Monday, April 07, 2008

Adding a "wow" factor to an event

I just got done watching the latest mission from Improv Everywhere. This one was called, "best game ever." They basically took a little league game and turned it into a major league event. At first, I thought - man that is cool. But, at the end, I started thinking about what it would take to pull off something like that in my youth ministry. What could we do to turn an "ordinary" event into something extraordinary? What would it take?

Watch the video and then we'll continue this discussion...



I think everyone in youth ministry would agree that doing something like this would be awesome. Talk about memory makers. But how do you pull it off and which students do you include? How could you do something like this and include all your students?

I don't think many of our ministries could afford to do a jumbotron or even the mascots. Maybe it could be something you do for the seniors each year, or the freshmen. I'm pretty short of ideas - I was just really impressed and wanted to start some conversation/thinking.

(read about what it took to pull of, as well as a nice recap of what happened, here on their site.)

Do you have any ideas of what a youth ministry could do to add this "wow" factor to an event?

6 comments:

  1. Wow. I wouldn't have known what to do if I was one of those players. Or their parents. Crazy! I like the idea of trying to be memorable in ministry, too. There's probably lots of stuff we could do. I'm going to brainstorm some stuff later. Thanks for the inspiration.

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  2. It's all about making an event memorable and making the students feel special. In some cases, that means a ton of planning for an over the top event. In other cases, that means investing more time into a student or group.

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  3. @drpoulette I'd love to hear some of your thoughts from the brainstorming

    @brandon How do you know the difference? Can't you just end up at the second option when you don't do the first option? (Def. not disagreeing, just thinking)

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  4. Trial and error...

    When I worked at a camp, we would spend so much time planning crazy fun events. Sometimes they would become instant classics, ones that students would ask for year after year. Others fizzled away cause kids hated them.

    We would also have a campfire the last night. Three solid hours of students pouring their hearts out. This was another time of great impact, and kept the students coming back year after year.

    After all that, I guess you just need to figure out what your students are looking for. At this time, my jr high students want big and flashy things, while at another jr high they just want to be together, no matter the event.

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  5. @brandon thanks for the thoughts. Would you agree that sometimes the biggest impact might be to just do the opposite once or twice?

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  6. @lilkup yeah change it up. Varying your programs can break students out of a rut of the same programs.

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