Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

In our community there is a large outdoor mall that is very popular. On weekends there are typically a few bands playing outdoors and it is packed. On Monday nights they have the stage sitting there and no one using it. It made us think… we should use it! So we had two all-area clubs there. The first one was a hot dog eating contest, it was promoted as the North Phoenix Hot Dog High School Eating Contest. It was a ton of fun. In the Spring we did a Price is Right club where the contestants came from the audience.

To our surprise the mall people were happy to let us use it. Also it allowed some parents to check it out while not embarrassing their kids too much. We also had a lot of people asking us about YL. And yes, we did a club talk and everything. I’m sure we will do something like this again!

At summer camp we get to hear from some great speakers who are gifted, experienced and who have put a lot of time, prayer and study into the messages. It would be great if we could list some of the best illustrations or examples that we heard in the club talks this summer. It could be really useful for our club talks during the school year.

While I was at camp, the speaker used “cardboard testimonies” near the end of the week to illustrate the change that can happen when Jesus comes into your life. A person would come out with a piece of cardboard and on one side it would say something from their past (ex: fatherless), and then they would flip it over and it would say what has happened since then (ex: heavenly father). I thought this was an excellent illustration for those who were considering starting a relationship with Jesus.

What did you see this summer that was good? Put it in the comments on this post.

This year I had some club kids who love ping pong (OK table tennis technically, don’t send me angry emails). Since I’ve been in YL for a while, I’ve picked up some ping pong skills over time so I was always challenging them. But we didn’t have it at club, so we didn’t get to play. I realized that there used to be a club at the school where kids would play ping pong at lunch. I contacted the teacher who used to run it, he was a friend of mine, he said he was too busy to do it anymore. So I took it over and played ping pong with kids at lunch every Monday. We even made shirts that said, “PHS Varsity Ping sponsored by YL”. It attracted a lot of different kids who we didn’t know before. 

The people who do program at camp put a ton of preparation, creativity and experience into planning a great week.

I have an idea… why don’t we list in the comment section of this post some of the best themes, skits, games, etc. we saw at camp. My guess is they could be pretty useful for the upcoming school year and possibly for those planning camps in the future.

Here is an example:

While I was at Woodleaf, they had a Diva, a Rocked Out Scottish guy and a World of Warcraft Nerd as the main program characters, it worked great!

Honestly, it is hard to think of all the details because it was over a month ago, so put down your ideas before you forget them!

The “This Year…” series looks back at lessons learned in the past year of YL. It will feature several posts and guest posts.

Here is one from my friend Dan from St. Francisville, LA…

A new thing we started doing is riding the team buses to away games.  We are a small town ministry, and there is only one school within a half hour of us which means every away game is a good drive.  Since we started Young Life here four years ago, we have built relationships with the coaches and athletic director, and we show up at practices—not just games. This year we started asking if we could ride to away games, and the coaches were very much in favor of the idea.  Now our leaders have the chance to not just watch the games—but interact with the players on the way to the game, watch the game, and usually stop for dinner on the way home with the team too.  It is great for career leaders that can only commit one night to contact work a week, and it is also a great chance to get to know kids that never come to Young Life but are on the teams with Club kids.  It takes a little time to build the relationships with the coaches, but having a leader that is a teacher/coach or a parent approach the other coaches would help.

Thanks Dan! What did you learn this year? Let me know at smcgever (at) yahoo dot com.

Almost all the summer YL camps I go to have a day when you have a cabin unity competition that encourages matching cabin uniforms. For some of us, we are running around the day before camp trying to pull something together. I have an idea… Let’s make list of as many as we can think of and then I will re-post these before camp next summer to remind us all of some options.

To get you thinking, here are a couple I’ve seen recently…

• Braveheart (kilts, face paints, etc)
• Where’s Waldo (striped shirts and glasses)
• That crazy thing with balloons stuffed in panty hose that are worn as a hat (know what I’m talking about?)
• Nerds with shirts (dollar store dress shirts with ties and nerd glasses, briefcases if possible)

There are a ton more. What have you seen? List as many as you can!

A lot has happened since I wrote this post. There were some fantastic comments on the post that were very thought provoking for me. I also went to Woodleaf, where my friend Dave did an excellent job proclaiming the gospel. In fact, he did something very similar to what I was planning. He moved up the traditional talk sequence one day also. Honestly, I don’t think many leaders even noticed. It worked flawlessly. So that was good confirmation.

I also had been hitting a wall in the overall flow and analogy of my talks, so after a lot of through and prayer I pretty much stopped the 20+ pages of outlines and notes I had prepared and took a different approach, but I didn’t change the sequence.

I am now prepared and excited to speak in about a week. I have everything written and outlined. But I am working to fine-tune some details. In case you are interested, here is the general plan…

I have a drama, a cardboard testimony part (saw this at my church and at Woodleaf, which was awesome), and one main analogy. I am using a ring as an analogy that will carry over through several talks. I can go into that more later if anyone is interested, but I think it is a good one that is theologically sound and is easy to understand.

Also for the real life / role play type thing, I am going with the Best/Worst day thing from City Slickers (similar to this clip), I’ve done it before at summer camp and it was utilized really well by the Woodleaf team this year. I can tell you more if you are interested.

I’m not quite settled on doing a relationships/sex seminar. Does anyone have any good outlines, resources, details or comments about this? I have some, but I’d love to hear what you have to say.

If you have been following this, or enjoy ylhelp, I’d really appreciate your prayers as I begin speaking on July 11th.

My friend Matt Golley, an amazing artist who I’ve mentioned him before, is pioneering YL in Puerto Rico. There has never been YL in Puerto Rico! How can that be?!? This is a really well-done video about the need of the kids there, one-third of the population is under the age 18, and there is tremendous local church support for YL. If it sparks you interest, get in touch with Matt mgolleyyl (at) gmail (dot) com.