Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

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’ve done a few skits in my life and one thing I realized was that a key prop or outfit can make the whole thing work. One time I was doing a program for a YL camp and I simply went down to a fantastic costume store and decided I would just do a program around the best outfit I could find. I think that one ended up being a rapping parrot named P-Thug.

Anyway, I was online a few weeks ago and saw these and I instantly knew we had our camp sell skit. They are a bit expensive, but I bought two. It was worth it. They lent themselves perfectly to a lumberjack type of a skit. That brought to mind the old SNL skit Hans and Franz.

So for our camp sell skit we adopted a bit of this Hans and Franz attitude. The skit is one experienced lumberjack (a skinnier guy), showing a rookie lumberjack (our biggest buffest leader)  how to make the cut (pun intended). One of their key lines is that they are going to be “Lumber-Jacked!” 

We are going to Malibu for the first time as a club ever this summer, so we have added a Canadian theme as well. Lots of “eh” and C-A-N-A-D-A jokes. Each week they come out and tell us how to prepare to come to Canada and how to get Lumber-Jacked for camp.

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Over the summer I normally try to post a couple things that I learned over the previous school year. If you have anything you learned from last year that you would like to tell me about, send it my way smcgever (at) pv dot younglife dot org

Over the years I have noticed a trend with the clubs in our area, the ones that have the most cash deposits in early always bring the most people to camp. Now I don’t believe “having a lot of people at camp” is the holy grail of YL work, and in all honesty it can become an unhealthy idol in our view of our ministry. Yet, I’m sure we can all agree that wanting lots of kids to go to camp is a healthy goal for our work. On the flip side, some of our clubs only make the push to collect actual money a few days before camp. These clubs always have lower numbers of kids at camp.

This year we tried something that I’m sure many of you already do, we gave an incentive to get the deposit in early. For our YL trip we matched up to $50 of a deposit that was in by April 15^th. The deposit from the kids couldn’t be a fundraiser, it had to be actual money.

There was an important reason behind this. When you need actual money, parents usually have to get involved. So many times I’ve seen a kid be a part of several fundraisers, sometimes even earning a significant amount of money, but they don’t go to camp. Usually the culprit is they had none of their own money deposited. They liked hanging out at the fundraisers, maybe did some on their own, but they never had an actual sit-down talk with their parents to ask for the money. This happens less with junior high students since the parents are more in the loop, but this is common with high school students who may be pretty independent, until they need a few hundred dollars.

Our schools that normally bring a lot of kids to camp improved their numbers a little bit, but our schools with historically low numbers did significantly better with this approach.

Do you require a deposit by a certain date? Have you ever matched their money to incentivize signs-ups?

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Here are two fun video videos my friends made. One is to promote weekend camp, the other was for a YL College camp.

I have to be honest. I’ve never seen one episode of Hannah Montana. But I know that it is crazy popular. What does YL do with silly trendy pop stars… we make mock skits of them of course.

With Summer Camp around the corner, let me suggest the following idea which you can tweak to work for yourself.

In case you don’t know, Hannah Montana is the alter-ego of Miley Stewart. Miley is an average girl by day but a famous pop singer by night, Hannah Montana.

How about this. Riley Stewart is a normal high school student by day, but a bigger than life star by night, Banana Montana.

Two characters played by two leaders (or maybe one). Each club they come out one at a time and talk about their favorite parts of camp. Riley highlights the normal part and Banana takes it to the next level.

For example: the blob. Riley says how he is excited to blob his friend, maybe he will blob her 10 feet in the air, “oh and be sure to bring your sunscreen”. (Kinda the nerdy side). Then Riley walks out the door and Banana Montana comes in to loud music. “Waaaaiiit a second… The BLOB… I’M GONNA GO CRAZY ON THAT THING!” You get the idea. You play off the low key to crazy contrast. Maybe, if you have a host or leader who is being interrupted, the leader can play both parts with a super fast costume change. Then the leader give Banana the boot.

Then each week, change the part about camp to highlight. Maybe you show up as Banana Montana on campus and sign autographs.

Did I mention that Banana Montana is in a Banana suit and hands out bananas? Yeah, that should help. The Banana song too.