast gives you an avenue to share those little snippets of things. It also gives you an avenue to drip culture slowly. And so that's one of the things we've been doing.
00:13:43:02 - 00:14:04:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've been attempting to make our culture a little more conversational and a little less teaching, and we've just been dripping that slowly on the podcast. And what's so fun is last week I sat down with some of my leaders, we do a yearly leader debrief, and I heard them starting to use some of the language that we've been putting on our leader podcast.
00:14:04:04 - 00:14:26:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In addition to gripping the information and sharing more announcements, we'll do like giveaways, we'll do leader shout outs, we'll share funny stories. And so then every week that that, posts on Monday, there's always the off chance that our leader group chat gets a little flurry of activity around whatever topic happened on the on the podcast or people are, you know, laughing about some of the things that are going on there.
00:14:26:23 - 00:14:49:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So according to Nielsen, the average podcast listener consumed up to seven a week. And so if you have people on your leader teams that are already podcast listeners, that's a super easy one. If not, you can help them adopt it. Or also, again, you can post those, video form to YouTube. YouTube also has a podcast RSS kind of section built into it that you can also use and utilize.
00:14:49:24 - 00:15:21:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so even if they're not podcast adopters, they can still access it via the video. And so with your email strategy for adults, with your get to their phones strategy for students and with your podcast strategy for leaders, then use your stage and your bulletin announcements to really hit hard and to just simply reinforce and point people back not only into those channels, but then also off to your website where they're ultimately going to take their next step, call to action sort of things.
00:15:21:07 - 00:15:42:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this next video, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help break down why you on social media should be focusing now more because our, our, our, information and our announcements have been taken care of how you should start focusing on engagement as opposed to simply broadcasting information. That video is going to be linked right here on screen.
00:15:42:05 - 00:15:49:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and tap that. We'd love to see you over there. But until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.
16 min
February 27, 2025 Episode 138: Steal this Clearer (& Less Boring) Church Announcement Strategy
📊 HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
✅ CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms
======================================
DESCRIPTION
Tired of your church announcements being ignored? In this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast, we’ll show you how to create clearer and less boring announcements using three practical hacks: reduce your CTAs, centralize next steps, and inspire over inform. Stop overwhelming your audience with noise—learn how to simplify your messaging, engage your community, and make your announcements impossible to miss.
📓 SHOWNOTES
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/138
//HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
//CHURCH COMMUNICATIONS DONE FOR YOU
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms
//NUCELUS
https://www.nucleus.church
//TRANSITION STYLE VIDEOS
https://share.hsforms.com/1UrHggOX1Q3mH_A3F3f8dWwnumis
//HUBSPOT (For List Segmentation)
https://www.hubspot.com
//KIT (Formerly ConvertKit)
https://partners.kit.com/x9dbnh372pji
👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry
Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
--------------
🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉
We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!
https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick
--------------
🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!
Some of the below links are affiliate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid
BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym
OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit
//SIDEKICK SETUP GUIDE
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/setup
⌚TIMECODES
00:00 Steal this Church Announcement Strategy
01:48 Myth
05:44 Hack #1
08:39 Hack #2
11:17 Hack #3
13:31 The Ultimate Church Announcement Decision Making Grid
18:09 Bonus Tip
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:19 - 00:00:01:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I want you to
00:00:01:08 - 00:00:06:55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
steal this clearer and less boring church announcement strategy.
00:00:06:55 - 00:00:21:33
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because why? Because you've been announcing your event for several weeks, maybe even months now at this point. And give me a like, if this has ever happened to you, you get that text from that student or that church member that said, when is the event again?
00:00:21:38 - 00:00:27:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or is it too late to sign up? Or when are we supposed to be there again? And you just want to pull
00:00:28:33 - 00:00:29:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
your hair out? But like we talked
00:00:29:51 - 00:00:30:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
about in the
00:00:30:13 - 00:00:30:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
last
00:00:30:40 - 00:00:41:39
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video partying on, he has this concept called inadvertent blindness. And what he's really saying with that is he says, we really only see what we're looking for.
00:00:41:44 - 00:00:42:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in
00:00:42:09 - 00:00:42:34
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
this
00:00:42:34 - 00:00:42:58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
video,
00:00:42:58 - 00:01:08:50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
how do we have clearer and less boring church announcements, ones that are actually going to, incite inspiration and not just one where you're only simply disseminating information? So in this video, what I want to do is I want to share with you the myth about church communications and church announcements. I want to share with you three hacks that will help you have clearer and better and less boring church announcements.
00:01:08:54 - 00:01:33:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm also going to share with you the ultimate church decision making grid. How do you announce what you announce so that the best and most relevant announcements are the ones that are being said from the stage and from the platform, and from the areas and the channels that you want to be saying them from. And finally, stick around to the very end of the video, because I have for you a bonus hack that may in fact change everything.
00:01:33:18 - 00:01:38:50
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And as always, if you're watching here on YouTube or wherever you're listening in the podcast catcher, there are chapters
00:01:38:50 - 00:01:56:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
listed down below so that you can jump ahead to the areas of the video that make the most sense to you. Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So what's the myth? Okay, the myth is this. The myth is that people don't come to your church function, your church thing.
00:01:56:44 - 00:02:24:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We assume that they're not coming to the thing because they don't know about the thing. And so therefore, what do we do? We share more information about the thing. Oh, well, it's actually at seven and we're going to have this and we're going to put it in the fellowship hall, like, and we just give them more and more boring details about it, assuming that those boring details about it are going to be what's going to help them overcome their in in the action and misinformation and get them to that event.
00:02:24:17 - 00:02:41:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's not why they're not coming. They're not coming because they don't care about it. They're not coming because they're busy and they have a schedule conflict. They're not coming because your thing is not the most important thing in their life. Sorry. Like, I hate like I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not trying to say that to you in a way that's demeaning.
00:02:41:17 - 00:03:16:35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But like, your thing is not as important as you think your thing is. And so the reason why people don't come to church events is not because they're missing information. But as we talked about in the last episode, credit to Brady Shear for this analogy is we got to start thinking more like movie trailers, right? So a movie trailer moves people towards inspiration, and they try to incite curiosity in such a way that when they see that movie trailer, they're like, I have to go and they'll move heaven and earth and they'll find the tickets and they'll find the theater, and they'll get to that event of their own accord.
00:03:16:39 - 00:03:36:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Our church events. First of all, we're not able to compete in a lot of times with movie trailers. Like I get it right, but we we result and we, you know, get our church announcements to a spot where we think we just need to share more information. What time, what date. And like those are really boring church announcements.
00:03:36:23 - 00:03:57:55
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And the more information that you share in that church announcement, again, we're assuming the myth is we're assuming they don't have enough information, so we'll just give them more information, when in fact, what you actually need to do is you need to inspire them. You need to move them to action through inspiration, through storytelling, through captivation of their senses and their imagination.
00:03:57:55 - 00:04:18:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you're like, dude, I'm a youth pastor. I'm a church secretary, I'm a senior pastor. I can't do any of that. And like, I get it, these are not skills that we often refine or hone in on our own. They're not disciplines that that we have maybe necessarily been been, you know, given or taught in like a seminary degree or whatever the case may be.
00:04:18:22 - 00:04:42:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in this world with over information and with this noisy world, like, that's what we're competing. See, so like this, these, this myth. Right? This myth is the reason why, posting your announcements to social media is a bad idea because, again, this myth helps us think, oh, we need to put this information out there on the internet.
00:04:42:25 - 00:04:58:40
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We need to let them know when and where and how much dice to bring to the bunker. And I and which fellowship hall we're going to be in, like people again, they're not getting on social media for more information for information download. And if they are, I'm going to tell you where you should put that information because you should include it.
00:04:58:40 - 00:05:18:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. But and we'll get to that in a second. But they're not getting on social for that. They're getting a social once again for in from Earth, not for information for inspiration and and maybe even for some humor and maybe for some entertainment. And so that's actually what I sort of push towards in my free strategy guide, which is going to be link down below.
00:05:18:26 - 00:05:39:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you haven't grabbed it, go ahead and grab it. It is, like I said, it's completely free, but it'll help lay out in detail what I do to kind of live this hybrid version of ministry and what I do on social media. But if that's not what they're looking for, and if our announcements are chock full of too much information and not enough inspiration, then what should we do instead?
00:05:39:29 - 00:06:03:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
I'm glad you asked. That's where these three hacks are going to come in. Okay, so hack number one is reduce your CTAs, CTAs is an acronym. And it sure. It's a marketing word for reduce your calls to action. So a call to action is what you're actually asking someone to do as a result of the information. You have a bunco night.
00:06:03:36 - 00:06:27:42
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you want them to sign up for the bunco night, right. But oftentimes we're stacking multiple call to actions. Okay. So in an announcement moment in your church, we often get up there and everyone gets an opportunity that the kids in the youth and the women and the men's and then the whole church picnic, and there's just there's too many different things.
00:06:27:42 - 00:07:02:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, too much thing, too many things that can cause somebody brain to get overwhelmed, psychologically speaking. And therefore, instead of promoting action, it does the exact opposite. It causes paralysis and it promotes inaction. In fact, Simon Sinek, he shared this story of the salesman who was a shoe salesman, and the shoe salesman said he learned the key to selling shoes, and the key to selling shoes was anytime he would have, a person trying on shoes and he had three shoe options, they would always say no.
00:07:03:01 - 00:07:17:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But when he reduced it to simply just two options, right? Reducing the call to actions when he would reduce it down to just two options. And so if they had three, he would and they're like, they had two. And they're like, let me see this pair. He would say, which one of these do you want me to take away?
00:07:18:01 - 00:07:36:32
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They would remove one. He would take one away. And then that he'd bring the new pair in, and then there would be two new sets of shoes. And then he would say, which of these do you want, A or B, as opposed to which of these you want A, B or C? And he said when he had two options, he always sold.
00:07:36:32 - 00:08:02:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When he had three they would walk away. And so the same is true in our church announcements. You your assumption and it's a faulty one. But your assumption now hates it is that the more you offer on the stage, the the better it's going to be for your church and for your people. And let's be honest, if you work on a church staff, there's the pressure of getting everyone's announcement equal airtime.
00:08:02:16 - 00:08:20:35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so again, we're going to talk about the decision making grid of how you come to those decisions. But you need to reduce your call to actions on your stage. What do you really want the people in your auditorium in your service? What do you really want them to do? And everything else? We're going to find another way.
00:08:20:39 - 00:08:39:17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to find another avenue to promote it. And you might be thinking, yeah, but you just told me, I can't put that on social. And you're right. I did say that again. We'll get to it. But reduce your calls to action. And then within that okay. So reduce the number of announcements that you're sharing. But within that simplify see where they go.
00:08:39:17 - 00:09:06:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Which leads me to my second hack. Centralize everything on your website. And now you might be thinking and even assuming that you're doing that. But again credit to Brady Scheer of that pro church tools, his announcement strategy, his church website strategy, and his church website builder, which if you don't have a good church website and you want one that's good and actually easy to put together, I recommend nucleus Dot church.
00:09:06:06 - 00:09:29:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
His whole goal with it is to get everyone to the same centralized location. And so when you give an announcement, then people are and an announcement that's inspiring. And that one that's chock full of information. So a good announcement about a, you know, story of life change at the last women's bunco night and then someone sitting there like, I need to get to the bunco night.
00:09:29:56 - 00:09:51:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But when is it? Where is it? Like they go to the website, and the website has all of the information that they're looking for. Your announcements will be better if your website can supply them with the information that they're looking for. Because again, like I said in the last video, which is linked right up here at the top of the screen, if you're watching here on YouTube, I so we operate in a cable TV mentality.
00:09:51:29 - 00:10:22:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In order to come to the bunker, you need all this information. You need the when, the where, the why, the what, but in what. People aren't living mindset wise that way they're living in a Netflix culture. And so they're like, oh, my church has a bunco night. When is that again? And they're thinking about that, on a Thursday at 4 p.m. and so on a Thursday at 4 p.m., they need to be able to go to your church website and get all the information that they're looking for, as opposed to relying on you in the moment on Sunday to get to church.
00:10:22:27 - 00:10:45:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Bunco night information, which they're not interested in at that moment, but they may be interested later. And so you if you catch them and hook them with inspiration, they'll want to go and then later in this Netflix culture, they'll go on demand and they'll go get it on your church website, which if you're hearing this and you're like, wow, okay, so we need to overhaul our church website.
00:10:45:27 - 00:11:05:56
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That may be the case. And you may be right. And you know what? I can offer that for you. I have a service called Church Communications done for you. You don't have enough time to kind of overhaul your social media strategy on your church website. I would encourage you to take a look at the link below. I'd love to offer that to you, and we can explore what that might look like for us to walk into a partnership together.
00:11:05:56 - 00:11:39:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Because I want you to win, and I want more people to come to your church bunco night. But again, the third hack then, is, as we've been talking about, kind of in this whole video, right? Aim to inspire over inform, aim to inspire over and form a sort of been the basis of this whole video. But once again, and here I want to point out like here's what the dictionary.com definition of inspires, really, it's to fill someone with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
00:11:39:21 - 00:12:07:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And so a video, if you're watching here on YouTube, like this is one of my transition style videos that we do for social media. Might not seem inspiring to you, right? However, imagine a person stumbling upon it on social media because they can stumble upon your videos like this on social media. Which of these do you think performs better, this video or this standard static announcement graphic that you cooked up in Canva?
00:12:07:17 - 00:12:33:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. Which is why down below I have my social transition video pack, the ones that I recommend. I have six of those plus six cap cut meme style videos. Go ahead, download those and then start using and posting those on your social media, because this video is using the medium for what it's made for. And it may not be like inspiring, but it's entertaining and it gets it still gets the message across.
00:12:34:00 - 00:13:08:51
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
While your other one, yeah, it gives all the information, but this other one, it inspires, it promotes action. It may, you know, cause people to share it. It may be entertaining, it may cause them to laugh. And then as a result of that, like when there's a bunco night, let me go find that out. And then they head over to your church website, which is built, you know, comes done for you or you build it on your own and it has all of the relevant and pertinent information you're using now, the the broadcast channels and the platforms for what they're made for, as opposed to just simply, crushing it and pounding information down
00:13:08:56 - 00:13:33:45
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
through people's channels. Because remember, the myth that we all believe is that they just need more information. But the fact is, it's not exactly it. We need to optimize our our communications in the channels that we find ourselves so that they lean into what those channels are built for and made for. So now this leads me to the ultimate church announcement decision making grid.
00:13:33:57 - 00:13:56:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And so the question that I want you to ask yourself when you're considering putting an announcement up on the church platform, up on the church stage, is does this announcement apply to greater than 50% of the people in the room? If not, find another way. Now you might be thinking like, but I got to keep the men's ministry happy in the women's ministry happy.
00:13:56:01 - 00:14:23:28
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And and I will say, when you institute this church decision making, the search announcement, decision making grid. Yes. At first you are going to have some unhappy people, especially if you've been announcing everything. Okay. However, once you institute this as a policy, when someone asks you to announce such and such thing, you can say, I'm sorry, we actually only do this and you got to still be people over process in this, okay?
00:14:23:42 - 00:14:49:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But let the policy point to the policy and let the policy be the bad guy. But the reason that your announcements aren't captivating enough people is because you're getting up and you're announcing something that only pertains to 10 to 15% of the people in your population or in your congregation. And so you might be thinking like, okay, yeah, but the, the platform, the, the stage, that's the only time that we have to announce anything.
00:14:49:23 - 00:15:12:54
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So what I recommend is 50% or more okay. And then if not find another way. And so you might be thinking well what are some other ways. So here's not an exhaustive list but just a list kind of get your brain going. So you could do social media right. And if it's like an outsider event, you might even consider, doing some advertising and putting some some dollars behind like a Facebook or an Instagram ad.
00:15:12:58 - 00:15:33:18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Your website is a fantastic spot to advertise things. Text messaging, emails. And let me, let me just say for a minute, like if you can do list segmentation and there are tools out there like, like a HubSpot or like a ConvertKit, and they're going to have a they're going to have a little bit of cost associated with it.
00:15:33:29 - 00:15:57:44
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you may need to put that above and beyond a thing like, you know, church community builder, planning center or whatever your church management software is. But you can create list segmentation. And so you can actually send custom emails for people based on where they actually are in your church, as opposed to just sending big church blasts. Because I think that's another reason why some of our information falls on deaf ears.
00:15:57:44 - 00:16:16:58
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're sending irrelevant announcements to people, but we don't know how to, make our lists smaller and more custom. Right? Like, again, in the industrial age versus the digital age and the industrial age is all about numbers. So we just need to get the most amount of people on our email list and then just blast them with this information over and over again.
00:16:17:03 - 00:16:37:21
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But in the digital age, people want to be known for who they are as an individual. And so if we can send them customized, tailored emails that are broken down into what, marketers called lists and, segmentation of lists, that's going to, I think, perform better for you on open rates and click through rates and called actions and actually then taking those call to actions.
00:16:37:51 - 00:17:03:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But so you can use like banners on your website, you can even use printed banners, pop up banners and things like that. And nucleus actually does all of those things again for you. Okay. Now so so if it doesn't apply to greater than 50%, don't announce it. And okay. And I would say no more than two call to action zone one and two announcements.
00:17:03:05 - 00:17:25:09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now again you might be like what? Like how you're trying to riot okay. Some of you you have church bulletins. You have bulletin boards like use those other means and methods. I mean, let me just say like, you know, right now we have a, high school, like, kind of retreat disciple now weekend thing coming up. We don't announce anything in store for student ministry in our main church announcement platform.
00:17:25:09 - 00:17:44:04
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. But right now we're we're pushing and announcing our high school weekend in there. And, you might think, like, oh, Grace, you probably have, like, a lot more traction, like, we have less traction on this event signups than anything else. And it's not because people don't know about it. It's just because it's and it's ended up kind of being a bad weekend for a lot of our students.
00:17:44:04 - 00:18:12:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, again, the publicity thing is not necessarily the issue. We don't have more people coming to our events because of it. Like, we people know about what we have going on because we use and utilize these other kind of platforms and channels to, you know, to our best vantage. Okay. Now, so all those things being said, the myth plus through hacks now the decision making grid, the last little bonus tip that I have for you is when you're sharing announcements.
00:18:12:32 - 00:18:34:12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay, here's how you can here's how you can lean into inspiration and away from away from information is share stories, use footage, and use photos, especially if you have it from previous and past events. Share a story about life changing as you're doing it. I have some some videos in the back or some photos on the back scrolling.
00:18:34:16 - 00:18:55:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
This is a picture from last year's bunco event. And this is. This is Sally. And Sally had an amazing time and she came for the community. But she stuck around for for the life change. And now she's a part of a group and now she's serving. And as she leading bunco night. And that's why you should come to bunco night and go to our church website to sign up for this year's bunco night.
00:18:55:25 - 00:19:15:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like something like that. So much more inspiring. Then this Thursday, 6:00 bring a dip to share and all the boring information your website can handle that it does a good job of that. And people, people know to look for it and people are looking for it in that way. And so you have all these different avenues beyond just your stage.
00:19:15:16 - 00:19:36:35
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So how do you maximize each individual avenue in 2025 so that it gets the message across in a way that is captivating and inspiring. And then the people in your church know about what's going on and actually move towards action of signing up for and attending your church's events. Well, I'm glad you asked because that's the next video here in this playlist.
00:19:36:40 - 00:19:50:22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
It's going to be linked here on screen. So go ahead and tap that and we'll see you over in that video. But don't forget my friends. And as always to stay hybrid.
20 min

About Hybrid Ministry

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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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