A while back I taught a district class for about 150 youth on “Best Practices” for Facebook. The class was inspired by my own youth who were online but didn’t understand privacy concerns, what to do about cyberbullying, and how to ensure their online persona matches their Christian beliefs. The presentation was well-received.

I’ve been bugged about it for months by other youth ministry workers and now I’ve polished it enough to offer the presentation for distribution.

This is not a “how to sign up for facebook” or “how to fill out your profile” basics class but is the bare minimum of what a youth should know when they interact with people on facebook.

Release Notes v. 1.0

• The following is meant for a PowerPoint presentation for a 75 minute class taught to youth. Obviously you can cut whatever you want to make it fit the time. I doubt you could do it in less than 30 minutes given the amount of questions youth have even if you cut out all the media and games.
• The privacy settings are updated frequently by Facebook. These are current as of 02/15/2011.
• This blog post will be updated whenever updates need to be made to either of the files.

What you’ll need

1. The Facebook101-HackingChristianity.pptx file (see below)
2. The Facebook101Outline-HackingChristianity.docx file (see below)
3. Media Downloaded or Prepped (I use Firefox’s DownloadHelper with VLC media player for offline access)
   • Princess Bride clip with Vizzini v. Man in Black (on youtube [best quality but finishes too early] OR on veoh [lower quality but the full scene]…or on DVD of course!)
   • Talent Show Bullying Prevention Infomercial (found on youtube)
   • Facebook Girls illustration video (from BluefishTV)
4. Preparations for two games: Trivia Tic-Tac-Poke and Facebookish (see #2 Outline)
5. A heartfelt desire to help youth navigate the digital world!

Download the Files

1. http://links.hackingchristianity.net/facebook101-pptx (Google Docs – version 1.0)
2. http://links.hackingchristianity.net/facebook101-docx (Google Docs – version 1.0)

Distribution/Adaptation and Credits

• Distribution & Adaptation
  • The .pptx and .docx documents above are licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 license. This means you can make derivative works (adaptations) for your context without permission so long as you (a) leave the Credits slide up for a reasonable time or publish the credit information below and (b) it is not used in a commercial publication.
• Credits
  • Created by Smith, J. (2011). Facebook 101: Best Practices. Local Church Leaders Workshop, Muskogee District of the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church. Wagoner, OK.
    < http://links.hackingchristianity.net/facebook101 >
  • Adapted from Coggeshall, J. (2007). Facebook: To poke or not to poke. Student Development Presentations, Bentley University. Waltham, MA.

Hope you enjoy! Take a look at the files and comment below any adaptations or questions you might have.

Still one of my most embarrassing moments in ministry was when I was an intern at a UM church. For youth, I volunteered to choose a movie for movie night. I remembered a movie I watched a year previously that I thought was a great example of dealing with racism. It was called Pleasantville.

I still remember sitting in the youth room with 5 teenage girls and one female adult watching the bathroom scene where the mom is in the bathtub and…well, she ends up setting the tree on fire. Watch the movie and it makes more sense. The look on the youth sponsor’s face as she delighted in my 19yo embarrassment is burned into my head. Sigh.

However, today I can tell you that it will never happen again. I am thankful for the Internets that give people like me, who pastor youth, a simple(?) way to measure if a movie is appropriate.

Via Richard Hall, here’s the Youth Pastor’s Coefficient (originally from zoomtard.com):

The formulas are hence (most text taken from zoomtard.com though edited for my blog readership):

• S = Swear-words
• ! = Super swear-words (you know the ones…)
• b = Breasts or other PG-13 nudity
• V = Tame violence (Like a cartoon slapfest or someone getting in a playground fist-fight)
• G = Serious nudity (The kind you don’t want to watch with your mom in the room)
• m = Serious violence (The kind that is in Call of Duty that they will play when they leave)
• i = Innuendo (That most slippery of youth group movie downfalls)
• A = Alternative music laden soundtracks (Kids dig those block-rockin’ beats)
• H = Happy endings (All youth group movies ought to have it!)
• PRm = Positive Role-model (If the star of the movie prays, talks kindly to people with mental disability or t least shaves regularly then you have some prime youth group movie potential.)
• SI = Sermon Illustrations (Every scene that can be the basis of a preachy-session at the end of the night has to be very valuable)
• ir = Improper Relationships (Varies to your youth group’s level of prudishness: could be a divorced and remarried woman [shock!], to a sassy gay couple [shockiest!], up to domestic violence or teenage abuse)

The goal is to for the final total to be close to 0.5 (though depending on your students you could go up to around .75…but anything beyond 1.0 is right out, apparently!).

There you go. Now you know how to rate Saved as compared to Book of Eli on the level of youth group appropriateness. Good luck.