5 Ways to Get the Word Out About Your Student Ministry From: @joshuagriffin

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 ministry 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 ministry 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.

Josh Griffin is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church, you can check out his blog @ http://www.morethandodgeball.com/