Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Last Monday I gave the Resurrection talk. I always like to include a part about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this talk.

I love the resurrection talk. It is often under-stated most times I see it at club or camp. The resurrection is the power for our new life in Christ! You can even see that last summer when I spoke at YL camp, I moved all the talks a day earlier just so I could do an entire talk about the resurrection. Read the rest of this entry »

I was having an email conversation with my friend Stacy from Santa Barbara about club talks around Christmas.

What do you do around Christmas? Do you just do standard club talks, do you change it up?

I’ve done a few things, here are a couple ideas:

Read Luke 2:1-20

Readers:

Luke 2:1-12 Juan

Luke 2:13-15 Julia

Luke 2:16-20 Vince

Another thing we have done is have an open sharing time for students. I might ask a campaigner kid to be ready to share to get it started. Sometimes you will be amazed what kids have to say. It could end up being a great gift to the leaders.

What have you done around Christmas time for the talk?

Here is a video with a couple interesting club ideas. I follow this guy’s blog, its a pretty good one that you may enjoy.

The first idea is a little creepy.

The second ideas starts with a standard pizza Olympics, but the other ideas with text messaging are pretty good! I like idea about having kids text their favorite fast food place  and then you have their cell number, name and you can take them out to that place later. 

The idea of doing a talk under the stars would be a fun one to do to mix it up.

The Tarzan one probably wouldn’t work in my club, but maybe in a WL club.

His next idea is a standard indoor scavenger hunt that we used to do a ton back in the day at camps. Enjoy!

Here is the seventh installment of Sync through Mark…

Last Spring, we began an ambitious project to write a club talk and corresponding campaigner lesson for each chapter of the Gospel of Mark. We got through 5 chapters and then needed to pause. Over the summer we received lots of positive feedback. In fact, just yesterday Vince, a leader from Indiana, left this comment, “Thanks so much for the advice…I did this talk tonight at All-City club and it went well.”

My friend Tanita has stepped up on this project and thanks to her and others, I am excited to announce…

Here is the sixth installment of Sync through Mark…

The other night I was having a conversation with a veteran YL leader from my area. He has been in YL over twenty years. We were talking about the club talk progression early in the semester. The club he leads decided to start right off with “person of Christ” talks. What he and I remember through the years as part of the standard progression is a talk early in the semester about “Is there  a God”, or “There must be a God”. It seems that many clubs I know have done this talk less and less, including my club.

My rational is that statistics show that Americans basically all agree that there is a God. Previously I had seen reports of only about 5% of Americans not believing in God. But recent Barna research shows that only 9% of Americans would consider themselves atheist or agnostic. In another report, they show that this number may be higher for younger people, closer to 19%.

What is much more important to us is knowing our kids. We don’t need to base our club on national averages. We need to know our club kids and where they stand with God. This is a key YL relational principle that needs to be taken into consideration more than a national survey. One club might need to do three “Is there a God” club talks, while another club might be able to skip it.

What are your thoughts?

BTW I’m doing a “Is There a God” talk tonight in my club

Each year we kick off the school year with an All-Area Dodgeball tournament. It is a ton of fun. During “half-time”, we give a short club talk. Let me set the scene… 250+ high school students, many of them new to YL, they have been running, dodging, competing, arguing about rules, taunting each other, laughing, and now they are out of breath and sit down, then after some brief announcements you get to do the club talk… What would you do?

Well, several people in our area have done a talk like this (our kickball clubs, club at the local mall band stage, etc.), and I have done several of these too. Here is what I came up with for last week…

Talk: What is YL?… 3 Things

1. People

• Different groups of people: sports people, academic people, band people, people with no group
• At YL everyone is together, we can just relax and get to know each other.

2. Fun

• Events like dodgeball/kickball/hot dog eating contests
• Games, skits, laughter, not taking ourselves too seriously
• A chance to take a break from busyness… grades, parents, relationships, balancing everyone’s expectations. At YL we hope you can take the expectations and weight of life off your shoulders and just have fun.

3. Life

• All the YL leaders are Christians
• If you aren’t religious you are at the right place!
• We talk about LIFE, here is an example
• Read Jn 10:10
  • People try to fill their lives with relationships and as good as they can be they can be STOLEN as someone breaks your friendship or your heart or your family (when I say we fill our lives I blow up a balloon in front of all of them, when I say STOLEN I pop the balloon, I do this for all three points)
  • People try to fill their lives with sports, getting good grades, and those hopes can be KILLED when we blow out our knee, or the competition is better then we are, or we get a B in a class, or a C, or a D, or an F.
  • People try to fill their lives by constantly trying new things. I tried to do that in high school with girls, parties all kinds of things. But I didn’t experience life, most of the time I felt my hopes were DESTROYED as I felt regret, guilt and depression.
• But Jesus came to give us life to the FULL. God wants to fill our lives in a way nothing else can. (At this point I lift a balloon to my mouth but I don’t fill it.)
• Everyone take a deep breath. You see God doesn’t want to fill a balloon, he wants to fill your life with each breath you take.

CHALLENGE: Come back to YL. Come to hear more about life, come for the fun, come for the people, come for all of those reasons or just one. You are always invited!

A lot has happened since I wrote this post. There were some fantastic comments on the post that were very thought provoking for me. I also went to Woodleaf, where my friend Dave did an excellent job proclaiming the gospel. In fact, he did something very similar to what I was planning. He moved up the traditional talk sequence one day also. Honestly, I don’t think many leaders even noticed. It worked flawlessly. So that was good confirmation.

I also had been hitting a wall in the overall flow and analogy of my talks, so after a lot of through and prayer I pretty much stopped the 20+ pages of outlines and notes I had prepared and took a different approach, but I didn’t change the sequence.

I am now prepared and excited to speak in about a week. I have everything written and outlined. But I am working to fine-tune some details. In case you are interested, here is the general plan…

I have a drama, a cardboard testimony part (saw this at my church and at Woodleaf, which was awesome), and one main analogy. I am using a ring as an analogy that will carry over through several talks. I can go into that more later if anyone is interested, but I think it is a good one that is theologically sound and is easy to understand.

Also for the real life / role play type thing, I am going with the Best/Worst day thing from City Slickers (similar to this clip), I’ve done it before at summer camp and it was utilized really well by the Woodleaf team this year. I can tell you more if you are interested.

I’m not quite settled on doing a relationships/sex seminar. Does anyone have any good outlines, resources, details or comments about this? I have some, but I’d love to hear what you have to say.

If you have been following this, or enjoy ylhelp, I’d really appreciate your prayers as I begin speaking on July 11th.

OK, I got lots of support and prayer for this conversation. Thank you so much!

Just so you know, when I have spoke at camps I look at the big picture and try to integrate a lot of the themes and keep to one primary analogy. I also start with the last talk and work backward, among other things. I learned a lot of this from Marty, Rick and Larry, some of my good friends.

This summer I am thinking of moving up the talk sequence one day so that I can add a little more about a part of the gospel I think we could talk about more, that is Jesus Christ in you and the call to follow him.

Here is the traditional 7 day camp speaking topics (in general) breakdown…

1. It gives one more day to process the cross.
2. It gives one more day to have one-on-ones that include the cross.
3. Many resurrection talks are mostly about the “response”, this gives the resurrection more emphasis.
4. I really want to give a picture of what it means to follow Jesus while we still have them at camp.

Here are the challenges in my mind:

1. It makes the first two person of Christ talks very important because sin is moved up a day.
2. Some leaders will not like changing the sequence just because it is different.
3. Others I’m sure too…

I have a lot more I can share. If this generates comments/conversation I’ll keep the posts coming.

PS God bless you in your camps and fundraising this summer! It is a battle for me too, we are all in this together! We leave for Woodleaf in 4 days!

Would you help me? I am actually very excited and prepared to speak at summer camp (don’t be worried if you are bringing kids when I’m speaking haha). I’ve spoken at summer camp before and lots of weekend camps. And the powers-that-be asked me again, so apparently I don’t suck. But I’d like to get some ideas and feedback from you all. In fact I’m thinking about trying a thing or two that would be a little different then what I’ve seen in YL. I’m willing to share those ideas on ylhelp but I need some confirmation that you will work with me. So, will you help me and, in addition, commit to praying for me while I’m at camp? If you are in, then leave a comment. If I get 10+ comments then I’ll start laying out my ideas. If not, then I’ll save my time for other things. No worries.

Sean