Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

The other night I was having a conversation with a veteran YL leader from my area. He has been in YL over twenty years. We were talking about the club talk progression early in the semester. The club he leads decided to start right off with “person of Christ” talks. What he and I remember through the years as part of the standard progression is a talk early in the semester about “Is there  a God”, or “There must be a God”. It seems that many clubs I know have done this talk less and less, including my club.

My rational is that statistics show that Americans basically all agree that there is a God. Previously I had seen reports of only about 5% of Americans not believing in God. But recent Barna research shows that only 9% of Americans would consider themselves atheist or agnostic. In another report, they show that this number may be higher for younger people, closer to 19%.

What is much more important to us is knowing our kids. We don’t need to base our club on national averages. We need to know our club kids and where they stand with God. This is a key YL relational principle that needs to be taken into consideration more than a national survey. One club might need to do three “Is there a God” club talks, while another club might be able to skip it.

What are your thoughts?

BTW I’m doing a “Is There a God” talk tonight in my club

I ’m sure many of you already know all about YLPlaybook, but if you don’t, you should check it out! It is a growing collection of games, mixers, run-ons, and all kinds of stuff. They are all tagged for easy review.

One thing I’m really impressed with about YLPlaybook is they really keep adding to their content. Some resources lose relevance of usefulness if they never add anything new, but YLPlaybook is doing a great job adding new content.

Here some games I saw recently that I thought were pretty good:

You’ve Got Something On Your Forehead Game

Sponge On The Chair Game

Hobby Hoax Game

Thar’s A Bar Game

Caramel Onion Game

Psychological Sit-Up Game

Wheel Of Misfortune Game

Face-to-Face Balloon Relay game

Slurp and Spit Game

String Mania Game

Clothes Relay Game

Back To Back Mixer

Pockets Mixer

Each year we kick off the school year with an All-Area Dodgeball tournament. It is a ton of fun. During “half-time”, we give a short club talk. Let me set the scene… 250+ high school students, many of them new to YL, they have been running, dodging, competing, arguing about rules, taunting each other, laughing, and now they are out of breath and sit down, then after some brief announcements you get to do the club talk… What would you do?

Well, several people in our area have done a talk like this (our kickball clubs, club at the local mall band stage, etc.), and I have done several of these too. Here is what I came up with for last week…

Talk: What is YL?… 3 Things

1. People

• Different groups of people: sports people, academic people, band people, people with no group
• At YL everyone is together, we can just relax and get to know each other.

2. Fun

• Events like dodgeball/kickball/hot dog eating contests
• Games, skits, laughter, not taking ourselves too seriously
• A chance to take a break from busyness… grades, parents, relationships, balancing everyone’s expectations. At YL we hope you can take the expectations and weight of life off your shoulders and just have fun.

3. Life

• All the YL leaders are Christians
• If you aren’t religious you are at the right place!
• We talk about LIFE, here is an example
• Read Jn 10:10
  • People try to fill their lives with relationships and as good as they can be they can be STOLEN as someone breaks your friendship or your heart or your family (when I say we fill our lives I blow up a balloon in front of all of them, when I say STOLEN I pop the balloon, I do this for all three points)
  • People try to fill their lives with sports, getting good grades, and those hopes can be KILLED when we blow out our knee, or the competition is better then we are, or we get a B in a class, or a C, or a D, or an F.
  • People try to fill their lives by constantly trying new things. I tried to do that in high school with girls, parties all kinds of things. But I didn’t experience life, most of the time I felt my hopes were DESTROYED as I felt regret, guilt and depression.
• But Jesus came to give us life to the FULL. God wants to fill our lives in a way nothing else can. (At this point I lift a balloon to my mouth but I don’t fill it.)
• Everyone take a deep breath. You see God doesn’t want to fill a balloon, he wants to fill your life with each breath you take.

CHALLENGE: Come back to YL. Come to hear more about life, come for the fun, come for the people, come for all of those reasons or just one. You are always invited!

I know an amazing senior leader who has organized his team in a new way this semester. (Go Alex!) He decided to form three teams with his leaders. While everyone participates in the activities of each team, those on the team have specific responsibilities. It is all outlined below.

What I like about this is that is spreads out the planning and puts a few people in place who are always thinking about their specific area. Ideally it should add accountability and make it easier to not forget about a key area of the club team. This is also a way to place leaders who are more gifted with certain things in charge of their specialty.

In case you think this is impossible with your team because it is too small… on their team there is one, or two, “adult” leaders on each team and then about 2 leaders who are still in high school. So this approach could work for a team that only has three leaders.

Disciple Team

As leaders we are not called to make converts to Christianity but Disciples. Our goal is to teach kids more about Christ, help them on their walk with Christ, and train them to be the light to their friends and family.

Responsibilities for the semester

1. Determine teaching plan for the semester (topical, expository)
2. Organize readings for each campaigner meeting (Lesson, Book/Chapter)
3. Give the team a outline of Campaigner lessons/readings for the semester (needed by 9.21.09)
4. Make bookmarks for Campaigner kids
5. Recruit Work Crew Kids for Work Crew Weekend (10.2.09-10.04.09)

Responsibilities for the week

1. Lead campaigner discussions each week
2. Remind kids of the readings each week

Outreach Team

Outreach is going where kids are. Outreach is our opportunity as leaders to show Christ in the world no matter where we are, or what we are doing. Outreach is meeting kids at school, at sporting events, hanging out with kid and inviting them to see who Christ is through our interactions with them.

Responsibilities for the semester

1. Plan out of club outreach events (needed by 9.21.09)
2. Once a month, movie night, In N Out night, Post Homecoming Party, etc.
3. Gather Sports schedules, Plays schedules, and distribute to the team (needed by 9.21.09)

Responsibilities for the week

1. Set up, and organize Ultimate Frisbee each week
2. Be on campus every week

Club Team

Club is the an opportunity to invite kids to be themselves, meet new people, meet leaders, and hear about how Christ has impacted the lives of the leaders that serve in Young Life.

Responsibilities for the semester

1. Organize the themes, games, at club events, and skits for club
2. Create a Camp Sell Skit
3. Give the team leader a summary of what is needed and how games work for each game/mixer at club (needed by 9.21.09)

Responsibilities for the week

1. Print out club line up from the team leader and bring it to club prep
2. Make PowerPoint slides for the songs at club each week

Team Leader

1. Organize and distribute club line up via email each week
2. Support and assist each team, Disciple, Outreach and Club
3. Provide needs and supplies for each team
4. Set an example for other leaders to follow

Here are the plans my team came up with for our club this semester. I’ll let you know how they turn out. Enjoy!

As the semester gets rolling, so many club teams are sitting down to plan clubs. On YLHelp.com there are plenty of clubs you can check out. To make it easier I have put together a whole semester plan of clubs using existing plans on YLHelp.com. In case you need more, I did this last year too. This year I make it a zip file for easier use. Enjoy!

PS If you want to send your club plans my way, I’d love to hear about them! smcgever (at) yahoo.com