Your youth ministry might be your church’s best kept secret. And in some churches, the only secret. Ha! Don’t let that be the case – here’s 5 ways to think about getting the word out about youth group:
Friendship evangelism – this is our primary vehicle to “get the word out” about HSM. We promise to make an entry-level program that will be safe, fun and have an understandable message. We ask our students to bring their friends – not to everything – but to threshold events and the weekend series. Pray for your friends, share your story with them and when God’s Spirit leads you, invite them to check it out.
Word of mouth – this one is like friendship evangelism, but focuses on the ‘remarkable factor.’ If someone says to a friend, “you won’t believe what they did in youth group” then you’ve hit something remarkable – you have to talk about it again and again. While you probably don’t want to program with this as your main focus, it is a great byproduct to help get the word about about your youth ministry.
Viral Videos – this is a new one for us! During Tesoro’s You Own the Weekend they made a really strong rap video. When the service was over, we uploaded it to YouTube and as of this post it has close to 8,000 views in the past 8 days. Make sure what you make is titled promoting your student minsitry and there are clear links to the youth group website or next steps.
Advertising – This is one we’ve yet to experiment with, but I’d like to work some connections within the church and see if some local businesses would put up posters of our youth group events. If a local teen hangout like a froyo shop would allow a few postcards to be left on the counter. I dream of a day when a student walks into a theater and sees a youth ministry commercial. Why aren’t we using Facebook ads? What if several local ministries went together on some and gave credit to everyone so many could benefit from it without breaking the budget.
Be visible in everything your church prints/does – you know this is a big one for me recently if you read about when I realized that we’re largely invisible to a casual attender of our church. Get space in the bulletin. Make sure there’s an announcement about something in your youth minsitry every other week. If the church sends out a postcard, getting banners made or designing a new website – make sure you ask to get on there somewhere. No one cares about your youth ministry as much as you do.
What other ways are you using to get the word out? Share with other youth workers in the comments!
JG
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Josh Griffin has been in youth ministry for 15+ years and serves as the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church. [
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Geoff Stewart serves the Jr / Sr High School Pastor at Peace Portal Alliance Church in Surrey B.C.
We recently made some business cards that has information about our youth ministry times with our logo and youth website and times that we meet. Kids take these and can hand them out at school as a way to invite a friend to come with them.
Local newspaper = great opportunity for free advertising. I recently put together a service project/video scavenger hunt thing. I contacted our local newspaper a few weeks in advance to tell them about what we were going to do and see if they’d run a story on it with a picture of the winning team. They said, “Sure, why not.” So it was a free prize for the winner (names and picture in local paper) and great PR for our group. I wrote up an article with a pic and emailed it to the paper and they didn’t even change it at all. Perfect!
1. Produce shirts for events that students will actually like to wear after the even.
2. Social Networking (twitter, facebook, myspace, etc)
3. Texting students/parents/etc
4. Email
5. Banner in the foyer at your church
That is just a few that help keep us “visible”
..um.. in the first paragraph, is HSM stand for High School Musical? Word of mouth is alot of youth-aged love it but are embarassed to act like they know what it is…
we make recap videos for every big event we do. parents and church members love to see what they are supporting. plus i re-use the video as a sweet promo video to advertise next years event.
Our youth group is called The Edge and every Thursday night we have a live feed from ustream called The Edge LIVE. Myself and 2 of my high school seniors get together and talk about the week, have guest appearances, and discuss our church/youth group. I wasn’t real sure how it was all going to work out but it’s been amazing! When I go the the local high schools the students actually recognize me from the show. Restaurants in area have given us free coupons and vouchers and we advertise for them on the show. We usually have a weekly sponsor. God is doing some cool things with this!
Also, ustream is a free host… I think it would be sweet to see other youth groups putting out shows and reaching their community.
Almost for got to advertise!!! The Edge LIVE @ 8:00 EST http://ustream.tv/channel/the-edge-live
I work in a fairly small town and the city actually owns the theater and it operates under the umbrella of our community center (gym, workout facility, municipal pool, etc) and they have a staff member who works with organizations on publicity so we can run ads during the previews at the theater for around $50 each month.