We Should Hangout More Often

I can’t quite recall when the switch happened, but it was probably 4 or 5 years into my college ministry career when I started to look forward to conference more for the relational connections than for the conference content.

Do you know what I meant?

There’s just something about being with people who get what we do that’s so significant, so generative.

People of similar heart and mind, who feel called to reach college students with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

It’s a unique calling, which is why when we come together at conferences (or other events) it’s such a special time, and we find ourselves talking at length about the work that we do.

Unfortunately, for many of us, conferences are — at best — something that happen just a couple of times each year.

Which means that a lot of those life-giving conversations with friends and colleagues from our field of college ministry get isolated to a couple of weeks, a midst a full year of ministry.

But what if didn’t have to be that way?

What if we could “gather together” — to talk shop or simply catch up on life — on a more regular basis?

And what if we could do it from the comfort of our office, local coffee shop, or even the front porch of our own home?

Well, that’s what I’d like to experiment with.

I’m inviting you to be a part of a college ministry chat on Google+ Hangouts.

Prerequisits: You’ll need to be (or become) a part of Google+ and you’ll have to have a computer (with internet access) that has both audio and video capabilities.

I’m still pretty new to Hangouts on Google+, but from what I can tell there are enough spots for 10 people total. So if you’ve ever Skyped before, imagine having 8 additional people involved in the conversation. It might look something like this:

So I’m looking for 9 others who would be interested in testing this out with me this coming Monday, June 11th, at 10 a.m. (CST).

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JUST ADDED: for those who would prefer to join a test group in the evening, we’ll be holding a Hangout next Wednesday, June 13th, at 9 p.m. (CST).

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There are no long-term commitments — just an invitation to connect and converse about college students, college ministry and being a college minister in the 21st Century.

So if you’re interested, please send me a message by clicking here. The first 9 people to reply (for each of the two sessions) will be in. I’ll send more specific instructions after that.

If all goes well, this could become a regular (even weekly) opportunity at FaithONCampus.com — and could feature special guests and/or specific topics from Hangout to Hangout.

Gotta love technology!

Question: Do you do anything like this with friends or colleagues in the field of college ministry? If so, what benefits have you experienced from it?

14 thoughts on “We Should Hangout More Often

  1. Guy, I absolutely love this idea!  However, the timing is an issue!  For those of us (like me) who work a secular job during the day, we’re unable to participate during ‘normal’ office-type hours.  Any way, you could also schedule a second hangout during the evening hours? Just a thought…

    Jim

  2. Google+ Hangouts is awesome. We had an online Bible study and we used to do the first few meetings via Skype group video conference (which required the host to have a premium Skype account). Then we shifted to Google+ Hangout (which is free). We stayed there and used it for the rest of our Bible study lessons. It’s proven useful and most of the times, it is more reliable than Skype (and it’s free!).

    Btw, I’m from the Philippines and the other members of our online Bible study is from the US.

    1. This sounds great Marvin! So you’ve had the chance to compare and contrast Skype and G+ Hangouts. Any tricks or issues we should be aware of as we experiment next week? 

      Thanks for sharing Marvin!

      1. Do a test run. Try to max out the 9 people + 1 host (max of 10) so you can stress test everyone’s connection.

        Also, don’t make your hangout public (or invite public to join in). I made a mistake once when we started the hangout and I invited “Public” to the hangout… Suddenly came popping in a picture of an unpleasant sight. And we have to recreate a hangout and just limit it to our Circle.

        The usual problems that we had is on the user side. Unstable internet connection (from one member who is on a sailboat in the Carribean), non-working mic/headset/webcam. So just make sure everyone logs in at least 5 minutes before the schedule to smooth out any technical problems.

        If you are planning to use Google Hangouts on Air (which we weren’t able to use since it just recently went out to public lately), make sure no one plays any copyrighted music. Google can detect it and will close the hangout and ban you from using the hangout.

        I’d love to see how it would work for you guys.

  3. I’m unable to make it to either of these times, but I’d love to do this some time in the future!

  4. Hey Guy,
    I actually “met” you at one of those conferences – you facilitated the discussion on what we have to learn from other ministries and such in Nashville about a month ago. Been keeping an eye on your blog ever since, but this is my first comment. You finally got me. Ha.
    I’m on staff with our college ministry still, but in the last month I was asked to be a campus pastor with a multisite site church here in Kansas. I’m only 24 and my wife even younger so it was a daunting thought, but thankfully the lead pastor, two hrs away, is a tech nerd himself a bit and we do Hangouts with all the campus pastors across the state. Extremely helpful, and really quite encouraging. I think it provides a great opportunity to bring in younger leaders and let them get an inside look at the thinking and really even just the personalities of older leaders.

    So I’m saying, I like your thinking here. Good idea! Plus, I like to see older leaders not afraid to utilize the amazing tools of technology we have now. Shows me they’re willing to be innovative and not passive or stuck in ruts. Younger generations need that. I can follow a leader like that. Good work.

    1. Hey Riley!

      Yes, I remember you. Thanks for leaving a comment! 😉

      It sounds like the Hangouts have some of the potential that I’ve imagined, but I’m curious to know how you would compare it to Skype? Minus the obvious bonus of being able to connect with 9 others, are there any drawbacks to the Hangouts? Any recommendations for us as we “experiment” next week? 

      1. Well, I didn’t get back to this in time, so you probably encountered some of these things this morning. Actually, I’d like to know if you did. From my experience there’s a couple drawbacks though, yea. The image quality compared to Skype isn’t as good and reliable. I’ve never seen it drop a person, but that really cool switch-to-the-speaker feature it’s supposed to do rarely works on time. Perhaps it would with faster internet, but Skype’s seems to work better. That wouldn’t be a big deal except for when you get 10 people, it can get confusing. Remind yourself its free and it seems fine though. Ha.

        Then, so far I’ve never seen it’s cool features of being able to put documents and such into the screen show up in an effective way. I still need to play with it a bit more, but I’m hoping this gets worked out because I reeeally like that you can share a YouTube video or Document into the meeting. That’d be some handy stuff for, say, online Bible studies or small groups. We shared a document in the screen once about a vision and such and I couldn’t read it at all, so the whole talk on it couldn’t happen.

        A minor thing I find with people though, is because G+ is so pseudo-facebook people have a resistance to “building” a profile to get on there. It’s funny, but like, Skype has a rep and is just for chatting and G+ is supposed to a whole social network and many think it’s something they have to put all this effort into (which in cases like yours, it’s worth it – there’s huge SEO-type benefits to completing your G+ profile – but for most there’s no reason to).

        Ha, ok sorry for the mini-blog under yours. Yea, overall G+ Hangouts have made a huge fan of me. Only reason I’d ever turn Skype on again is for one person call and screen sharing or remotely controlling a computer which means it’ll rarely see me again. Ha.Did you like it this morning?

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