A while back I wrote a gushing blog post about a company called Tatango, whose aim is to make it dead simple for anybody to harness the useful technology of mass or group text messaging. Those of us involved in youth ministry are undoubtedly aware that text messaging is an indispensable tool for effective communication with our students, so I wanted to give another push for Tatango and the services they offer. And because I love you so much, at the end of this post you will find a code for 15% off of any plan Tatango offers.

Below is a short tutorial video that covers the basics of Tatango. Since the service has recently gone under a moderate redesign/update, I’m sure that current users will find the video helpful as well:

Let me say a few quick words regarding other youth ministry texting options.

If you’ve bought into Doug Fields’ Simply Youth Ministry Simply Txt, then I laud you for knowing that texting is important, but I promise you that Tatango is a better bang for your buck. Just compare Simply Txt’s $30/mo plan with Tatango’s $20/mo plan. For $10 less per month, you get 280 more group messages, unlimited more contacts, and two keywords (which, as far as I can tell, Simply Txt doesn’t offer).¹

I’m also aware that TXT Signal was all the rage in youth ministry circles for a while, but it simply can’t keep up with the services Tatango offers. A quick comparison of pricing plans for TXT Signal and Tatango will convince you more quickly than I could here.

Anyway, if you’re still on the fence about whether or not Tatango’s group messaging service is a good fit for your ministry, try it out free for 30 days. When your trial is over, the good people from Tatango have offered readers of JakeBouma.com a code good for 15% off any plan. Just enter K7D0TRCL when you check out and enjoy the savings!

If you have any questions about Tatango’s services, be sure to check out their Frequently Asked Questions page, follow them on Twitter, and/or leave a comment below.

1. Keywords allow you to choose words that users can text to join the group. For example, I have “EIKON” set up as the high school keyword

Hi, my name is Jake and I’m a coffee addict.

Here’s the deal: At least five days a week I spend $1.70 in the morning on a small dark roast coffee at Caribou. It’s enough to get me through the morning, but in the afternoons I’ll often spend $2-5 on a latte or double-shot on ice or some other sort of tasty pick-me-up. I don’t work on Friday or Saturday (usually), and sometimes I don’t buy coffee on those days — but lots of times I do.

So let’s do some math. If we add the average the price of the afternoon coffee ($3.50) with the morning coffee ($1.70), we get $5.20/day spent on coffee. Which, assuming I only buy coffee five days a week, amounts to $26/week, or $104/month, or $1352/year. One thousand, three hundred and fifty-two dollars. Per year. And that’s a conservative estimate.

Simply put, it’s odious.

That’s where No Caribou October comes in. For the entire month of October, I will not spend a penny of my own money at Caribou Coffee. And just so we’re clear, when I say “Caribou Coffee” what I mean is “any coffee shop whatsoever”. I think we can all agree that No Any Coffee Shop Whatsoever October is a bit of a lingual traffic jam.

Instead of buying my coffee from a shop every single day ($1352/year!), I have developed the following personal coffee plan for the month of October:

Before I go to work in the morning, I will use a (1) Bodum Chambord 8-Cup Coffee Press to brew several cups of (2) El Diablo Dark Roast coffee, which I will then transfer to a (3) Thermos Nissan 26-Ounce Travel Companion Stainless-Steel Insulated Bottle for consumption while at work. That’s it. I had to purchase all three items, but those expenses will be more than covered by the money I save this month.

I am both nervous and excited about No Caribou October (and I have certainly come a long way), but it’s pretty hard to argue with saving money.

So what do you say? You in?

Update: Follow along on Twitter via the hashtag #nocaribouoctober. Looks like a few people will be playing along.

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, director of the Law and Religion Program at SUNY’s University at Buffalo Law School, discussing one of the themes in her new book:

“[There is] a new openness to seeing Americans as naturally ‘faith-based,’ enabled, I believe, by a convergence between a broad range of humanistic critiques of scientistic understandings of the person, social scientific and biological; social and political movements that originated in the mid-twentieth century; and a contemporaneous shift in religious authority and anthropology from the church to the individual. The exclusivity of materialist/medicalized understandings of the entire range of human capabilities and experience, as well as ecclesiastical capacity to insist on orthodoxy and particularity, are both fast eroding in the face of these changes. It’s a next step in the radical disestablishment of religion in this country. This shift toward locating authority in the individual means that it’s much easier for people to move among religious communities, religious ideas, and religious practices in a much more ambiguous way, a way that is less determined by someone outside oneself.”

Sullivan doesn’t say whether this shift in authority from corporate to individual is bad, she just say that it is. So what do you think?

Do you sense a shift in religious authority from corporate to individual?

Is this affecting “ecclesiastical capacity to insist on orthodoxy and particularity” (think ELCA Churchwide Assembly)?

Is it creating a new generation of religious nomads?

Chime in!