Youth Tech Ministry

I have recently volunteered at my church, St. Paul’s UMC, a church of First Saints Community Church, and will be having my first “meeting” Thursday with two other members of the Tech Ministry leadership team, and I’ve been tossing down ideas of what to do with the youth tech ministry (Y™ as I’m going to call it from here on out – it looks cool, ya know) and some things to get the kids excited about said ministry.

The internet was no real help, because when you combine “ministry” and “tech” said internet thinks you’re trying to find resources on praise team tech (sound), or drama tech (lighting), and that’s not what I’m trying to do, but when you add “computer” to the word, you get “Computer Ministries” with Facebook, MySpace, or computer labs built by churches.  Sometimes you search on the internet and you don’t find any answers, you find more questions.

I did find a link called “100 blog topics I hope YOU write” [link] and it gave me a lot of ideas and even some great reading material.  One day I hope this blog is on that list, as I plan on punching through some of the topics over the next upcoming months.

Back to my idea searching: there’s a lot of resources for a lot of other ministries, but when it comes down to simple non-art tech, there isn’t much, unless I’m looking in the wrong direction.  Elizabeth, the person who seems to have been “voluntentold” to be head of Y™, expressed some ideas Sunday about music videos, and ways to keep the youth ministry as a whole in better contact using text messages and emails, which got me searching, in another tab (YAY! Firefox!) for that stuff, and I found a lot of those, including one directed towards youth ministires in general.

Because the internet let me down, as it sometimes does, I had to come up with some ideas of my own.  I sat down and brainstorm until it hurt, and boy howdy did I get a headache!  I came up with some things, but I really hope they hold well at the meeting Thursday.  We’ll see how that all goes.

Here are some of my ideas, thrown out there for the internet to steal read use and because you won’t be there at the meeting (or will you?!! *dramatic chord*) I’ll give some explanation, and I say some because these are all rough ideas.

Myspace / Facebook – This is more or less a moot (I may be using that word wrong) point but sometimes the obvious ideas get lost in the fickle of looking for the next big thing.  Everyone (even most Pastors) have a MySpace or Facebook, and why not use these tools to keep everyone together.  Most of your youth ministries are going to be on one or the other or both and this allows total access to communicating with them, getting feedback, and even allows you a chance to read up on them.  You should, and I’m not saying snoop, tell them “Hey, I notice you posted a blog, mind if I read it.” or just read it, who knows, they may just not want you to know they have a crush on little suzi.

Online newsletter – better know as E-Zines (FYI: i HATE that term) you can turn a full fledge newsletter into a PDF and send it to everyone, or post it online and send the link out on MySpace or Facebook.

Community Blog – Blogging seems to have become that “next big thing” as most websites have tossed out the old way of doing sites in favor of this more user-friendly way of posting, and a lot of places (I can’t speak for WordPress but I know it’s an option at Blogger) allow multiply accounts to access posting to the blog, or even an email where anyone can email a blog post to a specified and it’ll either hold in a que to be approved or post automatically.  This could be huge if you want one spot for people to just blog about whatever.  We did a sermon series called “40 Days of Nothing” and on the site for our ”emergent” service we had a spot where people blogged about their difficulty and experiences with the 40 Days.  Side Note:  I think I’ll post the 40 Days series here one day, it was a great experience and I usually hate “series”

Podcast – Maybe I was wrong before, maybe THIS is that next big thing, as everyone and their dog has a podcast.  It’s simple, there are plenty of free software out there (I use WildVoice [link]) and all you need is a computer, a microphone or two and you’re all set.  Of course you need something to talk about so get your Y™ group to schedule podcasts monthly to begin with and help them plan out a ’show’ and let them go to town.  Listen to other podcasts that are out there and see what everyone else has a good time doing, maybe one day someone will be listening to your Y™’s podcast going “that’s an awesome idea!”

Flyers/Handouts for Band & Drama Ministrys – Instead of the particular ministry doing their own fliers and programs, letting Y™ do the work releases stress on them, allowing them to focus more on what they need to focus on (be it a play, a set, whatever).  Simple, no?

Music Video – Elizabeth mentioned that she had an idea to do a music video.  Get some music, find some video, and then clip them together.  That’s a neat idea, and I took that idea, put it in an envelope and ran with it.  Sometimes a unified Youth Ministry project is an awesome youth ministry project, so I said to myself “Self, how do we involve the rest of the youth?”  Well, at St. Paul’s we have the basic youth worship band, youth drama, the youth tech and just a group who play tag football each week.  Instead of doing the work for the ministries, we’re going to work with them, please follow me.  What you do is go to the band and go “Band, write a song, perfect it, we’re going to record it for a music video.  We’ll be back in a month to do so, but in two weeks we want to hear the song to pass it along to the drama ministry.”  Two weeks later, we make a rough recording of the song, pass it along to the drama ministry and go “Drama ministry, here is a song, we want a music video based on said song.  We will be back in a month to film this music video but in two weeks we will be back so you can give us a run down on how it’ll play out (ie: story board).  See you in two weeks.”  Now, the tech team doesn’t get off that easy.  During the whole time the other two ministries are working on their part, the tech ministry is learning the software, the limitations of the camera, how the program works, what lighting shows up best on a screen.  After the song is recorded, filming can begin on the video.  Once the filming is complete, you edit it together and presto, music video containing all bits and pieces of the youth ministry, except those kickball players because hey, sometimes you just wanna play kickball.  Wait, I’m not done yet!  Have a viewing party.  Invite family, friends, the rest of the church, for a world exclusive showing of the video.  Have a question/answer time after the video to let people get some feedback or skip that part and show Spinal Tap or a Vegetales flick.

Band Album – Here we combine the band and Y™ again.  This time we record the bands best 5 songs, burn it to CD, give it a label, CD case and insert and sell them.  Let the band pick their best 5 songs and record them.  Then, allow the tech team to come up with different samples to pick from or combine details from the different concepts and make a final concept for mass production.  You can go all out and find a local print shop (I’m blessed enough to work at one, so sometimes that’s easier said than done) or even just peg out some on the church office printer, no one will know.  See what kind of designs and insert concepts the kids come up with and if you need help for ideas, there’s always the internet.