4 Tips for YouTube You Can Use

YouTube You Can Use is a free weekly youth ministry resource I publish every Monday at The Youth Cartel.

It includes a link to a YouTube video as well as a discussion starter, some related Bible verses, 3 ice breaker questions, and a thought question I call wrestle with this.

To give you some behind the scenes insight, here are my goals as I put it together:

• The video can’t be cheesy or predictable or boring.
• The video has to be 90 seconds or less.
• The tie-in has to lead students back to Scripture or an attribute of God.
• It has to be age-appropriate.
• It has to be something I’d use… because we use it in our ministry.

Here are 4 tips for using this free resource:

1. Play it as an intro in your Sunday morning or midweek youth ministry time. Just play the video and then have a slide with the 3 questions. Done.
2. Post it on your Facebook page. Just straight up snatch the video and the discussion guide and put it up there for your students to wrestle with. You’re probably not using that page enough, this is a weekly excuse. Takes 30 seconds.
3. Send it to parents as something they can use to talk to their kids. Copy/paste the content, drop in a link to the video, and now you have an excuse to send a weekly newsletter to parents. Drop your announcements for the week above there and I just made you look like a rock star.
4. Table talk with your own kids or small group. Just pull the video up on your smartphone, hand it to them, and then have a discussion based on the email. No prep time needed, just open the email and you’re done.

Are you getting this? How do you use it? 

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