Wiffiti.comI’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 text 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 text 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.

Given the several moderation options and filters, you have complete control over what actually shows up on the screen. Oh, and it’s totally free!

With a couple of my youth group kids burning through 18,000 text messages in one month each (yes, seriously!), it almost seems remiss not to use it to communicate with teens. I use TxtSignal.com to send announcements and last-minute reminders, cancel events, send daily devotional thoughts, run contests, share prayer requests,

and get quick feedback about a question or idea, and more. It’s definitely a very effective tool for communicating with teens in our ministry. Although the TxtSignal.com plan I use runs $30/month, you can get plans as cheap as $10/month with a 30-day FREE trial. They also offer a 10% discount for ministries.

TXTSignal.com

POLLEVERYWHERE.COM specializes in polling audiences. Results are displayed in real time and easily embeds into a PowerPoint or a website. Polls with 30 votes or less are free.

REACTEE.COM prints tshirts that invite people to text to a keyword to a short code and receive an predetermined reply with more info.

FACEBOOK fans of your youth group page can receive your page updates on their cell phones automatically. Get new fans by having them send “fan [pagename]” to FBOOK (32665).

LIFE IN STUDENT MINISTRY STUDENTMINISTRY.ORG

WEB TOOLS FOR YM

Parent Newsletter

TheParentLink.com provides a customizable newsletter full of great content, insights and resources for parents. You can add your own logo, write your own columns if you want or use their default content, which is usually excellent. Each newsletter also includes a calendar where you can post scheduled events and meetings. When you’re finished, they give you several ways to save and distribute your newsletter: PDF, HTML or Word document.

• Complete: A ready-to-print, monthly newsletter.

• Flexible: Customize 2 articles, calendar and more.

•Relevant: Biblical-based content, 7-12th grade topics.

• Affordable: $99 per year.

Newsletter Images

iStockPhoto.com is a cheap place to buy professional, royalty-free images, audio, and video for your handouts, newsletters, and publications.

ANIMOTO.COM THE END OF YOUR SLIDESHOWS

Animoto.com is the easiest way to quickly create professional looking video slideshows from all the pictures you’ve collected of your group over the years. Upload your photos, add

your own soundtrack, Animoto analyzes the music, and melds it with the photos in a way that feels somewhat like an MTV music video.

A free account will get you unlimited 30-second slideshows, so if you want something longer than that you’ll have to pay $3 per video or upgrade to an All Access account for $30/year. Alternatively, I heard some churches are scoring free All Access accounts through Animoto’s “For A Cause” program. (Click on “a cause” at the bottom of the screen on their site.)

YouVersion.com/Live YouVersion Live gives you a way to interact with church and youth services and other live events using your mobile device. Students can follow along with message outlines and take notes, read related Bible verses and click through to the expanded passage, vote on a poll and see the results live, ask questions anonymously, give, request prayer, and take it all home with them on your phone. It works with any web-enabled phone, as well as any computer with an internet connection. And it’s free!

COVENANTEYES.COM

As a guy in ministry, it is absolutely imperative that I protect my integrity. In case an accusation is ever made, I have reports on record. Definitely worth the $8/month! Use promo code “youthministry” to get the first 30 days free!

I have Covenant Eyes installed on every computer in my house. It logs every web page I visit and sends a weekly email report to a couple people for accountability.

MinistryQuestions.com is an online community of ministry workers who invest into

each other’s ministries by answering questions, giving advice, providing encouragement, sharing

ideas, and recommending resources, all through text, audio,

and video interaction.

YOUTUBE DOWNLOADERS

Vixy.net[website]

MediaConverter.org [website]

Zamzar.com[website]

VidDownloader.com [website]

KickYouTube.com [website]

DownloadHelper.net [firefox add-on]

VideoBox [mac software from tastyapps.com]

TubeTV [mac software from chimoosoft.com]

SHOULD YOU CREATE A FACEBOOK GROUP OR A FACEBOOK PAGE FOR YOUR YOUTH GROUP? WHICH IS BETTER?

Short story: absolutely, definitely, positively, without a doubt, create a page, not a group. Problem solved.

Groups served their time back in the day, but pages are under heavy development and will continue to

REMEMBERTHEMILK.COMThere’s a lot of different tools out there for organizing tasks, reminders and to-do lists, and I know almost everyone has a different method of keeping track of these items, from post-it notes to PDAs. I’ve tried a couple different systems and most of them are okay, but none of them are great except RememberTheMilk.com.It is by far my favorite and the easiest way to make my tasks,reminders and to-do lists easily accessible. The best part: it’sall FREE and it integrates with my iPod Touch, Twitter, Macdashboard, iCal, Gmail, Google Calendar, it provides txt alerts,reminders, and much more. I have no idea how I’d stay on topof ministry items without RememberTheMilk.com.

Website Services

A couple places where you can create an online presence for your

youth ministry

WordPress.com [free] Squarespace.com [paid] Posterous.com [free] MinistryWebsites.biz [free/paid]

receive boosts and enhancements. A Facebook page acts like a “profile” account for your group and has several key features that group’s do not have:

• Post status updates

• The ability to add Facebook applications

• Post pictures and videos from your cell phone (great for parents while you’re away on a trip)

• Some pages integrate with Twitter

• Create a custom URL that easy for people to remember and share (visit facebook.com/username to create it)

• View analytics of your page’s fans and interaction with the page

• Promote your page by adding a “fan box” to your website

• Import blog posts from an external site as notes

• Organize photos into albums

There are other advantages of using a page over a group, too, but these are the ones that will pertain to the average youth group.

If you don’t have a Facebook Page for your youth group, get started with one at facebook.com/pages/create.php

COMMUNICATION IS PERCEPTIONCommunication in ministry is vitally important because it really sets the stage for how people will perceive the ministry. Solid communication gives the impression that the ministry’s leadership is trustworthy, capable, and competent, whereas weak communication, even if the actual ministry is solid, leaves people feeling that the leadership is lacking direction and credibility.

On a very practical level, here are the avenues my ministry uses to communicate with teens and parents throughout the week.

Youth group website - this is the main hub of our communication. Most info is on the front page for easy access and navigation. Great for perspective visitors and parents.

Email list - used primarily by parents.

Text messaging - perfect for last minute updates, reminders, cancellations, questions, feedback, prayer chain, birthday wishes, contests, and more. Used primarily by jr. and sr. high students.

Facebook page - since many jr. highers are not legally old enough to use Facebook, this is used primarily by sr. high students.

Bulletin inserts - for church visitors and those who don’t connect elsewhere.

Youth kiosk - located outside our sanctuary with sign-ups, news video loop, promos and general info for visitors.

Twitter - the RSS feed is embedded in our website, so it’s used mostly to post short, quick, easy updates.

iTunes news videos - weekly news videos are posted to Facebook and YouTube and published on our website as well as iTunes so teens can easily sync new episodes to their iPods to watch while on the bus or working out in the gym.

Personal contact - my personal contact information is readily available for anyone who wants to contact me directly.

Email campaign services to check out

1. MailChimp.com

2. Aweber.com

3. Feedblitz.com

4. ConstantContact.com

WHY AN EMAIL SERVICE?Not all email lists are created the same. Sending a mass message with blind carbon copy to your youth group parents every week may get the job done, but there’s several advantages of using one of the

services above.

• Evaluate and track each message’s performance (open rate, clicks, user engagement, more).

• Lower probability of your message being trapped as spam.

• Dynamically use personal names and other info in the messages.

• Use attractive templates that make your messages look professional and engaging.

• Give users the ability to sign themselves up for your list as well as unsubscribe in the future.

I use MailChimp.com because it’s free for lists under 500 subscribers.

TIM SCHMOYERTim is the full-time youth pastor at Alexandra Covenant Church in Alexandria, MN, where he serves an incredible group of students with an outstanding team of adult youth leaders.

LIFE IN STUDENT MINISTRYStudentMinistry.org is the home of the Youth Ministry Mentorship for new youth workers and the host of a weekly live youth ministry talk show. This site also provides free youth ministry resources every week, ideas, advice, encouragement, devotionals for youth workers, free training videos, and much more.

CONNECT ONLINEStudentMinistry.org

facebook.com/StudentMinistrytwitter.com/timschmoyeryoutube.com/godrox

Email: tim@schmoyer.netGoogle Talk: tim@schmoyer.netSkype: rockinyp