WUWH - BTW - LOL...HuH?

Effectively communicating is a challenge in this day and age. We are all bombarded with a constant stream of communication through phone calls, e-mails, TV, radio, the Internet, and the latest text messaging. You would think with all the technological advances that have occurred, that we would have gotten better at effectively communicating with one another. However, I have found that this is not the case. I find it a daily challenge to communicate with the people I work with, the people I am in ministry with and just people in general.

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon in communicating with young people. I thought they would love to respond to e-mails. It is an easy way to communicate with people, there is a record of the communication and it is fast and easy to do. However, what I found out is that e-mail is probably one of the least effective ways to communicate with young people these days. Their preference-text messaging.

(A short disclaimer) Text messaging is not my favorite. I do not type very well, especially on a small mobile device. I also have a hard time keeping track of more than about two conversations at one time. If that were not bad enough, the shorthand that most people use to communicate through text messaging is like deciphering the code from an international spy. That being said, I know that if I want to reach the young people that I am in ministry with that I am going to have to overcome this shortfall.

It is a little confusing to me that young people will not just pick up the phone and call the person that they want to communicate with. They have the phone in their hand, it would seem to me that it would be faster. However, when asked a few young people why they prefer text messaging this is the response I got. From their perspective, text messaging is a fast and easy way to carry on more than one conversation at a time, to communicate while you were doing other activities and to communicate on the sly (bring back the days of passing notes!)

So here are a few suggestions that I would offer up. First, if you do not have a cell phone that can send and receive text messages, get one. I believe you to be at a severe disadvantage in ministering and connecting with the young people of today if you do not have the ability to contact them via text messaging. Secondly, I would encourage you to invest in a text messaging plan that is unlimited. Young people send a lot of text messages. One of the youth that I work with regularly sends upwards to 20,000 a month (And no, that is not a typo.) If you do not have a plan that covers an unlimited number you can be overly charged with additional fees from cell phone providers. Finally, get a text message shorthand crib sheet. I have one that is a poster hanging in my office. Or you can just simply Google "text shorthand help" and there are several websites that you can get help with deciphering text message shorthand.

I wish you luck in communicating with young people via text messaging. It's taken me a little while to get used to it, but it can be a very effective way of communicating.