Youth Ministry road trips are great for community, and are a lot of fun. But I always burnout when we get about half way home. Here’s what I’ve found helps.

1) The co-piolet

This is the number one key for me. I prefer an adult because they can take over and drive if necessary. If I don’t have an adult, I’m very selective about who sits in the co-pilot seat and when they sit there.

I try to be subtle arranging this, but I make sure I have a student who needs more attention riding shotgun on the way to the event. That way I can focus all my ministerial skills on giving them the attention they need. Then, on the way home, when I’m exhausted I make sure I have an easy-to-get-along-with teen for a co-pilot. That help decrease the odds of me going insane.

2) Music

I save my best stuff for last, because that’s when I need it the most. Right now David Crowder is about as good as it gets for me.

3) Lie

I’m not above stopping for food and calling all my adults together to have a “meeting” that teenagers aren’t invited to. Sometimes, we all just need a break.

4) Hire a Bus Driver

I know it’s expensive, and I prefer to be as cheap as possible, but I just took 40 teens to a Steubenville Youth Conference, and we decided to take bus. This was a first for us, and I have to admit, I loved it. Almost the entire ride home I got to hang out with the teens and chat about anything and everything. It was great, I wasn’t stressed, I didn’t want to throw anyone out a window, and I got some great relational ministry time it. If you can afford the expense, hiring a bus driver will make your ministry a lot easier.

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!)