According to my cell phone bill, I went through almost 300 txt messages last month. That averages 10 a day, which sounds like a lot, but when compared to students I know who go through 30-40 messages per day, that’s not really too many. Whether good or bad, txt messaging is one of the preferred methods of communication for teenagers. Leveraging it in youth ministry can be one of the most effective ways for us to get our message to our students.

Practical Ideas

Here’s some ideas for how you can start using txt messaging in your youth ministry.

1. Announcements and last-minute reminders
2. Event cancellations (works great when the weather forces you to change plans on the spot!)
3. Birthday wishes
4. Send Bible verses and short devos (watch for this Friday’s Freebie Friday!)
5. Contests, quizzes and polls
6. Prayer chain and praise reports
7. Introduce the weekend’s upcoming lesson
8. Get quick feedback about an idea or question

Several txt messaging services are popping up on the web that present a host of new opportunities to interact with our students using the above ideas and more. Here’s my four favorites.

1. TxtSignal.com

TxtSignal.com has been the backbone of txt communication in my youth group for over a year now. They are such a great company that I’ve already reviewed them twice. TxtSignal makes it simple to create a mass txt “mailing list” of your students. Or, if you don’t want to manually enter their information, send everyone a sign-up link or post it on your youth group website where they can subscribe, unsubscribe, change phone numbers or service providers, and more. Each TxtSignal account lets you organize txt subscribers into groups (i.e. youth group, college ministry, church staff) and into sub-groups called “teams” (i.e. sr. high, jr. high, parents).

Perhaps my favorite TxtSignal feature is the ability to queue txt messages to send at a later date and time. I queue up txt reminders about all our events and Bible studies sometimes several weeks in advance so I don’t have to worry about remembering to do it later.

The only feature TxtSignal does not have that I wish it did is the ability for subscribers to reply to my mass txt messages. Matt Donovan, the owner of TxtSignal, assures me they are working on this feature, but that it is not yet ready for public consumption.

TxtSignal is not free, but with plans starting at $10/month, it is definitely worth the price.

2. PollEverywhere.com

Ever want to poll your audience about something while you teach? Me neither, but the idea sure sounds cool! PollEverywhere.com allows you to ask your audience a question, they vote via txt message and, if you have an Internet connection, the results are displayed on the overhead screen in real time. It easily embeds into PowerPoint or displays in a web page. The service is free if you only need 30 responses or fewer, but anything over that you’ll have to start forking over monthly fees starting at $9/month. PollEverywhere.com could be a great way to make a point during a lesson, guess about a detail in an upcoming event, who will win the high school football game, or see who their favorite youth leader is (j/k!).

3. Wiffiti.com

I’m pretty excited about the ministry potential behind Wiffiti.com. Think of a virtual whiteboard in the front of a classroom that everyone can write on simultaneously just by submitting a txt message and watching it appear up front. Even people who aren’t present can participate! The “whiteboard” can also be embedded into your website and the background image changed to whatever you want.

Imagine a worship experience where, during the music set, students can publicly share prayers with everyone in real time, post reflections on what the Lord means to them, and txt their favorite attribute of God. Or, in a teaching situation, asking how each student will practically apply the truth during the upcoming week. Or a brainstorming session on how teenagers can influence their friends for Christ. The possibilities are endless.

Of course, using Wiffiti in these ways sounds like you might be vulnerable to those who will abuse the system and maybe even post something inappropriate, but fortunately Wiffiti has several moderation options and filters that give you complete control over what actually shows up on the screen.

Oh, and Wiffiti is completely free!

4. TextMarks.com

TextMarks.com is somewhat similar to TxtSignal.com except that it is used mostly for 2-way communication among a group of people. For example, one of your students can send a txt message to your youth group’s special code and it will automatically be forwarded to everyone else on the group. Likewise, when someone replies to the message, it’s automatically distributed to everyone else.

The cool thing about TextMarks, though, is that it can also be used as a “txt info hotline.” You could print your youth group’s special txt code on t-shirts or event flyers and have people “txt YOUTHGROUP to 41411 for more info.” An auto-response is sent to the phone with whatever information you want. This is a great way for people to anonymously find out more about your group or event if they are too shy to ask or just happen to see your promo when passing by.

TextMarks is also free, but remember that standard txt messaging charges apply with all these services.

[ UPDATE ] In the comments below, Lane Gilbert points out that TextMarks includes text ads at the end of the messages. He stopped using them when he saw one for a psychic hotline. Now he uses Txtsignal.

TheParentLink.com gave me a one-year free subscription to give away to a Life In Student Ministry reader, a $99 value! They’ve been a huge part of my youth group’s parent ministry for almost 3 years now, so I’m excited to help one of you benefit from them as much as I have. In fact, you can read one year of my archived ParentLink newsletters here.

Get a 1 year subscription for FREE

There are several ways you can enter to win a FREE one-year subscription to TheParentLink Newsletter. Each one will enter your name into the drawing a certain number of times. You’re welcome to enter as many times as you’d like. Here’s how to enter:

• Send me a youth ministry resource you’ve created and give me written permission to distribute it as a Freebie Friday. Send it to tim@schmoyer.net with your name, city and state, ministry name and website if applicable. Each freebie you submit enters your name into the drawing 10 times.
• Write a blog post on one of the unclaimed “100 blog topics I hope YOU write” and link back to the list. Each post enters your name into the drawing 5 times.
• If your youth group has a special game that you made up (not like Hide and Seek or something), send it to me and give me written permission to post it here. Include your name, city and state, ministry name and website if applicable. Each game idea enters your name into the drawing 3 times.
• Send me your youth ministry blooper stories. Please keep them brief and to-the-point and give me permission to share it here on this site. Again, include your name, city and state, ministry name and website. Each story enters your name into the drawing 3 times.
• Write a blog post review of Life In Student Ministry with a link back to us. Only 1 review per blog. It will enter your name into the drawing 5 times.
• Adding a link to Life In Student Ministry in your blog’s sidebar will enter your name into the drawing 1 time.

IMPORTANT:
After you’ve completed one or more of the above, email me at tim@schmoyer.net so I can ensure that your name is entered into the drawing the correct amount of times and so I can contact you if you win.

The drawing will take place on Monday, August 18, 2008, so you have plenty of time to get your submissions turned in, blog posts written and ideas sent. The winner will be contacted via email and announced on Twitter and the Life In Student Ministry Facebook page.

Get 1 month of TheParentLink FREE!

For a limited time, you can get a trial month of The ParentLink for free here.

I’ve written several reviews of The ParentLink Newsletter here and here because it’s such a great resource for partnering with parents. They write all the content you need for an excellent parent newsletter that is full of both practical tips and educational insights. They format it professionally and then give it to you to edit and distribute however you want. It’s easy to add your own articles, enter your youth group calendar events, save it as a PDF, Word document, or HTML for sending as a rich email or posting on your website. See this page for more on how it works.

A lot of you are submitting questions for the Q&A series here at Life In Student Ministry, which is great! Now I have to try to keep up with them. lol

Brian Sheeler asks, “I was wondering what curriculum you use with your teens. What have you used? Do you pick your Bible lessons according to the teens you have and where they are at?”

I actually don’t purchase curriculum at all. In fact, I’m a pretty avid fan against canned “one size fits all” twists on all the same ol’ Bible stories. I write all of my lessons. Our small group leaders, however, pick different books and resources to use and I leave that up to them unless they want my input. (When I delegate responsibility, I also delegate the authority that goes along with it, which could be a whole post in itself.) However, I don’t use any specific curriculum myself.

When I lead a small group, I usually teach from my own life and the Lord’s interaction with it. More details on that here.

For large group teaching times, I start with a text of scripture, study it myself using Observation, Interpretation, and Application. Then I apply it to my personal life to learn “how it works” so I can use personal illustrations. In doing so, I find that I teach from my heart instead of from my notes. This is very important because then I’m actually passionate about what I’m teaching since I’ve already internalized the principles and application. Passion isn’t something that can be faked. When it’s genuine, it becomes contagious. Besides, I never ask my students to do something spiritually that I’m not already doing. If I’m going to challenge them to share their faith, I need to make sure I pop my Christian bubble and share my faith with unbelievers first.

I pretty much follow Ezra’s example in 7:10, “For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” Study the Word, practice it in your own life, then share it with others.

If you’re a full-time youth pastor and don’t have time to prepare deep meaningful Bible lessons, then perhaps you should evaluate what it is you’re spending time on. I’m not saying that using curriculum is bad — just that you should never use it as an excuse to devote your time to something other than internalizing the Word yourself.

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Have a youth ministry question you’d like me and other readers to answer? E-mail it to me! Please keep your question brief and to-the-point. Thanks!

Heather Hershey, a youth director in Pennsylvania, emailed me concerning a comment I made in previous post about having evening meetings at only church about once every 3 months. Here’s what she asked:

How in the world are you able to NOT have evening meetings? I have a ton, but it’s because all of our church volunteers work during the week and can’t meet during the daytime. Please share this secret with me!

There’s no big secret — just don’t have meetings! What is it that you guys have to meet so frequently about? Can you find other ways to communicate? I have about 60 adult volunteers in my youth ministry and we have three meetings a year: 1) new school year around August; 2) Christmas Party in December; and 3) end-of-the-school-year wrap-up meeting in May. There’s occasional other little meetings that happen within sub-groups of leaders, but usually I don’t go to them. They can function just fine without me. (If your ministry can’t function without you, then you need to restructure it and delegate responsibility. If they don’t accept the responsibility for something, then you shut that thing down. If no one takes charge, that tells you how important it really must be to them.) We have trainings that I’m in charge about twice a year, but those are usually a Saturday morning and afternoon kinda thing.

Most of my communication takes place online, which allows us to handle issues a lot faster and efficiently than waiting for the next meeting to discuss something. I also just make a lot of executive decisions myself. Decisions that require quick input (and don’t necessarily need to be approved by all 60 adult leaders) I run by a group of 5 adult leaders who are my “executive leaders.” They’re people who have been involved in various aspects of the youth ministry for a long time, are spiritually mature, and are very good with responding to emails and phone calls in a timely manner.

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Have a youth ministry question you’d like me and other readers to answer? E-mail it to me! Please keep your question brief and to-the-point. Thanks!

Comedian Thor Ramsey is doing a story on youth ministry and contacted me asking for my most humorous and/or most touching moments in youth ministry.

I have a couple great stories, but the one that stands out in my mind happened last year in the airport on our way home from a missions trip. I had the game Catch Phrase with me to help us pass the time on our flight. While standing at the luggage claim, it started beeping in my backpack. Of course, as Catch Phrase does, the beeping got faster and faster. All the strangers standing around immediately gave me nervous looks and quickly backed away! I franticly tried to dig the game out my bag and as I did so, the beeping also got louder and louder. Finally I reached it and took the batteries out so it wouldn’t beep again, but whew, I fully expected the bomb squad to tackle me at any moment! The expressions on the faces of other travelers was priceless! lol

Thor would love to hear your most humorous, dramatic and touching moments in youth ministry, too. Post ‘em in the comments below.

Maybe this should go without saying, but I use Facebook a lot in ministry. Since almost every student has a Facebook account it makes for a great centralized place for easy communication. Here are some of the ways I use it:

Private Messaging
Last week I blogged about how email is old-school and teens no longer use it as a primary means of communication for various reasons. However, private messaging on social networking sites is definitely one of the top ways they talk online now, so I use it as a replacement for email. If I need to send a message to a student, I send it on Facebook instead of email.

Youth Group “group”
With our youth group Facebook group, all the students can share pictures, videos, cool links and exchange comments throughout the week. It’s an easy central hub of communication throughout the week. I use our Facebook group mostly for sending mass private messages to everyone in the group about upcoming news and announcements they should be aware of.

Event RSVP
Through our Facebook group, I sometimes create events and send invitations all the youth group kids to RSVP as “attending,” “not attending” or “maybe attending.” Even though we have sign-ups on our website, too, when people join an event in Facebook, it shows up in all their friends’ news feed and gives the event some free publicity to other students who otherwise might not know about it. Of course, they can easily check out more details of the event and sign-up to attend, too, if they’d like.

News application
Creating a Facebook application that streams your latest youth group news straight to student’s profiles is a bit nerdier, but I tried to make the process as simple and easy-to-understand in this tutorial. Basically, it’s nothing more than an RSS reader for you youth group news inside of Facebook for students. This puts announcements right where they’ll see it and where their friends will see it, too.

See what kids are up to during the week
Although all these other things are nice and all, the main thing I use Facebook for is to keep up with kids lives through the week. I love seeing what they’re up to, what they’re thinking, how they respond to different things their friends post, the kinds of content they post themselves, and all the joking around that takes place. It’s fun.

Kids don’t use email to communicate with each other anymore. Although adults have finally caught on and businesses aren’t sure how to function without it anymore, generally speaking, students have already moved past email. Most kids have an address, but a lot of them don’t check it very often because they don’t like email. To teens, email is filled with a lot of junk. There’s spam, marketers, phishers, scams, authorities, adults, random forwards, and most importantly, there’s no friends there. It’s also too slow. They want communication that’s like hitting the “Fire” button when playing a video game. So they don’t want email anymore.

The primary way kids communicate now is by:

• PM (Private Message on social networking sites)
• SMS (Short Messaging Service, a.k.a text message)
• IM (Instant Messenger)

These have become the primary means of peer-to-peer communication because they’re seen as having less junk and are a lot faster.

Unfortunately, a lot of youth workers still use mass email messages as their primary means of sharing news and announcements with their youth group kids. If that works for your group, great! Keep it up! If it’s not, and you’re beginning to feel a little frustrated with email, here are a couple ideas about how to be where the kids are in each of these three areas.

Private Messaging
Last spring my wife called a couple youth group girls and invited them to come over and help make some fundraiser posters. Unfortunately she got no response because no one was home nor where they answering their cell phones. So she went on Facebook and sent the girls a private message instead. Within an hour and a half, every girl responded to her PM and showed up at our house.

The easiest way to send a private message to all your youth group kids on Facebook is to create a “group” for your youth group and invite them all to join it. It’s not that hard. Just login to Facebook and click on Groups in the left mini-sidebar. In the upper-left of the screen you’ll see a button titled, Create a New Group. Click it, fill out the group info, upload your youth group logo, and select the kids you’ve already added as friends to be invited to join the group. It becomes a great centralized place for your group to stay in touch throughout the week, a place for you to create event sign-ups, post pictures, videos and especially be able to send a mass private message to everyone in the group. When looking at the group page, under your logo you’ll see a link titled, Message All Members. Click it, type up whatever you need to share and then send it off.

Text Messaging
Sending mass text messages to everyone in your youth group is great because it gives you instant contact with everyone. If you need to cancel a meeting at the last minute or ask the kids to wear old clothes for a messy game an hour before it starts, there’s no way sending out an email is going to reach everyone in time, but a mass text message will take care of it for you instantly. I’ve already recently blogged about this, but basically TxtSignal.com is the way to go just because it’s so simple and easy to use for everyone involved. Plus, ministries are eligible to use this promo code and receive a discount on the monthly cost: EH7DH.

Instant Messenger
When kids are online, they often check the away messages of friends who aren’t at the computer. I know I do! So I created a screen name that remains online all the time and post youth group news and announcements in the away message. In it I include links for more information to our website and frequently run contests for prizes. For example, at the bottom of the away message, after they’ve skimmed through all the youth group news, there’s a link to a movie audio clip. The first person to IM me correctly identifying the movie gets a big one pound chocolate bar at church on Sunday. Or, I link to an obscure picture I took of something at church. The first person to IM me with the correct answer gets a free iTunes download.

More than anything else, students want people to spend time with them.

A bunch of my youth group kids took an online love language test I posted on our youth group site and all of them, except one, scored highest in “quality time.” The one exception is a student who feels loved most through “acts of service,” but even that was only ahead of “quality time” by one point.

The application is clear: more than anything else, students want people to spend time with them. Quality time with a kid communicates love more than gifts, saying nice things, hugs, doing nice things for them, preparing great Bible studies or even putting together fun youth group events. If you want to impact a student, drop whatever you’re doing that probably feels important to you and instead go do something that’s important to them. Just hang out and have fun. That communicates more than you know.

And get their parents to do the same!

I started writing this as a reply to Courtney’s comment on my previous post about my youth group’s website, but it got pretty long and I thought others might want this info, too, so here it is as a blog post instead. Courtney asked,

“Do you mind sharing who you developed your website with? or was it completely on your own?”

I put the site together, but I certainly didn’t code the entire site from scratch. I took free open source web software that other’s have made available and made them all work together like a big puzzle. Here are the “puzzle pieces” for my youth group’s site:

Web Hosting:
Weeding through the thousands of webhosts out there is difficult, but I selected BuyHttp.com. So far my experience with them has been great. Quick and helpful support team and a responsive site. The main reason I went with BuyHttp.com is because they specifically configure their servers to work with Joomla, the content management system I’m using and they don’t oversell their servers (like hosts who give 100 GB of space for $5/month).

Content Management System:
Joomla is the content management system (CMS) I’m using. In case you don’t know what a CMS is, any blog works like a CMS — you login to an administrative section of the website and configure the whole site from there. With my youth group website, I log in to the admin section and set all the parameters, write the content, adjust settings, arrange the layout, etc. I can also install, uninstall and administer all my components from there, too, like the forum, user profiles, photo albums, and everything else.

Template theme:
The template is from YooTheme. Although their themes look pretty slick, they’re a pain in the neck to set up. Fortunately there’s support forums, which I definitely abused.

My main Joomla components
Here are the main components (kinda like plugins) I’m using for the site:

• Private messaging: Clexus
• User profiles: Community Builder
• Download manager: DocMan
• RSS Feeds: DS-Syndicate
• Forum: Fireboard
• Google mapping system: GMaps
• Submit news to front page for youth leaders: JA Submit
• Calendar: JCal Pro
• Comment system: Jom Comment
• Site statistics: JoomaStats
• Photo album: RSGallery2
• Videos manager: Seyret
• Live chat: SMO AJAX Shoutbox
• Event sign-ups: Attend Events
• Streaming music library: Jinzora (not a Joomla component)

There are some other little modules, too, but those are the main parts. You can browse a library of Joomla add-ons like this from the Joomla Extension Directory.

Free Alternatives
Everything here is free except YooTheme, Clexus, and Jom Comment, but there are excellent free alternatives to each of these components.

1. Instead of YooTheme, Google “Joomla templates” and you’ll find an overwhelming number of free ones available. I chose YooTheme mostly because I wanted to have a more unique identity on the web.

2. Instead of Clexus, browse through these free private messaging systems. I chose Clexus just because I had a little budget for the site and thought that Clexus was worth the money. Plus, it integrates well with Fireboard forum and Community Builder.

3. And instead of Jom Comment, use the free AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition or JoomlaComment. I’m using Jom Comment because it was the only commenting system compatible with Seyret, the video manager. Otherwise I’d use AkoComment.

Automatically email front page news
As I mentioned in my previous post, all news posted to the front page of the site by me or a youth leader is automatically emailed to our entire youth group mailing list. The trick for this really isn’t that complicated. In fact, it’s the same process I use here for email subscribers to Life in Student Ministry. I plugged the front page’s RSS feed into Feedburner, registered an account at Feedblitz and imported all my mailing lists.

If you decide to go this route with Joomla, I can save you from a big headache: don’t use Joomla’s default RSS feed. It strips all HTML content, including links and images. Either follow this solution or use the DS-Syndicate component. The advantage of DS-Syndicate is that you can also publish different RSS feeds for different news categories. So, if you post an announcement in the Sr. High category and have that category’s RSS feed linked to a Sr. High mailing list in Feedblitz, the news will only be sent to the Sr. High. A great solution to avoid spamming everyone with irrelevant news every time you update.

The easiest solution for a youth group website
Of course, a simple solution for a youth group website is just to use a blog like Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. It’s less interactive and there’s no logins, personalization or profiles, but commenting on updates might be all you want.

An idea to get this setup for your youth group
I’ve considered starting a little side business of hosting and building youth group websites like mine because the competition is just so expensive. My entire youth group site cost a little over $200, but in my research before building AlexandriaYouth.com I found that most youth group website companies charge into the thousands for sites not nearly as interactive or as flexible. How many normal churches can afford that?! I don’t mind building sites, but offering tech support could become a little overwhelming. Plus, I don’t know what the demand is for a service like this. So, maybe you can help me with the decision:

• Is this a service you’d consider using for your own youth group if a site cost around $300-$500/year (depending on web space and features)?
• Are you a Joomla fan that’s passionate about youth ministry and has time to help me support Joomla-based sites (for pay, of course)?

Post in the comments and let me know.

[tags]Joomla, BuyHttp, Feedburner, Feedblitz, YooTheme, DS-Syndicate, RSS Feed Manger, youth group[/tags]

Chris Day of SerialYouthPastor.com responded to one of my ideas in 130 Youth Ministry Tips & Ideas ebook about using a Skype-in phone number as an information hotline for parents and students to call. During our discussion I mentioned that I’m also thinking about using Skype as a mass text messaging service for sending quick updates and cancellation notices to my students, but at $0.12 per message, that’s too pricey for me. Chris referred me to TxtSignal.com, which is just what I was looking for!

Txt Signal lets me have multiple groups of cell phone contacts. So, I have one group for Jr. High, one for Sr. High and another for cancellation notices for a weekly event we’re doing this summer. The best part is that I don’t have to manually enter all the kids cell phone numbers and accidentally risk accumulating text charges for those who don’t have text messaging plans. The service provides me a link I can easily post on our youth group’s website or send out via email for people to click and sign themselves up. Plus, they can also easily unsubscribe from the service later if they want, so there’s little maintenance on my part.

The downside to the service is that I can’t personalize the callback number as my own cell number. Messages come from [pickaname]@txtsig.us, which cannot be replied to by recipients.

Service plans start $7/month, but I’m using the $14/month plan with 100 contacts and 60 group messages. That’s 6,000 text messages for $14 as opposed to 116 messages for the same price if I used Skype’s SMS service.

Of course, if you have a smaller group you can follow Matt’s instructions for sending mass text messages for free, but it requires a lot more footwork and I’ve found it isn’t as clean or reliable.

Thanks, Chris, for pointing me to this resource. It’s gonna be a life saver!

[UPDATE: Matt, from TxtSignal, informed me of a promo code they have for ministries or any organization that works toward ministry efforts. The promo code is good for a minimum of 10% off and even slightly more depending on the plan (for example, the $14/month plan becomes $12/month, or, 14% off). When signing up for service, use this promotional code: EH7DH]

[tags]Text Signal, SMS, Skype[/tags]