Yesterday, we we went public with a decision to end Youth Ministry Exchange after about 5 years.

For the last couple of years it has been trickling and trickling… and so we figured, “Why not just have a celebration of life and let it pass now instead of letting it go from 200 members per day, to 100, to 20 (where it’s at now) to 10, to 5?”

I’m thankful for YMX and the hundreds of core people who made it a vibrant community. 200,000+ posts— yowsers! While there were a couple thousand members– there were 100-200 regulars who made it not just a forum, but a forum community.

Five years ago, about this time of year, I started to get an inkling of an idea that I wanted to create a new home for the defunct YS forums. There was a core group of about 20 youth workers who did an AOL group chat just about every night. And when YS closed their forums about 5 other forum sites popped up as substitutes… but none of them were run very well.

I talked to Kristen about it and she was kind of meh about the concept. “You don’t really know much about that kind of thing. And you really don’t know much about running an internet company.” Both were completely true but I took that as a blessing! Then, a few weeks later, I brought up the idea with Todd Porter after he visited our church. He got really excited– which added energy to the idea.

So, mid-November 2005, I put together a private chat with 5 people I thought were strategically the right ones to talk about this idea. That discussion generated even more energy. And in early December 2005, we were open for business.

I spent $72 to start the company. And the first 24 hours we made over $250. It was awesome!

As time went on, the company went about 1,000 directions as I tried various initiatives. Business plan? Um, I didn’t have one! How could I? I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

From 2005 to 2008 we continued to grow… this was really the peak for YMX. We published a lot of user-generated content, we pushed out a regular newsletter, we had a podcast, the forums were vibrant, and some of our satellite sites were doing pretty well.

In truth, I had no idea what was next. I was learning a lot about business along the way but I wasn’t sure I knew how to navigate YMX past a new hurdle. Subscriptions were declining, interest in the web content was skyrocketing, and the site was struggling to pay the bills.

Thankfully, in June 2008, Youth Specialties stepped in and ended all the angst. They bought most of the web properties and hired me to come help them figure out how to bring some of the flavor of YMX to YS.

About the same time Facebook took off. Then Twitter took off. And forum communities hardly seemed to be the wave of the future that they once were. We infused some serious marketing efforts into YMX as part of YS. But it was obvious that masses of youth workers were going to flock to Facebook and Twitter while the decrease of interest in YMX continued to decline.

Certainly, there are those who think that the forums could have prevailed if I had focused more attention on them. I don’t value my presence there quite that much. I only had 4,000 of the 200,000 posts. Hardcore forumites know full well that in the last year or so I’ve largely turned the reigns over to Patti Gibbons and the rest of the moderator team. It just wasn’t humanly possible to do the work I needed to do at YS while maintaining things day-to-day at YMX. I heard the grumbles but couldn’t really do much about it. I think if those people saw the world from my vantage point they would have invested energy in the same places I did.

It was a two-way street… I was doing the best I could in my new role. And the moderator team did a great job ministering to the forums.

So, long-story short, we went public with the decision yesterday. It was a bit more sad than I expected. It truly felt like the end of an era.

It was a good era and one I’ll be fond of forever.

Here’s a quick rundown of the things I’m up to over at YS.

#1 I post regularly at the new YS blog.  Here are 3 posts you should check out. Big vision for Cabot. Youth Workers Who Twitter. Carrie Clausen and Her Youth Group. I’m loving the blog. It’s really a fun way to connect people together.

#2 The big 3 of social networking. I spend some time each day talking with people on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. If you want to friend us, follow us, or join our group just click on the links. 

#3 Custom social networks for our events. This is very unique to YS. We’ve created full-blown custom social networks for people coming to our flagship event, National Youth Workers Convention. Here’s the one for folks headed to Sacramento in October. So far there are a total of seven websites associated with NYWC this fall. I’m helping the YS convention get web-o-riffic in a hurry. 

#4 Relaunching the podcast. Starting very soon is a brand new format to the YS podcast. I’ll bring some of the flavor of the YMX podcast to YS as well as some other cool features. Keep an eye on this page. We’ve got the first few episodes ready to go… great content in the new format!

#5 YMX stuff. Since YS purchased YMX back in June things have changed only slightly. Seriously, I think the only thing that got changed was the privacy policy and about us pages. The first change is coming soon as YMX will host the next generation of the website, YM Women. There will be a special section of the website dedicated to women in youth ministry. I think this is a cool compliment to the HERstory conference that meets at NYWC. Looking forward to YMX going to “generation two” of its existence.

#6 Experimental stuff. Just think of my office as Area 51 for YS. OK, not really. But I’m always playing with new ideas and seeing what will work or not work on the social media front. When I first started I talked to the internet team about “Adam’s sandbox.” I said, “Just give me some place I can create things, try out things, play with ideas and strategies, and basically do things with no fear of failure.” So I’ve got room to do that! I love knowing that everything I try has to be safe enough to succeed. Think of a lot of what I do as Google Labs. Some experiments make it past beta testing and some don’t. 

What about you? What are you up to at the job these days?

Today, at 4:47 PM EST it was official. My mouth has been shut for weeks since I couldn’t talk to anyone outside of my family about the deal with YS. But it is now done and I couldn’t be happier. YMX partnering with YS is, in my opinion, the perfect place for YMX to fit into the youth ministry landscape. As Marko said, it’s only natural.

We’ve truly enjoyed being the independent source of youth ministry stuff. And we hope to continue on with that flavor.

There are a hundred reasons I am excited about this deal. The most obvious thing to be excited about is that I get to run YMX as part of my new job with YS. How cool is that? I’m also jazzed about the massive door of opportunity that was just swung open to us from the YS/Zondervan family. There are too many cool things to talk about with this. For now…

Here’s the press release

And here are the FAQs we posted in the forums about “what happens next” for YMX/YS.

How will this effect the way I use YMX?
One of the coolest parts of this is that the YMX community will mostly stay the same. The same people will be running it and Youth Specialties is taking a very hands off approach to YMX. YMX will benefit mostly from access to tons of resources to grow the site in a way that helps fulfill the community’s long-term vision.

Will this effect the way the forums operate currently?
Yes. Eventually, the forums will shift from a subscription based forum to a free forum. In other words, there will no longer be “premium level” areas of the site which require payment to utilize. The terms of service, the community accountability, the emphasis on self-moderation, will all continue.

Will the forum community be under a new and/or revised terms of service?
Not right now. If the terms of service ever change we will contact you to let you know.

What about the privacy issues? I thought the forums were secure and now they will be open to anyone?
We share your concerns. Starting in January 2008, YMX changed the method of registering new members so that new members have to provide personal information that is verified before we allow new members to access the forums. We will continue to utilize this option as a way to prevent trolling and keep the community safe. This meets the same need in protecting your privacy on the forums fulfilled.

Will the forums be indexed on search engines?
No. Since the forums require a registration to see anything, the search bots are prevented from searching forum content. This is not changing.

Will the forums be managed by different people and/or different moderators?
YMX, including the forums, will continue to operate as we always have.

I am a charter/premium subscriber, what does that mean for me?
Most of our premium/charter subscribers have been with us a long time. You guys are awesome and we thank you for your support. We will soon contact you to offer you a store credit with Youth Specialties. If that doesn’t work for you, please contact adam@ymexchange.com.

Will the Oasis still be available?
Absolutely. The private Oasis area of the forums will still be available upon request, with a team of caring, youth ministry-understanding people to listen, pray, and confidentially walk with youth workers through tough or tricky situations. In fact, we hope to bring even more hope and help through the people being part of YS makes available to us all.

Does this mean that you won’t be accepting and publishing user-generated content?
Not at all! Actually the opposite. As a property of Youth Specialties we will be increasing the frequency of content for the community. While you may see some new authors on the site, we’d love to continue to work with new and emerging authors.

How much money were Patti and Adam given to make this happen?
We can’t answer that at this time. Adam and Patti are currently on the Youth Specialties jet on their way to FerrariWorld in Roma, ciao! http://www.ferrariworld.com/

Will YMX still be appearing at the conventions to promote the community?
Yes. Look for us at all the National Youth Workers Conventions this fall.

What about Raising Lazarus and the community’s desire to help hurting youth workers?
Raising Lazarus has always been a separate entity of Youth Ministry Exchange, LLC. YMX will continue its partnership with Raising Lazarus to offer practical support for those who need help. In addition, with more time dedicated to running YMX, Adam and Patti will be more available to help.

Will the site continue to place ads?
Yes. The site will largely operate as it has.

Does this mean that YMX will only promote resources that are Youth Specialties products?
No. The site will largely operate as it has. If we review a resource or report on a news item, we will include a disclosure stating that our our parent company is Youth Specialties when it is relevant. This is similar to the way you see reporting on mainstream media.

Doesn’t YMX own other sites? Are those part of this deal as well?
Yes, YMX will continue to operate the blog ad network, Youth Ministry Tips, Youth Ministry Pro, and just like we are today.

Your thoughts?

It’s after breakfast in Romeo and I’m wide awake here in San Diego. (4:00 am) The last 24 hours have been a blur as I commuted about 3000 miles to work yesterday. (Going home Friday) Besides the travel I did get some stuff done yesterday and I’m looking forward to getting more settled today.

The first thing on my mind about yesterday is that people on early morning flights are boring. I’m not one who would like to talk for 4 hours to a stranger on a plane, but at the same time both flights I took yesterday morning were nearly silent. If it weren’t for the guy in 6C asking me about switching to Mac somewhere over Arizona I wouldn’t have said a word to anyone all morning. I’m all for keeping to ones self but lets all acknowledge one another as humans, OK?

The second thing on my mind is that I have a really cool job ahead of me. Like any job my new role as “communitymeister” has a lot of things to do which are really important and will occupy my mind for more hours than I’ll admit. But there are two different aspects of my new job that have me jazzed.

Over the last few Sunday’s numerous people at church have asked me, “So what is this new job all about?” I’ve always translated that to “I want to know if this new job is worth losing a pastor over at my church.” And people from the greater youth ministry community have been asking me to give a little more insight into my new role as well. (One friend even asked me, “Can I see your full job description?” Um, no.) So here they are… two aspects of my new job I totally dig.

• I get to help youth workers from all over the place. It’s awesome that folks can write or call YS and get practical help and encouragement. And it’s fun to be that first connection these new volunteers and paid staffers have to the greater community of youth workers out there. I love listening to them and helping them with a couple of pointers from my experiences in the trenches… but I really, really love pointing them to places online where they can learn my most favoritestist word in all of church leadership… “Collaboration.” There’s nothing like the moment when the light bulb goes off, “You mean I’m not the only one who has a parent issue like this?”
• I get to help tell my friends about Youth Specialties. Literally, I’ve had one day in the office and my mind is already racing with ways I can help connect this amazing staff of people with the greater community of youth workers.

Just like at Romeo, it’s not going to be my habit to talk about work very often on my blog. Sure I will talk about things that are going on in my life or things that I’m excited about. But my purpose in blogging has never been to expose the inner workings of my job… because lets face it, that’s boring for all of us. It’s not like I’m one of those early 2000s bloggers who would rant on and on about the inner workings of their jobs. I’ve been blogging a long time. And I have rules to follow.

My purpose in blogging has always been to expose the inner workings of my mind. And for those brave/stupid enough to want to know all about that I suggest you subscribe to my RSS feed (or email) and get ready to laugh a lot.

This was just posted over at Youth Ministry Exchange. Here’s an excerpt:

Here’s a thought that will blow your mind. The God of the Universe chose you to help him build the church in your town. Here’s another thought to give you some perspective. The God of the Universe has an enemy, Satan, whose deepest desire is to distract, discourage, debilitate, and destroy you. It’s as if Satan has a special department in the community you live in just for that. Just like there is a Street Department and Water Department, Satan runs the Ministry Destruction Department in your town and people like you are his number one project.  Read the rest

I am very proud of the “You Matter” series at YMX. There is a reality in “church world” that most people who work a churches are often discouraged. They are paid to encourage and lift up… and yet the church is a tough place to work. We came up with the idea of You Matter to step in and write a series of articles to and for our friends. The result is amazing! I love that peers are encouraging peers. It isn’t about numbers or time in full time ministry, it’s about practically encouraging one another.

My students know that I love a road trip. There is nothing quite like climbing into a church van and driving to a destination. So a few weeks back YMX decided to have a contest to find out “Who has the worst road trip story?”

It turned out that my NYWC buddy Chris Wyatt of South Carolina (and an adoptive parent newly back from Ethiopia) had the craziest story. This beats any road trip nightmare ever! Read the rest of the stories. If you like ironies, check out how Gospel.com avoided using the word “hell.”

Here’s the winner:

We’ll start with the fact that the last 20 miles of the trip took 2.5 hrs, driving over steep, curvy mountain roads in a whiteout. It snowed three feet in those two hrs. I was driving a loaded van, pulling a 10 ft. trailer, leading a caravan of several other vehicles. We couldn’t pull off of the road, and cars were going into ditches all around us. So, after 12 hrs of driving, we finally get to the lodge. We wake up the following morning to 18 degree temps and strong cross-winds. As we are walking to get the kids their skis, we start down a set of steps. One of our chaperones promptly falls on an icy step and breaks her ankle. Badly. I wrap my coat around her, and take off looking for ski patrol. We hook her up to a sled, and get her the infirmary. I then have to dig our van out of the snow (more than an hour), and go off the road twice driving to the infirmary. The nearest hospital with the facilities to help is almost two hours away over icy mountain roads. We FINALLY get to the hospital, and they tell us she needs surgery. They don’t have the facilites to do the surgery. So they put her in an air cast and send us back to the lodge. We get to the lodge and there are no wheelchairs, so we have to carry her to the room on a luggage rack. We get her settled in and drugged up, and my phone rings. It’s the ski patrol office. I have another girl with an injury, and one of my boys has been in a collision that required the other party in said collision to be airlifted out with a kidney injury (NOT my kid’s fault). So he’s been stuck in the patrol office all day, as he can only be released to his legal guardian (me for that trip…the other party tried to sue him for the wreck, and it went to court…our kid won). I take care of the injury, get the kid back on the slopes. The following day weather is so bad that no one can ski. Every kid at the place was holed up in the lodges. For a whole day. We start the trip back the following day. Our chaperone with the shattered ankle has never been in the mountains before this. She is doped up on painkillers. We are about 10 minutes into the trip when she suddently projectile vomits – right into the back of my wife’s head. There’s nowhere to stop for another 20 miles or so until we get to the bottom of the mountain. We finally stop, and I clean vomit up off of the van while my wife goes into the bathroom to try to clean the chunks out of her hair. Well, you know what happens when a van full of people has to smell vomit for hours. Everyone started chunking, and we had to stop every 30 minutes or so to empty out plastic bags full of barf. One of the vehicles broke down, another got lost from the caravan. It took us over 15 hrs to make what SHOULD have been an 8 hr. trip. On top of that, three kids ran out of money, and I had to foot their meals on the promise from their parents that I would be repaid on arrival. Did I ever see that cash? Nay.

Every once in a while we get a great string of synergy at Youth Ministry Exchange and we really hit it out of the ballpark with solid resources.

Today we released 3 different resources on teen pregnancy.

• Life After Birth (bible study for new moms)
• What Juno Didn’t Tell You
• What Does Juno Teach Us About Youth Ministry?

Big props to Amy for putting all this together. She’s mucho good at what she does.

I am continually in awe of what God is doing with YMX. The other day I had the opportunity to talk to a “real publisher” about YMX and publishing and starting a business and all kinds of things. As I look back at the quality of things that we are able to produce with no money, no staff, no offices, and no backing from a major publishing house… it is clearly a God-ordained movement. It really is youth ministry people encouraging and uplifting one another and sometimes I sit back and just go… whoa, this is cool.

For a few weeks now (eternity in my library of ideas) Patti and I have talked about having a YMX blog so that our blogs weren’t quite so clogged up with stuff about the company and/or youth ministry stuff for others.

It’s not that we don’t love youth ministry or youth workers coming to our site, it’s that beyond our friends people aren’t getting a central location for all of our youth ministry stuff. Also, we need to feature bloggers from YMX more regularly and we really didn’t have a place to do this on YMX outside of the forums. (Right now, only half our traffic goes to the forums so that was out.)

So, the YMX blog was born last week. It’s got a fancy look that I love and we’ve got a growing list of writers to go along with all the collaboration we do all around the sites.

Three quick things about the YMX blog:
1. It’s all original content. We’re not recycling stuff we’ve already posted on our personal blogs or stuff that is making the rounds of blogs.
2. It’s all about youth ministry. No personal musings allowed.
3. It’s informal. We’ve got standard on the main site for polished content… we’re relaxing that on the blog.

Yesterday we kicked off a series of articles at YMX. Let me tell you why I’m excited about this series. It is practical, between the eyes, encouragement to youth workers.

One of the main goals of YMX is to be an encouragement to the Youth Ministry community. So I have been asking our forum moderators and a few other folks to write brief notes of encouragement to the community called “You Matter.”

Why is this so important?
This is purely practical. This is the time of year church staff and volunteers are under a lot of pressure. Tough to isolate the source of that pressure for everyone… but there is pressure. This is the time of year when a lot of ministries hit the long part of their schedules. Endless weeks of planning and executing between now and June are ahead. This is the time of year when many people experience seasonal depression. All that to say, this is the perfect time to encourage the discouraged. 

Here’s an incomplete list of You Matter articles you can expect to see over the next few days. You Matter to God, You Matter to Your Community,  You Matter to Your Spouse, You Matter to Your Students, You Matter to Your Schools, You Matter to your Church, You Matter to Your Spouse, You Matter to Parents.

Yesterday, Patti kicked this in with flare.

You matter.  It’s not what you do, it’s you.  More than you matter to your family, your students, your church, or anyone else, you matter to God.

When the days are hard, it’s tough to remember that before you mattered to anyone else, you mattered to God.  He knew you first.  He sees your whole life from beginning to end, and He always has.  He sees your potential and created you to fulfill it.  He knows what it is to be you, face what you face, feel what you feel, because He put on frail humanity for you.  No, He hasn’t faced your elder board or senior pastor, or a difficult parent, or your unruly students.  But He has faced Pilate, the High Priests, his broken-hearted mother, a skeptical hometown, and mentored a promising but thick-headed group of guys (who incidentally achieved astounding results after He’d gone on). Read the rest

Over the last few weeks I’ve had several people ask me about Youth Ministry Exchange. I don’t mean people from the community, I mean people from Romeo.

So here is the scoop.
Back in November-December 2005, I created a website with some friends of mine. It’s an online community for people like me… people who do youth ministry vocationally or as volunteers. Feel free to check it out, I’ve got nothing to hide.

What, were you bored?
Nope,just crazy. We just set out to meet a relevant need. From there God has blessed it and it’s taken off. In a lot of ways it’s taken a life of its own.

So it’s a place where people vent about their jobs or waste time at work?
While there is always that kind of thing at any online community (facebook, myspace, etc) there is actually very little of that. Most of what I participate in is practical advice, encouragement, and that kind of thing for people working/volunteering with youth groups like ours. I know for me personally, I don’t go to the site much during the day at all… well, unless I need advice on something at work! Like… I need an event and I’m looking for something cool… got any ideas?

What about all these other websites?
If you look on my sidebar to the right you’ll see a bunch of other websites that YMX owns. These are “sub-sites” that operate within the youth ministry genre but to a slightly different audience within youth ministry.

I heard you do web design “on the side,” is that true?
Yes and no. I do all of the church’s sites and all of YMX’s sites. But I’m not a professional web designer by trade so I always feel uncomfortable building other people’s sites. So, if you’ve got a project… just understand that as much as I like you… if it’s not for the church I’ll have to charge you and I’ll have to do it outside of my “work hours” at church or on a day off. Hints, discussion, advice are always plentiful and free!

Is it profitable?
This is the question that every person from the church wants to ask but is afraid to! Yes and no. Yes the site generates revenue and pays for itself. No, I don’t take a salary from the site. We simply reinvest profits into growing the site. Kristen and I are in it because we want to encourage other people…

Are you a solo act on this thing?
Nope. Never! Yuck. Boring. I have a great business partner. Also, I have an incredible group of moderators who oversee the “heavy lifting” part of the company, the forums. (1300 members and growing every day) The other thing we are getting known for is our youth ministry content. All of the credit for that goes to our managing editor. Seriously, Amy is awesome.

Is the goal for this website to become your job and for you to stop being a pastor at Romeo?
Not at all. The aim of the website was always to encourage other youth workers. I am more passionate about reaching this amazing generation of students here in Romeo than ever. As Kristen and I like to say… we have 28 years left on our mortgage so we intend on being here for a long time. We don’t know the future. Really, YMX is the result of responding the Holy Spirit’s prompting. Just like I love building into the lives of Romeo’s students, for some reason the Holy Spirit is directing us to build into the lives of youth workers around the country. The church is always #3 in my life. And YMX is generally a distant #4 or #5.