We’ve been getting quite a few questions about You Own the Weekend series we just finished this weekend – so here are a few answers and explanation to some of the questions we’ve been getting from my man Pease:

How did you pull it off? Each weekend was primarily run by our student leaders from that school. 2-3 weeks out we would start the brainstorming process with these students and we would encourage them to think about everything from in-school promotion, to the topic of the weekend, to the flow of the programming, to whatever takeaway/after-service event the students would want to do. In those conversations we encouraged them to think of how to make the programming school-centric.

What were some examples students did in programming? So week 1 a school did a rock version of their alma mater. Week 2 was a rap video about their school. Week 3 had a 30-foot inflatable cougar head that students walked through on their way in. Also, students decorated (streamers, shoe-polishing windows in our building, etc.) to their school’s colors.

How did you get the word out? We also really challenged students to think creatively about how to build momentum at their schools. What we found though was that word of mouth was irreplaceable. In addition to this, one week students passed out fliers. Another week students wore the exact same promo shirt for the week leading up to their weekend. Also, we encouraged our students to involve people from other churches/non-Christians. Two of the three weeks we had at least one or two students working on the weekend who wasn’t a Christian … which was incredible.

Did you work with the schools themselves? Ultimately though we don’t know if we necessarily built bridges with the school itself. While students definitely thought it was cool, and while we definitely had huge attendance, we really didn’t build bridges with the teachers/administration, which maybe is something we should focus on when we do this again.

JG