With the internet being dubbed the 8th continent, Facebook being the gateway into hundreds of relationships and most university classrooms looking like the picture below, it’s a no brainer to start thinking about how to train students in the principles and tactics to make their online time count for eternity. I need your help to design some training for students.
I’m headed to Cru’s Big Break conference in Panama City next month where the conference team is trying something new. They desire to augment the life on life evangelism students do on the beaches with some digital training to help students use tools intentionally to bring Christ into the conversation online.
I’m the only one who signed to teach this gig, probably because I’m designing the content from scratch (almost). This is where you come in. I need you to glance through what I have planned for tactics so far, tell me what I should do different, what I should trash or add. Keep in mind that we’re trying to be principle based, helping students live out evangelism principles that they can practice for the next 50 years of their lives. I’ve got 1 hour for 3 days with them. Most everything needs to be able to be done from a smart phone. The hour will be broken up into about 15 minutes of principles and introducing tactics, 30 minutes of workshop, and 10 minutes of debrief.
Day #1 – Explore!
- Comment and invite conversation with 10 friends, looking for windows to the soul. *Tip make a Facebook list of the people you want to be intentional with.
- Post an everystudent.com article or Global short film in your timeline and invite a conversation? “Tell me what you think about this?”
Day #2 – Pictures!
- Post at least 3 High Quality pictures on Facebook (ups timeline visability). Tag friends and comment “We miss you!” Invite conversation. Picture will be available via Tumblr blog from conference photographer.
- Post an everystudent.com article or video on your feed and ask a question. “Today, how important is your spiritual life?”
- Tactic #3 Work on writing 1 minute video of how God is at work in your life or how he has changed your life. It must end with a question that invites conversation. We’ll record this tomorrow.
Day #3 – Sometime!
- Record that video you wrote yesterday and post to Facebook. Tag your friends and family.
- Set up gospel conversations back on campus using a “Sometime” question via text or Facebook. “Sometime I’d like to hear more about what you believe about spiritual things, would you be up for that?” We used this at our Winter Conference and it has been a huge hit.
What would you do differently if you were in charge?
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Hi Matt. You might want to try out Flickstarter. It’s a new tool we’ve been developing that uses your friends’ Facebook likes to connect them with videos from a database of faith-conversation-starting videos. Check out http://www.flickstarter.org. We have a new version (it’s made but the database isn’t loaded yet) that allows you to select friends. Contact me if you want to know more.
Hi Matt. The new version is ready to use. It’s at http://www.flickstarterapp.com. It now has the ability to select a friend, as well as the app randomly selecting friends.
Matt, you have some great ideas. *like*
Here’s the package we put together for others to use based on some ideas we used at our winter conferences this year.
Got it, thanks Russ. I’ll check it out.
Matt,
Never met, but heard lots of great things from my MTL, Tim Casteel and Andy & Christina Garber.
I was in charge of our social media outreach at Winter Conference this year in the RRR. Ironically, I am not a big social media guy, but I do see a huge value in it. I think I learned more technical, situational things, but I’ll try to comment more on the principals as requested.
The thing that I/we focused on most was that social media is not an end, but a means to an end. It is a great and often less threatening way to enter into conversation, but it can also be a veil to hide behind. We really challenged students to initiate through Facebook, but have their end goal setting up face-to-face meetings. Sounds like you are definitely doing this already, but just wanted to affirm that.
Another thing is, like most outreach efforts, students get out of it what they put into it. You can put cool ideas and snazzy videos up all day, but if they think it is a lame idea then it won’t matter. Conversely, if they really catch the vision you are casting, they will innovate and do things far more compelling and bold than we could ever suggest. Really wish we had had more time to focus on vision and big picture.
Finally, be ready for some puchback. Although the majority of students use Facebook constantly, there is a significant minority that will be very opposed to the idea that their spirituality can be confined to a status update. I believe this is best addressed with my first comment on helping them see it as a bridge and not the end in itself.
Hope some of this helps. Sounds like you have put a lot of thought and enegy into it already and it will be a huge success for the Kingdom.
-Aaron
Aaron, I have heard good things about you too.
Thanks for your thoughts. That’s super helpful. Really like the your thoughts and doing a good job with big picture vision.
Let’s meet in person some day!
Hey Matt, we met at your seminar in PCB. Wondering if you have those “sometime” questions anywhere? Would love to forward those to my outreach team leader.
Chris! It was awesome to meet you. I just posted notes on my blog. Let me know if you have more questions. Hope it spurs some thoughts in Chicago.