Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

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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You may or may not know that where I sit right now is a hub of Spring Break activity. It is about 70 degrees, sunny, down the street are multiple Spring training MLB games being played right now, it is perfect picnic, golf, kite, pretty much anything you want to do outside weather. Spring is upon us, and so is Spring Break!

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At my club we love wiffleball. Every Wednesday our guys campaigners is called Wiffleball Wednesday. The first half we play an over-the-line version of Wiffleball in my backyard and then have campaigners.

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Hugh, an amazing volunteer leader and frequent contributor to YLHelp, sent along his Spring club plan matrix.

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Next week we are having an All Area Valentines club. In the past we have done lots of fun things along the lines of the “dating game”. Here is something new we are going to try…

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A few weeks ago our team met to plan out our clubs for the semester. Some are variations of clubs we have done in the past and others are brand new themes. I will post the clubs as we do them with notes and ideas.

But for those of you who are interested, I put together a zip file of a complete semester of club plans you can use. The table below shows the plans that I included and the last column gives you a heads-up on the clubs we currently planning. Hope this helps! Feel free to share you ideas in the comments or email them to me to share.

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