Text messaging youth group t-shirts

Categorized | Technology

Posted on 08 June 2007 by Tim Schmoyer | Trackback link | Print This Post

Rethinking Youth Ministry posted about a resource called Reactee that prints t-shirts like this:

This is a great idea! Looks to me like Reactee is just using TextMarks, though, a free text messaging info service, which means that anyone can take this idea and make their own youth group shirts with it.

[tags]Reactee, TextMarks[/tags]

4 Comments For This Post

tom Says:
June 8th, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Hey,
Thats a cool idea! we just did a survey wednesday night on how to best reach the students in our ministry and text won. Surprise surprise I know. The funny thing is mailed calendars with info came in second. We wanted to boostup our website like yours and have the computer guru to do it. The website idea was a dreary 6th behind giant wall calendar, email, and newsletters. I was proud of my student leaders who bashed the idea of continuing to update our myspace because the lust level is out of control there. here by grace,tom

Tim Says:
June 8th, 2007 at 11:47 pm

Conducting a survey sounds like a great idea. We’re giving text messaging updates a trial run this summer with my youth group. Surprisingly, not very many students have signed up online to receive the text message updates, at least not yet. Our website has only been live for two days, so it’s way too early to see how well it will work. The kids in my community just don’t seem to be very techy, which is fine. It just means we should use more conventional methods of communication. However, I think half the battle is training people how you’ll communicate and then being consistent with it.

Brian Says:
June 9th, 2007 at 7:05 pm

I wonder that this idea would work best if you could get a lot of people wearing these shirts in one place at the same time. A lone shirt out in the crowd might not get much notice, but a small group of folks all wearing the same shirt tends to get people’s attention. Could work well if your whole youth group is going to be out in a public place together (mall, zoo, movie theater, concert, etc).

Tim Says:
June 9th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

Yeah, you’re probably right, Brian. If it was me, though, and I saw a group of people together wearing these shirts, I’d probably be a little leary of actually sending a text message for more info. One, because I probably don’t really care to look up more info about the group; and two, how do I know they won’t record my cell phone number and call me with a sales pitch later or something? Now, maybe if I went to a fundraiser and all the kids were wearing these shirts, that might be different. Like, if I drove through a car wash and all the shirts said, “Saving lives” or “Impact Brazil” or something like that, then I’d probably do it just to find out more about what I’m donating toward while I wait for my car to be washed. That’s just me, though. I know teenagers are probably a lot more lenient with their text messaging habits.

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