Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

This is a great idea. Ali commented on my earlier post regarding sharing songs for club to sing, and for background music on Spotify with an idea of his own.

Ali is a Work Crew boss this summer at YL camp. I’ve had the privilege of being a Work Crew boss a few times at summer camp and there are some moments when it really helps to have some great music.  One of the challenges is finding the right music. I suggest you check out Ali’s playlist and see if it will work for you:

YL Dining Hall Music

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After months and months of club, you, your team, and your club kids might be ready for a change. Here are a couple ideas you can use in the last couple weeks of the school year:

1. Leader panel

This is mostly a replacement for the club talk. For more details see this post, complete with cards you can print out.

2. Senior led club

For this club we simply hand the club over to the seniors and say “you got it!” We make sure there are some junior leaders working on most of it. We ask one or two seniors to give their testimony at the end of the club. They always love this, just be sure to give them enough time to work on it, especially with how busy they get near graduation.

3. Best-of club

For this club we make a poster and put it out a few weeks in advance. Kids then vote on their favorite games and skits from the year. Then you simply re-do the ones that are their most favorite. You can find more details here, including a poster you can use.

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I hope you saw my earlier post about the key components of a great camp video. Here is another post that adds to it…

Why it’s good to have a video for camp: Even when your camp Is fully booked!

While you are in the mood for great YL videos, please take a moment and see this spot-on take on contact work from the YL Leader Blog.

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Many know that Denny Rydberg, the second longest tenured President of Young Life other than Jim Rayburn, has an important role that he plays in the mission of YL. Recently many really have applauded Denny for his creative initiatives allowing Young Life to reach more teenagers than ever before. Even with all this momentum, we are sad to hear the surprising announcement in the Young Life Sunday Morning email, Palm Sunday edition, that Denny will no longer be in his role as backup performer of the “Teach Me How to Denny” dance. Many thought this was the key to YL stepping it up to the next level in reaching kids for Jesus.

Southwest Regional Director John Irwin responded today via email saying, quote, “This is a sad day for YL. Errr body loves him, Errr errr body loves him.” Elk Grove Area Director, and YL Brand Ambassador, Andi Yanok could be heard all over the Twitter-sphere in less than 140 characters, “You ain’t messing with my Denny #errbody”.

In other news, stock prices have been soaring, and many in the YL world can guess the number one performing company of the 2011-2012 school year (the school year is a new Wall Street metric). You guessed it, Kiwi shoe shine company. There have been accusations that many in the YL world have some sort of insider trading connections due to an unusually strong number of conference calls supporting the brand. Kiwi has responded with a nearly unprecedented gift to the camping department. It is no surprise that this summer YL’s newest camp will be the “Kiwi Shoe Shine for Car Windows Family Ranch, Sponsored by Kiwi Shoe Shine” (KSSFCWFRSBKSS for short). Camp Manager Josh Smiley sent out a secure email to friends saying, “I can’t wait to ride the liquid shoe shine super slide on a plastic tray!”

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I remember sitting in a small room in 1995 at Woodleaf as the staff edited the VHS camp videos they hoped to get to kids in time before they left. One entire night was left to render (basically get the computer to start a video process and then leave it alone) the intro to the camp video. They would have the computer run overnight just for the opening 20 second scene. The staff also had to finish the video about 36 hours early so someone could drive the master copy to Sacramento to make bulk copies of the VHS tapes in time for the kids before they left on buses (it was all worth it for the ropes course scene with the Enya soundtrack in the background) . I’m sure a couple old farts will say “you were LUCKY” about all this camp video stuff, but all that to say… camp videos have come a long way!

The very best video guy I’ve met is Ashley Maddox. His wife Tanita is on YL staff in Santa Barbara. He has a great guest post on making camp videos and other things from YL video guru Dan Dyer. At Ashley’s website you can also get some inspiration from other videos he has put together. Be sure to check out his post:

Making Camp Videos with Dan Dyer

Here are two of my favorite videos Ashley has made. The first is the best video I know of to explain camp to parents (and donors). The second one is a promo for Lost Canyon.

Lost Canyon: The Eric Scofield Tour from W. Ashley Maddox on Vimeo.

Young Life Lost Canyon (2008-09) from W. Ashley Maddox on Vimeo.

I briefly mentioned in the past that we have done a Chipotle Club. I don’t know about you but I love Chipotle. I think I even see people doing @totalylmove quotes about Chipotle being a YL staple as much as Chacos and Nalgenes. Our club kids love it too. For our club students came dressed in foil, we had games basically involving eating burritos, or using a water balloon launcher to shoot burritos at people, you know…that kind of thing. I don’t think I mentioned it because we have a local connection with Chipotle that has hooked us up with some free burritos and I didn’t want to gloat or rub it in (but I guess I said it so…oops).

My friend at Chipotle just told me about a program that could be fun for a YL club kid to do. It is the Chipotle on Campus Student Brand Manager. I’ve seen this type of thing on college campuses, but not for high schools. If selected, the student will get $100 at Chipotle, some swag, and a Chipotle party for 20 of their friends (read as: you and your club kids).

Now I should be up front and say that I don’t know anyone who has ever done this, in fact I think it is pretty new program. So I really can’t say it is good, bad, or neither, but if based on how great Chipotle has been as a company, I bet it could be fantastic. I could see a key club kid or junior leader contacting the local marketing rep and then having a Chipotle club to help spread the word. I think it could end up helping with fundraisers and attract kids to club who like Chipotle (I went to my first YL thing because of the food).

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We are now in our fifth year of our FYL program. If you were to ask my committee and long term volunteers to have me do one thing and one thing only as a staff person, I think they would say… keep doing FYL. In fact, some have actually told me that.

The Western Division of Young Life asked me and a few other staff people who have adopted FYL to put together a simple and brief video to highlight on their blog. Check out the link below, and while you are there you might enjoy looking at the other resources for the RWOK initiative. Many of the resources are focused on things YL staff can do, but there are some good ideas in there for volunteers as well.

You can read more about the program here, and shoot me a note s mcgever (at) pv dot younglife dot org if you are looking for more details.

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You may or may not know it, but if you are in the trenches of volunteer leadership in Young Life, you are gaining marketable skills for future jobs. When I came out of college I applied for entry-level jobs and was quickly passed up the line for management positions. In fact, I never had an entry-level position (except when I quit to go on YL staff as an intern!). In one particular company I was the only person in my job without an MBA and I did just fine. I give much of the credit to the leadership I was taught and learned as a Young Life volunteer.

One of our key leaders, Alex Devine, recently graduated and was hired by an incredible company out-of-state. I asked him to write up some of his thoughts about his process. Here is what he had to say…

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I’m guessing there are a few YLHelp readers who will be heading to Florida this week for the ASC YL Celebration, Young Life’s conference for staff which is every four years. I know my wife and I are really looking forward to it!

I want to put a plug in for the Social Media seminar where my friend Chad Swanzy and others will be sharing great ideas about social media and such. I will be in the crowd taking copious notes from the best!

If interested, I wanted to invite anyone who wants to chit-chat and meet in person to simply meet up near the front after this seminar, ummm lets say to the right of the stage (though I have no idea how the room will be laid out). It would be great to say hi and meet a few of you who have been gracious enough to send me your great ideas and add helpful comments to the posts.

If you are looking for me, my twitter is @seanmcgever and I look like this (with my youngest daughter and future ASU cheerleader!):

This semester had some incredible highs, and some incredible lows for me.

We already have our Pinnacle HS YL planning meeting for the Spring all set for later this week. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share the top ten posts of the last semester (based on views). Enjoy!

10. Limit the Choices for Talks

9. Christmas Club Again

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