The Best Apps For Youth Ministry in 2019
Let’s face it: we live in the digital age. If you’re a youth pastor, you’re probably looking for new ways to connect with your students and get them engaged in ministry and church. And if you’re not, well… you should be! So many people today are living on their phones and tablets—and that includes high school students.
If you’re looking for some new ways to connect with students, apps are a great way to go. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite apps for youth ministry here—but this list is by no means exhaustive. There are so many great apps out there that can make your life as a youth pastor easier (or more fun!), so take these suggestions as the beginning of your search—not the end!
Here are some of our favorite youth ministry apps:
Best Apps For Youth Ministry 2019
THE FANTASTIC FOUR OF YOUTH MINISTRY APPS
The amount of technology available to assist you with youth ministry is overwhelming. There are so many places to go to find resources! Instead of letting you drown in the vast sea of possibilities, I wanted to give you my 4 favorite youth ministry apps that have reshaped the way I work.
MUST-HAVE YOUTH MINISTRY APPS:
1. ORGANIZE AND PLAN YOUR WEEK WITH TRELLO
My weakest area of ministry is organization, by far. But I actually get excited when it’s time to update my plan on Trello. Trello is an app that allows me to plan my Wednesday nights visually by creating “lists” that stack with “cards” that sit side by side in the app. I use lists to represent my sermon series or events and each week or section of the event is a separate card. I love it because after I create and maintain these, I can share it with my team so we all can stay on the same page. You can also create collaborative checklists, which I use to share random to-do lists and shopping lists with my team. If a volunteer picks up an item, they can check it off and it will appear checked on everyone’s app.
For Apple – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trello/id461504587?mt=8
For Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trello&hl=en_US
2. KEEP ALL YOUR COMMUNICATION IN ONE PLACE WITH SLACK
Communication is vital in youth ministry. The problem is, there are so many different people you need to communicate with, making it incredibly difficult to keep all conversations in one place. This is where Slack comes in; it’s a chat app on steroids. Besides being your one-stop solution for communication with your team, you can add hundreds of features like file-sharing from Google Drive, Google calendar alerts, and polls/questions. To keep communication clear and organized, you divide your contacts into as many “channels” as you need inside your “workspace.” Each channel can have a separate group of people. For instance, I have a “Youth Leaders Slack” chat, a “General” chat for everyone, a “Leaders Only” chat, and a “Worship Team” chat for my student worship leaders. For DNow this past year, I created a separate workspace and different channels for each host home, our worship team, and our leaders. Ultimately, it helps keep my communication organized and in one place!
For Apple – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slack/id618783545?mt=8
For Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Slack&hl=en_US
3. KEEP PARENTS AND STUDENTS IN THE LOOP WITH REMIND
Remind is the easiest announcement tool I’ve ever used. It was created for schools, so teachers could communicate with parents and students, but it works flawlessly for churches as well. It allows you to send out announcements that are one-way texts or push notifications on your students’ and/or parents’ phones. I use it to share event details or any urgent announcements. The best part? It is 100% free!
For Apple – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remind-school-communication/id522826277?mt=8
For Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.remind101&hl=en_US
* https://help.remind.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002396740-Service-disruption-for-Verizon-Wireless-users-in-the-United-States
4. SAVE TIME AND UP YOUR GAME ON SOCIAL MEDIA WITH CANVA AND HOOTSUITE
Social Media is a huge avenue for youth ministers to reach students. I believe it is important to have a consistent presence in your students’ lives; this is one easy way to do that. Sweet graphics make your posts pop, but I used to waste hours trying to make them myself. That is, until I found Canva. Canva has thousands of premade templates or graphics you can edit and use for your own social media posts. It’s easy to use and can be done on your phone or computer. I mention Hootsuite as well because it allows you to schedule posts for up to three social media networks. Once a week, I create graphics on Canva and then schedule them to be posted throughout the week with Hootsuite. Not only does scheduling save me time, it forces me to plan ahead so students know what is going on before it happens!
texting app for youth group
Ten years ago, I couldn’t have imagined managing a youth ministry from 5 apps on my phone. Now I can’t imagine doing it without them.
In case you couldn’t tell, I love apps. Whether it’s entertainment apps like Netflix, Spotify, or shopping apps like Amazon (just bought a new ping pong paddle!), I love the ability to do so much from a device that fits in my hand. Beyond the fun stuff, apps have also helped me keep up with the details for our youth ministry, saving me time and increasing our efficiency.
Sure, I’ve used apps to connect with kids or run games, but the apps I want to focus on are a whole other set of apps that can help you streamline your ministry, keep you organized and prevent some of those details from falling through the cracks. So whether you lead a youth ministry of 10 students or 10,000 (if you have 10,000 students, it may be time to start your own mega-church!), here are 5 FREE APPs that can help you make your youth ministry more efficient and effective.
1) REMIND (remind.com) — Want to text everyone in your youth group? How about just your student leaders? Guys only? Girls only? Dog owners? Remind can do it.
Communication is huge in youth ministry. Like us, our students live busy lives and church is only one part of their weekly rhythm. But beyond Sundays and Wednesdays and events, I know we all want to keep students in the loop and remind them of what’s going on and coming up. This is where Remind comes into play.
Remind is a free texting app that allows you to text your entire youth ministry or sub-groups. We use it to let students know about upcoming series, events and even what’s being served in the cafe this week. And we have Remind groups for student leaders, adult leaders, all guys and all girls. Not every text needs to go to every person so the categories are super helpful.
This year, our church has also used Remind to send out a daily text for our read through the New Testament in a year series that includes a link to the Scripture passages online. Many students in our youth group are receiving these daily texts and reading through the New Testament for the first time! You can also schedule texts to go out on any given day and time.
2) EVERNOTE (evernote.com) — Evernote is probably my favorite app for youth ministry and I literally use it every day. In fact, I’m currently writing this article in the Evernote app on my computer, but I may finish it later on my phone.
Evernote is basically a place to store notes and organize them by category. Simple idea, right? Most of our devices come with some kind of a “notes” app built-in, but I found it frustrating to keep everything organized with hundreds of different notes.
With Evernote, you can make categories and sub-categories which make it simple to keep track of events (current events, old events, event evaluations, etc.) and messages (new messages, old messages, message ideas, etc.). I also keep track of notes from ongoing meetings, Bible studies, prayer requests and teams; which I can easily access on the go from any of my devices.
The beauty of Evernote is that you can easily add in pictures or even audio notes; which is great when you think of that perfect illustration in the drive through line of Taco Bell.
3) GOOGLE DRIVE (google.com/drive) — If your youth ministry is anything like mine, then you have LOTS going on with events, teams and weekly programming. Sometimes it’s a challenge just keeping up with everything and staying organized – but fear not, Google Drive is here to help!
With this app, you can easily keep track of who signed-up for camp and track their name, grade, contact info, t-shirt size, rooming preference and more.
Another great feature of Google Drive is that it allows for multiple people (staff, volunteers, etc.) to literally work off the same page instead of e-mailing back and forth or constantly printing updated sheets of information. For any given event, I can access all the info I need from this one app, which makes it super-convenient.
I also use Google Drive to keep up with schedules for Bible study curriculum and our Wednesday night teaching rotation.
4) ASANA (asana.com) — Asana is one of the newer apps our student ministry team has been using and so far, it’s two thumbs up!
It’s basically a shared to-do list. With our bigger events like Mission Trips, we’ve found that it has been difficult to keep up with who is doing what between staff and volunteers.
With Asana, you can see the basic description of all your events along with to-do lists for each one organized by the categories you setup. Each task can be assigned to an individual on your team (the free version allows you to have 15 people on your team) along with a due-date, place for notes, etc.
One other cool feature of Asana is the conversations area where your team can communicate back and forth about different ideas and other details (instead of looking back through old e-mails and texts).
5) DROPBOX (dropbox.com) — If you haven’t started using Dropbox yet in your ministry, you’re going to want to jump on this soon. Dropbox is a cloud-based storage app where you can store and share anything in your ministry from graphics to documents to video files. Right now in our ministry, several people on our team are working on updating a mission trip application that includes trip info, fundraising ideas, application questions and more. Instead of working on this individually and e-mailing changes back and forth, I can make the changes to these documents directly in Dropbox and I know we’re all working off the same page with the most current information.
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