Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

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?

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.

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!

We sold our house and are looking to move closer to the school where we do club. It is a lifelong dream to live super-close to the school. We want our house to be a hub of club, campaigners, Friday night football tailgate parties, … you get the idea. 

We find ourselves asking, could we possibly be too close? Some fiends have cautioned us that we don’t know what we are getting ourselves into. Some of these friends understand YL and some don’t.

Just so you know, we have three kids ages 5 and under. We are currently renting the house we sold from the new owner for a little while.

Does anyone out there have any experiences with this?

• Pros?
• Cons?
• How close is too close?
• How far is too far to be helpful?
• Anything we should consider?

We could use your help. Thanks!

Here are a couple links from my friend Andi who is on staff in NorCal. 

www.biblemap.org

A very cool Google map organized by Bible book, chapter and verse, "It would be great for campaigners".

www.bibleplan.org

Lots of leaders have never read through the Bible, but want to. This can help you get a plan to do that.

We have had such a hard time with campaigners over the years. With the busyness of kids and leaders it is so hard to get another night out of them. I know lots of clubs fight through this and win (even the club right down the street from us). Yet, we have lost over and over.

This year we moved to having club at a local restaurant that offers half-price appetizers and has a cool atmosphere. We spend $10-20 per week and the kids chip in too. This has allowed us to keep a consistent meeting time and the cool atmosphere helps. We even built a positive relationship with many of the people who work there.

The downsides are the lack of depth that is hindered by the environment, also no worship and then Mondays are crazy for everyone. It also makes it hard to pick up kids and really be ready for club.

So in review, we knew the downsides to our campaigner plan, but at least it was a consistent place to meet and do a Bible study.

Any ideas on how to add another night or morning (tried that too) successfully?

Every year when I get back from camp I have club kids who want to keep cabin time going. So I sit down and pull together the best follow-up camp and campaigner resources I can find. This year I put a considerable amount of work into developing the best 10 camp follow-up Bible studies I could come up with. I decided to call these “Cabin Time Continued”.

Here are the 10 topics included in the study:

First 5 Camp Review

1. Christ at Camp and at Home
2. Person of Christ
3. Sin
4. Cross
5. Resurrection

Second 5 Foundational Topics

6. Christ in You: Identity in Christ
7. Christ as Lord: Deity and Ruler of my life
8. Christ Forgives: When we go our own way
9. Christ Communicates: Word
10. Christ Communicates: Prayer

It is a 48 page booklet that has worked well with my club kids. I printed 100 copies and ran out within a week of being back from camp. I’m going to print more. If you are interested in getting some for your camp follow-up, email me at smcgever@yahoo.com.

It can be used in a group or individually. The format is centered on interacting with scripture through questions and creative learning.

In case you are interested, here is a sample… It is all set to print on both sides, fold and hand out.

Cabin Time Continued - Lesson 8 Christ Forgives: When we go our own way

Recently I have had some requests to order these, I’m trying this link to handle it, let me know if you have any trouble with it.

As the summer approaches fast, it is very helpful to look back and think about what we’ve learned. This gives praise to God and all that He has done. It is also being a good steward of our time, there is no reason we should keep repeating the same mistakes and there is every reason to repeat what works!

So I’d love to hear what worked for you in:

• Club (plans, events, promotion)
• Campaigners (times, places, format, what kind of studies, other things you did)
• Camp (promotion, prep, at camp, camp followup)
• Talks (illustrations, Bible stories, other ways to do talks, i.e.leader panel)
• Contact Work (events, tips, success stories)
• Leadership (recruitment, team meetings, helping each other grow)

Those are just a couple ideas. Let’s share! Over the summer I will post at least one thing I learned this year each week. So my question is…

WHAT DID YOU LEARN THIS SUMMER?

Here is a simple game you can use as an icebreaker for Campaigners or any other get together.

Print out the link below and get a pair of dice. Take turns rolling the dice and answering the question with that number.

It is a simple game, it is fun because there is an element of a "game" and also you can get the same question in a row but in a fun way. Also people are anticipating what what someone might say if they roll a certain number. It keeps them focused.

I just stumbled across these…

Looks like a beach ball that has questions on them. Might be useful for a campaigners meeting? Maybe an all-area leadership or even at camp in a leaders meeting?

I’m thinking about getting one. Has anyone ever used one? (Click the picture for the link)