Kinda Tying In With The Editorial Below

There was a meeting last night for the volunteer small group leaders for our high school students.

I was asked to come and help with the training session and one thing I was focusing on was to build meaningful relationships with students. One reality is that the volunteers are busy and the students are busy...so I was telling them that technology can be their best asset to help foster that relationship. That's the way teens connect today.

See, folks my age and older tend to see the Internet as a highly valuable tool for getting information...like, "What time does the concert start?"...or getting driving directions to the new restaurant or to register for a seminar or to maybe shop a bit or make reservations or send flowers or listen to music or get movie tickets and all that jazz.

And, folks younger than my age tend to see the Internet as a highly valuable tool for building relationships or establishing community. It's how they connect with each other.

So, for example, a newly married couple who moved somewhere and was wanting to find a good church might start with information, like what time the services start and the location of the church and what classes they have for people their age. They might even preview a sermon to decide if they want to attend or not. But once they decide to make that church their "home church," they will want to go to the website to read the pastor's blog or to visit a forum and ask questions about the sermon or interact with some other members in chat rooms.

I mean, folks do the same thing at The Diner. I see people every Sunday who maybe have been on vaction for a couple of weeks and sick for another who walk in and we chat like we've seen each other every day because, well, they've visited The Diner every few days. See? It builds a digital relationship of sorts that enhances the flesh & blood one. That's how teens view the Internet.

So, I recommended that each leader load their mobile phones with teen's numbers for text messaging & set up a MySpace and a Facebook page to keep connected with their students. Since the leaders & teens are so busy it can be hard to line up schedules for lengthy visits at the local coffee shop (my personal favorite way of building relationships, but my job allows me the freedom to spend time doing that very thing--not many people have that luxury)...so they could make daily connections, discuss questions that came up with the study, pray together, send out announcements quickly, etc.

One person asked a question the rest of the adults were thinking: "Why can't we just send them e-mails?"

And the answer was real but revealing to the crowd:

"E-mail is too slow for them. Most teens I know don't check their e-mail but once a week or so--or only if somebody tells them that they sent something important. In fact, our children's ministry leader had about 30 teenage volunteers for a summer program and couldn't figure out why they weren't responding to an important e-mail sent two days ago. We set up a MySpace page for that event, had one teen post a bulletin, all the 30 teens became "friends" and had a nearly 80% response rate in 4-hours."

The implications of this reality are staggering...for businesses, schools, churches, etc.

And we can fight it or ignore it at our own peril.

But it's very real.