Most youth ministers I know don’t like feeling like “sales people,” but if we’re going to spend hours planning events for our teens then we need to spend some time publicizing the events.

Being the ridiculously cheap human being that I am, I found Doug Hall’s book, Jumpstart Your Brain, in one of those four-books-for-one-dollar deals. The cover caught my eye, so I signed up, and I’m glad I did because Doug’s humorous writing has inspired and motivated me for years.

Last year, I found another one of his books, Jumpstart Your Business Brain, in my local library. In this book he outlines the three pieces of information we should include anytime we publicize our ministry.

They are:

1. Benefit
• Keep the audience’s actual needs in mind (This happens to be very similar to my One Sentence Discription of Ministry).
• Don’t list mere features, but benefits that have pizzazz.
• Here are a few questions he suggests we ask to help identify the benefits:
• Why does this exist?
• Why is it important?
• Why is it necessary?
• Post your benefit in your most important place—your name.
2. Real Reason to Believe
• What is your credibility?
• The world is tired of sales people making promises they can’t keep. Why can our audience trust that we will actually provide the Benefit we just promised?
• The most powerful source of credibility is to tell the truth (Yet another Christian principal).
3. Dramatic Difference
• How relevant is your point of difference? Remember we are here to serve them; are we? (I love the fact that Doug Hall reiterates that we are here to serve them. There are some things that Christians can learn from capitalists.)
• Why are you the only one who can offer this?

This is a basic outline of the three points he says every publication should have. The first half of Jumpstart Your Business Brain elaborates on these points by discussing things such as the “five proven strategies for communicating Real Reason to Believe.” The second half of the book explores techniques for generating creativity in group collaborations, which is yet another important task of youth ministers.

You should definitely check your local library to see if they carry any of Doug Hall’s books. I recommend you start with Jumpstart Your Brain then read Jumpstart Your Business Brain. In the latter, Doug rescinds some if the ideas he discusses in the former, but in Jumpstart Your Brain he writes more “from the gut” so it’s more inspiring and motivating. In Jumpstart Your Business Brain he discusses the scientific research behind effective publications and collaborative creativity so it provides more logical, practical ideas.

(They’ve changed the book cover)

Without question, the most effective way to evangelize teenagers is to have peers evangelizing peers. Part of the reason we cancel our small groups once a month is to plan an event that our teenagers will feel comfortable inviting their friends to. But that doesn’t mean adults are off the hook; even if some of the other ways we reach out to teenagers are less effective, we have to keep trying.

A while ago we discovered a couple ways to make one of the less effective outreach techniques a little more effective. One of my volunteers did some research to find out what kind of snail-mail parishioners actually read. He discovered that a simple 5’x7’ postcard is our best bet.

I’m not a big fan of mailings. I don’t like wasting hours of my life typing, labeling, folding, stuffing, licking, and stamping something that I know people will barely skim over before tossing it out. But his postcard discovery changed my outlook. Postcards save me a ton of time; There’s less space so I don’t feel pressured to fill a whole blank page, and there’s no folding or stuffing which is the part of mailings I dread the most. And apparently people are more likely to read something if they don’t have to open it. Win-Win. Plus, the postcard solves the age-old debate “Should I address this to the teen or to the parent?” We always address our postcards to the teenagers, but I like to imagine the parents scanning the card before dropping it into the mail pile.

I don’t like to think about or talk about marketing our Church, but if we want to effectively reach out to the registered-non-participating teenagers, then it might be helpful to borrow a few marketing strategies. Tomorrow, I’ll share Doug Hall’s three keys for effective mailings. Doug Hall built a million-dollar consulting business and he says he did it all with direct mail marketing, so his pointers should be able to help our humble church flyers.

(Look, I made it through an entire post without using ellipses or parentheses, oh wait . . . darn it!)

This has got to be the epitome of Dad-cooking.

A long time ago, before Richard the Deuce abandoned me for big-city youth ministry, we had a Souperbowl fundraiser (Soup, salad, and a bread bowl after the Sunday masses on Superbowl Sunday). One of the parents gave us this recipe. It was our bestseller and has become my all-time favorite soup.

Rule 1: Don’t measure anything.

Ingredients:

• Tomato Soup
• Croutons
• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
• Oregano or Italian spices mix
• Pepperoni

Instructions:

Mix, heat, pray, eat, pray again and thank Jesus for Pizza Soup.

I’ve tried and failed at every kind of prayer technique the Church teaches. I’m inspired by Brother Lawrences’s simple “Practicing the Presence of God.” And I’m in awe of people who have the discipline to pray the Divine Office without fail.

I used to assume these two prayer techniques were mutually exclusive, as if they were spiritual gifts given to “Type A” and “Type B” personalities.

While reading some of St. Teresa of Avila’s writings on prayer, I discovered something that validated a recent experience I had. St. Teresa outlines a specific technique for developing a mediative and contemplative prayer life (she considers meditation and contemplation to be two different things). So for years I categorized her as a disciplined prayer warrior . . .which she was.

But she makes one powerful point that I some how missed until a couple weeks ago. She says that one of the keys to developing a meditative or contemplative prayer life is preparing yourself to pray. As I read over her thoughts more closely I discovered that what she means by preparing yourself to pray is very similar to Brother Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God. In fact, she says that if you don’t prepare yourself to pray during during your regular daily schedule then you won’t be able to pray when it is time to meditate. And the opposite is true too. That if we don’t set aside specific times of prayer then we will be unable to experience what Brother Lawrence calls the Presence of God in our daily lives.

They aren’t mutually exclusive, but completely dependent on each other.

After my most recent failure to pray like Brother Lawrence, I tried to pray the Divine Office. But I didn’t feel like the Divine Office alone would get me close enough to “praying at all times” so I threw in couple rosaries and a few other traditional prayers. My prayer schedule was so intense that I didn’t really have time to do anything but work and pray (sound familiar?), and somewhere in the middle of all that extra business I found myself being constantly aware of God’s presence. I’m not sure I experience the kind of Presence of God Brother Lawrence felt, but I couldn’t do anything without thinking about my next round of prayers. I don’t know that I’ve ever enjoyed praying so much in my entire life.

So what happened? Well, you know, I got lazy and the whole thing fell apart. . .again.

I use YouTube videos almost every week in our youth ministry. I’ve tried several different sites and add-ons for downloading the videos and here are the two that I recommend:

Online Converter: www.tubefish.net

This is the easiest way to get a video in mpeg format. YouTube videos are in .flv (flash video) format, and this site converts it for you then lets you download it. All you have to do is cut and paste the web address of the video you want. There are several other sites that work the same way, but I have two problems with online converters:

1) They don’t work consistently (tubefish has worked the most consistently for me, plus you can browse videos that other people have downloaded). Here are a couple other online converters. Neither of them work consistently for me but maybe you’ll have more luck with them than I did.

www.viddownloader.com

vixy.net (they have a beta version of a desktop app, but I haven’t tried it out.)

2) The second problem I have with online video converters is video quality. Sometimes you lose video quality when you convert it from one format to another, and that’s bad because YouTube videos are often low-quality to start with.

Add-ons

The way I recommend you download YouTube videos is with the Firefox add-on called DownloadHelper.

This technique is more complicated but it works 100% of the time and the video quality is better when you leave it in flash video format.

You’ll also need a Flash video player, or software to convert the the .flv to another format such as mpeg.

I use Flash Video Player because it’s simple.

And I recommend SUPER to convert. . .everything. It isn’t the easiest converter to use, but if you can figure it out you can convert almost any format to any other format.