Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

If you need ideas right away, go to the bottom of this post for a link to the best resource to date on theme clubs.

A few weeks ago (before the post) we had our semester planning meeting and came up with some outlines for our clubs. Here is what we are thinking right now:

Jan 16 – Volleyball hangout

Jan 23 – All Area Club

Jan 30 – Hipster Club

Feb 6 – Progressive Club

Feb 13 – Valentines Club

Feb 20 – No school, no club

Feb 27 – Leap year club

Mar 5 – College Club

Mar 12 – Superhero Club

Mar 19 – Spring Break, no club

Mar 26 – Mom club

Apr 2 – Kentucky Derby Club (seriously, my leaders wanted it)

Apr 9 – All AZ Club

Apr 16 – Canada/Malibu Club

Apr 23 – Mock Prom

Apr 30 – Messy Games Club

May 7 – PJ/Pillowfight Club

May 14 – Senior Run Club

May 21 – Year End Party

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Get your neon gear and leg warmers out… it is time for 80’s workout club! It worked out pretty good (get it?). The only challenge was calming the kids down due to all the energetic events. We could have used another song or two before the talk that were a little more chill to help transition the students so they were more ready to listen. Other than that it worked out just fine (get it?).

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This might sound confusing, but follow along… last week we did Young Life, Young Life club. So basically a club with a “theme” of “Young Life”. We did this near the beginning of the semester to somewhat introduce some of the newer kids to a little intro to YL. We asked kids to come in any YL gear they might have. I also save up random leftovers from previous camps and such and gave them away during club, especially to the newer kids. We also had some of our junior leaders do the “If I Weren’t In YL…” skit.

Here is our plan and also the video of the skit.

In the words of legendary rocker David St. Hubbins, “It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” Well that is pretty much how you can define a flashmob. As you may know, a flashmob is a coordinated group of people who assemble or perform in a public setting to the surprise of everyone else.

Several of my YL friends have recently done their own YL flashmobs. Here is one from my great friend Chris…

I think the key is to minimize driving, emphasize being polite, and keep it moving.

Here is the plan we used:

Here is our birthday song:

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Your mom has it. So does your dad. So does grandma and grandpa. Guess who else has it? Every kid that you probably know. Yup. Facebook. 500 million users and over half of active users login every day. I’m no expert but even I saw it coming. Heck, I even published a theological paper with references to it.

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Dances can provide great opportunities for YL clubs to leverage. I’ve shared our Mock Prom Club in the past. Our leaders always do the bag check at the homecoming and hoopcoming dances. It provides a fun way to serve the school and to connect with kids. Also at the bag check we end up learning a ton of names.

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You may or may not know that where I sit right now is a hub of Spring Break activity. It is about 70 degrees, sunny, down the street are multiple Spring training MLB games being played right now, it is perfect picnic, golf, kite, pretty much anything you want to do outside weather. Spring is upon us, and so is Spring Break!

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Hugh, an amazing volunteer leader and frequent contributor to YLHelp, sent along his Spring club plan matrix.

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A few weeks ago our team met to plan out our clubs for the semester. Some are variations of clubs we have done in the past and others are brand new themes. I will post the clubs as we do them with notes and ideas.

But for those of you who are interested, I put together a zip file of a complete semester of club plans you can use. The table below shows the plans that I included and the last column gives you a heads-up on the clubs we currently planning. Hope this helps! Feel free to share you ideas in the comments or email them to me to share.

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Usually once or twice a year we do a kidnap club. We did one last Spring. I think timing is key on this club. You can do it when things aren’t looking good, using it as a boost when numbers are low. But I think it is best utilized when you see things picking up and there is a positive energy in club.

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