This year… Campaigners before club
We have had such a hard time with campaigners over the years. With the busyness of kids and leaders it is so hard to get another night out of them. I know lots of clubs fight through this and win (even the club right down the street from us). Yet, we have lost over and over.
This year we moved to having club at a local restaurant that offers half-price appetizers and has a cool atmosphere. We spend $10-20 per week and the kids chip in too. This has allowed us to keep a consistent meeting time and the cool atmosphere helps. We even built a positive relationship with many of the people who work there.
The downsides are the lack of depth that is hindered by the environment, also no worship and then Mondays are crazy for everyone. It also makes it hard to pick up kids and really be ready for club.
So in review, we knew the downsides to our campaigner plan, but at least it was a consistent place to meet and do a Bible study.
Any ideas on how to add another night or morning (tried that too) successfully?
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We do campaigners on Friday mornings. They’ve been at the same person’s house for two years now. The consistency in location and time helps. Disadvantages of this are that it’s mornings so it takes getting over a cultural hurdle if your kids aren’t used to it. Ours have become used to it so it’s not a huge deal for them. Another disadvantage is that you have to have a hard stop because kids need to get to school. Another club in our area has in the past done campaigners in the high school cafeteria before school one day a week.
You have to make sure the kids involved are INTO whatever you do. If it is an AM thing, they have to be the ones who initiate it. I usually start out the year with a SELECTION COMMITTEE of 4 to 6 kids and ask them when they want to meet and then have others conform to these strong(er) kids.
Above all else, do what works for you and your club.
Here is a comment Ryan sent me…
We’ve got folks in our region who have campaigners on the night of club. It’s one crazy long night but it’s only ONE night.
6:30 pm – Campaigners
7:30 pm – Leave to get friends
8:00 pm – Club
10:30 pm – make your way home completely thrashed
We are going to throw this out to our leaders. The club that does it says it’s not the best, but is a necessity for their leaders, small groups and CW that happen on other nights during the week.
Here is a comment Lance sent me…
We have our Campaigners group at McDonald’s on the mornings of Club days. We meet at 6:45am and everyone who shows up gets a breakfast (we have 9 kids that come constantly & it cost us about $30). The manger opens up the play area for us and has the lights on and the room ready to go when we get there. We end at 7:45am and everybody usually heads to the local coffee house then off to school.
It works out pretty good for us for several reasons:
1) The indoor play area is closed off from the rest of the restaurant so there is not a problem with noise, or worship or whatever this also helps the kids feel a little more comfortable.
2) There is a group of about 25 older gentlemen from our community who meet there every morning to have coffee and talk etc. and they really like seeing the kids getting up and studying the Bible etc. so it helps build community recognition.
3) The students love it and wish that we could do it more. They say that their day just goes by so much better / easier when they start their day like that. So we are instilling good values of how important it is to have a daily quiet time with the Lord.
This may be something you have tried or would like to try and it may or may not work but it has worked great for our area this last year. It was the first time we tried to have it before school and we had seven students out of our regular nine that came to every campaigner group we had this past school year.
We have Club every other week and Campaigners on the off week. It has been mildly successful. From a campaigners standpoint it has been great. Great consistency. From a club stand point it was kind of hard to gauge momentum. I am encouraging leaders that are not yet running a campaigner group to take advantage of the night off to get ice cream with kids and get caught up on some contact work. We are going to continue with this approach this coming year and see how it goes. Peace and blessings.
~benjamin