The following is a written interview I did back in February for someone whose blog has since shut down. This interview was never published, so I got permission to post it here for you guys instead. It feels a bit weird to publish someone else’s interview of me on my own site, but his questions are common ones that I’m frequently asked. Although some of these answers are a bit inaccurate now (for example, a couple people on staff at my church know about my sites now), I figured it might still be helpful for people who are wondering about these questions and would like a “behind the scenes” glimpse of Life In Student Ministry.

1) First of all, tell our readers a little bit about the work you do online (what blogs, websites, social media accounts, youth group sites, etc., do you manage?).

• Life In Student Ministry [Blog. HQ for YM Mentorships, YM training videos, LIVE YM Talk, Freebie Fridays, etc.]
• OnlineMissionsTrip.com [HQ for Online Missions Trip]
• MinistryQuestions.com [Recent project, details below]
• MinistryWebsites.biz [Side business that will hopefully keep future projects free]
• @rockinp on Twitter [Twitter]
• Tim Schmoyer on Facebook [Facebook]
• YouTube [YM Training videos, my youth group news, and personal videos]
• AlexandriaYouth.com [My youth group's site that is quickly becoming old-school.]
• …and other sites and ideas I’ve abandoned (like PlugRug.com)

2) Life In Student Ministry runs like a well-oiled machine. Where do you find inspiration for fresh content, and how far in advance do you prepare for each post?

Inspiration comes from almost anywhere: various conversations, my wife, issues in my own youth ministry, other blogs, and totally random thoughts from the Lord.

The preparation for posts really varies. Sometimes I’ll sit down with an idea, crank it out and publish it within a couple minutes. Other times I start with an idea, save it as a draft, and come back to it from time to time as I think about it. Right now I have 40 drafts started for blog post ideas, some of them dating back to 2006. So, there’s definitely not a set process of what I write and when I publish.

3) How much does the Life In Student Ministry community contribute to the content you deliver on the site?

Again, it varies. As previously mentioned, the content at Life In Student Ministry is a combination between a lot of different places. Sometimes the comments spark an issue that needs greater attention, so I’ll blog about that. Other times it’s an email from someone. Posts also are based on an ongoing need or question I see. And still other times it’s something that’s never been addressed before I think needs to be talked about. Other times it’s an old issue that has my own spin on it.

4) A search for “student ministry” on Google brings up Life In Student Ministry as the third result. What effort (if any at all) or marketing do you put into the site to attract new visitors?

A couple years ago I started reading a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) online. Based on some of the advice I read, I made some changes to my site’s structure, which helped, but the ranking mainly comes from three things:

• Consistent new content over time
• Incoming links from other sites
• Blogging about roughly the same topic over and over again

I’ve also found that some of the conventional SEO wisdom out there is totally dead wrong in regards to my site. Not sure why, but some standard SEO practices actually kill my site’s Google traffic for sustained periods of time. That’s why it’s helpful to track site stats and experiment on your own a bit without swallowing whatever the “experts” say.

As far as marketing is concerned, though, I’ve never spent a dime on advertising or anything like that. Not only do I not have the money nor the interest to do that, but social networking is both better and free! I create content primarily for people, not Google. If people like it, they talk about it with others, post links on their own sites, and share it in their own way. Google has ears everywhere and picks up on that.

5) Your most recent project is MinistryQuestions.com. Can you tell us where you got the idea, and what the response has been like?

The idea for MinistryQuestions.com came from two places, actually.

I used to get a fair amount of youth ministry questions showing up in my Inbox. Instead of answering them privately, a long time ago I started a Q&A feature on my blog where I’d publicly answer some of them. However, the questions quickly began to pile up and before long no one was getting the answers they deserved. I also found that most of the time people gave better advice in the comments on my blog than I did in the post, which was great, but it made me start thinking through a better system for answering questions.

Around this same time I started the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program, which was great, but after the first round generated almost 200 applications, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see there was a huge need among youth workers — to be able to ask ministry questions and be mentored one-on-one. Since the mentorship is limited to however many mentors are on the team (currently 16 of us), I wanted to figure out a way to put the mentorship online where an open community of youth workers could encourage, mentor, and support each other.

MinistryQuestions.com is a response to both of those situations. It took months of dreaming, planning, and a huge financial investment to make it happen, but so far the Kingdom impact has been totally worth it. Many people are embracing the site and investing into each other’s ministries, which is awesome to see. I know I’ve been blessed tremendously through the people there! In the first week of its launch, it had over 30,000 hits, which was great!

The future vision for MQ is to have it extend into other areas besides youth ministry. It’s currently populated with youth ministry since that’s my primary audience, but hopefully over time it will grow to encompass worship ministry, children’s ministry, pastoral ministry, and more.

6) How do you balance time with your wife, your students, and investing in other student pastors?

I’m not really sure. Probably because I don’t have any kids of my own yet (first one due this August), but honestly, none of the areas seem to be lacking. I’m very conscious about putting my wife first, my ministry second, and my sites last as a hobby. I don’t really have much interest in watching TV, going out to movies, or other things like that, so the time most people spend on entertainment and such I spend developing content online. It feels so much rewarding than keeping up with TV shows.

It will be interesting to see how this changes in August when my first kid is born. Life In Student Ministry and other projects may slow down. Who knows.

7) On average, how much time do you spend updating, creating, and sharing content on the web each week?

Hmm… Fridays are my day off from the church, so I create most of it then and post it online throughout the rest of the week. My wife is usually at work on Fridays, so it doesn’t detract from our time together. So, maybe 10 hours a week, give or take, of course.

8 ) How supportive is your church of the things you are doing online?

Honestly, I don’t think they even know about most of the things I do online. Some of the staff have seen parts of it, but none of them know about all of it. As I already mentioned, I don’t really promote my content outside of online social networking, so I’ve never brought it up and they’ve never asked. I’d be fine if they knew, but I’ll wait for someone else to bring it up.

9) Lastly, do you have any advice, tips, or recommendations for youth pastors who have a passion for helping each other like you do?

• Just start doing it. Life In Student Ministry started as a personal blog one night in 2005 because I was bored and didn’t feel like playing video games. I threw WordPress on it and started blogging about nonsense with my mom and dad being the only readers. But as I continued to write, I tended to write about what I’m most passionate about: youth ministry. Over time it morphed into what it is today. I certainly didn’t set out to create what it is today. Others started connecting to it slowly and I realized that the Lord was giving me an opportunity to use it to serve Him.
• Do it for the long haul for the right reasons. Too many people have a great vision for something, but stop because they’re not becoming as popular as quickly as they think they should be. Or, they think that because they’re only helping 1 or 2 people that it’s not worth their time. Just like youth group, be a good steward with the 1 or 2 people God has sent your way and you’ll be blessed to serve others later.
• Be different. Seth Godin writes about this a lot and it’s absolutely true: don’t copy ideas someone else is already doing — no one talks about that. Do something unique for the kingdom. Meet a need no one else is meeting. Do something that’s extraordinary, something worth talking about and sharing with others. Build the kingdom in ways no one else is. That’s where the YM mentorship came from, MinistryQuestions.com, YM training videos, Online Missions Trip, etc.
• Start off small and invest as it grows. Don’t discount yourself because you think you need to start your ideas with a lot of big fancy equipment, an amazing website design, or a huge audience. Start simple and build from there if your idea takes off. For example, I started the weekly YM training videos with nothing more than my Macbook’s iSight webcam and iMovie. Now that iTunes downloads and views are over 1,000 per video, I’ve invested in an hi-def video camera and an good mic. Same with the LIVE YM Talks every Friday. I started those with my little gaming headset that sounded awful, but the idea took off, so I invested into a better mic and recording software. Even my website’s design a little over a year ago was hideous, but as traffic grew it was worth investing into something better.
• Have a plan for making money. I know this sounds weird, but new ideas often come with a price tag. Of course you’ll need to start cheap like I just mentioned, but as your idea grows, you’ll need to invest into a better webhost (or increased traffic will knock you offline like it did to me), better equipment, or even have to pay designers and web developers. Adsense supported most of my projects until I decided to provide all the books for the YM mentorship to the mentees for free, and more recently when MinistryQuestions.com required almost $1,000 up-front just to get it started. Since I never want to charge a penny for a single thing I do to serve the Lord online, I need to find other ways to finance ideas. For example, MinistryWebsites.biz is an attempt to generate funds to keep my projects online. Unless you have a lot of extra money lying around somewhere, I advise you also come up with a plan to keep the finances of your ideas out of your personal bank account as much as possible.

The media is has really latched on to the Online Missions Trip over the past two weeks and given it more publicity than I ever imagined. In fact, last week I did 2-4 radio interviews per day, plus several magazine and written interviews. What started as a 2-week outreach campaign for my own youth group has really spread into something huge. Over 3,000 teenagers representing almost every continent will be actively sharing their faith using social media from February 1-14, 2009. Crazy! Sounds like the Lord is doing something here.

I’m continually adding resources to OnlineMissionsTrip.com, the most recent being a link to a free book download called, “Welcome to the Family,” by Youth for Christ. It’s 6 chapters long and would work perfectly for helping a new believer start the life-long journey of discipleship. It probably works best in a one-on-one format, but it could also be used in a small group setting. Thanks to Jonathan McKee for making this book freely available at TheSource4YM.com!

Download “Welcome to the Family” book

There are several other good options for new believer follow-up at OnlineMissionsTrip.com.

———————————————————————-
Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk! Jason Lamb of Dare 2 Share Ministries will lead our discussion about Deep & Wide Ministry. Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

———————————————————————-
Been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer? Apply for a FREE 10 week one-on-one Life In Student Ministry Mentorship with one of our 13 youth ministry veterans. Application closes on January 24, 2009. Mentorship is made available for free thanks to Lifeway Students, who are supplying all the resources and materials to each mentee. Thanks, Lifeway Students!

Brian Ford wrote a three-week lesson series for youth groups to use as pre-trip training for the Online Missions Trip. The “missions trip to Facebook” kicks off February 1 and runs through to February 14, so if you start the pre-trip training this Sunday, that would give you exactly three weeks before the missions trip launches.

Thankfully, Brian Ford made these lessons freely available to whoever can use them. Even if your group isn’t participating in the Online Missions Trip in three weeks, these lessons are still excellent for challenging your kids to look outside themselves and the people in their church to the lost world out there that desperately needs to hear the “good news” of the Gospel.

These lessons are available both in Word and PDF format. Your choice.

Download “Sharing Christ through Social Media” PDF

Download “Sharing Christ through Social Media” DOC

———————————————————————-

This afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk we are definitely looking forward to a great conversation with Dale Tadlock, a youth ministry veteran for over 20 years. He will lead us in a discussion about achieving longevity in youth ministry (even when it’s tough!). Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

I love supporting you and your ministry! With the on-going work of the free missions trip, Freebie Fridays, LIVE YM Talks, weekly youth ministry training videos, and more, they all require funds. Most organizations reimburse themselves by charging you to access their resources, materials and ideas, but since I want to keep everything free, I need to find alternative ways to fund these projects.

Extending youth ministry advice and mentoring online

One of the largest undertakings is the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program, where new youth workers have one-on-one mentoring with a youth ministry veteran for 10 weeks straight, plus they get a slew of books and resources, all for FREE! The demand for the mentorship has been overwhelming. Hundreds of new youth workers apply for each round from all over the world, seeking one-on-one advice, training and input into their ministry to teenagers. Unfortunately, only 13 of them can be accepted into the program for each 10-week round.

I have an idea of how to extend this mentoring, advice, and help to youth workers all over the world online for free, but it will take some initial start-up funds to purchase the scripts, pay designers, and set it all up.

Asking for your support

I’ve never done this before, but people on Twitter encouraged me to do it, so here you go: Since everything else at Life In Student Ministry is completely free, I’m asking that if this is something you believe in, would you mind contributing toward this project of providing youth ministry advice online? My goal is to launch it in mid-January along side of the next YM Mentorship round. The cost of $700 is the bare-minimum to get it launched, so anything above and beyond that is greatly appreciated to compensate my time and server resources. (Monthly costs thereafter will only be the server fees that I already pay anyway.)

Other ways to support Life In Student Ministry

Here’s how I currently support the expenses and the various Life In Student Ministry projects. Any way you can help is greatly appreciated!

1. Link to me.
I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it really helps. Incoming links increase my Google rankings, which means more traffic, a larger audience, and thus higher value for the site’s one (small) advertising space, more Google ad clicks, and higher revenue.

2. Complete a freebie site.
Sign up under one of my referral links for a free iPod Touch, Xbox 360, Wii, Laptop, or whatever and complete two trial offers. Once you’ve done so, I get $50. Plus, after you refer a couple people, you get a free iPod Touch or another prize out of the deal!

3. Donate via PayPal.
Obviously, the easiest and simplest way for both of us is to just donate via PayPal.

4. Buy a ministry website.
In October I started MinistryWebsites.biz, a small business that provides websites for ministries as a way to support the ongoing efforts of Life In Student Ministry. MinistryWebsites.biz gives you a state-of-the-art system for building and maintaining a website that is so simple, intuitive and easy to use. Check it out and sign up for your FREE 3-page website to check it out.

5. Sign-up for a year of service at Animoto.com
In case you’re not familiar with Animoto.com, they make it easy to create very professional videos from your digital photos. For an example, check out the Christmas greetings video I made for me and Dana this year. The guys at Animoto.com have been gracious enough to toss me a couple bucks whenever someone signs up for their $30/year All Access Pass using this link.

Thank you for your investment into teenagers and youth workers around the world!

Last Sunday night I kicked off my youth group’s pre-trip training for the Online Missions Trip by talking about, “What is the Great Commission and how does it relate to me?” Greg Stier has a good outline for the talk in his book, “You’re Next: Leader’s Guide,” which I heavily borrowed from and tweaked for my own group. With his permission, I’m sharing my revised copy of his lesson with you guys.

It works as a perfect introduction to the Online Missions Trip. Or, even if you’re not participating in the Online Missions Trip, feel free to tweak it for a good discussion about the Great Commission, evangelism, and sharing Christ with unbelievers.

How to use it
The format of this lesson is structured for my high school large-group meeting. Due to our size, I start by telling kids to sit in groups of 3 or 4 around the room and designate one person to be the group leader. Each group leader gets a copy of the “Small Group Discussions” sheet and is expected to lead the discussion in their small group. The format then switches back and forth between me teaching for a couple minutes and them talking in their groups. If your group is small enough, you may just want to have the discussions as an entire group.

The music video I used
In this lesson I used the music video “Savin’ Me” by Nickelback. It’s a powerful message by a group of unbelievers saying, “Heaven’s gates won’t open up for me… say it if it’s worth saving me.” Although I’m not sure how legal it is, I downloaded an HD version of the music video here since iTunes won’t let put their copy on a DVD. Download at your own risk.

Download “What is the Great Commission?” youth Bible lesson

———————————————————————-

There is no LIVE YM Talk on December 26 or January 2, but we are definitely looking forward to a great conversation on January 9. Dale Tadlock, a youth ministry veteran for over 20 years, will lead us in a discussion about achieving longevity in youth ministry. Info on the LIVE YM Talk page.

Yesterday I wrote about why I’m abandoning outreach events and gave several reasons why “outreach campaigns” may be a more effective solution.

For several months now I’ve been planning an outreach campaign for my own youth group and am excited to have other youth groups join us! The best part is that it’s completely FREE! We’ll be going all over the world, sharing the gospel with friends both in our local neighborhoods and friends far away. It’s an online missions trip, a “missions trip to Facebook,” if you will.

The Internet has never made it so easy to share Christ with those all over the world! Teenagers spend a crazy amount of hours talking with friends on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, World of Warcraft and other such social hangouts online about things that don’t really matter in light of eternity, let’s train them to share their faith and push them to do it online. The Online Missions Trip is a 2-week campaign to empower them to use social media to share Christ with their friends who don’t yet know Him.

The structure looks like this:

January whatever-31, 2009

Pre-trip training. Use youth group meetings to train kids how to share their faith, think through the Online Missions Trip concept, and start praying for unsaved friends.

February 1-14, 2009

Online Missions Trip! During these two weeks teens and youth leaders are engaging in spiritual conversations with unsaved friends online. They’re uploading videos, photos, posting links, using status updates to share what God’s doing in their lives, writing notes, sending messages, posting on blogs, creating event invites to youth group, and anything else that will bring God up in a conversation that starts online and hopefully spreads to a face-to-face discussion.

February 15-whenever, 2009

Outreach event/series and new-believer follow-up starts. Follow-up on this missions trip with a series that helps the new teens in your ministry either investigate Christianity a bit closer or start growing in their new faith. Be sure to follow-up one-on-one with new converts, as well.

To learn more about this trip, visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com. There are many ideas, free resources and tools, a 24/7 Prayer Room, a Facebook app you can use, and more. It also has a video of me explaining the trip in more detail.

While you’re there, join the OnlineMissionsTrip.com Facebook Group and meet some of the other teens and youth leaders who will be attending this missions trip with you in February.

———————————————————————————

Thanks to YouthBytes, Dare 2 Share Ministries, and Xtreme Youth Alliance for their support, promotion, and free resources for the Online Missions Trip! Thank you Brian Ford and Michael Rothermel for all your help in creating content and tools for this missions trip that will bring teenagers to Christ! And thanks Janelle Painter for designing the Online Mission Trip logo!