This Year…Club and Campaigners on Same Topic

Over the summer I normally try to post a couple things that I learned over the previous school year. If you have anything you learned from last year that you would like to tell me about, send it my way smcgever (at) pv dot younglife dot org

In the past year or two we have moved from separate male and female campaigners to co-ed campaigners. There are multiple reasons for this, perhaps that could be a separate post in the future…

You may know that in the past few years our club has moved toward going through the gospels in a year. Two years ago we did Mark (see the comments on this post), last year John. The guys had been doing Mark but the girls a different plan for campaigners. When we went co-ed we decided to go through John, and the easiest way to plan this was to have the person who did the talk also lead campaigners that week. Here are a could thoughts about this:

1. Leaders

+This makes it easier for leaders since they do not need to figure out what to teach on. I find this is often one of the biggest hurdles for leaders teaching campaigners.

+When the leader knows that they will be leading campaigners in addition to their club talk, it makes them dig deeper in their club talk since they will also be going through it in campaigners. This can make for a better club talk.

+This may be obvious ,but it gets the leader to campaigners, just in case they struggle with this.

+It does make for a busy week when the leader has to plan club and campaigners, but it isn’t twice the work, it is a lot less.

2. Students

+Many club talks end with a question but rarely this ends up in a conversation (in my experience), I still end my club talk with a challenge or question, but campaigners is the perfect place to take that forward.

+Campaigner kids know what to expect. At times campaigners might feel somewhat lost, having no idea what to expect at campaigners each week.

+Campaigner kids don’t need to re-learn a new topic, the foundation has already been set in club so you can build on that.

+Many people learn better from a discussion than listening to a talk.

+Kids can follow along on their own in their Bibles during the week if they choose to do so.

3. Team Leader

+This takes the load off team leaders since they do not need to micro-manage campaigners, the scripture, speaker, and topic are already set. This is a great fit for those working to develop volunteer team leaders.

+I have found that this helps the “I do not know what to talk about” hurdle that many younger leaders face. This often leads to procrastination and less-than-stellar campaigner talks.

+Leaders might flake less on doing the club talk, not that this EVER happens to me haha, knowing that they also have to do campaigners later that week.

4. Potential Weaknesses

-This minimizes the topics covered. This isn’t a good fit for groups needing or wanting to address specific issues in campaigners.

-If some leaders are not strong communicators, it doubles this weakness since they will be up twice in the same week. On the other hand, some may be better leading campaigners than doing club talks.

-This works well for co-ed, but if guys and girls meet separate then one person would need to do their own planning that week.

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