Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Here is the seventh installment of Sync through Mark…

Last Spring, we began an ambitious project to write a club talk and corresponding campaigner lesson for each chapter of the Gospel of Mark. We got through 5 chapters and then needed to pause. Over the summer we received lots of positive feedback. In fact, just yesterday Vince, a leader from Indiana, left this comment, “Thanks so much for the advice…I did this talk tonight at All-City club and it went well.”

My friend Tanita has stepped up on this project and thanks to her and others, I am excited to announce…

Here is the sixth installment of Sync through Mark…

The other night I was having a conversation with a veteran YL leader from my area. He has been in YL over twenty years. We were talking about the club talk progression early in the semester. The club he leads decided to start right off with “person of Christ” talks. What he and I remember through the years as part of the standard progression is a talk early in the semester about “Is there  a God”, or “There must be a God”. It seems that many clubs I know have done this talk less and less, including my club.

My rational is that statistics show that Americans basically all agree that there is a God. Previously I had seen reports of only about 5% of Americans not believing in God. But recent Barna research shows that only 9% of Americans would consider themselves atheist or agnostic. In another report, they show that this number may be higher for younger people, closer to 19%.

What is much more important to us is knowing our kids. We don’t need to base our club on national averages. We need to know our club kids and where they stand with God. This is a key YL relational principle that needs to be taken into consideration more than a national survey. One club might need to do three “Is there a God” club talks, while another club might be able to skip it.

What are your thoughts?

BTW I’m doing a “Is There a God” talk tonight in my club

Each year we kick off the school year with an All-Area Dodgeball tournament. It is a ton of fun. During “half-time”, we give a short club talk. Let me set the scene… 250+ high school students, many of them new to YL, they have been running, dodging, competing, arguing about rules, taunting each other, laughing, and now they are out of breath and sit down, then after some brief announcements you get to do the club talk… What would you do?

Well, several people in our area have done a talk like this (our kickball clubs, club at the local mall band stage, etc.), and I have done several of these too. Here is what I came up with for last week…

Talk: What is YL?… 3 Things

1. People

• Different groups of people: sports people, academic people, band people, people with no group
• At YL everyone is together, we can just relax and get to know each other.

2. Fun

• Events like dodgeball/kickball/hot dog eating contests
• Games, skits, laughter, not taking ourselves too seriously
• A chance to take a break from busyness… grades, parents, relationships, balancing everyone’s expectations. At YL we hope you can take the expectations and weight of life off your shoulders and just have fun.

3. Life

• All the YL leaders are Christians
• If you aren’t religious you are at the right place!
• We talk about LIFE, here is an example
• Read Jn 10:10
  • People try to fill their lives with relationships and as good as they can be they can be STOLEN as someone breaks your friendship or your heart or your family (when I say we fill our lives I blow up a balloon in front of all of them, when I say STOLEN I pop the balloon, I do this for all three points)
  • People try to fill their lives with sports, getting good grades, and those hopes can be KILLED when we blow out our knee, or the competition is better then we are, or we get a B in a class, or a C, or a D, or an F.
  • People try to fill their lives by constantly trying new things. I tried to do that in high school with girls, parties all kinds of things. But I didn’t experience life, most of the time I felt my hopes were DESTROYED as I felt regret, guilt and depression.
• But Jesus came to give us life to the FULL. God wants to fill our lives in a way nothing else can. (At this point I lift a balloon to my mouth but I don’t fill it.)
• Everyone take a deep breath. You see God doesn’t want to fill a balloon, he wants to fill your life with each breath you take.

CHALLENGE: Come back to YL. Come to hear more about life, come for the fun, come for the people, come for all of those reasons or just one. You are always invited!

The Leader Panel is a great option in lieu of a club talk. Is it 10 minutes before club and you don’t have Bill Paige or Marty Caldwell around to do the club talk at the last second? BOOM!  Leader Panel! Is it 30 minutes after club has started and your leader who was supposed to do the talk isn’t showing up because they were going to do it but they decided to go to the grand opening for Wolverine at midnight and now are just “too busy” or “too tired” to do it, or even give you a heads up? BOOM! Leader Panel!

But it isn’t just a backup option, it can be a great time for kids to ask questions and for leaders to share. It also can be a good time for the leader who isn’t all that comfortable to do a club talk to share up-front. One club in our area did it a few weeks ago and it was so powerful that some kids came up crying afterwards and wanted to talk more about a relationship with Christ… BOOM! Leader Panel! My club did it last week after some year-end senior testimonies.

Here are a couple tips:

1. Explain it clearly. Tell the students this has the potential to be a really good discussion if they take a minute to think of an honest question.
2. Give them 1-2 minutes to think of a question, play some chill music in the background.
3. Then pass out the cards and I recommend golf pencils (they are cheap).
4. When the kids turn the questions in, have an experienced leader filter the questions and pick leaders to answer them.
5. Expect silly and lame questions and put them aside. The more you can keep the panel discussion on track… the better.
6. If you are worried about too many lame questions, prep a couple questions beforehand to answer.
7. You can use any scrap of paper (we used the back of club fliers last week), but I have also used the following file if you want to use it: