Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

My friend Hugh from North Carolina shared a great idea with me. Here is what he suggested…

Here’s a quick and dirty pre-club activity:  photo booth.  Set up a camera, leader, backdrop, and some nutty props (theme optional).  As kids arrive at club take pictures of them. Here is a sample from a wedding, but you get the drill.

He mentioned that is is easy, free, fun and you can use these pictures to promote club.

Thanks for the idea Hugh!

This is the fifth and final post in a series that is a review of the Original Young Life Leader Training Manual from 1942.

If you are interested, here is the link to the copy I made of the manual with a letter from Jim Rayburn.

4. The Young Life Club and Promotion

The last two sections are about club and promotion of club. From the very start, the manual says that there is no set procedure for the club meeting. The manual consistently reminds the reader that Young Life is done best when it is molded to the local context.

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I realized the other week that we had not done a kidnap club in a long time. So BOOM! Kidnap club was in full effect. We had about 20 new people and used the great Minute to Win it relay that Emma described. It was a ton of fun and a great intro to YL fun for the new people. The club fell on a sin talk night, but as it turned out the week earlier a recent graduate had suddenly died. So it was a God moment when Kendra spoke about how sin ruins life the way it was meant to be. I normally wouldn’t plan a kidnap club on sin talk night, but God knew what he was doing.

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This is the fourth post in a series that is a review of the Original Young Life Leader Training Manual from 1942.

If you are interested, here is the link to the copy I made of the manual with a letter from Jim Rayburn.

3. The Campaign Organization

The Young Life “Campaign” was organized under a national board of directors, much as it is today. Under this board sits a local committee. Then there are field staff. At the time of this manual there were only five Young Life staff! The manual mentions that they were paid a salary each month, if the money came in that month! The staff was expected to keep a file of all club members. Weekly reports of attendance were to be sent in to the office for their records.

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This is the third post in a series that is a review of the Original Young Life Leader Training Manual from 1942.

If you are interested, here is the link to the copy I made of the manual with a letter from Jim Rayburn.

2. The Campaign Leader

The manual starts this section on leadership with a bold phrase, “The leader is IT!” Young Life puts an incredible emphasis on the leader and on leadership. There is not only one kind of leadership, as the manual suggests, “Do not put yourself in someone else’s mold. Use the personality God gave you to its best advantages.” This is a good reminder as we often see leaders up-front who are funny or exceptional communicators. There is not one “mold” for the Young Life leader. The mold is the complete body of Christ and each person is just one part.

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For those of you who have followed YLHelp for a while, you probably have seen that I have published a booklet for camp follow-up called Cabin Time Continued. It is a series of 10 Bible studies perfect for when you come home from camp. I’ve seen people use it just for normal campaigners too. In fact I’ve used it twice in the last week as a part of one of our team meeting Bible studies.

I’d like to announce a new resource I have published. It is called Live Like This. Live Like This is a study through the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is a fantastic study, especially for those in campaigners since it is simply the teaching of Jesus. I’ve divided the booklet in two parts. Right now Part 1 is available and Part 2 should be done this summer. If you would like more information on either of these resources check out this page.

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This is the second post in a series that is a review of the Original Young Life Leader Training Manual from 1942.

If you are interested, here is the link to the copy I made of the manual with a letter from Jim Rayburn.

1. The Introduction

The introduction begins by asking a great question, “Why Young Life Campaign?” Basically why do we need something like Young Life today? It also asks, “What need is there for another organization?” The same questions are asked today. Sometimes this is asked by teenagers, “What is Young Life?” Sometimes this is asked by parents. Sometimes the question is asked by opponents in and out of the church, “Is there a need for another organization?”

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Here is the club we are doing tonight. We will have different kinds of cereal out when kids can arrive to make their own bowl of cereal. Kids are dressing up in PJs. We also might have on some cartoons. We’ll see how it goes!

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As a part of the Reaching a World of Kids initiative, YL president Denny Rydberg recently announced that YL has acquired a new property in Hawaii and is now shifting camp spots for this summer. Hawaii is a strategic location for reaching a world of kids due to its centrality in the middle of the largest ocean in the world, which is the only world we currently reach. “But we need to think bigger”, says YL International VP Marty Caldwell and thinks he has donors already in place.

It became obvious that YL needed another camp on the Pacific ocean since passports are simply too hard for YL staff to obtain for themselves, thus the future of Malibu club is up in the air. “I really like the abundance of water this camp will have”, said Josh Smiley of Lost Canyon. Preliminary plans are in place to pipe water from the Hawaii camp to Lost Canyon so they can finally get the mud pit and flowrider in place that the staff has demanded for years.

Currently the camp does not have many “rides” but temporary plans are in place to zip line from one island to another, to add a new summer staff position called “shark wrangler”, and to do that thing where kids would run down the steep mountain and flip over and over which was available at YL camps in the past. For more information please check out this link and this one also.