Helping Catholic Parish Ministers unlock their ministry and defeat burnout forever. ❤️🔥
Story Matters
Would you buy a thrift store porcelain figurine for $17 if someone wrote a fictitious story to explain its origins? The existence of such a thing as Significant Objects is a testament to the goodness of the internet. Authors wrote little vingettes to go with the crap objects, and they were then sold on eBay. The fact that all of these yard sale insignificants sold for a total of $8,000 is a testament to the power of story.
Jesus told lots of stories. People connect with stories. In evangelization and catechesis, you can root an idea or doctrine firmly into reality and your audience's mind by telling a story.
Tell more stories. End your talk with a story. Write a story into your thing. Put a story on the website. Throw a story into the newsletter. After that conference send out the story of one of the teen's experience to the parents.
Tell more stories.
Figuring Out How to Evaluate Ministry Methods
As you may have guessed by a previous article of mine about common fallacies found in critiques of youth ministry, I get pretty testy when it comes to people's opinions and critiques of different methods of ministry. I'm not against us making things better, but I go a little crazy when I read a majority of the comments, articles, and books that are a part of this conversation. (Some definitions first. When I say ministry, I'm speaking of ministries in the Church that deal with evangelization and catechesis. Also, I'm using method in a broad sense. Think Lifeteen, YDisciple, peer ministry, Adoration, Lectio Divina, gregorian chant, small groups, experiential catechesis, inductive methods, deductive methods, praise and worship, talks, skits, activities, coloring books, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, relational ministry, prayer ministry, conferences, spoon man, summer camps, etc. etc.)
I'm working on an article that I hope will offer a framework for evaluating methods and methodology for ministry, using specifically youth ministry as a practical example.
But I want your input first.
While doing some reading I came across this quote from the GDC in a fantastic chapter on this exact topic. It is Caroline Farey's work in the book The Pedagogy of God. Her chapter is titled "Methodology in the Light of the Pedagogy of God".
Here's the first:
"The Church, in transmitting the faith, does not have a particular method nor any single method. Rather, she discerns contemporary methods in the light of the pedagogy of God." General Directory for Catechesis 148
Caroline takes this quote to set up her thesis that all methods must be evaluated against God's pedagogy, or God's method.
(I love this because one of the biggest problems is the lack of distinctions we make between the objective and subjective ways we speak about a method.)
Caroline's bold claim is this:
Catechists (read youth minister, blogger, DRE, Diocesan Minister, speakers, etc) need formation, firstly in the deposit of Faith, then in the pedagogy of God... and then in how to examine methods and methodologies in its light in order to discern those methods that are suitable for communication the Faith and those that are not."
Caroline Farey in The Pedagogy of God p.163
So Here's my question to you:
How do you evaluate different methods of (youth) ministry? What makes a particular method successful?
Answer in the comments below or email me. Say something smart or witty and I may include it in the article I'm writing. I'm looking forward to the discussion!
Jerry Seinfeld: How to Write a Joke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCfW5s I love this clip of Jerry Seinfeld showing the New York Times his process behind writing a joke. A joke two years in the making...about a poptart. Its interesting how deeply he thinks about his process, in a career where you might be tempted to think comedians just stumble upon funny material, or are just naturally funny.
He talks about trying to find the perfect connection between two parts of the joke.
"I'm looking for the connective tissue that gives me that really tight smooth link, like a jigsaw puzzle link. And if its too long, like a split second too long, you will shave letters off of words. You count syllables, you know to get it just... its more like song writing."
He makes me want to work harder on talks and catechesis and writing. Maybe take one 20 minute talk and work on it for two years. Obsessing about the delivery and the connections. Shaving off words. And praying about it. Praying and shaving. Praying and shaving. (What a t-shirt...)
Also, take note of the fact that he's weird about always using yellow pads and a specific type of pen - Bic clear barrel blue. Which if you're a long-time fan of the blog, you know how weird I am about Pilot G-2 10's.
I'm developing a theory that being obsessive about the small things gives room for being creative in the big things.
Something like "The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones." Luke 16:10.
So be trustworthy and use a Pilot G-2 10. Be faithful in the small matters my son.
And,
Work hard on your craft.
Pray.
And get back to work.
Why You Get Less Done in More Time - Pope's Window Syndrome
Youth ministers seem to be particularly prone to what I will call “Pope’s Window Syndrome”. I stood in St. Peter’s Square a few years ago while a friend told me the Pope’s office window is the last light to turn off at the Vatican, communicating to everyone just how hard the Pope is working for our Church. PWS hits youth ministers hard, as they wake up early (or maybe not so early) and put in grueling 50-60 hour work weeks, leaving lights on in their office or the youth center long after everyone else has left the building.
And while putting in 60 hours a week may make you feel like you are working hard, not getting paid enough, and completely unappreciated, there is a lot of evidence that suggests the more hours you work, the less productive you could become. (See this, that, and here.) Not to mention the huge negative impact on your family life if you are married and your sanity if you are single.
Enter Sheryl Sandberg and Parkinson’s Law
Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook and the first woman board member of Facebook’s board of directors. Before Facebook, she was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. Before Google, she worked as chief of staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 2012 Sheryl made the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. My girl Sheryl ain’t messing around.
And Sheryl leaves work everyday at 5:30 p.m.
How? My guess is that Sheryl is intentionally using something called “Parkinson’s Law” to her advantage. Parkinson’s Law originated as a simple and cheeky opening observation by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in an essay in The Economist published in 1955:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
This one sentence kicked me in the pants and changed the way I do, well, everything. Now when I hear people moan about how late they stayed at the office, or how many hours they worked last week, I wonder if they are busy or if maybe they could do these two things better...READ MORE
[This is an excerpt of an article written for Projectym.com. You can read the rest of the article here.]
How to Read 75 Books a Year and Remember What You Read
Read More and Have Better Ideas
How different would 2015 be if by next January you had read 75 books? What if you read 75 books and also could remember what you read and talk coherently about 75 books? Enter Brandon Vogt.
Brandon is a monster. Not only is he a professional at getting stuff done (like launching websites, reading and writing books, and working as Father Barron's Media Ninja on Fire) but he's created a beast of an online course to show people how to read more and remember what they read. Brandon reads more than 75 books a year. And he will show you how to do it too.
I'm a huge advocate for reading wide and well. Its probably one of the biggest payoffs when you think about cost/benefit. Think about: you spend about $10 to read a few hundred pages synthesizing down the years and years of work, research, thinking, and expertise of a particular author. Plus your opinions are usually boring if you haven't seasoned them by engaging authors and ideas by way of books.
Brandon is offering well done video courses choke full of practical advice with no-fluff. Its filled with principles you can apply right now to start reading more books immediately. If you were to set a goal and increase your reading to at least one book per month, you'd be ahead of the average 18-29 year old Americans who actually do read. You'd also be reading 12x as many books as a quarter of all American adults.
I was fortunate to get a sneak peek at all the content and extras last week and after reviewing it I highly recommend it.
Some of the topics Brandon covers:
- How to build a library and why you should (with great resources for finding cheap books)
- Easy ways to creatively find more time to read (with some great tech tips)
- How to engage the author effectively
- How to remember what you read so you can use what you read (more great tech tips)
- How to X-ray a book and find out in 3 minutes if its worth reading (from the legendary Mortimer Adler book)
Currently this beastly course is free (only until Feb. 18). So be sure to take advantage of it while it lasts. And go read more books.
Check it out at readmorebooksnow.com
Don't be like this guy...
[embed]http://youtu.be/Ertz9lpV7sU[/embed]
Cognitive Bias: A Critique of Critiques of Youth Ministry
Youth ministry is a strange ministry in the Church. And most who care to have an opinion about youth ministry’s methods or importance (or Biblical deviance) have a strong one. It seems like every few months an article makes the popular rounds critiquing or praising youth ministry in general, or critiquing a perceived “common” approach to youth ministry.
At best, most of these articles say very little. At worst, they show severe bias, logical fallacies, and fundamental theological mistakes. We just can’t seem to talk very constructively about youth ministry.
Here’s a few common cognitive biases, fallacies, and errors I’ve come across way too often in critiques of youth ministry of any shape and size. Think of this as vocabulary we can use to keep each other honest. This list could be a lot longer, but I’ve narrowed it down to the ones that piss me off the most.
Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies
The first initial problem with talking about youth ministry is the small amount of hard data and statistics we have. Which is the breeding ground for the first error:
Correlation is not Causality
New York and Chicago have reported that as ice cream sales increase, so do the number of murders. Are higher ice cream sales causing more murders? Maybe…
But most likely not. Just because one thing increases and decreases proportionally to another thing, doesn’t prove that one is causing the other to change.
This is a pretty common and tempting mistake. “People who drink red wine live longer.” Maybe… Or maybe people who can afford to drink red wine can afford better health care. “Habited religious orders are exploding with new postulants.” This might be a true statement, but it would not necessarily follow that to increase the number of new postulants in your religious order you should bring back the habit. Would it be worth testing? Yes. Is the increase proof that the habit is attracting new postulants? No.
In youth ministry critiques it sounds like “Parishes with Lifeteen are exploding.” or “Adoration causes parishes to explode.” or “All of the teens who were in a large youth ministry group left the faith in college.” More is needed, and in fact its pretty hard, to prove something is causing something else, and not just a correlation or coincidence. Which leads us to the way people tend to draw these types of conclusions in the first place…
The Plural of Anecdote is not Data
As well meaning as this article and this article is, there is a strong cognitive bias at work here as the main argument: availability bias. When we tell stories of our experience of a youth ministry “My youth ministry was all about hugs and I never learned the faith” and then turn this into a general statement “Youth ministry is about hugs and doesn’t teach people the faith.” we are in danger of building our arguments on sand.
“But, but” you might say “I know two or three other people who have had the same experience.” Ok. That may be true. But there is a strong cognitive bias at work that makes you remember the two or three stories that support your belief, and forget the rest that don’t. The availability bias is our brain’s tendency to remember things that are vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged. This bias tempts us into overestimating a situation as being representative of the way things are in general. The author of this article knows this to some extent by saying “and I’m certain readers can point to hundreds of examples of excellent youth ministry programs”, but then goes on to outline what he believes to be the “strategy for youth ministry” based on multiple personal experiences and anecdotes.
This is helped (or hurt) by the fact that the more a certain view is discussed or anecdotes of this nature are shared in public discourse, the more believable the narrative becomes. (Hence the saying "repeat something long enough and it will become true.)
Bill says, in his experience, youth ministry is just about hugs. Fred and Ted say they feel the same way, and write a blog post about it. Nancy speaks up and says in her experience, this isn’t the case. But who wants to listen to Nancy? We’re all in agreement, so Nancy must be an outlier. GET IT TOGETHER NANCY.
Historical Precedence
Ok, brace yourself. I get real testy with this one. And I know I’ll get a lot of hate mail.
I believe it is beneficial to talk about the way the early Church did ministry or Jesus did ministry. I believe in tradition and I’m not proposing we cut ties with the past. But can we all just drop the whole “I scoured the early Church Fathers and the Bible and couldn’t find any trace of youth ministry.” bit?
This type of argument is rehashed a million different ways. “Jesus didn’t need praise and worship, or guitars, or a youth group, so we shouldn’t either!”
“The early Church promised death and persecution and they had no problem attracting youth with the Gospel without a youth ministry and an instagram account. Heck they didn’t even have the internet!”
Yeah. Brilliant point. Let me ask you a small question. Do you like religious orders? What about seminaries? What about toilet paper? Jesus didn’t use toilet paper! Neither should you!
Okay, I’m going a little overboard, but the problem with an argument like this I hope should be self-evident. Sure, its a great thing to talk about. But to write an entire critique of youth ministry based on whether or not the early Church had youth ministry seems to be a stretch. Also, its a gross oversimplification of what was occuring in the early Church. To say that first century Christian communities attracted teens in Rome to the faith, and did so without youth ministry, therefore we should critically evaluate youth ministry, is reductive and an oversimplification.
You may as well say something like “If only we had Latin Mass in every parish, that would fix so many of the problems in our Church.” Or “If only we used more praise and worship, more people would come to Mass.” Both could be true, or partially true, but the reality is a lot more complicated. Which leads to…
Not Accounting for the Holy Spirit
So I’m throwing in this one more as an aside that’s really straining gnats, but I believe it is worth mentioning. When we talk about the “effectiveness” of a particular ministry or approach to ministry, we often point to the results or fruits. And Jesus told us we will know a tree by its fruit. But it is easy to forget this amazing quote from Evangelii Nuntiandi:
“Techniques of evangelization are good, but even the most advanced ones could not replace the gentle action of the Spirit. The most perfect preparation of the evangelizer has no effect without the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit the most convincing dialectic has no power over the heart of man. Without Him the most highly developed schemas resting on a sociological or psychological basis are quickly seen to be quite valueless.” EN 75
Ministry isn't a in/out function. If you do all the "right" things, you aren't owed remarkable results. A ministry that produces vocations might be a great ministry. But it might be a horrible ministry that God is still calling priests and religious from. The Holy Spirit can't be boiled down to an equation. Our conversations about youth ministry need to reflect the inability for us to really know for certain how the Holy Spirit might be moving because of, or in spite of, our ministry.
The Bias Bias
I've committed a bunch of biases and fallacies just in writing this article. But I hope we can use this short list to keep our conversations about youth ministry productive, and stray away from the lazy streams of "this caused more vocations" and "in my experience" and "well in the early church" unless it is really necessary.
Feel free to merely comment "The plural of anecdote is not data." or "Correlation is not causality." on your local youth ministry critiquing article, and let's get back to work.
More Tech for Parish Ministry
I recently wrote an article about some tech, gear, and tools we've been using to do some parish design projects for a recent campaign we had and a promotional video shoot. Since people seemed to really enjoy it, I thought I'd share some of the other things and stuff I'm using right now.
Omnifocus
(Mac and Iphone)
Omnifocus is an incredibly broad and versatile task/ project manager app that synchs across both Mac and iPhone. I use it to stay sane. Maybe you know the feeling...
Audrey Assad concert. Core team training. Sunday's youth group night. 9th grade retreat. Website. Lunch meeting. Parent meeting at 3pm. Send that email. Respond to this phone call. Pay this bill by Tuesday. Reserve the retreat center. Meet with the secretary and discuss possibility of never transferring phone calls to me ever again.
How do you stay on top of all these projects/individual tasks/due dates/reminders required to get anything done, and do it all on time? I do it with Omnifocus.
You can set deadlines, defer a task so you don't see it until a certain time, schedule reoccurring tasks (like daily praying or taking out the trash), and even set a location reminder (when I pass a Apple Store remind me that I need a VGA adapter). It synchs to your phone too, which is super nice. I showed my Pastor Priest Boss Man this app and he loved it so much he told the staff that anyone who wants it can purchase it on the Church budget.
You'll get the most out of Omnifocus if you are familiar with the Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
GTD+Ministry post to come...
If you're into this kind of thing, there is a great podcast series on GTD by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin on Back to Work. Listen to episodes 95 through 99. You might not enjoy these at all.
Back to Work Podcast Ep. 95 - She's Five for a Living Ep. 96 - Compensatory Muscles Ep. 97 - Pope of the Office Ep. 98 - Bagged and Boarded Ep. 99 - Nobody Wants to Live in a Scaffolding
(WARNING: Some explicit language and tangental ranting in these episodes. If you are allergic to these kinds of things, maybe this will make you feel better.)
Merlin wrote a great "Getting Started" article on his website covering GTD. Creating Flow with Omnifocus is a guide to using Omnifocus that I highly recommend as well.
Workburst
(Mac)
I'm a huge fan of using the Pomodoro Technique to batch work into small, focused, twenty minute chunks. Super necessary in the type of work we do as ministers (youth, adult, middle school, DRE, whatever) with lots of shiny tasks and emails yelling for our attention.
Its also helpful to use the Pomodoro Technique to make sure we are putting in enough deep work on a weekly basis. (For more on the idea of deep work, checkout Cal Newport's articles on the subject. A list of his articles on deep work can be found here.) I think this is a huge leaky area for most ministers (especially youth ministers).
If you've never heard of the Pomodoro Technique its a pretty simple concept.
20 minutes of focused work on a single task. No Facebook, phone calls, potty breaks, texting, letting coworkers into your office, covering a water bottle in duct tape, etc. You get the idea. After 20 minutes you break for 5 minutes. Do whatever you want. I recommend standing. Sitting is life draining. After 5 minutes you go back to another 20 minutes of focused intense work. Do this four times and then take a 10 minute break.
This has helped me get over decision paralyses (when there is way too much to do or too many decisions that need to get made) and put in some solid time on work without distractions.
Take some time to do some deep work to create something super valuable. Do some research. Write a resource. Maybe even (shocker!) practice your talk... Check out this Wikipage explaining the Pomodoro Technique.
IFTT
(Iphone)
Not extremely work related, but I do use this app on my phone to automatically text my wife whenever I leave work to come home. Right now it helps us a lot since I'm commuting 1.5 hours to work. (Pray we find a house soon!)
You can also do some pretty neat things with this app like, IF I take a picture with Instagram THEN save it to a Google Drive folder. Or, IF I add a contact to my phone THEN save it in an google doc spreadsheet. Or IF I tweet something hilarious THEN save it to a google doc spreadsheet. And a nifty one is IF its going to rain tomorrow THEN text me and let me know. It's constantly adding new apps it can work with, so its getting more and more interesting.
TextExpander
(Mac and Iphone)
I might be exaggerating a bit but this Mac app saves marriages. I have saved countless hours of my life by using these short abbreviations to answer email a heck of a lot faster.
For example: I get lots of emails asking similar questions. Sometimes the answer is available in the bulletin or on our Parish website, but sometimes you want to give them the info directly in the email. So when this app is open you can use a shorthand to automatically fill in text.
So when I type "cconfirm" in an email, it spits out this:
"Our Confirmation program will meet two Saturdays evenings a month from October to November. On the weeks when the teens attend Confirmation class, they are not required to attend Sunday evening catechesis. We are waiting to hear from the Diocese about when in the Spring the celebration of the Sacrament of Confirmation will be. As we get closer to September I'll be sending out emails and bulletin announcements with more information. The cost of the Confirmation program covers a student workbook, parent guide, sponsor guide, and a retreat in the Spring. I’m excited for your child to go through Confirmation!"
When people ask a question, I found that I was typing the same thing at the end over and over again. So I made a custom abbreviation "aaq" for: "Let me know if you have any other questions."
"Reglink" automatically fills in the link to find online registration for faith formation classes. "Ccell" inserts my cell number. ":hsi" inserts a long paragraph giving the instructions for registering and using our online home school option for faith formation.
You get the gist. HUGE time saver and it feels really epic when you type three or four letters and a bunch of text bloops in.
Evernote
(PC/Mac and Mobile)
Evernote is a a note-taking app that synchs across all your devices. You can grab clips and images from the web, record and save audio notes, and take pictures of documents.
I mainly use this app on my phone to take pictures of documents and save them. The advantage of using Evernote is you can search notes AND IMAGES for text.
The problem I had was I kept having all sorts of meetings but kept losing the notes from the meetings. I would write down some to-do's from the notes but inevitably sometimes I would miss something and need to go back to the original. I tried keeping a "Meeting Notebook" but that didn't work because I couldn't guarantee I would always have it when I need it. I needed a way to collect a hard copy and file them away so I could easily access them for reference.
I take notes from our staff meeting on one sheet of paper, and then save them in evernote by taking a picture of the page. I tag the date, save them, and throw away the paper. I do this for most meetings I have. I also take snapshots of whiteboard brainstorming sessions for future reference.
Evernote is free up to a certain amount of space in the *cloud* but I've used it for years and haven't had to switch to the paid plan.
Audacity
(PC/Mac) Audacity is a free audio editor. I use this for podcast editing. I also used this to record the music for our Parish video. It's pretty easy to use and there are tons of tutorials out there to learn how to do what you gotta do.
(Not-as-Honorable Mentions)
Posca Paint Markers
You gotta label stuff. Also if you have paint markers you're bound to be more creative/draw on something you're not supposed to. Snag em' here.
Scrivener
I'm testing out Scrivener as an alternative to MS Word. It seems like a great way to organize research and notes for writing talks, blogs, resources, and youth nights, and then actually write those things in a flexible way. You can move around pieces of the content easily, outline, easily change format universally, keep a target word count, etc . I'm not that deep into it yet, but I'll let you know what I think.
What tech and tools are you using that help in ministry, doing work, and making stuff? Leave a comment and let me know.
Tech, Gear, and Tools for Parish Design
People ask me how we make the cool things we make and so I want to show you all the things I use to make the cool things we make.
So I'm working at the new job at the new Church down in God's country (Texas) and wanted to share with you some of the sweet stuff we've been working on. Some videos, video editing, graphic design, GoPros, and more are below.
I am by no means near a pro at video, filming, lighting, editing, etc but I think we pulled together some great stuff for the first couple months on the job. I wanted to show the behind the scenes techy gear and resources we used. If you have some budget you could easily do this in a few days while learning some super valuable skills.
At the recommendation of my good friend Nick who works at a parish up in Toledo, a few of us Church lay minister people combined our budgets to buy a real stinking nice camera. The Panasonic LUMIX GH4
This camera is SOOO nice. It can even shoot in 4k, which will come in handy four years from now when HD looks dumb next to all the 4k tv's everyone will own. (Maybe?)
Here's a picture of our fearless Pastor. Pretty nice right-out-of-the-box photo. (I ended up using this picture for his new Twitter account....)
We launched a lot of big changes, new programs, and new ministries at the beginning of August and we wanted to wrap up all these announcements in a campaign with some slick logos and videos. I use Inkscape for all my graphic design stuff (I'm an amateur in this as well. I'm starting to dabble in Pixelmator which is a little quicker at photo enhancements).
We came up with this banner logo in about 15 minutes after a brainstorm session where we decided as a parish staff to use the words of Jesus to St. Francis, "Francis, rebuild my Church", as our theme for this campaign. We are St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, after all...
Our facilities guy/Jack O' All Trades went to film school and used to sell cameras and had some lighting equipment lying around, so he let us borrow it and helped set up a great shot Robert Barron interview style. I used a TASCAM DR-05 Portable Digital Recorder with a lavalier mic clipped under Father's shirt at about chest level for his audio. (I used the Tascam and lav mic for our catechist training recording as well. Best $100 investment ever.)
I took some b roll footage on my iPhone 5 just for the heck of it and actually ended up using it in the final edit we published. We also used a LOT of Wolf Urine Lure-32 oz
I'm really new to Final Cut Pro, but its pretty straight forward even if you are 25 and own a laptop and a two year old. My coworker and I recorded a little diddle (diddy? doodle? piddle? poodle?) on a ukelele and guitar with a Blue Yeti USB Microphone straight into Audacity (a free audio editor) for the background music.
The biggest help with Final Cut came from some good videos explaining color correction. My friend Nicolas again came to the rescue with these video tutorials that helped a lot. Although the final version uploaded to Vimeo was a bit too dark... We also had a light go out on us half way through the shooting of the video so that took some extra love and care to get it to look at least passable. Next time I'm going to watch the video in a lit room before uploading it to make sure the color and brightness is good.
Here's the good bit from an email Nic sent me with the videos that helped:
We also purchased two GoPro HERO3+
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/102104399]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/103683070]
We also recorded this video with the Azden SMX-10 Stereo Condenser Microphone I just purchased. I want to make this into a series. Took about 15 minutes total from shooting to publishing:
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/102059563]
And just to throw this out there as well, I use Squarespace for our youth ministry website. Check out sfayoungchurch.com. I use the Buffer app (free) to stay on top of our Twitter and Facebook pages and schedule out posts and toots. I use a Vimeo Pro account for all our parish videos because I have way more control over the look and feel of the videos and I think the website looks a lot more professional than youtube.
Did you like this post? What tech gear do you use in ministry or to do cool stuff? Would you like more posts like this? Did you find the link to wolf urine?
2 Memory Tips So Teens Don't Forget Your Talks
I wrote an article over at the very cool projectym.com about applying the way our brain remembers things to the methods we use to give talks to teens, or teach anything for that matter. Two memory tips called the "Serial Positioning Effect" and the "Von Restorn Effect" we can use to help teens remember our talks based on the way their weird brains are wired.
I'm going to try to be more aware of these and experiment with it when I give my next couple talks. Let me know what you think, and if you have any success trying to structure your talk with this in mind.
Here's an excerpt:
"You’re talking to teens five minutes after you just gave a rousing 20 minute talk. “What do you remember about the talk? What stood out to you?”
Blank stares.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Think about the best talk you’ve ever heard. What do you remember? Probably very little. For an even more sobering effect, try this experiment: listen to a talk (podcast, video, Sunday homily, etc) and the following day write down as much as you can remember about it.
There are two simple scientific facts about the way our brains memorize things that can help you help teens memorize what’s important in your talk."
You can read the full article here.
This is Part of the Professional Youth Minister Series:
Grace builds on nature. So if you are paralyzed by 347 emails you haven’t read, find yourself despairingly browsing Facebook for most of the day, haven't had a good idea in weeks, lack vision in your youth ministry, or just need some motivation to get back to work, welcome to the club. This series is about working on our nature and becoming a professional youth minister so all that grace has room to build. Check out all the posts in this series by clicking here.
Youth Ministry Office Calendar
Visiting Good Shepherd Catholic Parish in Fort Worth, TX I found all three of the youth ministers (yes...three!) have these amazingly huge year calendars on their wall in their offices. Made out of a sheet of dry-erase material screwed into the wall (I'm guessing you can find this stuff at Lowes) they used some electrical tape and printed labels for the months and dates. I love this idea because it helps you see the entire year in context for planning youth group nights, a semester curriculum, large events, deadlines for paperwork, and meetings in a way that constantly reminds you of the bigger picture.
The summer is coming up and as I transition to a new youth ministry position at a different parish, I'm starting to think about how best to plan a year in a way that I will actually stick to. In the past I've sat down and planned out great youth nights, awesome events and activities, and goals that I want to accomplish, only to throw out the entire plan two months in.
How do you plan out your school year and make sure you stick to the plan? I'd love to hear from you and I reply to every email and comment.
Part of the Professional Youth Minister Series:
Grace builds on nature. So if you are paralyzed by 347 emails you haven’t read, find yourself despairingly browsing Facebook for most of the day, haven't had a good idea in weeks, lack vision in your youth ministry, or just need some motivation to get back to work, welcome to the club. This series is about working on our nature and becoming a professional youth minister so all that grace has room to build. Check out all the posts in this series by clicking here.