Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

At our club we use a video projector every week. It adds to the setup and work but it has some nice benefits. We normally brings a Playstation and the kids play games before club, especially during our brief team meeting and prayer before club.

One game they play is Rockband, which I know you know is incredible.

So we did Rockband Club. It was awesome. The main feature was doing our clubs songs through Rockband. You can see what songs we used on the file below.

We could have done it better. If you wanna see an incredible adaptation of this LOOK HERE. Go Chad and team!

MESSAGE PREP “TOP 10 LIST” by J Rinne

1. Know your subject and plan way ahead. I like to have a message done at least a week prior to the day I am gonna give it. I like to rehearse it out loud or to a few people before I give it in club. Funny but I like to lock myself in the bathroom and turn on the shower get in and rehearse the talk to the wall. This way no body will interrupt me, I am relaxed and I am not self conscious that someone will hear me and think that I am talking to myself.

2. SCRIPTURE, STORY, MAIN POINT. Start with the SCRIPTURE. This seems to be a pitfall for most people that I talk to about messages. We try to find a really funny story or a really good video clip or song that we like and then tryt to find a scripture that relates somehow and then teach kids about Jesus. I say start with the SCRIPTURE and THE MAIN POINT you want to make and then pray and look for good stories, video clips, song, ect. It seems like we should find this first because the story is usually how we gain the crowds approval and get them to listen to us. But we are about Scripture and so we should start there. Make your MAIN POINT and stick to it.

3. Pray a good deal as you prepare and have folks praying as you speak.

4. If you are not the one speaking know that your role as a prayer warrior/supporter for the person speaking is very important. DO IT!

5. I use www.crosswalk.com to help prepare my talks. There are great resources like references, commentaries and cross references to help you prepare. You can also look at all different translations. Also very helpful are the search bars… for example I can’t remember where the story about Jesus healing the blind man is so (instead of looking through the whole new testament paragraph by paragraph) in the search bar I can type “Jesus blind Man” and it will find all the references for me. I recommend it and it’s FREE.

6. Be bold. Know that kids need to hear the truths that you are talking about. Jesus is worth sharing.

7. Know your crowd. Don’t use real religious words. Speak about Jesus in a way that is simple and concise.

8. Look at the crowd, individuals and vary your tone and volume as you speak. This will keep you interesting.

9. Go up with one 3×5 note card and have all your main points written on this card. This card is ONLY if you get lost in your talk. Know your talk so well that you only need to glance at it to keep your talk flowing.

10. I am not an expert nor do I claim to have this dialed. These are just some things that help me and they might help you too. Above all be faithful to God and be faithful to what he tells you to tell your high school and jr high friends.

Thanks J!

Junior High clubs can be a different beast all-together. My motto with WL is, "choose for them when you want them to spend their energy or they will choose to when you don’t want them to." Embrace their energy!

My friend Amber passed along some WL Clubs you can use right now. Thanks Amber!!

BTW… this picture looks like my YL friend Sam P in Tucson.

For years I have been helping people do club talks. The main error most people make it not starting with the main point and the core scripture. I decided to put together a different approach to message preparation.

The "TalkPrep" is basically a Bible study that leads to a club talk. It forces you to start with the scripture, determine your main point, then your challenge and intro. There are also lots of helps along the way.

This is perfect for the person doing their first or second talk, and also for those who want to improve their preparation and speaking.

I’m considering making more of these, I’d love your feedback!

Yes, that is the meatiest hottest centaur you have ever seen huh? Think about it, combine the mass cultural demand for centaurs (among the crowd that lives in comic book stores on weekend nights for get-togethers) and the hip hop urban crowd and you pretty much have every single person at a high school covered. This is the brainchild that brought 50 Centaur, half horse, half rapper to fruition. No actually it was Bree, Andrew and Jory from SVYL who told me about a Woodleaf program a few years ago. But who cares about details?

I’ll give you just a taste of his mad game…

50 Centaur’s the name I’m half rapper half horse
Spitt’in mad lyrics is par for the course
Half horse is way I rock the wild wild west
Half rapper is the way I rock the bullet proof vest

Crooked Creek… Creek… Creek…Creek
For a week… week… week…week
Don’t be a geek…geek…geek
On the bus save a seat…seat…seat

Best recognize!

I had a MySpace Artist page that had over 1000 views in 3 days, but Tom took it down. The only reason I can figure is “impersonating” a real person. Hmmm.If that doesn’t work, look hereBTW, last Monday I was 50 Centaur at club, on Tuesday I graduated with an M.Div from Phoenix Seminary… This only happens in YL.

I had the privilege to be with all of the camp speakers this summer. As part of this time they compiled their best talk illustrations. Many of them are time-tested ones many are familiar with. There were dozens of these. There were five that really stood out to me and I want to share them with you in this series of posts. I am also trying them in my club so I know how they work. I’ve used two so far, I’ll be using more soon.

Blood Diamond - I am your father who loves you

This clip needs some setup. Blood Diamond is a movie that highlights the illegal trade of diamonds. In the midst of chaos, rebels abduct children and brainwash them to kill people. In this scene the son is supposed to shoot his father. Then the father says these words:

What are you doing?
I know they made you do bad things.
You are not a bad boy.
I am your father
Who loves you
You will come home with me and…
be my son again

I am not a crier, but this one gets me every time. The richness of those words minister to me. Our job is to translate this to our friends. This could be part of a sin message or a cross message or an appropriation message.

Next week I am doing a person of Christ message. I might do the woman caught in adultery (John 8). I’ll let you know how it goes.

So you are preparing your first club talk? Maybe you have asked this question: "Where’s that one story about Jesus? You know the one with that woman? Where he makes her feel better?

This is a word document that has many of the key Gospel stories and where they are located in the Bible.

I love to have this in front of me because it allows me to visualize themes. Stories that I wouldn’t have thought of before to hold moments of compassion or redemption.

I did this game at club last year. It was a little painful but fun. I ran it as a game show. There was a table and 3 kids standing behind the table. I used PowerPoint as the way to ask the questions. Needs to have the songs and celebrities updated but that is the easy part.

You will ask them trivia questions that relate to heat. (i.e. The name of the Miami pro basketball team) You must get a buzzer for them to buzz in with. I used hot sauce or a variety of hot peppers.. The first to do "buzz in" gets to answer the question. Tally points maybe even have a final round between the finalists.

I had the privilege to be with all of the camp speakers this summer. As part of this time they compiled their best talk illustrations. Many of them are time-tested ones many are familiar with. There were dozens of these. There were five that really stood out to me and I want to share them with you in this series of posts. I am also trying them in my club so I know how they work. I’ve used two so far, I’ll be using more soon.

TOM BRADY - “There’s got to be more than this…”

Watch this interview from 60 minutes. The last minute is the most useful.

I used a version of this video in my club talk a few weeks ago. Here was my main point…

You can do incredible things, but without Christ you will never be satisfied.

In my introduction I told a story of when I got my first birdie in golf. It was an incredible moment but there was no one around to witness it. It felt hollow, I wish someone was there to see it. It was so close yet so far from being an amazing thing.

Then I told them I wanted to describe a similar situation. I told them the story of the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19. He went away sad because there was one thing missing in his life, giving up control.

Then I said I want to close by describing someone who is rich, young and rules in what he does every day. Then I listed his anecdotes without saying his name…

• Played in four Super Bowls, winning three of them
• Won two Super Bowl MVP awards (XXXVI and XXXVIII)
• Four Pro Bowls
• Holds the NFL record for most touchdown passes in a single regular season.
• Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year, in 2005.
• He also helped set the record for the longest consecutive win streak in NFL history with 21 straight wins over two season
• In 2007, he became the first quarterback to lead a team to a 16-0 regular season.
• He was named “Sportsman of the Year” by The Sporting News for the second time in his career.
• He was also named the NFL MVP in 2007
• Male Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press
• Dating a Brazillian super model
• Makes over $8 million dollars per year

I asked them, do you know who this is? They knew, Tom Brady. Then I played the video.

I closed by saying, look it was true for the man that Jesus encountered 2000 years ago, it is true for Tom Brady today, you can do incredible things, but without Christ you will never be satisfied.

I suspect many of you are going to be doing cross talks in the next few weeks. I want to pass on to you one of my best resources for cross talks. The document below is a harmony of the cross story that I created several years ago.

The cross is obviously an incredible event (a little bit of an understatement), yet when we approach it for club talks it is a little longer than time allows to read the entire thing. This download gives a Biblical outline of the events and their references so you can highlight the key events that you feel you want to go into more detail. Let me remind us again that it is essential to read the words of the Bible in club talks, never summarize the entire event.