Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Just wondering… what are some good contact work ideas over the winter break? Any creative ones?

BTW… have a great Christmas. Let’s bring our gifts to Him for His birthday.

Here is a helpful and entertaining contact work training video my friends made a couple years ago. Enjoy! Go Tanita and Troy! Thanks to Steve too.

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!

This year we started an official campus club. There are a couple reasons why. First, official campus clubs can use the facilities free, that help a ton. Next, this allows us to be on campus more and even do announcements. It also allows us to be at things like freshman orientation. Also, it allows us to give a formal name to the incredible leadership efforts our students put in (i.e. we have a president, vice president, etc, though we don’t mention it much, it might help their college resumes).

I was hesitant and careful about how we use this tool. First, it is student initiated. Also, the official club portion represents only the lunch meetings. We do not promote after school events through the announcements. So what we have settled on is a once a month meeting at lunch with our club kids to play a game or show a video of camp, and then talk about our plans for the next month and how the kids can be involved. Through this we have planned a couple student-led clubs.

I think we really are in the first stages of using this tool effectively. In fact, if you have any ideas, let us know.

This year I had the opportunity to speak at a snowboarding camp in Northern California. They were nice enough to take care of my arrangements, but I thought I’d push my luck and see if they had room for me to bring one of my club kids with me. And they said yes! (Thanks SVYL!)

It was an incredible move. First, because he felt really valued and special that I asked him. Second, we got to go to camp. Third, it gave him vision and a behind-the-scenes look into what we do. Also, the group of kids and leaders said it gave them a cool example that they want to do themselves.

I have no idea if I’ll be asked to speak somewhere like that again, but it could work in all kinds of situations. Think this way… If I am going out of town, can I bring a club kid with me? You might only do it once a year or every other year, but it is certainly worth it!

We were having an all you can eat Taco Bell club (at Taco Bell). As if that wasn’t good enough, I talked to some guys about making a video to promote it.

Not only did it help the guys, some of whom had only been once to YL, but they wanted their friends to see it and come too. It spread online real fast. We also used a song from a band from their school. That helped too.

I’ll definitely do this again. Here is it…

For six years I have coached basketball at Pinnacle High School. I love basketball. It is so much fun helping this way. It has helped me make great connections with the school and the administration. It is well worth it. You might think that I have a lot of club kids from the basketball team, right? Nope. I’ve only brought two to camp and only a few more to club. Ouch! Trust me, it hurts. Yes, I have a great YL leader relationship with these kids, but it is very disappointing.

Enter Twiggs Reed. I had an assignment (now two) with this quirky and incredible guy. He loves loves loves running. He told me I should go after cross country kids, they are more dedicated, more open, etc. Also no one goes to their events. At other sports, there are plenty of people there. How about an away JV cross country meet? Even the parents hardly come. The kids can easily tell you really care about them.

I’m debating whether I’ll coach basketball (a sport I love), I might just do it to keep the connections going with the school. But I know I will continue to focus on other sporting events much much more.

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?

I had the privilege of hearing from Dr. Tim Brown of Western Seminary (Holland, MI), last week. He, like Dale Bruner for those who know him, recites long passages of scripture for the majority of his messages. I’ve seen him do the Sermon on the Mount and other long sections. I won’t tell you how many, but he has many complete books of the Bible memorized, not just the short ones.

I’ve heard him several times, but I finally decided to ask him, “How do you do it?” He said he just gets lucky and remembers it after reading it once. Just kidding, he actually said there are five ancient practices that have been used for thousands of years for oral tradition. I believe he is writing a book or a chapter of a book on this. I’ll let you know when it comes out.

1. Say it aloud. Go somewhere where you can say it. You probably need to be alone so you don’t freak people out.
2. Repetition. I knew this was coming, yes the hard work of going over it over and over.
3. Mnemonic Devices. Since I was an engineer I thought he was going talk about pumps and device controls with differential equations. This is what he actually said.-Write out the verse on paper over and over.
   -Make acronyms. For example if you wanted to remember “love, joy, peace, patience…” in the fruit of the Spirit, this would be L.J.P.P
   -Draw little pictures. He said like hieroglyphics. So for the fruit of the Spirit you could draw a heart (love), a happy face (joy), a peace symbol (peace) and so on. In the deciding what to draw you actually are creating mental memory points that will help you. Another example is the classic One-Verse Evangelism from Navigators

4. Take breaks. Work on it for 20 minutes, then take a 10 minutes break, then work on it again. Taking a break helps clear the mind and actually helps you remember it better than if you worked on it 50 minutes straight. So 20 + 10 + 20 > 50 if you like math talk.
5. Hand motions. Anyone who has done the Walk Through the Bible seminar knows the power of hand motions. This can really help with the subtle words in a verse. For example if it said, “then Jesus went down from Jerusalem”. You could use your hand to motion going down from a high hill into a lower area. This kinesthetic movement will help memory.

There were some other words of advice and I have a bunch of stuff on names from my leader training stuff, but I think this is enough for right now.

One of my favorite baseball players growing up was Darryl Strawberry. I even traded a Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie card for a Strawberry 1984 Topps one time (now the Griffey is 10x its value). Anyway… One thing I loved about Darryl was that he hit for power and could steal bases. He was consistently in the 20/20 club and was on the verge of a 40/40 season one year (that is home runs and steals). For some reason this combination has fallen from the spotlight in baseball.

What do you think about this about a stat… Names and contact work trips in a semester (season). So you could be a member of the 10/5 club after you learned 10 new names and went to do contact work five times. Here are a couple details:

Names - They cannot be names that you already know. This would be only new names.

Contact Work Trips - This would be times when you do contact work and encounter kids outside of club or campaigners. There is a value to texting, Myspace and Facebook connection, but for this plan it would not include those. This could include shopping at the mall where kids hang out and intentionally going through the food court where they all hang out (Level 1 Contact Work = Be Seen).

I have a couple questions:

1. How could you keep track of all this? When? Where? How? Before club? Email?

2. It would be fun once a month (Area Leadership) to have awards for certain plateaus. What would be good levels? What would be good awards?

Is this a good idea or too focused on numbers?