Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Hey there friends, I haven’t been able to post as frequently as I’d like. I’m in max-hustle mode especially as I try to finish my PhD thesis by January (fingers crossed). But, I’ve been cranking along as I normally do making things for my club and my area that might also be helpful for others. So rather than making seven individual posts, below are seven things you might be able to use… all wrapped into one post. I hope they are helpful! Blessings on all the amazing work you do my friends!

1. Marshmallow Club

Two weeks ago we did Marshmallow club. We are still finding marshmallows in our club room and digging them out of our carpet, but it was a blast. You can find the club plan HERE.

2. Froyo Club

Nothing is as cool as frozen yogurt, well OK… maybe lots of things are. But, we still have a great plan for Froyo club. I tried to get a frozen yogurt machine brought in for club but it didn’t work out, maybe you can pull that off! You can find the club plan HERE.

3. New Spotify Playlist for Club 2016-17

In my history with YL (which began in the early 90s!) I can’t remember a time which was more difficult to find great club songs that are sing-able and also are clean. When will Taylor Swift please come out with a new album?!? Maybe Kelly Clarkson will make a comeback? Probably not. In the meantime I’ve created a playlist for background music for my club. While I did my best to sort out sketchy stuff I’m sure it isn’t perfect, use your own discretion. You can find the playlist HERE.

4. Tutorial using Typorama to make YL graphics for social media

While we shouldn’t over-rely on social media for communication, we all know it is important. Social media requires great graphics. I would love to know what you are using to make your graphics. In the meantime, here is what I am using right now: Typorama. You can find a short tutorial I made HERE.

5. Snapchat YL promo ideas

I’ve received a ton of feedback about Snapchat Geofilters for club (original post on how to make them in 6 steps HERE). Thank you for the messages! One YL leader showed me the analytics from his event were their YL Geofilter received 10,000 views for one event. Wow. Here are some creative uses I’ve heard about:

-Set up a Geofilter at the school at lunch (of before school) when you are doing contact work. Kids who are just using Snapchat at that time will see your Geofilter too (even if they don’t use it).

-Set up a Geofilter for a big event like a football game or a school dance (Homecoming, etc.)

-Create a contest or a game where kids need to use the Geofilter you set up and then send you a screen shot of them using it. You could use this to win a t-shirt, money off of weekend camp, or pretty much anything.

6. Free Snapchat Geofilters

I ran a brief contest for a generic YL Geofilter for Homecoming. You can find the winning design HERE. Thanks Josh Roubik from Flagstaff WyldLife!

Big thanks to Brad Voight (@BradVoigt) for providing these simple YL and WL Geofilters for all to use. Dropbox with the files HERE).

7. Gospel of Matthew Talk Helps: Talk Tuesday!

Last year I went through the Gospel of John and passed along some tips and ideas for club talks. This year I am going through the Gospel of Matthew. I try to do it on Tuesdays (hence, Talk Tuesday!) but sometimes it ends up being Talk Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday… You get the idea. I have switched from Periscope to Facebook LIVE. Facebook LIVE seems to be a much better platform and gets much more engagement. The YouTube videos have over 1500 views, so glad I could help 1500 club talks in the last year just a little bit with these videos! You can find the full details HERE and the YouTube list HERE.

Think ideas like these might help another leader in your club, your area, your region, or maybe someone who just became a leader? Consider signing them up to get emails automatically HERE (with their permission!)

Turnip for what! One person on the internet slightly smiled at that joke. That person will love this club.

A little while back it was difficult to find ideas for clubs. Now there are lots and lots of ideas to be found. Because of this I don’t post many club plans anymore. But, if an idea is great, or in this case just quite unusual, then I pass it along.

One of our leaders had an idea to have a club which revolved around lettuce and turnips. Yup. So that is what we did. In all honesty lettuce volleyball was really difficult. We found out that a head of lettuce pretty much explodes into nothingness when you try to hit it. My back yard looked like a lettuce explosion happened. The local birds and rabbits loved it for the next few days. It started smelling a bit so I ran my lawnmower to pick it all up. I’ve never mowed a lawn of lettuce before but now I can say that I have mowed a lawn of lettuce. Even after 20+ years of YL there are new things to experience!

We also made a video of a skit from SNL. Those that like dry humor enjoyed it.

This was one of those clubs that was so random that it was memorable. And… we got to tell kids about Jesus (that was our real plan all along).

You can get the full club plan HERE

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Hey there! It is game time for Spring club plans to come together. Game on.

I thought I’d pass along our template for our Spring semester planning meeting this Monday. (File HERE, tips on how to run the meeting HERE, other ideas HERE)

I also wanted to pass along the Spring (even chapters) plan for the Gospel of John club talks. For those who are interested I will give further details in the upcoming Talk Tuesday! posts, but I hope this be helpful too. (File HERE)

One quick note about the Spring (even chapters) plan for the Gospel of John… The even chapters present some exciting and challenging passages for YL leaders to consider about Jesus and the way we present the gospel. Remember the gospel found in the Gospel of John is the gospel. When you are scratching your head saying, “how does this fit in a club talk?”… this is a good question to wrestle with; one that the author of scripture wants you to wrestle with! Remember good questions/challenges/problems don’t have quick answers. Just keep giving the kids Jesus!

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Hey there YLHelp friends, Happy New Year! It has been a while since I wrote the last post. I have been busy on lots of projects which, when they come to fruition, will hopefully help lots of YL friends, I’ll give you the scoop when they are ready. Also, in case you missed it I have been continuing my Talk Tuesday! videos through the gospel of John (see HERE and HERE). Other than that I only try to post stuff when I think I have something useful, so here is something I think you can use…

The fantastic Paradise Valley WL team passed me their club plans from the Fall and the Spring.

17 PV Wyldlife Club Plans File

These include:

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This club might not make sense if you don’t have a Dutch Bros Coffee in your state. Basically in a lot of states on the west coast Dutch Bros is a rapidly growing coffee shop. Since I don’t drink coffee (never liked the taste) I have no idea if it is a good coffee shop, but what I do know is that the “vibe” at Dutch Bros is over-the-top to the max, to say the least.

For instance, when my wife went there recently a highly caffeinated young man with a floral hat on backward over his man-bun said, “what a RAD ride sista, it is siiick”. My wife drives an aging Honda minivan with some decent-size dents in it from YL people borrowing it. Next he asked, “So what are your plans for the DAY?!?” My wife replied, “taking my kids to their orthodontist appointments.” The man with too many hand-made fabric bracelets from another country replied while doing a mini drum solo with a few straws, “That sounds AWESOME… LOVE it.”

If you don’t have a Dutch Bros, maybe you have something similar. If not, maybe you will enjoy our three-part video we played at club, we spread it out in between mixers, games, and announcements.

For the club plan CLICK HERE

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For our first club of the year we did “The Tonight Show Starring Pinnacle Young Life”.

We were able to create a fun graphic to get the word out (S/O to Felipe Contreras!), did a few new songs, had a club kid learn the piano music to “thank you notes”, and more. Below are all the details for you to use and to make it even better.

This file contains a zip file with our PowerPoint and chords for our songs, including a few new ones, CLICK HERE.

For the Tonight Show Club plan, CLICK HERE.

See the video below for our skit, “Thank you notes”…

Looking for campaigners resources? Look here.

Looking for a way to get contact work started in the Fall? Look here.

This is a great club that overlaps with great contact work. It takes a few weeks to put together but can grab the attention of new people too. It is based around the old game show “Family Feud”. Basically you aim to survey 100 students on several different questions and then your club revolves around playing Family Feud with the answers from the students themselves.

Take a look at our club plan below, but there are two things that will help you a lot.

First, the main way we got responses was through our online survey. We created this as a Google Form and sent it out via Twitter, Facebook, text, etc. You can also make a hard copy and hand them out at club, during contact work, etc.

Here is a link to a form you can copy and edit as your own (be careful as this link is to my example form, if you edit it someone else can use this link to edit it later, make a copy of it and then use the copy to edit your own).

FORM YOU CAN EDIT (COPY FIRST TO CREATE YOUR OWN)

EXAMPLE OF WHAT STUDENTS SEE

During club you need a PowerPoint file to play the game. I’ve attached the one I use, which works on a PC. To change the answers just move the box with the number which is layered over the answer. It comes complete with buzzer sounds and more. If you try to use this PowerPoint file on a Mac, my Mac friends say that it doesn’t always work correct. Maybe the YL Mac majority out there can make a similar file in PowerPoint Mac or Keynote and pass it along.

Family Feud Power Point

And last, here is our club plan which is basically based around playing Family Feud:

Family Feud Club

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PS… If you are looking for campaigner resources see this post and maybe this too.

It may be counter-intuitive but we had our first club of the year, after Dodgeball and Taco Bell All You Can Eat Club, be “Top Secret” club. Normally you don’t want club to be a secret, but this top secret club was not secret at all.

The part I was most excited about was the daily pictures we posted on our Instagram account. We put YL stickers in secret places around campus and took pictures. Then each day we would post a picture and the first student to find it would then send us a picture of it and they would then win a french fry at In-N-Out after club (yes we go to In-N-Out, which is great but after 12 years of going there every Monday night your body kinda doesn’t like it anymore, which is a bummer since it is In-N-Out).

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Need an easy homerun? Then try All-You-Can-Eat Taco Bell Club. Whether you are trying to start a new club, need an easy event, or just a break from the usual stuff, this is a fun one.

In a nutshell, I’ve found over lots of years that if you call a Taco Bell a little in advance and talk to the manager they will say yes to you having this event and give you one free soda for everyone that comes (sometimes they gave me an additional 10% off, but usually not). We only do hard tacos, soft tacos, and bean burritos. Here is how it works:

1. Get the word out. Here is a flyer we used and here it is in PowerPoint which can be edited and moved to other programs.

2. Show up early and connect with the manager you talked to, have them start a tab on one of their extra registers and keep it open for the entire event. If they don’t have an extra register ask if they will just keep a tab. The idea is to just have you pay the entire bill at the end for everyone. Give them your credit card if they are worried.

3. Get the free small soda cups for the people who show up.

4. Fifteen minutes before the event pre-order a starter number (ex: 25 hard / 25 soft / 10 bean burritos).

5. When kids arrive collect their money and use a sharpie to write “YL” on their hand so you know they paid. I used to charge $3 but ended up decently short and then moved to $4 and usually end up pretty close to breaking even.

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For those of you that A) Don’t speak Spanish, B) Don’t live in the Southwest, or C) Took four years of French and were the president of the French club [who would do that, why would you learn French?… probably a guy that now has enough free time to blog about YL clubs]… You might be happy to learn that “cinco de Mayo” means “May 5th”… which happens to be on a Monday this year.

Adios! Au revoir!

PS… As I am out of my local club for a little bit this semester I am posting all of our clubs each week (partially to remind my team haha!) If you want to fast forward and see them all then see this link. – Sean

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