Practical Youth Ministry Tips

Instagram is your friend. This is a great ministry opportunity to grab onto right away. Your students are on it all the time. They are uploading pics and double clicking others pics to “like” them. Create an account for your youth ministry that is strictly youth ministry stuff. Follow your students on Instagram with this account. Let them know about it. They will want their friends to see the pics as well.

Use #hashtags. Hashtags are used to find other pictures that are dealing with similar topics. People will search for specific things they are interested or things that match their own pictures/hashtags. You can sort of tag people like you do in Facebook. The difference is you need to do it in your comments by using their Instagram name and the @ symbol.

If you are new to Instagram then play around with it. The idea is that you use a filter to alter your picture slightly. You can also blur out everything but certain sections so the focus is on a part you want. There are other apps that can work with Instagram as well. Instacollage will take several photos and put them together in fun frames. You can also put text on your pics with this app. Instaeffect has tons of crazy effects you can add to your pics. Many apps are trying to capitalize on Instagram. Play around with a few and find your favorites and delete the others.

Explain to parents how to use this app and have them follow you. Then you can upload pics from the retreat, camp, etc. This is a great way for them to see what is happening with their own kids and for you to show off what your students are doing. (keep in mind this would not be a good place to post pictures of the dumb things you do at camp. Parents tend to get concerned when they see their own children doing the cinnamon challenge).

Check out these guys with their song Instagram It. Hilarious. Thanx Kirk and Tyler.