It was presented at the table on Tuesday that we were having a round table discussion on our current series topic for the message on Sunday. The topic was on God, the Bible and other questions you may have about your faith, We're calling it EVIDENCE. One thing about students, and most people in general is that you're going to be sitting in silence for a long time because no one likes to get up and ask the first question, or sound like an idiot. So we needed some kind of anonymity. Kids automatically are drawn to technology like their cell phones. Services that take text and put them on a website for some kind of dissemination is pretty stinking expensive, and more robust than what we needed. Some churches do these types of things all of the time and need a little more consistent support.

If you've got the time, effort and a few volunteers you can get it done for free and offer students, or your congregation a chance to interact with you on stage, and maybe help a few people defend their faith.

Most people have texting capabilities today, if they're not paying for it monthly, they can send a text for $0.10. Set up a free email account, (gmail, yahoo, hotmail) just to name a few. keep the address name as short as the service will let you, 6 characters is the general minimum. This way people will not have to take forever entering it in their phone.

We set up a general email address to use on future occasions, it was short and easy to remember once we took it off the screen. Have your moderator or speaker get up and present it to everyone, phones today can send a text to an email address (in place of a phone number). If it can't then you've probably got an iphone or blackberry and can just email the address.

From there I opened up a group chat window in ichat (everyone on stage had macs) and would list off the questions while the people on stage answering the questions would sort through and let me know what questions they wanted to tackle next. Then my graphics opperator would copy and paste the question from the email into ProPresenter and display the question real time.



In a group of close to two hundred kids we had around 50 serious emails that came in (65+ if you count then ones asking why the guys on stage were so sexy).

While the answers may have been a little long, because this was the first time we've done anything like this, some of it may have gotten lost on the kids. We at least had peaked the attention of students and gotten into their world of text and technology in a relevant way. With the 30 some odd unique questions posed there was no way to answer them all in the hour slot. So now we're going to tackle each question in a series of blogs on the student website, www.lyf.net, also referencing some solid online resources so that the students can better defend their faith in an world that isn't alwas the easiest to stand up in.

If there is an opportunity to have an open discussion like this again a few tweaks to the process may be that one person instead of multiple answer the questions while another person on that staff or team is in the back sorting through and picking the best handfull of questions for the presenter to go through. (I was in the back acting more as a filter instead of a question moderator).

Research the topic you're planning on answering thouroughly, don't go up on stage and expect to know it all. Kids have some incredibly deep theological questions today because of the gap between school and the Bible. They are presented that it's either one or the other, not both, and that the Bible is a fairy tale (so take your guess at which one they end up thinking is better to believe in? It's not the Bible).

You may understand in your heart why you believe those things, but it's a little harder to articulate those issues on the spot.