How to promote your Youth Alpha course without throwing rocks...

I’ve toyed with ideas such as hurling Youth Alpha flyers wrapped around rocks through local windows, but fortunately I have a brilliant youth team who prevent such moments of personal ‘inspiration’ from ever being acted upon!  

Rocks aside, I believe that four vital components for promoting a Youth Alpha course are Consultation, Ownership, Relationship and Quality.

In each of our lives, our time is filled with things we Have To do (e.g. school), things we Should Do (Church...?) and things we Want To do (hanging out with friends, playing computer games etc.).

In my experience, it’s often the ‘Should Do’ category that gets dropped from many young peoples’ lives and so when we run Youth Alpha, we should constantly seek to make it a ‘Want To’ activity/event by making it a Quality event. Publicity should focus on being attractive, contemporary and eye-catching (we copy designs from Night Club flyers!). The flyers should seek to promote the fun aspects of the course, but should never conceal the serious faith content (no surprise Bible bashing!).

One survey suggests that only 15% of people will actually read what is on a poster or flyer so promoting a Youth Alpha course requires that we put it in front of their faces in as many ways as we can. Facebook, texts, websites, verbal announcements and snail mail all allows you to contact as many young people in as many ways as often as possible with the same info.

We also need to try to be as relevant as possible to the subcultures of the young people we’re trying to reach. The need to be relevant to young people is where Consultation becomes so important! Young people are, naturally, experts on what young people will enjoy and therefore we should ask for their expert opinions. 

This has proved invaluable to me! We were told by our youth that some flyers we’d produced looked ‘too churchy’ and would put people off, so we chose to do a complete re-design and re-print! This process does require humility on the part of those in charge, but adults (and young leaders) must remember that consulting a wide range of young people enables us to be culturally relevant to them in ways we cannot be alone.

Through this process of Consultation I believe that young people will naturally take Ownership for their Youth Alpha course. They have invested in it and this is only right, since its success is dependent upon them inviting their friends! As attractive as the publicity material is, it will rarely be enough to convince someone to come along to Youth Alpha by itself. Youth Alpha is all about inviting young people into relationship with God, so it’s only natural that Relationship should be the most powerful tool in any invitation to come along.

I also think it’s important to ensure that friends will be together during small group times to capitalise on these Relationships; when we advertise a course, guests should feel like they’re coming as part of a group of friends to an event, rather than as a lonely participant who will stand out!

So to sum up, Consultation helps to make the event and advertising material of high Quality and relevant to its target audience. Because of their involvement in the process, the young people will take Ownership of the event and be prompted to invite those with whom they have a Relationship to come along.

It’s not rocket science, but I think it’s way better than throwing rocks...

 

Adapted from the UK Youth Alpha website.  Thanks Joel  - he’s the Youth Pastor at Upton Vale Baptist Church in Torquay, UK.