00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry The average teenager already spends almost five hours a day on social media. Five hours of scrolling. Voting. Picking sides. Arguing about who's better. They're already playing the game. They're just not playing it with you. So I built a bracket. 16 options, one winner. And every single year we use and lean into the phones in the room, they get a vote. 00:00:23:17 - 00:00:45:24 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And it's the highest engagement thing that we run all year long. And I'm making a complete refresh. New guide for my world's greatest donut. It's been years. Welcome to the 2026 version of The World's Greatest Donut. Welcome, everyone, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. What is up, everybody? Welcome to the Hybrid Ministry show. If you haven't had a chance to meet. 00:00:45:24 - 00:01:05:29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry My name is Nick Klassen, a 16 year youth ministry veteran. Today we're talking about my all time favorite event, brackets. I have done a million bracket episodes. I've made a million bracket resources in my lifetime, and I wanted to list all the ones that I could come up with off the top of my head. So we have I have made the world's greatest donut. 00:01:05:29 - 00:01:30:01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I've done movie madness. I've done the ultimate Christmas movie showdown. We've done a mascot bracket. We've done a fun fall bracket. We've done the student ministry bracket of epic things. I've done Super Bowl foods, I've done cereal. And my favorite probably of all time is what we call the Bad Ben bracket. And so, the Batman bracket, just for a little bit of context, was me and a guy on my team. 00:01:30:01 - 00:01:46:29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry We made a bet. He's a mavericks fan. I'm a Thunder fan. He can't tell. And, it was a couple years ago before Luka got traded. And it was like, who's going to win in the NBA Cup game? And the punishments were if he lost, he had to wear a Thunder shirt and lead worship in a Thunder shirt for the entire semester. 00:01:47:06 - 00:02:04:07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry If I lost, I had to wear a maverick shirt on one of our videos, which would of course never get taken down and I would always be up there forever. And so we won the game. He lost his Thunder shirt every single week, and one week he forgot and I noticed. And I took a picture of him not wearing the shirt. 00:02:04:07 - 00:02:24:15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And then we built a punishment out of that. And we're like, based on all of this, what is what does Ben have to do? Because he didn't live up to his end of the deal and the kids loved it. And ultimately they voted on him having to swim in this nasty drainage ditch that we call a creek in our in our church, in our space, in our context. 00:02:24:20 - 00:02:38:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And it's never even usually full enough. But finally, one week it was and he went and he swam and it brought the absolute house down. So let me explain to you why I do this and why it. 00:02:38:07 - 00:02:58:03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry The stats are honestly kind of alarming. Like, students and teenagers are spending an insane amount of time on social media. One of the things that's tricky about youth pastors is like, you were never hired to be a content creator. You were hired to make disciples, connect to parents, recruit amazing small group leaders. How and when and where do you manage social media? 00:02:58:05 - 00:03:16:07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry That's where I would like to propose that I could come in. I have three like lanes of products available on my Patreon. Number one, a weekly bonus podcast. I'm simply detailing and recapping my programing. Think more like creativity, using out of the box element, changing service orders and you can just listen in on like a friend talk in youth ministry. 00:03:16:08 - 00:03:33:03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry The second thing is my seasonal social media pack, which really is the key to a lot of this for you pastors. You're busy. Your senior pastor walks in like, do you realize your plans? Great. I have a schedule that's already mapped out for you. All you got to do is press play and go. And best news of all is it's not just like a bunch of, like, cremate graphics. 00:03:33:03 - 00:03:53:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Like it'll coach you how to make it a little bit more custom for you, for your student ministry, your face, your people, your leaders, your staff. And then the last thing is the carousel engine, which is an extension of my seasonal social media pack. Carousels are an amazing way to go deep with your primary audience, which is what your goal is as a youth pastor to go deep with your students. 00:03:53:02 - 00:04:13:01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And here's the good news it's less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month. For dollars a month gives you access to all three of those things out of cart. You can buy the social pack and the carousel, but check out the $4 per month membership. It's worth it. Many, many friends of mine are jumping in and using it already in their context, and I would love for you to also be a part of it. 00:04:13:02 - 00:04:16:00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So take a look. Link down below. Let's get back to the episode. 00:04:16:00 - 00:04:36:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Let me explain to you why I do this and why it works. So brackets are just a great way to get your students debating about things that don't matter as much, right? We always are talking about things that matter at youth group, talking about faith, life, eternity, hell, sin, pain, suffering. 00:04:36:11 - 00:04:56:10 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Brackets are a great way to lighten the mood. And my personal favorite way. And there's a million ways that you can do it. You can do live paper ballot votes. You can do sidekick pro votes. You can incorporate sidekick pro voting. But my favorite way is to push students to your social media. And so you say that voting is like live. 00:04:56:10 - 00:05:14:06 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry It's only open for the next 24 hours, because Instagram Stories are 24 hours and there's polls and you just like go through and you vote. That's literally all you do. But what it does is if you make a big deal out of it, like I'm recommending you do again, link down below. World's Grace Donut Refresh Guide 2026. They can you can make a big deal about it. 00:05:14:06 - 00:05:34:16 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And then now you're getting students especially, by the way, like, we kicked off our year one year with the world's greatest donut like bracket guide. So outrageous events kids brought friends. And those kids are now on our social media voting for what they think is the world's greatest donut. It's so simple, like, and here's why. That's like, here's why that's so clutch. 00:05:34:16 - 00:05:53:29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Because now kids that don't go to our church now, they've interacted with our social media, now our social media, especially because our social media is going to try to remain consistent. If your social media stinks. Check out my free guide on how to crush Crush social media down below in the description. But now our social media is more prone to show up in their feet in their algorithm. 00:05:53:29 - 00:06:15:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry It's a great way to reach our students friends again with the message of hope, the message of Jesus and the message is found through the gospel. And so, brackets. And then what we do is that's like the launch of the thing, right? Like we'll start round one. Big deal. We got donuts everywhere, whatever. But it lasts longer than just that one week. 00:06:15:06 - 00:06:30:12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so then the next week we're voting around two. The week after that, we're voting around three. The week after that, we're voting on round four, and we're getting pretty close to like crowning a champion. And then you can even, like, be like the winner. Oh another one. I didn't even mention this one. I forgot we did Starch Madness one time. 00:06:30:12 - 00:06:53:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So the best potatoes or best breads and so like for that one the end were like the winning bread which ended up being Olive garden breadsticks. We're gonna order. So we had like, just pounds of Olive garden breadsticks and, like, it brought kids back, right? We've been voting all month, and then we brought kids back. You can use it for something like my ultimate Christmas movie showdown. 00:06:53:06 - 00:07:17:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Or are my movie madness? Both of them were like the movie that we ended up watching at a movie event. Or just something simple like, we're gonna have been year now. Which, by the way, is what, one for the world's greatest donut, which is not the world's greatest donut. But I just think our kids wanted to, like, make it impossible for us to try and, like, figure out where in the world we were going to buy Benny's from in Dallas, Texas. 00:07:17:09 - 00:07:40:13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But nonetheless, I digress. What this does is, again, it allows you to lean into phone usage in your space, but it also can create an ongoing culture of fun with your teenagers and with your students. And like it's an easy way to create memorable moments like when Lucky Charms one, even though it lost online to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. 00:07:40:13 - 00:08:03:19 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But Lucky Charms one because one student stood in the lobby and filibustered and made sure that students voted for Lucky Charms, he took it by himself over the top. Or when we voted for our, winning mascot option, and it became a platypus. And now Pugsley the platypus is very much a part of the fabric of the culture of what our student ministry is all about. 00:08:03:19 - 00:08:30:29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And we create little Pugsley event pins. Every single time that we have an event like this is what a bracket has the opportunity to do. You lean into it, you have fun. People can be like, you guys remember that time that Ben swam in the creek? And it's it creates like excitement. It creates a moment that students can attach to something where they feel like they're a part of something that is bigger than themselves, which is ultimately the goal of youth group. 00:08:30:29 - 00:09:00:20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And you're doing this all with something silly, like voting on cereal, voting on Super Bowl foods, voting on Christmas movies. But the argument, the the debate, the the like, the faux outrage that exists is just such an opportunity for fun. And and you're using the phones that they already brought to youth group that are in their hands. It's an amazing way to, to re reclaim and recapture that for student ministry. 00:09:00:20 - 00:09:23:21 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so I love brackets. I've done a million of them over my entire career of youth ministry and of student ministry. And so, like I said, I have brought back to life the world's greatest donut, guide. They're like, I clicked on it yesterday to, like, prep for this episode and like, half of the links are dead, you know, like, it's like stuff to buy for it. 00:09:23:21 - 00:09:45:11 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And it's like that that left Amazon three years ago. So new links, new guides, new service order. First picture of me. Because my beard is not quite as long as it was when I took this a couple of years ago. But that is down below. It's for you. It's completely for free. And then it'll direct you to the dim resource where you can grab it for just a couple of bucks to fully implement it in your context and in your space. 00:09:45:11 - 00:09:51:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But until next time, my friends. And as always, don't ever forget guys, stay hybrid. Your students already are.