How to be Social Media Savvy as a Student Minister

Youth ministers have many jobs and responsibilities, but being social media savvy these days is so important. Find out why in a minute. Are you ready? Because it's time.

You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network.

Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder. I'm the host of the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. And this is the podcast where I bring in ministry leaders and we talk about how to be more effective in our ministry world in this very digital and online world that we're in today. And today I have a friend back, Dan Istvinik. Dan is a family minister over in the Illinois area, and I've known Dan for a few years. Mostly we met on Twitter, and we've just been following each other ever since. He's been on the podcast a number of times, and you can check out some old episodes I have with Dan on the podcast. But today we're going to talk about why it's so important to be social media savvy as a student minister. Listen, we know that there are so many different roles and responsibilities that a student minister has, but being social media savvy is so important because what you communicate online really shows people Jesus or it shows them the quite opposite. So today we talk about what it means to be social media savvy. But before we get into the podcast, I want to remind you, if you enjoy this episode, either on YouTube or on iTunes or Spotify, definitely subscribe to it. There's a subscribe button on every place you're listening to it or you're watching to it. So we would love for you to subscribe to it today. All right. So now we're ready to get in the interview. Let's welcome Dan as we talk about how to be social media savvy as a student minister. All right. With me right now is Dan Isfinik. Dan, how are you, man?

Doing really good. Doing really good. Getting ready for the holidays.

yeah that's good i mean it is a festive time of year and again i'm looking at you and you've got you know some is that orange or brown it is orange it's a it's my orange orange sweatshirt nice nice is that to represent thanksgiving or the chicago bears uh thanksgiving okay good well you're i don't know what represents chicago bears right now fortunately so yeah okay so you're you're if i remember correctly you're not from chicago you're from somewhere else correct yeah we're i mean mostly from ohio okay that's where most of our family's from and we're heading out there a couple days from now so That's fantastic.

All right.

All right. So I know you, you and I've been following each other for quite a number of years. You've been on the podcast before, but for someone who may not have been listening to you or don't even know who you are, quickly describe what you do and how long you've been doing it.

sure um i've been doing youth ministry about 27 years as of a few weeks ago so it's been it's been a long haul but it's been a lot of fun uh served in churches kind of all around the country and currently i'm right outside chicago about 20 minutes outside chicago the western suburbs as a family pastor that's awesome um is it weird being a family pastor and not a youth minister No, because I get to still work with youth, which is fun. I get to oversee the other areas of ministry, but I still get to have my feet right in the middle of where I love, which is middle school ministry. So I get to still hang out with middle schoolers, but then also get to hang out with other ages as well and kind of oversee the team.

That's awesome. What do you like most? Because again, you're a youth minister at heart. What do you love most about working with the children's ministry team?

I think it's just fun. I mean, it gives me a little opportunity to have a little more immature fun. I just love getting down and hanging out with the little ones. So that gives me opportunity just to kind of see, but also just like set up, set myself up and set the rest of my ministry up well into the middle school and high school years. It's just to see that build a strong foundation. It's just so cool to see the little ones starting getting those stories, getting the concepts, and then knowing that they're going to be coming up, you know, in a few years.

Yeah, well, that's really cool. Well, you have been in the youth ministry game for a long time, and you've actually been one of the ways that I think we started following each other is you and I both blog and do resources. And you have a blog or website called Youthman Hub. And I'll have all these links in the show notes, but it's youthmanhub.com. and it absolutely it's got a bunch of blogs it's got a bunch of resources um i guess with having 27 years of experience you've got plenty of resources to carry on what made you want to get into blogging and sharing resources

Well, I mean, about 10, 12 years ago, I started working with Reading for Youth Ministry, Journal, and Group Magazine. And they said, hey, you know, you have no social media presence, really. We love your stuff. So could you just start a little blog? So I got the old school blogger going. and uh just started honestly just sharing resources more than just my opinion and uh over the years has transitioned and just recently just a few months ago we launched this new website with a new partner and it's more of a website than it is a blog but it has you know at the heart of it it's still daily sharing resources daily sharing thoughts ideas a little bit of humor just from make sure that we're practical everyday youth pastor um just being there for for each other and the reason why i started is because at that point working with middle school there wasn't a whole lot of middle school stuff out there yeah musical specifics so that's where the heart of of who i am still kind of shines through sometimes in my what i'm writing what i'm doing and also what i still physically do i still hang out with middle schoolers so yeah

Yeah, see, again, part of the reason why I started blogging was because I wanted to just share my thoughts. There was conversations going on, and I'm like, I can just share and be a part of the conversations. And again, I thought a lot of times when I first started doing it was that a lot of the resources were for bigger churches. I wanted to tailor towards smaller churches. And I like your resources. I've used quite a few of them, and they've got a lot of great resources that no matter what size ministry you're at, you can really apply it into your context. So I

yeah i'm trying to be just practical every day in the trenches youth pastor stuff you know is there a lot of stuff out there that's written by great people but they're way bigger than you know where that i am and just trying to size down so that i just need to like write stuff that's in the middle you know for everybody the average guy average gal doing ministry and also a lot of bi-vocational volunteers

um that don't have a whole lot of monetary resources or volunteer resources and they need to still do ministry well and i just want to empower them equip them in that way yeah that's awesome well again it's called youthmenhub.com and we'll talk about it a little bit as we kind of wrap up a little bit later i want to get into one of your blog posts that you had a little bit ago it's called being social media savvy as a youthman as a youth worker um and i think this is really important and uh so i want to just ask you why did you write this blog

Wow. Well, I've unfortunately seen a lot of social media missteps for youth ministry. Nothing. I haven't made my own. So I've lived and learned. But it's coming out of just seeing a lot of a lot of kids really disappointed by what was being seen on social media from their youth pastor. And also just kind of talking to other youth pastors, you know, fellow youth pastors like, man, I mean, I really made a misstep in what I'm doing.

All right. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I I've seen, I think social media is so important. It's very powerful in the sense that you can reach anybody and connect with anybody, but when you make a mistake and when you make a misstep and I've done that too, you know, I, it can really cause a lot of problems, a lot of damage. And so I think you have to really, I love how you just said social media savvy. we you have to be really smart with what you're um with what you're posting when you're posting it how you're posting it so i think it's really important that you do that Okay, so let's get into the heart of this. And again, I'm going to include the link of this blog post in the show notes, but I'm just going to go through a few of these points. I wanted you to kind of unpack it a little bit more. The first one I think is really important. Well, they're all important, but you said the first one is keep it fun. Talk to me about that. What do you do to keep it fun? And why do you do it?

Absolutely, I just try to use humor in a way that just, you know, encourages my kids and my students are looking at it, my parents are looking at it, my staff people are looking at other youth pastors. There's just so much, you know, I don't know, animosity, that's maybe a strong word, but you know, over the last year, two years, there's just been a lot of social media meanness. And I just said, you know, why not just make it fun, you know, create some resources, some things out there. They're just silly. Do create some memes. Just poke a little light, fun. And maybe people smile. Then try to like... meme i mean we're we there's a lot of people out there creating memes that are just mean mean memers that's why i put in my art my uh my post just have fun man bring some brightness to people's day even students students get so much nastiness on on the internet they look at you they don't want to see another another person just taking cheap shots at society why not just have some fun with it so you know as a family we just try to be really make it fun and do some silly stuff post some silly things from our family too just to be leaders out front as much as upfront as well yeah

I agree with you completely. Again, youth ministry by nature is supposed to be fun. You're supposed to have an element of fun into it. And so I think by you doing fun, it's breaking down walls. It's kind of like what we talk about in youth ministry in general. You want to break down walls. And when there's so much, I think, negativity centered around believers and church leaders that when you show fun and when you post some fun stuff, you're really saying, oh, well, the people are thinking, well, I didn't think that person was fun or that's kind of funny. Maybe I'll listen to him or her a little bit more. So I think including that fun stuff is great.

Yeah, it just literally is God's joy coming out in clean ways. It really is. It's easy. It's not that hard. We make it a lot harder than it sort of needs to be just to bring out the joy of life.

Yeah, I agree. So you like posting memes. yeah yeah yeah um i i love posting gifs like go gifts are like my go-to response on things so i like to include that kind of stuff um so i i think that's really funny um do you follow the wrestling pastor on twitter no i don't i have to look that up okay so the wrestling pastor was a guy who just posted pastoral stuff or things that ministry leaders go through and then he uses a gif of a wrestling person or a thing to kind of highlight his uh his uh his stuff and it's it was just so funny and he did it for a few years and then he he stopped uh back in early 2021 but he actually just announced that he's going to be bringing it back a little bit and i was like yes because it's awesome it was fun it was relatable it made people laugh um it took a little lighthearted pot shots at things but i think a lot of people really enjoy that kind of stuff and so fun goes a long way when you're when you social media

especially with students yeah students yes exactly right okay well another thing you said is to watch out for stumbling stones okay talk to me about this it really i mean really comes to um you know our own standard or expectation for ourselves as a family myself but also even just kind of how i communicate to my volunteers other staff members is you know the world we live in i mean you know we're not trying to beat anybody up on their christian liberties But there are so many students who have struggled through different things that we need to be super aware of what we post in ways that are gonna just cause kids to stumble, whether it be, whatever the social or Christian liberty thing is, there's some things that just are gonna offend kids or they're new believers, they're young believers who are trying to figure out their faith. When we post things, we just need to be very, very aware, very cognitive of what we post, how we post, or even who to we post to. I mean, there is, you know, privacy settings. You don't have to post everything so that your students and your family see everything you do. I mean, if you, you know, want to do something or, you know, whatever, that's fine. But, you know, limited to who sees it, if you're going to, if you really feel like it needs to be out there. But there's some stuff. don't know it just really doesn't need to be out there on social media um i've heard way too many core stories from youth pastors who put something out on social media that they didn't think was offensive but offended someone and now they're saying without a job so we just be very very aware but also what's worse is when kids um you know literally stumble or you know or get tripped up by something we put on social media that they take the wrong way and uh just it's once again the idea of being social media savvy just really being thoughtful and wise with what and how we post

There are so many stumbling stones out there that we can get sucked into. I like to say it's a trap. I just like to use that, you know, like the Star Wars Return of the Jedi, Admiral Ackbar, you know, it's a trap. Like, don't get sucked into the trap because... um people were going to tell you you need to comment on this or you need to post about this and i'm like no i don't need to comment on this i don't my my goal is to help lead people to a relationship with christ and and help them discover god's purpose for their lives and i don't need to post about every especially every political situation that goes oh no it's so divisive um and so even if majority of your people are one way or another it's just entirely divisive and i don't like to post about that stuff i think there there's lots of traps out there there's lots of stumbling zones out there and i think when we when we post too quickly like i thought you i thought you made a good point about how you have to be thoughtful in what you post i mean i think sometimes we have there are people out there that post out of anger or out of emotions And it causes so much more problems than it does. It helps people.

Yeah, and you just have, you can't react. You can't be reactive on social media because it's just going to end up going poorly. Don't post when you're tired. Don't post when you're frustrated, you know, and give 30 seconds, 30 seconds to reread that post before you put it out there and think about who's going to read it, who's going to see it, how it's going to be seen. Would it be a picture or would it be, you know, a text, you know, writing something out. Sometimes, you know, it's just, if you need to talk to somebody, talk to someone in person.

put it on social media and i said i've seen that way too many times in in church settings where youth pastors just put themselves in a really bad situation and even you know when people forgive and forget they tend not to always forget yeah yeah even if you've moved on they tend not to forget and so i think that's a really important thing okay the last one i want to hit on uh is your comment on be friendly without being friends okay talk to me talk to me about this what does this mean

Well, honestly, it came from a different post that I also posted, but it's this idea that we need to be very careful of unblurring the lines between us and students. Social media is, in a lot of ways, an invisible imaginary world that does not really exist in the real world, but it leaks over into a real world. And when we're, we have to be very careful what we comment on. So, you know, one of my girls posts a picture of her on vacation, you know. how i react what i like i don't like oh why did you like that how did you make that but also just there's you know kids are looking and and they're looking for relationships they're looking they're hurt they need a friend um unfortunately you know in the world we live in they're looking for intimacy and we we cannot provide that in a way that is inappropriate and in social media we get we can get ourselves really really stuck um and i'm very very careful about things like snapchat private messaging uh disappearing messaging any of that stuff that's private but also even publicly um i'm very very very careful you know i have a i have a 17 year old daughter i have a 13 year old son i have a wife I don't, you know, but on top of that, I need to be very, very aware that I am friendly with my students. I have great relationship with my students. I'm friendly to them, but I'm not their friend. They have people their age to be their friend. And even on social media, I, you know, I may be very, very aware of what I comment, how I comment, but also being very aware that, you know, my students know they, you figure somebody a private message, I'm going not to respond to it. You know, I respond to your parent, I'll respond different ways, but we need to be very careful because once again, way too many horror stories of men and women in ministry that were private messaging, created relationship, false relationship inside of a social media setting that turned into something in the real world or did turn into something in the real world at all, but became an accusation. and uh once again social media savvy it just takes a little thoughtfulness and just stepping back and saying no i just can't put that that out there to a young you know young individual yeah

There are so many pitfalls here, and I'm glad you hit on the private messaging, the direct messaging stuff and the Snapchat. Listen, I have Snapchat and I Snapchat students, but I only Snapchat guys. But even in that context, I have to be careful about what I say that it cannot be misconstrued. text messaging any kind of email communicate digital communication that's not like an in-person type of situation can be misconstrued so quickly and people can read into things um and determine something inappropriate or appropriate there's so many pitfalls you have to be very careful and you have to set up accountability in a sense of i i like to have rules like again one of our rules that we go over with our youth ministry leaders is uh no direct messaging with people of the opposite sex like you can you can be in a group message with people of the opposite sex especially when there's another leader involved but you got to have that accountability there so that you can be friendly kids need again social media is a great way to interact with kids every single day i can just pull out my phone text kids encourage kids inspire them in christ but it does have its pitfalls and we have to be very very careful about that

It's a, it's a, yeah, it's a dangerous world we live in and we just have to be, be smart. Just be smart. I talked to young pastors, especially who, you know, just put everything out there. I feel like everybody needs to know everything. And they all say of, of kind of get on board with those. They blur the lines of friendship. and relationship with their students and you know beyond just the accusation or the inappropriate relationship that also just loses them respect in the real world suddenly you know they're up there speaking and a student is viewing them as oh just just this buddy my friend and there's not that clearer expectation of no i am your pastor i'm your leader i'm an adult you are you know your student and that seems sometimes to be unpopular opinion but i've i've never regretted making sure that there's some clear lines between myself and my students that i love them i care for them i want to have relationship with them but in the most appropriate godly way and i see them through god's eyes and all those those clear-cut things that i say out loud to my students and then also we're on social media i just you know kindly and graciously but the parents know we talk to parents about this is who we are this is how we're going to respond this is how we're going to react during our parent meetings throughout you know beginning of the year middle year and the year we do talk to parents about hey it's not like we don't want to respond to your student but we're being very very careful and i've never heard a parent say man i wish you were less careful on social media with my kids

yeah no that's exactly right that's 100 right and again you and i who both have teenage children we understand that too that it speaks a little bit differently than when we were when we were in our early 20s and doing ministry with students uh then again i don't think we had cell phones i i maybe had a cell phone when i first started i had a pager my my first full-time church i thought a big deal they bought me up they bought me a pager and gave me pager service so that's how old i am i don't know my kids could page me that that is awesome yeah i had a cell phone i i can't even quite remember but i do remember when i got my palm trio the my very first like smart oh yeah i was like that that's the best um but you're right like when Again, we're old enough to know the term of buddy leader. I mean, when I was being trained, I was like, you don't want to be that buddy leader. You want to be that adult friend who's a role model. And again, your comment of being friendly without being friends is really in that line. You are that adult. You are an adult. They are a kid, a teenager, and you have that boundary set up. And I think that's really important. social media makes it easy for us to want to blur the lines as you said this if you have that kind of mentality of i'm an adult friend of theirs i'm not their buddy i'm not their friend like that is a really important distinction to have huge huge yeah well listen we could go on and on about this but there's a few other points that you have that i think are really important that i want people to check out so i want people to go to uh your website and i want them to go to the link that i'm going to include being social media savvy as a youth worker you've got lots of great content on here what are there emphases at youthman hub that you like to focus on? Are you all about all sorts of resources and all sorts of content?

I mean, we're trying to provide a lot of things. We're trying to hone it down a little bit more. We have a great resource coming out very, very soon after the new year that I'm excited about. That's going to be an all-inclusive resource that I just haven't been, I've been looking around. I haven't seen something like this, but you're going to see something come out that is going to be an all-in-one resource for youth pastors, youth workers to grab and kind of grab and go. Everything's included. for really affordable um we try to as i said we try to post four or five times a week so monday through friday there is something on there in the blog and then um every every couple weeks we'll put out a new game we'll put out a new lesson uh put on some new resources there's some freebies that we're trying to create as well which will make sure we're giving out as much as can so um couple weeks ago we gave out 10 uh scavenger hunts and that has been a hot hot download everybody's been grabbing those it's the pdf ebook uh we gave away a couple games we give away some christmas stuff as well um the other day we just really want to make sure that the average you know in the trenches youth guy youth gal has the resources they need affordably and then we're also just trying to get away a lot of free stuff just to just to have fun and allow everybody to be equipped the way they should be so

Well, dude, I love your resources. And I think you've got, again, you've got all the experience. You do coaching too, correct?

I do. I do. I do some coaching. I do some speaking as well. COVID has been a little different, but we are stepping back into that world. So yeah, we're more than happy to lead up parenting seminars. I've done some camps, conferences, retreats for students. You're looking for somebody to come in and help you just train your youth workers and outside voice. So it's good to sometimes have a different voice than your own stepping in and saying some things that you want to say, but you can't.

Yes.

But yeah, anyway, we can help. I mean, we're available. That's why we created this website to really be an all in one inclusive resource for youth pastors, youth workers, volunteers, bi-vocational, part time, you know, everything we can do. Just put it out there. We want to hear you hear back. We want to be able to interact with people and say, hey, what do you need? What can we create? And, you know, be a part of that.

That's awesome. I think what you're doing is awesome. Again, I love your resources. And I would strongly recommend people going to check it out. Again, you've got free stuff, you got some paid stuff. And then you got some encouragement being again, you've got over 27 years of experience. I people can definitely learn a lot from you. So absolutely. I thank you so much for joining me today and being with me.

Thanks for having me on again.

Yeah, I'll have you on again tomorrow after the new year and everything like that. But I hope you have a great holiday season. All right. So what did you think? You know, I always enjoy having Dan on there. He's a veteran in youth ministry and he's got a lot of great resources to definitely check out his website, include that in the show notes. But I always love having him on there and just his processing on why he thinks it's so important to be social media savvy. I think it's really important. to be social media savvy so definitely check out his blog post the rest of the points that he has on there and check out his website but i would also love to hear your thoughts on this so if you've got comments if you're watching this you know definitely put in the comment section but if you're listening to it definitely hit me up on twitter at ta pounder i would love to carry this conversation on with you some more because it's a really important conversation you know as we said you know what you communicate online either draws people closer to jesus or further away so what are you doing and how are you communicating effectively online in social media that is so important as a student minister so i'd love for you to ask some questions give me some thoughts share your insights on it as well again you can put a comment or hit me up on twitter All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. As always, go to thechurch.digital. There's tons of content on there about digital tools and trends and how it applies into your ministry. And we've got a lot more stuff coming out in the weeks ahead, so we'd love for you to check that out. But also make sure you check out the Digital Bootcamp Facebook group. There we've got ministers from all different backgrounds. part-time, full-time, volunteers, student ministers, executive pastors, senior pastors, children's ministers, all sorts of ministers together learning digital tools and trends and how they apply it into our ministry context. So we want to make sure that you get on to the Digital Bootcamp Facebook group. It's a great group and we'd love to have you in there. All right, heroes, well, I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week, and until next time, have a great one.