Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

This semester had some incredible highs, and some incredible lows for me.

We already have our Pinnacle HS YL planning meeting for the Spring all set for later this week. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share the top ten posts of the last semester (based on views). Enjoy!

10. Limit the Choices for Talks

9. Christmas Club Again

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It may be too late, but I thought I’d pass along our Christmas campaigners time from tonight.

We opened, as we always do with a game, then we sang some Christmas carols, did some announcements (including an update on Raju, the Developing Global Leaders student staff we are helping support), and then moved into our Bible study before closing with prayer requests and prayer.

For our Bible study we divided up these parts to act out:

Luke 1:26-38 Angel speaks to Mary

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One of my good friends went to be with the Lord Monday night after losing his battle with a very aggressive cancer. His name is Troy Gray, Tempe, AZ Area Director, he was 29 years old.

Back in the mid-90’s Troy never went to my Wyldlife club, I guess the huge clubs and the fact that all his friends went simply weren’t enough to get him to come, I’d always give him a hard time about that over the years. But he went to Arcadia High School Young Life, the same one I went to years earlier, and his life changed through the power of Jesus and wonderful leaders like Dick and Kathy Mason, Mike Olson, and many others. Troy went on to be trained and discipled by our Area Director in Scottsdale, Rick Wilson, and later to become his intern after graduating from ASU. I was a few years ahead of Troy, but our paths have been very similar. He is also best of friends with my brother-in-law and some of my other close friends. Troy went from a sketchy teenage punk, that happened to be fantastic as basketball (he was a star in high school), to an incredible man of God, wonder husband and father, and an admired and top-notch Area Director, and he still kicked my butt in basketball too.

I’m not going to say much more, but I do want to say that I miss him very much, I love him, and I am excited to see him in a few years (whenever the Lord returns or He takes me home).

Here are a couple fun memories:

Woodleaf Program 2005 (with Joey and Laura Colletti)

A Hilarious Contact Work Training Video (with Tanita Maddox)

Troy speaking about Young Life adventures about a week before he found out he had cancer

Our club is finishing up the semester tonight with a Ugly Sweater Christmas party. We begin the night with Christmas cookies, my wonderful wife makes a bunch of cookies and then we let kids decorate them with icing and frosting. We try to keep it clean, but if you are wondering if 50, 75, or even 100+ kids can do this, the answer is yes! We also have a small Christmas tree in our hallway with small Christmas ordainments that each club kid can write their name on and put it up on the tree. We had that up for the last two weeks and it will stay up until after Christmas. After the cookies, we will sing some Christmas songs, then do a huge white elephant gift exchange (the key is a really strict time keeper!), and then tonight we are doing a leader cardboard testimonies followed by a leader panel Q&A time.

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I’ll keep this short and sweet. Post It Note club will stick with the kids for a long time. If you got the pun in there then you would probably like most of my jokes because they are almost all like that, really punny.

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