Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

If you need ideas right away, go to the bottom of this post for a link to the best resource to date on theme clubs.

A few weeks ago (before the post) we had our semester planning meeting and came up with some outlines for our clubs. Here is what we are thinking right now:

Jan 16 – Volleyball hangout

Jan 23 – All Area Club

Jan 30 – Hipster Club

Feb 6 – Progressive Club

Feb 13 – Valentines Club

Feb 20 – No school, no club

Feb 27 – Leap year club

Mar 5 – College Club

Mar 12 – Superhero Club

Mar 19 – Spring Break, no club

Mar 26 – Mom club

Apr 2 – Kentucky Derby Club (seriously, my leaders wanted it)

Apr 9 – All AZ Club

Apr 16 – Canada/Malibu Club

Apr 23 – Mock Prom

Apr 30 – Messy Games Club

May 7 – PJ/Pillowfight Club

May 14 – Senior Run Club

May 21 – Year End Party

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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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Last night we did a fun club, iClub. Basically everything had some kind of technology or Apple twist to it.

The mixers was a Words with Friends type game. Everyone got a label with a letter and point value, put it on their forehead and then the guys played the girls by making a word, lining up and grabbing a knee. To do the game you will need this file I made with letters and points, print it out on standard address labels.

Then once again we used the wonderful Polleverywhere web site to do live polling via text message. We did:

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Get your neon gear and leg warmers out… it is time for 80’s workout club! It worked out pretty good (get it?). The only challenge was calming the kids down due to all the energetic events. We could have used another song or two before the talk that were a little more chill to help transition the students so they were more ready to listen. Other than that it worked out just fine (get it?).

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This might sound confusing, but follow along… last week we did Young Life, Young Life club. So basically a club with a “theme” of “Young Life”. We did this near the beginning of the semester to somewhat introduce some of the newer kids to a little intro to YL. We asked kids to come in any YL gear they might have. I also save up random leftovers from previous camps and such and gave them away during club, especially to the newer kids. We also had some of our junior leaders do the “If I Weren’t In YL…” skit.

Here is our plan and also the video of the skit.

Last Saturday we planned out our Fall 2011 clubs. I’ve mentioned it before but here is how we do it:

1. I ask each leader to come with three new fully planned themed clubs (mixer, game, skit, additional fun things to spice it up)
2. I write all of their ideas on a board with minimal explanation (do this part quick)
3. We review the list to see if there are any obvious clubs that are basically the same, and then combine them
4. I have everyone take a piece of paper and write down their top 5 (you could do as many as works for you obviously)
5. This part may sound lame, but… I have them close their eyes and raise their hands as I say each club and I write down how many people voted for it (I don’t want people to think their idea was bad or know who did or did not vote for their ideas)
6. When we are done I circle the top ideas. This semester we needed nine new clubs.
7. Since I am the senior leader, I make some executive decisions about some of the clubs, but usually 95% of it is what we vote for.
8. We then break up into teams and plan the clubs in detail.
9. We finally come back together, explain our plans, tweak the ideas as a group and write them down.

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In the words of legendary rocker David St. Hubbins, “It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” Well that is pretty much how you can define a flashmob. As you may know, a flashmob is a coordinated group of people who assemble or perform in a public setting to the surprise of everyone else.

Several of my YL friends have recently done their own YL flashmobs. Here is one from my great friend Chris…

I think the key is to minimize driving, emphasize being polite, and keep it moving.

Here is the plan we used:

Here is our birthday song:

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Your mom has it. So does your dad. So does grandma and grandpa. Guess who else has it? Every kid that you probably know. Yup. Facebook. 500 million users and over half of active users login every day. I’m no expert but even I saw it coming. Heck, I even published a theological paper with references to it.

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Dances can provide great opportunities for YL clubs to leverage. I’ve shared our Mock Prom Club in the past. Our leaders always do the bag check at the homecoming and hoopcoming dances. It provides a fun way to serve the school and to connect with kids. Also at the bag check we end up learning a ton of names.

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I have yet another great resource from Hugh in North Carolina!

In a past post I asked people for their input about weekend camp activities. Hugh mentioned the “Clubble”. The Clubble is Club in a bubble (of course).

Basically imagine club in a huge plastic tent blown up by fans.

Then inside of the “clubble” you can have club. The projector can simply be projected on the inside of the bubble. Also, since it is an enclosed place it is a great location to do a messy club. At Hugh’s club they have done food smashing skits with the sledge-o-matic (ala Gallagher for those of you who remember, or maybe you tried to forget).

I liked the idea so much that while I was doing program last summer at Lost Canyon I tired to get the whole camp into a clubble for the messy games. That didn’t work out but we did use it as part of the obstacle course. It was a ton of fun. The only problem is that Lost Canyon is in,well, a canyon, and thus it can get windy at times. So the clubble almost blew away a few times. We had Summer Staff holding the clubble down while kids were in it, sometimes in the dark… well at least we tried it.

Hugh was nice enough to give great detailed instructions about how to build a clubble, complete with links to the Home Depot website so you can see exactly what you need and the cost.

This could be a great event to do in the midst of a long Spring semester to mix things up.

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