The Text Blast
This is an idea that have not ever done, but I plan to in mid-October. However, if YOU have done it, I would love to hear how it worked for you.
Here is how it goes. I plan to invite the high school students in the Sonlight Leadership Team over for our usual meeting in October. Some directors call this team “officers,” I just prefer “Leadership Team.” For this activity, we are going to meet on a Thursday night (instead of our usual Tuesday night) to get a bit more proximity to our Sunday rehearsal.
For this meeting I will ask the students to make sure to bring their cell phones (really, Randy, do you think you need to remind them to BRING them?)
I plan to ask each of them to bring the cell phone number of three friends of theirs who are not members of Sonlight, but SHOULD be. On the two previous Sunday rehearsals leading up to this meeting I will ask ALL members of the choir to submit names of high school student friends who are not members of Sonlight.
I will ask them to submit first name (only) and the phone number. I will assure them that we are only going to text that number for this one occasion and we will NOT use the number again. To put them at ease about giving out friends numbers.
They can pick friends who are members of our church or not. I will ask them to think about friends who love music, perhaps they sing in their high school choir, but don’t sing in their high school CHURCH choir.
Many churches in Houston no longer even HAVE a high school choir at their church. Therefore, even active members of Houston area churches might not have an outlet for singing in a high school CHURCH choir.
Those kind of students will be our primary target for this activity.
So, jump back to the meeting. I will ask everyone at the meeting (usually around 10 students) to bring up a new text message on their phone. Everyone will type in the target phone number (selected from the ones submitted by the students).
I will remind them to be careful NOT to hit the send button until we all do . . . together.
Everyone will type in a SIMILAR message, but it is good to allow for some personal differences. The basic message is this:
Hey, ______ (name of target student), my name is __________ and I sing in the high school choir at Tallowood. We meet on Sundays at 4:30 in the Choral Hall at Tallowood. I would love for you to give us a try this Sunday. You know people that sing in our choir, come give us a try! Then, they will type their name.
Then, once we all have our messages ready to send, we do a countdown from 5 so that everyone hits SEND at the same time.
And the TEXT BLAST #1 is complete.
Since we will likely blast several students that night, you might get the Leadership Team to copy their basic message and then copy/paste it into the next message to save time.
They would just need to be sure to change the opening name so that it stays personal.
Since we have never done this one, I will have to let you know how it works!
Randy
