But today, let’s get a little more practical.

Maybe you really want to make church more fun, but you’re just not sure where to start. Maybe you feel like you’ve exhausted all of your own fun ideas. Or maybe you feel like you just don’t have time to sit around and think of fun stuff to do.

If that’s you, no problem. You can steal some of our ideas if you want.

So here we go.

Here are 5 ways we’re trying to make our Sunday mornings super fun…

A GREETER TEAM. AND COOL GREETER T-SHIRTS.

When our students first walk in the door, we want them to get an awesome first impression. So we have a team of super fun and friendly greeters, wearing super fun and friendly t-shirts, who welcome them. We think it sets a great tone for the day, especially for new kids who maybe aren’t accustomed to church being a place where they can laugh and smile. Each Greeter gets a few t-shirts customized with their favorite phrases and colors. We use Spreadshirt for our tees, but CafePress and RedBubble are also good options.

WEIRD CONTESTS AND GIVEAWAYS AT THE DOOR. 

As often as possible, we ask our Greeter Team to get the fun started by doing a little contest or game at the door as students arrive. To celebrate the first Sunday of the school year, we handed out cheap little noisemakers to every student (I think I still have ear damage, but it was worth it). A few weeks ago, students tried to guess the weight of a watermelon and, of course, the winner got to take it home. Once, we even let students vote on our worship leader’s new style of beard… and then we shaved his face. Live. At church. It was gross.

CANDY. 

We give away candy. Like… a lot of candy. We throw it from stage by the handful. We keep a stash that our Small Group Leaders can tap into when they want to reward (or bribe) their students. And every new kid or visitor get a full-sized candy bar of their choice from the New Kid Candy Cupboard. That might sound a little juvenile but, really, it works. I can’t tell you how many terrified little 5th graders or way-too-cool-to-be-at-church 8th graders crack their first smile when they get a look at our candy stash. It’s pretty awesome.

LIVE INSTAGRAM SLIDESHOWS AND CONTESTS.

Our middle schoolers love Instagram, so we try to take those social media habits of theirs and use them to make church a little more exciting. Before and after our services, we throw a live Instagram slideshow on the screen, using Instafeed LIVE, that’s populated by our students’ very own Instagram photos. They simply tag their photos with our custom hashtag (#shinedotms), and Instafeed LIVE takes care of the rest. Our students get pretty pumped about it, and it’s a great way to expose their Instagram pals to all the crazy stuff they do at church every week. We’re also experimenting with some weekly Instagram challenges and an Instagram Pic of the Week – the winners get a free treat from our Cafe.

GROUP GAMES THAT ARE FUN TO WATCH AND PLAY.

We open every service with about 20 minutes of games. Sometimes we’ll spend all 20 minutes doing a big crazy game like Giant Angry Birds but, most of the time, we split that time up into a few silly segments like…

• The 2-Minute Countdown Video. Every week, 2 minutes before our service starts, we harness the power of YouTube by playing two minutes of our favorite funny YouTube video of the week. It’s funny, and it helps us get students in their chairs.
• Joe’s Top 5. A really stupid segment where students try to guess 5 of Sound Guy Joe’s favorite things. Joe’s Top 5 favorite cereals, favorite Thanksgiving dishes, favorite green things… So dumb. We know. But middle schoolers think it’s funny.
• On The Spot Showdowns (Stand-Up, Dance Crew, and Poetry Slam Editions). The basic premise of this little segment: choose a few students who want to showcase their skills in a particular field. Like stand-up comedy, dance, poetry, or whatever else we feel like watching middle schoolers do. We give them 15 minutes to prepare, then make them battle it out live on stage. It’s pretty entertaining.
• May the Odds SHINE! Ever in Your Favor. In a little ode to The Hunger Games, we give a few kids a Nerf bow and arrow. If they can make it through a hoop on the opposite side of the room, they get a sweet prize. Like… a gigantic container of Lucky Charms marshmallows.
• Interactive Group Games. We experiment with a lot of different crazy group games – games celebrating absurd holidays… games that celebrate completely normal holidays in absurd ways… games that involve eating disgusting things… and games that are just funny to watch (like that pantyhose-over-the-face game over on the right - so stinkin’ funny). And every week, the winners of our games receive their very own SHINE! Game Champion Wristbands. Those wristbands have become a pretty big deal. Kids wear them as badges of honor and they love competing to see who can accumulate the most wristbands. If you want some more specifics on the games we play, you can grab a bunch of our favorites in the Stuff You Can Use shop, or just follow us on Instagram for photos of our latest game-related creations.

So there you go! Those are 5 things we’re doing to make our weekly services super fun. And now its’ your turn!

What about you? What are some of your favorite ideas for making church super fun?

So… if you’re wondering how you can relay this have more fun! message to your volunteers, maybe this will help…

My husband Kenny and I like to tell people that we have an official “family prayer” we say every day. It’s really super spiritual and it goes like this…

God, please help us have FUN.

I know, it’s awesome.

And, ok, we don’t actually pray that every day (only sometimes). But we definitely do consider having fun to be a priority – especially as Small Group Leaders.

So we laugh a lot. We do stupid things. We try to pursue something a guy named Bob Goff calls “whimsy.” We try not to take life, or ourselves, too seriously. And we try to help our students to do the same.

(That usually isn’t very difficult, by the way – things like smiles and joy and laughter are pretty contagious.)

To be honest, though, it took me a while to see the value of fun when it came to my small group…

Keep Reading…

Like, ball-pits-and-balloons-and-dancing-and-beach-balls-and-laughing-and-Bob-Goff kind of fun.

And all that fun wasn’t just incidental. It was strategic. Because, this year, they had a really important point to make. To open the Conference, Reggie Joiner spent a few minutes chatting about the value of fun in ministry, which made me so happy. Here are a few of my favorite (and probably kind of paraphrased) thoughts from that opener…

“I am shocked at how many people are bothered by children and student ministries having fun.”

“You can measure the temperature of a church by how much its people laugh.”

“Joy attracts people.”

“Until you are having fun with a child, they’re not sure if you like them.”

“We were made to have fun.”

- Reggie Joiner

If you were anywhere in my vicinity during that session, you probably noticed me doing something like this…

Because, for real, I can’t believe how often I see youth ministry folks minimizing, marginalizing, and sometimes even deriding fun. Yikes!

Kenny and I aren’t hesitant to say that we try to make our Middle School Ministry the most fun place ever. From the second our students walk in the door, to the time they leave, we want them to enjoy being there. We want them to walk away with memories that make them smile and crazy stories that make them laugh and a desire to come back as soon as possible.

Of course fun is not the only thing we want our students to experience. But it’s a big one. Because fun is really, really important. I think having fun should be more than just an afterthought. It should be a priority and a strategy. Not an incidental. Here’s why…

Having fun together helps us know Jesus better. Having fun is a powerful expression and working-out of the joy and freedom and abundant life that we find in Jesus. It’s not trivial. It’s sacred and holy and it makes Jesus smile. We’ve got to model that to our students. They’ve got to see how Jesus is present and involved with their “everyday, ordinary, walking-around life.” By refusing to separate the fun stuff from the spiritual stuff, we help our students learn and practice a holistic kind of faith – one that sees the presence of God in everything. Even (maybe even especially) the fun stuff.

Having fun together helps us not take ourselves too seriously. You know that kid who’s just way too cool (or that leader who’s just way too spiritual) for their own good? Yeah. They really need to stick their feet in Jell-O or launch a giant Angry Bird once in a while.

Having fun together creates community. Laughing, being silly, making memories… those things are absolutely vital to creating a strong community. They force us to let down our guards, give us common ground, build trust, and make us feel like an accepted and valued member of a tribe. 

So, yeah. I think having fun is a pretty big deal.

And, while we’re on the topic, you should check out this blog post from Mark Oestreicher, which I read a few days after drafting this post and then laughed about because it sounds kind of like my post.

So that’s awkward.

Anyway.

I’ve got some more to say about fun later this week. But, for now, I’m wondering…

What is your ministry doing to prioritize having fun and how is it making a difference? 

Photos courtesy of The Orange Conference and NTS Camp (the most fun summer camp on the face of the earth).

The Stuff You Can Use blog has migrated to ellecampbell.org! Same stuff (and hopefully some better stuff), new location. Feel free to poke around the new site if you’re interested and see what else I’m working on these days.

I mentioned we went on a few ministry-related adventures this past month. It’s true. We’ve been traveling, learning, listening, and chatting with some super smart people, and I’m really excited to share some of that with you in the next few weeks. So here’s what it’s going to look like…

• THE ORANGE CONFERENCE. We got to hang out at Orange this year and, while there were tons of takeaways and great ideas shared, there are a few that we really want to highlight. So, first up will be a recap of our favorite content from The Orange Conference 2013.
  
• ALL YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA QUESTIONS ANSWERED. In our most recent post, I talked about a breakout session that was going to be happening at The Orange Conference about using social media effectively in ministry. Well, it happened. And I got to help. And it was cool. I’ll give you the highlights from the session, plus respond to the questions that you submitted in the comments here on the blog. (And psssst… if you still want to submit a question, go for it.)
• THE UTHMIN.NET GOLDEN TICKET LUNCH. What the heck does that mean, you ask? Well. On the final day of the Orange Conference, Uthmin.net (a little something I’m involved with) hosted a lunch and panel discussion with three of my favorite Middle School Ministry geniuses: Tom Shefchunas (North Point), Kurt Johnston (Saddleback), and Scott Rubin (Willowcreek). We call it the Golden Ticket Lunch because, well, you needed a magical Golden Ticket to get in. (And, by the way, the things we forced people to do in order to get those tickets were horrible and cruel and so, so, funny). Anyway. Those three guys are incredible, so I’ll give you a little recap of some of the great thoughts they shared.
• THE MIDDLE SCHOOL MINISTRY SUMMIT. Last month, Kenny and I got to hang out in the mountains of California with some of the most incredible Middle School Ministry leaders and innovators in the country. For three days, we talked Middle School Ministry – what’s working, what’s not, trends we’ve spotted, things we’re trying, where we are, and where we think we’re headed next. We heard so many great ideas, innovative practices, and practical solutions for ministry, and I am so stinkin’ excited to let you in on it. This will actually be a series of posts because, well, there is a lot of greatness to share.

So there you go – that’s what coming up here on the blog in the immediate future. Hope it’s helpful!

Check out the latest social media stats from Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics.

But let’s be honest. Keeping up-to-speed with social media is kinda hard, and staying up-to-date on the latest platforms, updates, trends, and innovations can be overwhelming.

Especially when we’ve got other stuff to do. Like, I don’t know, ministry…

That’s why I love what our friend Matt McKee is up to. He’s cool. And he’s helping ministry people like us be more awesome at social media.

In just a couple of weeks, Matt will be leading a breakout session at The Orange Conference called…

Get All of Your Social Media Questions Answered!

And the really fun part of this breakout for me? I get to help! Matt has put together a panel of some social-media-obsessed folks (Justin Wise, Gina McClain, Terrace Crawford, and me), and we’re going to do our best to answer some of your most pressing questions about social media. Like…

• How do I start a blog? 
• What do you mean by RSS?
• What’s the difference between a group and a page in Facebook?
• How do I turn Twitter into a mass-texting service – for free?
• Do guys use Pinterest?
• How do I set boundaries when using social media?

And here’s where you come in…

We want to know what kinds of questions are plaguing you about social media these days.

Because, you know, we want to be helpful. So we’d like to answer questions that people are actually asking.

And don’t worry.

Even if you’re not coming to The Orange Conference, we haven’t forgotten about you. We want to get all of your social media questions answered, too.

So here’s what we’re gonna do.

Friends and readers and ministry geniuses, tell me this: what social media questions do you want to hear the panel answer? What are you wondering about how social media works or how to use it effectively in ministry? Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. Pinterest. Vine. Google+. Blogging. RSS feeds. Whatever. I may not be able to answer it, but someone on the panel probably can.

Tell us. How can we help?

Questions you personally want answered.

Questions you think would be beneficial for others to hear answered.

Things you want to hear us discuss.

Get it all out there. Tell us how we can help.

Leave us a comment, right here on this post, with your questions, ideas, and suggestions - we’d love to hear what you think.

And then… 

For those of you coming to Orange, well, you’ll get to hear some of the answers discussed live during our breakout.

And for those of you not coming to Orange, don’t worry, we’ll hook you up, too. After the breakout, we’ll follow up with a blog post, right here on Stuff You Can Use, and help you get answers.

Cool?

So let’s do it.

What do you want to know about how social media works, and how to use it effectively in ministry? Fire away…

I have an Instagram account. Kenny has an Instagram account. We have an Instagram account for our Middle School Ministry. And, of course, we have a ton of volunteers and students with Instagram accounts, too.

Since Instagram seems to be the realm of social media where most of our students are hanging out and interacting, Kenny and I were chatting recently about ways we might increase our presence and engagement on Instagram. We already had our Instagram account up and running, were encouraging students and volunteers to use our hashtag (#shinedotms), and had a pretty decent number of students interacting with us there, but we wanted to take things a step further.

We wanted to find a way to get students even more engaged and excited about what was happening at SHINE! 

A bit of brainstorming resulted in the idea of putting a live Instagram slideshow up on the big screen – and not just the “official” SHINE! Instagram photos. We wanted the ability for our students to see their own SHINE!-related photos up there too. We were really excited about how this might get our students more excited and engaged on Sunday mornings - not to mention our hope that all of the Instagram activity would help create new opportunities for our students to have conversations with their friends about their church and their faith. Social media can do cool things like that sometimes.

But, well, we were kind of surprised to discover that this live slideshow thing didn’t really exist. (Ok, we found one service that maybe could have worked. But it was a pay-per-use thing, and we wanted something we could use every Sunday – without spending a billion dollars.)

We couldn’t find anything that worked for us. So we made something that did!

It’s called Instafeed LIVE and we’re really pumped about it!

We’ve been using it for a couple of months now and (you may have seen some of the hints we’ve been dropping on Facebook and Twitter) – now it’s available for you, too! Yay!

Want to check it out?

HOW IT WORKS…

1. Decide how often you want to do your live slideshow. We have one-time and monthly subscriptions available.
2. Choose a hashtag. Ours is #shinedotms.
3. Spread the word. Tell your people to start taking and tagging some sweet Instagram pics.
4. Enjoy the FUN! 

We’re using Instafeed LIVE on a weekly basis for our regular Sunday morning gatherings, and we’ll also be using it in the future for some crazy special events that we have coming up. It has gone over really well with our students. Just check out the #shinedotms hashtag.

Now, we know what you’re wondering and the answer is YES! Instafeed LIVE is equipped with administrative features so you can control which photos appear (or don’t appear) in your slideshow. Because teenagers are weird. And sometimes they take weird pictures of weird things that you maybe wouldn’t want to display on your big screen. So far, we actually haven’t had any issues with this… but you can’t be too careful. :)

So, is your ministry using Instagram? Think you’ll try out Instafeed LIVE? 

If you’re trying out Instafeed LIVE and have a question or problem you need help resolving, email Kenny! He’ll take care of you.

And they’re also super interesting. 

Seriously. Middle schoolers are fascinating. The preteen and early teen years are a crazy time of change and transition and developmental advances, which (for both middle schoolers and the adults who are trying to influence them) is both pretty cool and also a little bit terrifying.

And as middle schoolers struggle to navigate these years of growth and transition, one of the most confusing, important, emotional, exciting, and stressful things they will deal with is, without a doubt, the issue of love & dating.

We recently embarked on a 3-week teaching series with our students about this very topic. And as we strategized about how to deal with this super important topic, we knew we wanted to make sure we were doing our very best to address our students’ biggest needs and questions. We had some ideas about what we thought they needed to hear about love and dating, of course, but we couldn’t help but wonder… Are we really being helpful? Is this content relevant to what they’re dealing with? Are we addressing the questions our students are actually asking about love and dating? 

We weren’t sure. So we decided… if we really wanted to know what our students are wondering about love & dating… we should probably just ask them.

So we set up a really high-tech and complicated anonymous question-and-answer system.

(Just kidding. It was a Dubble Bubble bucket and some index cards. And a student labeled it with that fancy little sign when we weren’t looking.)

We let them anonymously ask anything and everything they wanted.

And we learned a lot - about middle schoolers’ brains, about the things they struggle with, about their biggest concerns, and about how they view love and relationships. So, today, we wanted to share it with you. Here’s what our students asked…

WHAT MIDDLE SCHOOLERS WANT TO KNOW…

We’ve already made observations and drawn conclusions of our own from the questions our students asked. But today we’re wondering…

What conclusions would you draw from these questions about the middle school mind? About the culture that is shaping them? About their perspective and underlying assumptions about love and dating? And, most importantly, what implications does this have for us, as ministry leaders? 

So you want to meet the winner of the 1-year subscription to YouLead?

Meet Nikki Harris from Nashville, TN!

Nikki is the Youth Director at Watson Grove Missionary Baptist Church and she seems pretty awesome. You can find her on twitter at @nikki_harris216.

Hope you like your prize, Nikki!

YouLead has been a huge help to us (both helping us personally grow as leaders and helping us be better developers of our teams). And we think you’ll like it, too.

And, hey, if you’d like to learn more about YouLead, The Orange Conference, or any of the orangey things we talked about on the blog this week, check out the Orange website.

And if you’re coming to The Orange Conference in April, don’t forget to let us know! We want to say hi. And we just might have some more prizes to give away…

Here are the 4 things we’re talking through…

1. PARTNERSHIP. Linking arms with others.
2. LEADERSHIP. Leading teams and mobilizing volunteers.
3. CULTURE. The state of the Church and family.
4. MISSION. Engaging others with the Gospel.

As you may have already deduced, this particular post is about MISSION. One of the reason we so love and appreciate the folks at Orange, and the orange strategy in general, is because engaging others with the Gospel is woven throughout everything. Like we saw in our culture post, thinking orange requires us to look outward. It forces us to question and rethink the way that we understand and engage those outside the walls of our church.

Orange compels us to discover and create and experiment with new ways of doing things for the sake of the people and the mission that we’ve been called to.

Earlier today, when we walked through how orange challenges us to rethink culture, we gave you a peek at some of our notes from this year’s Orange Tour. And, to help us talk about mission, we’re going to do it again. Because, like we said before, the content was just so good.

THE ORANGE TOUR 2012

We love the passion behind the folks at Orange for connecting kids and students to a mission. Absolutely love it. And we believe in it. It’s something our church believes in, too – that we’re all the Body of Christ. That we’re all called to live “on mission” – even our kids and teenagers. That you’re never “too young” to make a difference for the Gospel. We love that Orange is a champion for helping our kids and teenagers get connected to a mission – something significant, something bigger than themselves.

One of the ways we’ve tried to put these ideas about mission into practice is by giving our middle schoolers ways to “be good news” and share the love of Jesus with others through their actions. We try to tell our students often that  we think they’re significant – that we don’t care if they’re ten or eleven or twelve or thirteen years old. We believe they can turn the world upside down for the Gospel, right now. This fall, our middle schoolers decided that they believed us. And then they did something pretty stinkin’ cool. You can read all about it right here.

We’re grateful for Orange for a lot of reasons. But their passion for seeing kids and students embrace their roles as important members of the Body of Christ is a really, really big one.

Hey, thanks for hanging out with us on the blog this week. It’s been pretty fun for us to chat about all this thinking orange stuff. We hope you found some info that was helpful and some ideas that were inspiring.

And, listen, we’d love to hang with you in Atlanta this April at The Orange Conference! For real! If you’re coming, let us know. We’ll be there, and I’m personally really excited because, this year, I get to help out our friend Matt McKee with one of his breakout sessions on social media! REGISTER BY FEBRUARY 14 and you’ll get a $50 credit and save $40 on your registration.

And hey! Don’t forget! We’re giving away a FREE 1-Year Subscription to YouLead TOMORROW! YouLead is a complete, done-for-you leadership development plan, for you and your team. Today is your LAST day to enter! Winner will be chosen tomorrow at 12:00PM EST.

THE YOULEAD GIVEAWAY QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is your church doing to engage children and students in “living on mission”? What kinds of significant ways have you seen children and students get involved in ministry?

We’ve already shared two things (PARTNERSHIP and LEADERSHIP) that we love and appreciate about what the folks at Orange are contributing to the Church right now. But there are two more things we want to talk about today. The first one is culture.

When you get exposed to thinking orange (whether it’s through the Orange resources, The Orange Conference, or even simply the community of orange thinkers around you), you will be challenged in the way that you, and your church, view and engage culture.

To give you a first-hand look at what we’re talking about, today we want to simply give you a peek at some of our notes from this year’s Orange Tour.

The Orange Tour, by the way, is what happens when the Orange crew gets together, drives around the country for a few months, and puts on a ton of one-day mini-conferences. Our whole team (Children’s Ministry, Middle School Ministry, and High School Ministry) got the chance to hang out at an Orange Tour stop in Detroit this fall, and the content was so good.

So, here we go. A few thoughts on culture (and, specifically, what the family looks like in our culture) from The Orange Tour 2012…

THE ORANGE TOUR 2012

Pretty powerful stuff, right?

If you want to hear the Orange folks (as well as other “in-the-trenches” leaders from all over the country) unpack ideas like these a little more, we’ve got some suggestions for you.

1. COME TO THE ORANGE CONFERENCE. Seriously, it’ll be a blast. And Kenny and I always like making new friends. So come hang with us. We’ll be there for the whole thing – conference and pre-conference sessions. (And I’m super pumped this year to be helping out our friend Matt McKee with one of his breakout sessions on social media!) REGISTER BY FEBRUARY 14 and you’ll get a $50 credit and save $40 on your registration.
2. READ THE ORANGE LEADERS BLOG. It is packed with incredible leadership lessons, discussions on culture, and interesting ideas for helping your ministry be more awesome.
   
3. READ ZOMBIES, FOOTBALL, AND THE GOSPEL. Zombies is a book by Reggie Joiner and it’s about how the church can better navigate the ever-shifting culture around us.

And hey! Don’t forget! We’re giving away a FREE 1-Year Subscription to YouLead TOMORROW! YouLead is a complete, done-for-you leadership development plan, for you and your team. Today is your LAST day to enter!

THE YOULEAD GIVEAWAY QUESTION OF THE DAY: What are some of the biggest shifts in culture and in the family that you’ve seen during your time in ministry? How have you seen the church attempt to meet some of the greatest felt needs of our culture and our families?