The Leader Panel is a great option in lieu of a club talk. Is it 10 minutes before club and you don’t have Bill Paige or Marty Caldwell around to do the club talk at the last second? BOOM! Leader Panel! Is it 30 minutes after club has started and your leader who was supposed to do the talk isn’t showing up because they were going to do it but they decided to go to the grand opening for Wolverine at midnight and now are just “too busy” or “too tired” to do it, or even give you a heads up? BOOM! Leader Panel!
But it isn’t just a backup option, it can be a great time for kids to ask questions and for leaders to share. It also can be a good time for the leader who isn’t all that comfortable to do a club talk to share up-front. One club in our area did it a few weeks ago and it was so powerful that some kids came up crying afterwards and wanted to talk more about a relationship with Christ… BOOM! Leader Panel! My club did it last week after some year-end senior testimonies.
Here are a couple tips:
- Explain it clearly. Tell the students this has the potential to be a really good discussion if they take a minute to think of an honest question.
- Give them 1-2 minutes to think of a question, play some chill music in the background.
- Then pass out the cards and I recommend golf pencils (they are cheap).
- When the kids turn the questions in, have an experienced leader filter the questions and pick leaders to answer them.
- Expect silly and lame questions and put them aside. The more you can keep the panel discussion on track… the better.
- If you are worried about too many lame questions, prep a couple questions beforehand to answer.
- You can use any scrap of paper (we used the back of club fliers last week), but I have also used the following file if you want to use it: