Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

My friend Joey and Alex are trying something this semester I thought would be worth passing along.

Like most clubs they have a time each week when they introduce any new kids. In each club they will award one point to either the guys or the girls based on who has more new kids that week. At the end of the semester the gender that has more points will get $5 each in the camp store or snack bar.

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We just finished being a part of four weekend camps for our area! They were great, the Lord did amazing things. I also recently posted about using cabin time questions at weekend camp.

We require every leader to go through leadership training to be a leader and then we do separate trainings for leading at weekend camps and weeklong summer camp trips. I recently refined our weekend camp leader training packet. I thought I’d share it with you all. Enjoy!

PS… If you have any reflections from the Fall semester, things you learned, things you would never do again, etc. Pass them along! Leave a comment or email me smcgever (at) pv.younglife.org.

I recently spoke at a YL weekend camp. One of the best pieces of YL camp speaking advice I ever received was to plan your cabin time questions before you plan your talk. Obviously you tweak them after you study the scripture and the rest of the talk planning process, but you really want to begin with the end in mind.

Even as a speaker, I feel the most critical part of the gospel proclamation and formation is in the cabin time discussion. I’m sure you have seen miracles happen in front of your eyes in the midst of cabin time, I know I have.

I have posted cabin time questions before here, and below are the ones I recently used. If you are interested in more cabin time type questions you can also look here.

At summer camp we get to hear from some great speakers who are gifted, experienced and who have put a lot of time, prayer and study into the messages. It would be great if we could list some of the best illustrations or examples that we heard in the club talks this summer. It could be really useful for our club talks during the school year.

While I was at camp, the speaker used “cardboard testimonies” near the end of the week to illustrate the change that can happen when Jesus comes into your life. A person would come out with a piece of cardboard and on one side it would say something from their past (ex: fatherless), and then they would flip it over and it would say what has happened since then (ex: heavenly father). I thought this was an excellent illustration for those who were considering starting a relationship with Jesus.

What did you see this summer that was good? Put it in the comments on this post.

The people who do program at camp put a ton of preparation, creativity and experience into planning a great week.

I have an idea… why don’t we list in the comment section of this post some of the best themes, skits, games, etc. we saw at camp. My guess is they could be pretty useful for the upcoming school year and possibly for those planning camps in the future.

Here is an example:

While I was at Woodleaf, they had a Diva, a Rocked Out Scottish guy and a World of Warcraft Nerd as the main program characters, it worked great!

Honestly, it is hard to think of all the details because it was over a month ago, so put down your ideas before you forget them!

Almost all the summer YL camps I go to have a day when you have a cabin unity competition that encourages matching cabin uniforms. For some of us, we are running around the day before camp trying to pull something together. I have an idea… Let’s make list of as many as we can think of and then I will re-post these before camp next summer to remind us all of some options.

To get you thinking, here are a couple I’ve seen recently…

• Braveheart (kilts, face paints, etc)
• Where’s Waldo (striped shirts and glasses)
• That crazy thing with balloons stuffed in panty hose that are worn as a hat (know what I’m talking about?)
• Nerds with shirts (dollar store dress shirts with ties and nerd glasses, briefcases if possible)

There are a ton more. What have you seen? List as many as you can!

A lot has happened since I wrote this post. There were some fantastic comments on the post that were very thought provoking for me. I also went to Woodleaf, where my friend Dave did an excellent job proclaiming the gospel. In fact, he did something very similar to what I was planning. He moved up the traditional talk sequence one day also. Honestly, I don’t think many leaders even noticed. It worked flawlessly. So that was good confirmation.

I also had been hitting a wall in the overall flow and analogy of my talks, so after a lot of through and prayer I pretty much stopped the 20+ pages of outlines and notes I had prepared and took a different approach, but I didn’t change the sequence.

I am now prepared and excited to speak in about a week. I have everything written and outlined. But I am working to fine-tune some details. In case you are interested, here is the general plan…

I have a drama, a cardboard testimony part (saw this at my church and at Woodleaf, which was awesome), and one main analogy. I am using a ring as an analogy that will carry over through several talks. I can go into that more later if anyone is interested, but I think it is a good one that is theologically sound and is easy to understand.

Also for the real life / role play type thing, I am going with the Best/Worst day thing from City Slickers (similar to this clip), I’ve done it before at summer camp and it was utilized really well by the Woodleaf team this year. I can tell you more if you are interested.

I’m not quite settled on doing a relationships/sex seminar. Does anyone have any good outlines, resources, details or comments about this? I have some, but I’d love to hear what you have to say.

If you have been following this, or enjoy ylhelp, I’d really appreciate your prayers as I begin speaking on July 11th.

Here is an idea passed along by my friend Drew from Colorado. His friend Zach came up with an idea for follow-up from camp. Instead of putting a book into kids hands and asking them to read it. Zach is sending out an abbreviated version of a quiet time for kids to do a few times a week as a Facebook message to individual kids who started following Christ at camp. We’ve found this to be successful as kids are more apt to read things on the computer written as messages to them then a book.

Great idea Zach!

The “This Year…” series looks back at lessons learned in the past year of YL. It will feature several posts and guest posts.

Here is one from my friend Dougie in Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island, Canada…

We have been working with some higher risk students through contact work and they started coming to club.  The only problem is that they have lagging social skills and really need attention so we came up with a plan…why not take them away for a camp?

But then we still struggled as to what to do with them…so we decided to do a work crew camp at our camping facility.  It’s a big like extended contact work, with a club talk and an opportunity for the students to develop their work ethic and grow in their faith.

It’s been really easy to set up and local businesses have been sponsoring the camps…we invite 4 students to go and then just drive them up to camp, we work in the pits for about 6 hours a day and then have free use of all the facilities.  We go on "excursions to town" and hang out with the YL community there. I set up a meeting with a guy that works with us in the Pits and he shares something about his Christian faith with our students.

It was hard the first time to set a precedent for behavior on the trip but now the students figure all this and respect the camp and their leader enough not to pull many stunts.  They really enjoy working in the pits and achieving something.  The Ministry of Children and Families and youth probation have been really encouraging along with our local municipality and the trips can be used for work experience credits in school too.

OK, I got lots of support and prayer for this conversation. Thank you so much!

Just so you know, when I have spoke at camps I look at the big picture and try to integrate a lot of the themes and keep to one primary analogy. I also start with the last talk and work backward, among other things. I learned a lot of this from Marty, Rick and Larry, some of my good friends.

This summer I am thinking of moving up the talk sequence one day so that I can add a little more about a part of the gospel I think we could talk about more, that is Jesus Christ in you and the call to follow him.

Here is the traditional 7 day camp speaking topics (in general) breakdown…

1. It gives one more day to process the cross.
2. It gives one more day to have one-on-ones that include the cross.
3. Many resurrection talks are mostly about the “response”, this gives the resurrection more emphasis.
4. I really want to give a picture of what it means to follow Jesus while we still have them at camp.

Here are the challenges in my mind:

1. It makes the first two person of Christ talks very important because sin is moved up a day.
2. Some leaders will not like changing the sequence just because it is different.
3. Others I’m sure too…

I have a lot more I can share. If this generates comments/conversation I’ll keep the posts coming.

PS God bless you in your camps and fundraising this summer! It is a battle for me too, we are all in this together! We leave for Woodleaf in 4 days!