Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

For months I have been using the free version of Spotify and love it. If you don’t know what Spotify is then you should just check it out yourself, but more or less the free version gives you access to over 15 million songs while you have wifi access. They also offer accounts you can pay for at $5 and $10 per month that allow you to use the music when you don’t have wifi, or are offline (I have not used this paid service). It all ties in with Facebook and this and that and whatever and I’m sure it will morph over the months and years to come.

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I hope you enjoy YLHelp.com. I don’t do this often, but I wanted to let you know about some booklets that I have written. On YLHelp I’ve posted 258 different posts full of ideas that you can read and use anytime. Enjoy! Here are some other resources that might help your campaigners, one-on-one discipleship or Bible studies. I know many of you have been ordering these for your Fall campaigners.

Cabin Time Continued

This booklet is a series of lessons that are geared for camp follow-up. It reviews the main topics we normally cover at camp and then a few critical first topics for getting start in Christ. A lot of people have brought these to camp to give to kids at the end of the week, or to use right when they get back. Each lesson can also be used on its own, apart from camp. I just used one for a weekend retreat for college kids to use for their morning devotional.

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I am part of a team that trains the student staff in our YL region and I was talking to them last week about the book of John. In our region we are focusing on the book of John this year. One of the unique features of the book of John is the “I Am” statements. As you may know, when Moses encountered the Lord in the burning bush and asked the Lord what to tell people as His name, the Lord replied “I Am Who I Am” (Exodus 3:14). So when we are reading through the book of John we find the author using this phrase “I am” as an important tool to communicate Jesus’ divinity and the Lord’s identity. As I was teaching this I gave our student staff some ideas about how to utilize these in club talks, campaigner talks, team devotionals, etc. Here are a couple of them:

1. I am… the bread of life (John 6:35)

Just like our need for food, Jesus is the food we need for life. I suggested using a loaf of bread as an illustration to talk about how we need food and what happens when we are hungry or don’t have food. A few of the Wyldlife leads said they thought this object lesson would work well with their kids. 

2. I am… the light of the world (John 8:12, 9:5)

Throughout scripture we see a contrast of the “light” and the “dark”. It starts in Genesis and works its way all the way through. I recall my leader, Kathy Mason, doing a talk when I was in high school when she turned off the lights during her talk to illustrate what it is like in the dark. This would be a good time to talk about what it is like when you don’t know what to do, when you aren’t sure where to go for help, when you don’t have answers, when you feel alone, and more. Then, after it almost gets uncomfortable and people’s eyes are getting adjusted to the dark (which is another illustration you can use), turn on a flashlight and talk about Jesus being the “light” of the world. Jesus lights up dark places, shows us the world around us as it really is, shows us who God is, allows us to even see who we really are, etc. There is a lot you can do with this!

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