Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

So this might be a little late. Maybe you could pull it off this week or next? We had a gobbling good time at Turkey Club. I love Turkey Bowling. Adding finger holes in front of the kids added a nice, and gross, touch to it all.

FYI… I have an exciting idea I’m working on for club and campaigners in the Spring that we can all share. I’m really interested in what your biggest needs are. Let me know if you can.

Here is a fun club that we did using pretty much only clothespins (which you can find cheap at most stores). When I’ve done this with WL be careful because some kids don’t have a high pain tolerance. Let the kids decide if they want to do it (don’t force anyone).

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

Here is a simple club we did the week before weekend camp….

Camp Club

Even though I’m not a big country fan, I came across this video and thought it would be a great discussion starter for a girls campaigners meeting.

Maybe I’m just a sucker because I have two daughters and they like to dress up at ballerinas.

How would you use this video?

Very random, but here is our tic tac toe club! One the mixer we had kids hold up their hands over their heads in an "X" or an "O" to keep it a little more organized and obvious.

Here is another fun idea for a club from my friend AJ in SD…

Mountain Man Club

Have everyone dress up in flannel, jeans etc. and have a outdoor mountain man games like on ESPN.

We got a huge wooden pole and went outside to see how far kids could throw it. They had to balance it on and then throw.  Probably best to do it outside.

We also have club at the high school and we’re in a room with huge wrestling mats.  We rolled them up and then set up a log run.  Kids had to try and race down the logs while leaders and kids threw dodge balls at them.  

I can’t remember what else we did, but you can adapt any game you want to fit within the parameters of the Outdoor Games.

(Props to anyone who can name the mountain man in the picture above)

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.

Here is a fun idea for a club from my friend AJ in SD…

First and foremost, sell the club for a few weeks so that everyone can try and grow a sick stache (typcially in March and call it Mustache March after Furry February).

Then for games-

Color a mustache on everyone’s finger and have them play a form of Captain, Gunner, Sailor except it’s

Mustache, Unibrow, Sideburns

Mustache - one person stands there while someone else puts their finger under the persons nose

Unibrow - one person stands there, other puts up a mustache, and the other puts up a unibrow

Sideburns - one person stands there and puts up a mustache, other puts up a unibrow, two people put up sideburns on each side.

Pin the mustache on the Area Director (or any leader).

Blind fold kids and give them a mustache that they then try and pin on a picture of the Area Director

Call up game -

If there’s a leader with lots of facial hair (i.e. Josh Fulkes) you can raffle off a chance to get to cut and shave that person’s entire body.

My friend Robert sent these games along. You may have seen some before, but Robert has added in some fun tweaks to them. Thanks Robert!

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We do something called ugly baby where we pull pantyhose off of kids heads, but we put bibs and diapers on the contestants as well as paper grocery sacks with eye holes punched out of them with a sharpie marker of an “ugly” baby face.  The contestants come out with the bag over their heads, we then have “Vanna White” unveil the contestants one at a time (crowd goes wild), then “Vanna” unveils the ugly babies by pulling up very slow ly the pantyhose off of the each head.  TEARS, hilarious laughter!

Another is the “frozen spoon” gag where you have on the end of the rope a frozen spoon and people have to weave it up and down the isle of peoples shirts, it touches bare skin and it’s cold…OKAY…now hears what we do…we drill a hole in a frozen trout and have it at the end in the bucket where no one knows it’s coming and the line of people are busy with the other items on the rope, boxer shorts, hats, McDonalds toys…and all of a sudden the frozen trout has to come through because the string that the other things were tied to is already up and down their shirts.  Also a screamer…one that kids will never forget!

Have you ever done “rate that kiss?”  You have freshman think that they are going to rate the kiss of some upperclassmen (on the cheek), and they get blindfolded, then you sneak in each of the contestants moms, the upperclassmen step back, mom goes in for the smooch, and sometimes they even plant on on their son’s lips, the audience is dying laughing, while the contestants are clueless…they rate their mom’s kiss a 9/10/11 etc..  Then we unblindfold the contestants…and walla… another gut buster!