Summerville First Baptist Gets Creative with Student Ministry During COVID Crisis

Summerville First Baptist Pastor, Sean Wegener is getting creative with his student ministry during the COVID crisis. Recently the Church premiered a new video series, 2 Minute Doctrine.

“The idea for 2 Minute Doctrine began while I was considering how to engage teenagers during the COVID crisis. With most of the schools shut down, we needed a way to disciple our students at a distance,” Wegener said.

On top of discipling the Church’s students, Wegener says he wanted to provide teenagers with a tool they could use at lunch or passing in the hallway at the middle/high school level. “So I asked a bunch of students from various schools around Summerville what kind of tool would be most helpful — what would you be willing to share with a friend and not be too nervous about sharing it? The answer was a YouTube video across the board. They all share videos with friends and acquaintances. Just about everyone is willing to give a short video a try, even if they had no interest in the video before watching.”

“So, we developed the idea to reach our students during COVID and to give our students a tool to share what they believe with their friends,” said Wegener.

Once the idea was settled on to be a video, from here the question was, what kind of video?

“Stephen Peppers, one of our students, a sophomore at Summerville High School, and local filmmaker, and I sat down and came up with three goals: be short, informative, and entertaining.”

The duo developed a formula for making videos: the whole video must be three minutes or less, the informative portion two minutes or less, and it needs to not take itself too seriously.

“When we presented the idea to the church, they were immediately on board and got us the funds to set up a small film studio in our youth room. With Stephen’s expertise in lighting and filming we were ready to go very quickly.”

The Production Crew:

“I have two friends who are theologians, I pass the scripts to them for comments. I also share the scripts with Stanton Peppers, Stephen’s brother and a middle school student. He is really helpful in pointing out vocabulary and phrasing that desires correcting to reach our audience.”

While Wegener looks like a natural in front of the camera, he was quick to point out,  “no, not really, I really prefer to write the content and get out of the way. I do have an acting background, however. I studied at Oklahoma State University and have a BA in Theatre concentrating in voice and movement.”

The first video in the series, “What is Theology” shows there is no subject matter too tough to tackle in two minutes. “We want to cover everything from basic questions like “what is the New Testament” to the harder questions like “what is justification.” or “who is the Trinity,” Wegener explained.