Facebook and Instagram in my life are basically just for following other Youth Pastors and ministries. Helping to run the YouthMin.org Facebook community and being involved in several other groups, I see hardly any updates on my newsfeed that aren’t coming from a youth worker. I say that because that means that most Sundays and Wednesdays, I get to celebrate with other churches as they post how many baptisms, or salvations, or… read more
social media
It’s funny trying to write a title for this post. Winning a circle might not sound like anything to be excited about, because what are we talking about? A hula-hoop? A hand drawn circle in a shadow box? No, we’re talking about the all new Circle, a product partnered with Disney that is going to change the way your family uses the internet. Circle is a device that, after connecting to the… read more
“Daddy!” My 5-year old boy Matthew came running, arms wide open, plowing into my legs at Mach 3 to welcome me home for the evening. He had experienced his first day of kindergarten, and was eager to tell me about all the amazing things he had done and new friends he had made. Sounds like a perfect picture, right? Unfortunately, it wasn’t, because as I had pulled into the driveway, a parent… read more
My first two posts in this series highlighted the importance of hiring the right person for your internship and making the most of the internship experience while the intern is with you. This last post in the series deals with the most overlooked portion of the internship experience, namely how to encourage and mentor your intern AFTER the internship is over. While the lack of proximity makes this the most difficult portion… read more
At this point, you are probably pushing into your second meeting on how your church will be running this Easter. As a youth worker, you might have a bigger stake in the Sunday service and many churches I know treat that Sunday as a family or big church service. Let’s be honest, this might be your only shot for the next six months at several families that only come on Easter and… read more
Yesterday, I wrote about why you shouldn’t have a youth ministry website. It sounds a bit hypocritical of me, because I have my own youth ministry website and I create youth websites for other youth pastors. So here are some reasons why you should get a youth ministry website. 1. Because they are awesome One page on a church website doesn’t convey all that is your youth ministry. Youth Ministry is complex… read more
I love my youth website. I spent hours making it just right and after seeing my site stats, I know more than just my students and their parents are checking it out. However, I know a lot of people who don’t need a youth website. If you are considering getting a youth website please consider the following: 1. It’s hard to keep up-to-date. It is far better to have no website than… read more
If you look at my church’s social media feed on our ministry’s Facebook and Twitter account, you might wonder how I have the time to post social media while still doing ministry at the same time. It takes time to come up with ideas, construct the post, schedule it out, reply to comments, see what posts works so that I am coming up with the best content we can be sharing on… read more
For the past three months, I have been working at the headquarters of Youth for Christ as their Social Media Specialist to learn how to better engage people with social media and blogging at a local and national level as we work to improve engaging with teenagers and the whole community to share the Gospel alongside the church. One of the first missions I had for the position is to put together… read more