When it comes to preparing campaigner lessons, I’ve tried it all. Fortunately the plan is not the most important part of campaigners. If the meeting includes honest sharing, a conversation about scripture and prayer, you pretty much can’t go wrong. With that said I’m always trying to provide the best content that is relevant. What I’ve done for the last few years is simply go through books of the Bible (ex: Mark), or sections of scripture (ex: Sermon on the Mount), or similar verse-by-verse type things. Here and there I’ll mix in some different approaches, but this is what I’ve found to be my favorite.

One of the benefits of letting scripture dictate the topics is that you might just end up talking about something you wouldn’t ever think of talking about with your group. This happened this year when we studied the Sermon on the Mount. One of the weeks the section was about fasting. I need to be honest and say that I had low, very low, expectations about having this be a campaigner study. In fact I thought about skipping it or just combining it with the next section of scripture. But I decided to stick with it.

As it turned out, it was one of our best campaigners all year. I should say that this campaigners group last year was a guys-only group of juniors and seniors that I’ve known for several years, but many of which have not been Christians very long. We each picked some issues we were dealing with and picked something to fast from. One person picked TV for two days, another person picked drinking soda. Nothing too extreme, but I was impressed that they were taking it seriously.

When we met the following week, each person had a story to tell about their experience. In fact at the end of the year when we talked about our personal highlights from campaigners all year long, most of the guys said it was the fasting Bible study. One guy pulled a note out of his wallet that he wrote during his fast and said he kept it with him all year to remind himself of what God put on his heart. So I encourage you to take a risk sometimes in campaigners, you might be surprised!

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In my community there is an often-avoided neighborhood nestled in an otherwise pleasant and upscale part of town. In the past years this area has been one of the most violent square miles in our state and has faced other significant challenges.

In this neighborhood there is a middle school and a team of amazing teachers who love their students. I remember meeting with one of the teachers five years ago. She has an amazing heart for Christ and for her students. Many of her students come back to her classroom after school weekly, even when they are in high school and beyond. She knew that Young Life would be a great bridge to connect these kids to Christ. When we met five years ago we dreamed of opening a Wyldlife club at the school. In fact she had one kid in particular on her heart that needed Wyldlife right away. Over the years we were able to get some of the kids to YL camps and occasionally to club. We kept praying and strategizing to reach these kids. Then a little over a year ago the kid who needed Wyldlife desperately four years earlier was finally convinced to go to Woodleaf. He met Christ in a powerful way and started growing quickly in his faith.

In the last year we finally started that Wyldlife club. Fortunately we had four years of leaders built up and one key leader who we had been praying for five years. In its first year the club regularly had over 50 kids at club and the same amount at camp, strong campaigners and the leadership is thriving.

What I learned this year is not to give up. The timing was perfect this year but wouldn’t have been right any sooner. It reminds me of Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Sometimes things fall into place right away, sometimes it takes five years, sometimes it takes longer, but I encourage you to not give up.

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Usually when I need something that I don’t have I just Google it and start my search. I do this with things for club, things for my home, all kinds of stuff. I bet you do that too.

In my spare time I like to read Wired magazine and all kinds of other sources of technology information. One thing that tech journalists are always covering is the battle between Google and Facebook. Google has a monopoly on internet information. Facebook has a monopoly on information and access on your friends. So it dawned on me (and probably many of you too) one day, instead of looking to Google for information and stuff I need to get, why don’t I look on Facebook. For instance I wanted to sell my car and buy a different one. Instead of putting my car on Craigslist or Autotrader, I told all my friends on Facebook. The benefit is that they know me, for better or worse haha, but many of them know a lot about my car and probably have been in it before. So a few weeks later, my car was sold at a great price to someone who really needed it.

Earlier this summer I needed some supplies to do program at camp. Some of the supplies are the types of things I would only need once a week for four weeks. So I asked people on Facebook if I could borrow them and sure enough some of the stuff I needed I simply borrowed. Some people even dropped it off at my house the same day I posted the request.

So if you are looking for supplies for club or campaigners or pretty much anything, I’d recommend posting your request on Facebook. If you are friends with some parents from your club or other adults, they might really enjoy being able to help out by tracking down things for your club. In fact it is really nice because when you post the request people don’t feel bad if they don’t have it or can’t make it happen soon enough, but when you call people to help sometimes they feel obligated.

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I have been a leader for over 15 years now in YL. In the first half of my experience I rarely saw high school students have much of a role in the leadership and execution of the club. I realize this is different across the country and some areas have been doing this for decades. Then about 6 years ago I recognized that the strongest club in our area always had students as a part of their leadership team. I would train them and encourage them but I thought that was nice and kept on doing things the way I was used to doing in my club. Then other clubs in my area started adding junior leaders and they were having stronger campaigners, stronger clubs, camp, everything.

So what did I do? Well I finally got smart and in the past two years junior leaders have been an indispensable part of our club. In fact, in the 9 clubs in our area, all of them have a junior leader team, even our Wyldlife clubs. Our junior leaders do pretty much everything our traditional leaders do in YL: music, skits, talks, lead campaigners, help planning, contact work, area leadership meetings, etc. We have also seen more graduated students stick around to be leaders after high school.

At one school this year we had over 20 qualified and leader-recommended kids who wanted to be leaders the following school year. So we arranged using a classroom once a week for 6 weeks and I did junior leader training at lunch time in the high school. We are doing more and more of this and it is going great.

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So right now there are so many pictures from our various YL and WL trips on Facebook right now I haven’t even begun to look at them. Honestly I just start with the ones I’ve been tagged in. So in the midst of a plethora of pictures, how can we stand out? Take better pictures. Some people spend a ton of money on new cameras, but really any camera will do a great job if you just know some simple rules of photography. My friend Alex, a leader in Cave Creek, put together an awesome overview of some tips. He is a great photographer and his skills really have been a great tool for his YL club. For you staff out there, I think it should be a required 1 hour training at NST, we take so many pictures in YL, we could make them so much better with just a little training. With all that said, here are Alex’s great tips…

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While I was on assignment last summer I tried to take a few pictures of some of the camp unity outfits I saw, so here are a few you can use and steal as needed! You can click on the pictures for larger versions. If you have ideas for this summer, leave a comment. I’m looking for an idea for my guys and we leave in a few days!

1. Old Ladies

2. White T’s with Letters

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

4. Tie-Dye with Spray Letters

5. Caped Crusaders

6. In-N-Out Workers

7. Ladybugs

8. Bumble Bees

9. Men with Ties

10. Classic Nerd

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PS… Check them out if you need a great design or price. http://www.fashionablyretro.com or just email RyanDurkin@FashionablyRetro.com

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Here’s a quick and dirty pre-club activity:  photo booth.  Set up a camera, leader, backdrop, and some nutty props (theme optional).  As kids arrive at club take pictures of them. Here is a sample from a wedding, but you get the drill.

He mentioned that is is easy, free, fun and you can use these pictures to promote club.

Thanks for the idea Hugh!

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If you are interested, here is the link to the copy I made of the manual with a letter from Jim Rayburn.

4. The Young Life Club and Promotion

The last two sections are about club and promotion of club. From the very start, the manual says that there is no set procedure for the club meeting. The manual consistently reminds the reader that Young Life is done best when it is molded to the local context.

As the manual starts to explain club, it is obvious that the context is 1940 in Texas, the Bible belt. It says to start club off with something unusual. Great idea! Then it goes on to say a great way to start club is with a prayer “for the Lord’s leadership and blessing upon the meeting… it will quiet the crowd down if they are rowdy, and often be a real eye opening testimony to new kids.” I’m not sure this would have the same effect in my club. Nonetheless, a prayer with your leadership team is something we always do every week.

Club should always have “an attractive, poppy song service”. It is funny that it says, “If someone else leads, be careful not to let it ‘bog down’. Interrupt if necessary, with ‘Say, here’s a new chorus I’d like to teach you.’” Club should not “bog down”, but I think it would be pretty harsh and/or funny if someone interrupted the leader in the middle of a song and took over! I see a skit in this somewhere.

Another element of club in the manual is the announcement time. During this time you welcome new people and have a “time of testimony”. This time would be a spontaneous testimony or story from one of the student. I don’t see a lot this today but maybe we could do this more!

Until this point, there were quite a few differences between the 1940s Young Life club and the modern club. But when the manual starts to talk about the message those differences start to disappear. The message is to be “down-to-earth”, “talk, don’t preach”, and ” be conversational”. It suggests that 25 minutes is long enough. Agreed, and it should probably shorter today. It teaches us to say what we have to say, “get it said and quit.” We should know how to make our point and then stop!

One of the best parts of the manual is how it talks about the gospel proclamation. It teaches, “Never avoid giving the gospel. It is not a boring subject; don’t make it so.” I have seen people criticize our relentless teaching on Jesus and the gospel. “When are you going to get to Paul, creation, king David, etc?” they ask me. Usually those people don’t understand our audience, or we have the wrong audience in our clubs. If the gospel is boring, the problem is with us, not the gospel. The gospel is the most captivating, life-giving message in history, past, present and future of all time. Each of us need to respond to the manual’s challenge, “if you have to drum up enthusiasm about the gospel, you have no business in the ministry.” Well said.

After the message is done, the manual gives some instruction about how the kids can respond. If an “alter call” type situation is appropriate it say, “Don’t ask for raised hands when eyes are closed… Urge a bold testimony by those who have taken Christ as their Savior.” I love those words. We certainly are gentle, understanding, not pushy about so many things, but one thing that we do not want to be wishy-washy about is out stand for Jesus Christ.

As the manual starts to sum up the message in club, it concludes that in the message, “Don’t assume that they know more than they do.” The general club aims are to “REACH and TEACH”, “always trying to reach the unsaved”.

At this point the manual takes time to teach about Christian growth. It doesn’t call it campaigners in this manual, but I believe this is what they were talking about. “Encourage the growth of Christian young people… stress these three: Bible study, prayer, personal witness.” Furthermore it tells us to be an example of a true Christian in our standards of living. Once again it mentions the idea of club kids giving money. It uses the term “dime cards” which today sounds like something totally different! I think some kids in my club have more “dime cards” then money to give to club.

The manual then talks more about club “officers”, which were student leaders in the club who helped run club and invite their friends. Several approaches in Young Life today seem to be emphasizing student leadership more and more. The manual says of the officers, “Here you will often see your greatest growth in spiritual stature”.

These junior leaders were encouraged to bring their friends and the club was to be promoted by a variety of means including, “printed invitations, handbills, posters, announcements on class room blackboards, radio publicity, newspaper articles, school paper announcements”.

At this point the manual abruptly ends. Interestingly enough there is no explicit mention of contact work by the leaders, though it may be implied several times throughout the manual. Young Life in those days seemed to be mostly organized by a staff person and high school student “officers”. The role of the adult volunteer had not been evolved as much as the message, the club, the organization, etc.

Questions for Discussion

1) Several times the manual talks about club techniques which are outdated for our culture. How have you seen the Young Life club change in the last 5, 10, and 20 years if you have seen it that long?

2) Announcement time include an opportunity for a student testimony. Is this something we should reconsider?

3) We all experience ups and downs, but do you feel like you have to “drum up enthusiasm about the gospel”?

4) How can we encourage a bold stand for new Christians?

5) How can we utilize student leaders better in our clubs?

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If you are interested, here is the link to the copy I made of the manual with a letter from Jim Rayburn.

3. The Campaign Organization

The Young Life “Campaign” was organized under a national board of directors, much as it is today. Under this board sits a local committee. Then there are field staff. At the time of this manual there were only five Young Life staff! The manual mentions that they were paid a salary each month, if the money came in that month! The staff was expected to keep a file of all club members. Weekly reports of attendance were to be sent in to the office for their records.

The activities of the local Young Life area were to be centered around the Young Life club. The manual calls the club the “backbone”. But the manual teaches that the activities are not to be set in stone, but to flex with the changing needs. Interestingly enough it suggests that “more needs to be done”, which may include, “radio programs, street meetings, gospel teams, printed matter, and so on.” It may be that Jim Rayburn wanted to start a radio program to the unchurched as part of the ministry! We would be wise to keep our minds and hearts open to different opportunities in our day.

The organization was also based on its doctrinal statement. One interesting part in this section is that the campaign motto was, “He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:12). What a great motto! Its explicit focus on Jesus, life and having Him in your life is what Young Life is all about. This part of the manual also states it financial approach. It mentions that Young Life has three sources of support: “contributions of Young Life club members, club offerings, and the voluntary gifts of interested Christian friends.” I couldn’t imagine a offering at club, or money from club kids, but I guess that is how it started!

The last part of this section goes into detail about Young Life’s relationship with the local church. It quotes a motto, “cooperation, without confusion, competition, or compromise”. It’s a good one we could still use today. The motto goes on to state, “Young Life Campaign shall encourage all young people who have a personal faith in Christ to join a church of their own choice.” The manual also states that “local clubs… much not be linked organically to any particular church” in order to be effective to reach all denominations and the unchurched. The leader is to “be careful to avoid controversy on subjects that arose opposition.”

Questions for Discussion:

1) How do we benefit from a national board and local committee?

2) Early Young Life kept close record of each student and attendance. How might this help or hurt our effort now?

3) Is the Young Life club still the “backbone” of the ministry?

4) The manual suggests activities such as radio, street meetings and more. Brainstorm some activities that we have never tried in Young Life. Could any work?

5) What do you think of the original motto, “He that hath the Son hath life”?

6) How does Young Life relate to your local churches?

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