This is brilliant television.

JG

Someone texted me today and said that in Cincinnati at the Group Conference we would have to grab some Skyline. Unsure what they meant I Googled it. And oh yeah, I’m definitely in for some of this.

JG

This weekend we’re giving something pretty cool a test drive. We rented some Audience Response Systems (ARS) from Interactive Church – think like the things that people could vote with on the classic show America’s Funniest Home Videos. They’re similar (but not exactly) like the devices in the video above.

Jake and I will be using them during the Group National Youth Ministry Conference evening sessions, and we couldn’t pass up the chance to give them a run here at church first.

For our Choose Your Own Adventure series, students will be able to choose the songs we sing, the order of the service and vote in various polls throughout the service. We’ve even got a “Choose the Ending” video they vote for in the middle of the video, then we play the selected ending. Our guys have been working overtime on this, I think we’ve got most of the bugs worked out for now. Should be a programming nightmare but a really great weekend. Full report after the services!

JG

“What would J.J. Abrams Do?”
-Josh Pease, when talking about a programming element from this weekend.

JG

This afternoon we recorded Episode 66 of the Simply Youth Ministry podcast with Doug, Jana and McGill. Catch it on iTunes soon … if you dare.

JG

Just left a meeting talking about Easter planning – there’s a ton that goes into the weekend of Easter since so many people visit church that weekend. As we talked about marketing and advertising, some of the “standard” stuff we do came up – personal invitations, newspaper advertising, banners/signage, etc. I thought it might be fun to hear about what you’re doing this year to get the word out about your church’s Easter services! Got a creative idea? Did you do something that really worked last year?

Skywriting is probably out – but everything else is fair game! I’ll forward this post on to the lead person for Easter, would love to start a conversation about this to help everyone have a great turnout!

JG