Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

I hope you enjoy YLHelp.com. I don’t do this often, but I wanted to let you know about some booklets that I have written. On YLHelp I’ve posted 258 different posts full of ideas that you can read and use anytime. Enjoy! Here are some other resources that might help your campaigners, one-on-one discipleship or Bible studies. I know many of you have been ordering these for your Fall campaigners.

Cabin Time Continued

This booklet is a series of lessons that are geared for camp follow-up. It reviews the main topics we normally cover at camp and then a few critical first topics for getting start in Christ. A lot of people have brought these to camp to give to kids at the end of the week, or to use right when they get back. Each lesson can also be used on its own, apart from camp. I just used one for a weekend retreat for college kids to use for their morning devotional.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently had the privilege of teaching two seminar sessions on how to dig deeper in scripture at the YL Western Division Student Staff weekend. This is a topic I love to talk about, I even teach a class on it at a local university. Those who attended asked me to post some of my notes. I have included similar notes on another post about how to study scripture while crafting a club talk. You can find that post here.

Here are two websites I shared:

Blue Letter Bible

Bible Maps

Here are my notes, which are pretty rough, but I hope they are helpful:

I am happy to announce that Live Like This Part 2 is now available.

Thank you to everyone for your encouraging emails and comments about Live Like This Part 1. I have continued to find the wisdom found in the Sermon on the Mount to be challenging and rewarding not only in the small groups I lead, but also personally. We have even adapted this study for a married Bible study group and for large college YL ministry small groups.

I trust that Live Like This Part 2, the second and final installment of a Bible study through the topics found in the Sermon on the Mount, will continue the style and approach of Live Live This Part 1.

If you would like more information CLICK HERE.

For those of you who have followed YLHelp for a while, you probably have seen that I have published a booklet for camp follow-up called Cabin Time Continued. It is a series of 10 Bible studies perfect for when you come home from camp. I’ve seen people use it just for normal campaigners too. In fact I’ve used it twice in the last week as a part of one of our team meeting Bible studies.

I’d like to announce a new resource I have published. It is called Live Like This. Live Like This is a study through the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is a fantastic study, especially for those in campaigners since it is simply the teaching of Jesus. I’ve divided the booklet in two parts. Right now Part 1 is available and Part 2 should be done this summer. If you would like more information on either of these resources check out this page.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the fourth installment of Sync through Mark…

Here is the third installment of Sync through Mark…

Here is the second installment of Sync through Mark…

Thanks to Andi and Karen for your helpful edits too!

Our area does a lot of Work Crew weekend trips. We have a YL camp two hours away, so not only do we help at YL camps, we sometimes do Work Crew at non-YL camps also.

The typical tension I’ve seen on Work Crew is work vs. spiritual experience. There is often a lot of work to do on Work Crew (I’m Captain Obvious). The challenge is that the work needs to get done. If it doesn’t get done, camp doesn’t work. So typically all the work gets done. The part that can easily be minimized is the spiritual experience. It is a bummer when occasionally I hear a kid say, "All I did was work my butt off, we never had a meeting, prayed, or did anything like that". It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

I have a couple suggestions:

1. Train the Work Crew bosses well – help them understand both priorities work and spiritual growth.
2. Know when to draw the line on work. Every once in a while tell the camp or the program or whoever is running it, "no, we can’t do that". Explain that you need time to have a meeting or a worship time.
3. Work hard so you have more time for other things.
4. Make the most of when the Work Crew eats. Have a Work Crew boss share their testimony or have "table questions".
5. Have a good meeting plan with a game, worship and small group teaching.

I have put together a basic Bible study for Weekend Camp Work Crew that includes four different sessions or quiet times. Hope it helps!