Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

As the semester draws to a close, we all get a well deserved break. But soon kids will start asking, “When is club?!”

One year I was on campus the first day of school in January after the break and a girl came up to me and said, “I have 8 new friends coming to club tonight! Isn’t that great!” In my mind I was thinking, “What are you talking about? Club doesn’t start for 3 more weeks! Us leaders need a break!” But instead I quickly said, “That is great, we are meeting at the food court at the mall.” And then I was able to get one more leader who helped me pull of an event for those kids and a bunch more.

I’ve done everything from waiting until February and just focusing on contact work until then, all the way to having club on the first day back.

I’m interested to know, when and why do you re-start club?

Also be sure to vote on the survey to the left of this post. It will be up until we have a new one.

So the results are in! YL camps are by far the nicest resort camps in the world. It really doesn’t matter what a camp has, if it is Christ-focused, a patch of dirt is all that is needed (I’ve run a few camps like that and can attest that the results do not rely on the camp itself). With that being said, if you are going to have a camp then it may as well be great. It was Jim Rayburn who said, “Who started the idea that Christians have to camp in tents? We talk about the King of kings; let’s act like He’s in charge! We’re going to have the classiest camps in the country " (It’s a Sin to Bore a Kid: The Story of Young Life, pg. 46). It is clear that we have the “classiest” camps! With my friends we don’t even call them camps, we call them resorts, and once they get there they agree.

So without further delay, here are the results:

If you don’t know what a flowrider is, you should check it out. They are sweet. I’ve seen them on the boardwalk in San Diego and I see them advertized on TV commercials on cruise ships. It definitely brings the “wow” factor! It is a great option for a summer-focused camp. I’ve seen little kids, maybe 6-7 years old have fun trying them over and over.

As for paintball, I’m sure there is a legal risk, but if you think about some of the other things we do (ropes course, zip line, blob, etc.), it normally is something we embrace rather then dismiss. It might be more of a draw for guys then girls, but I think a lot of girls would enjoy it.

Last, I don’t think that the skatepark got the respect it deserves. I spent over a month at Oakbridge last summer and kids love the skatepark there. One leader told me it is the only reason they came to camp. Between XGames, Dew Tour, Fuel TV, etc… there is so much draw in this.

One principle that should be applied to any options, and YL normally does a fantastic job at this, is whatever we do, go big. Don’t buy the affordable option, the value-priced one, or even the middle-of-the-road one. Lets have the classiest Flowrider in the country! Lets have the classiest paintball arena! Lets have the classiest skatepark anyone has ever seen.

Much respect to our property friends who are working every angle every single day to have the best camps in the world. They are way beyond this survey, they have thought through these ideas years ago. Lets just keep our eyes open to the best ways to keep our camps on the cutting edge.

One thing I didn’t do… I didn’t ask for other ideas, I only gave you three options. What would you add to YL camps?

Here is a great piece advice: Find something in which you have found success, something that you look forward to doing, something that makes time fly by, something that is incredibly easy for you to focus on and something that fulfills a need of yours… and then do it. Find ways to do it in your job, no matter what your job is. Find ways to incorporate that into your relationships, your free time, anywhere and everywhere. This is Marcus Buckingham’s advice in “The Truth about You: Your Secret to Success”.

I work with so many college and young career friends of mine who are constantly trying to figure out what the heck they should be doing with life. Buckingham provides some good help in “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and this book and others of his have been helpful for some of my friends and even personally.“

This is not new advice, but it is concise and timely for nearly everyone. It would be a good primer for someone who is new to the idea of personal strengths or who has spent little time in personal professional development. You can find some more detail about my experience with this book here.

Here is a link to a pretty good site that my friend Russell told me about…

I scanned it quickly and it looked like some standards that have been around for a while but the ability to search and use certain criteria is nice (though similar to this site)

youthgroupgames.com.au

It has been so much fun to create YLHelp.com! I’ve received so much positive and helpful feedback through the comments, emails and personal conversations. I’m glad it is helping! Also, lately I’ve been receiving lots of great club and game ideas that I’ve been able to pass along. Thanks! Keep them coming. Imagine a team meeting with thousands of the best YL and WL leaders in it… that is what this is meant to be.

If you are new, I wanted to highlight a couple key resources on the site:

Club Plans

These are fully-planned and ready-to-go club plans with all the details.

One great place to start is in this full semester plan you can download.

Here are a couple of the most popular club downloads:

Thug Club

Yellow Club

Birthday Party Club

Club Talks

Our most powerful tool is a clear picture of Christ. If people see who Christ is clearly, they will fall in love with him. Here are a couple popular tools for club talks:

Club Talk Worksheet. From Bible study to talk outline in a worksheet and Bible study that you do on your own. BTW, I hope to put more of these together.

Powerful illustrations:

Blood Diamond

Tom Brady "There’s Got to be More than this…"

Ladder Illustration

Campaigners

There are so many things we can do in Campaigners! The key is making sure we do it. Have food/snacks, have fun, pray, open the Bible together. If you do those it will be great! Here are some tools that have been popular:

Work Crew Weekend Bible Study - This could be 3 or 4 campaigner meetings too.

Cabin Time Continued - 10 Camp follow-up Bible studies for personal use or campaigners meetings.

Getting Them to Talk: Faces Sheet - A sheet to help people describe how they are doing.

Another way to make the most of this site is to subscribe. You can do this through email or an RSS feed. Click here for more information about both. Tell some friends too!

If you are interested in who the heck would make a site like this or if you want to check out my Facebook click here.

OK, so basically our economy seems like it was hijacked by Black Bart. I went into a local yesterday Einstein’s Bagels and it was empty. They said is has been very slow and people’s hours were being cut big time. My guess is you are trying to make the most of your money, especially now.

Being a YL leader can cost you a fair amount of money. Here are a couple ideas about how to save money as a YL leader:

• No Starbucks. Some of my friends affectionately call it "Five-Bucks". Not only for yourself, but it is kinda the standard phrase to say, "hey lets do coffee" or "lets do Starbucks". How about meeting at McDonalds? My wife says their iced coffee thing is pretty good. I’ve been meeting people at Wendy’s and we get $0.99 Frosty’s. (Ummm I love Frostys). Basically avoid Starbucks. You can even feel like one of those "down with the establishment" people.
• Paying for school events. Many schools will give you free passes to games if you explain what are you are doing. (Use the word "mentor", they like that). Ask the front desk or teachers or coaches. Your staff person can help with this.
• Carpool to club. Basically carpool everywhere. Maybe ask a kid to pick you up if they can… Why not?
• Fun is free. Dust off the board games and all the stuff you already have. You don’t have to go see movies or anything like that. Also don’t do Pizza Olympics club, that always costs me like $50-75.
• If you expect paying for camp to be a problem, tell you team leader or staff person ASAP! They might be able to help you figure it out if you give them enough time. If you tell them two days for camp then you might be out of luck. Don’t be prideful and don’t wait.

What are some of your ideas how to save money these days?

Again from video genius Ashley Maddox and friend Eric Scofield is this video that explains a day at camp. I will be showing this to parents, committee and donors a lot.

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

This is easily the best camp video I’ve ever seen. From Ashley Maddox, video genius and all around good guy.

Young Life Lost Canyon from W. Ashley Maddox on Vimeo.

Here is another blob video from somewhere out there. Wait until the end when he goes over and his friend tries to catch him. My friend and fellow leader David B came to mind instantly. He would try it in a heartbeat. Obviously we would never do this.

On assignment for Wyldlife this summer we decided to do a guys hike and a girls talk. We split them up, I led the guys hike so I know a lot about that, but I can get info about the girls identity talk if you are interested.

The theme of the guy’s hike was "how to be a man". When we started the hike, which had five stations, I introduced this idea and, let me tell you, it got their attention. I will go on to explain the details, but beyond the details I learned that there is a deep hunger, especially among junior high guys, to find out what a man is supposed to be like. We need to leverage this more for the sake of the gospel. Help me think of ways to do this better and more often.

As I planned the stations I felt like I was pulling stuff out of the air for the topics. I knew I wanted to say something about how we treat women and a couple other things. But then 1 Tim 4:12 came to mind. It laid the perfect outline for a young man wanting to be a man. I repeatedly mentioned how they may have been looked at like children just a few years ago, but they have the opportunity to act like men. Also acting like a man has nothing to do with age, there are plenty older males out there that act like children. The kids I talked to knew that all too well.

So the stations were:

1. The power of our words
2. Our actions (especially in competition) - Joey Colletti did an incredible job with this station.
3. Selfless Love - Mike Mayfield from our summer staff shared about why he was serving them. They broke into groups and talked about men who had influenced them.
4. Faith - Walk what you talk. Don’t just "know" the right thing.
5. Purity - Especially how we treat women.

At each station we broke up into the cabin time groups and had a question for the leader to answer and a question for the kids in the cabin time.

• How do you think we can leverage the desire to for guys to want to be "men" for the sake of the gospel?
• What do you think they need to hear?