Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Need to get a new leader up to speed with contact work and the school? We have used these questions below to help get things going. This could also be a great refresher for an experienced leader. You could also have a contest between leaders, pair them up in groups of two and see who can finish this first. Another way we have used this is at our All Area Leadership meetings. We play a Jeopardy style game with one representative from each club. The possibilities are endless. Not really, but it is fun to say they are.

Here is a worksheet you can download.

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What do kids like pretty more than anything else? Pictures of themselves! Just check out Facebook… Wait it is called Face book, as in, I want to see my own face. Yes, that is the idea. Random tangent, I almost did a program skit recently that was going to be about my newest invention, “MyFace”, a new website that combines the best of both worlds, you can steal that idea if you want.

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This year we decided to get stickers made up for each school with club. On the stickers we had a YL logo and the school name. Surprisingly, they were very cheap to make. You can find custom one-color stickers for five to ten cents each depending on how many you get. It seemed like a no-brainer to throw out 20-40 stickers at club and for contact work (you could even put the club details on the sticker). It is a great way to get the word out that is cheaper then a t-shirt and lasts longer then a flier. I saw them on cars and on books and binders at school all the time. It was a smart investment, especially when money is tight, like now.

Making a design is as easy as opening up Power Point (most people have this I think), putting a logo and some text in there and then going to “save as type…” and in the file type part scroll to the bottom and look for “jpg”. I use Photoshop, but I’ve used this other way before for simple stuff and I figure most can do this very easily if they don’t know anything about photo/design editing.

I have my stickers made at 123stickers.com. They have great prices and do a great job and make it easy to order. Don’t hesitate to call them on the phone, they have real people who help you.  

This year I had some club kids who love ping pong (OK table tennis technically, don’t send me angry emails). Since I’ve been in YL for a while, I’ve picked up some ping pong skills over time so I was always challenging them. But we didn’t have it at club, so we didn’t get to play. I realized that there used to be a club at the school where kids would play ping pong at lunch. I contacted the teacher who used to run it, he was a friend of mine, he said he was too busy to do it anymore. So I took it over and played ping pong with kids at lunch every Monday. We even made shirts that said, “PHS Varsity Ping sponsored by YL”. It attracted a lot of different kids who we didn’t know before. 

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 Dan from St. Francisville, LA…

A new thing we started doing is riding the team buses to away games.  We are a small town ministry, and there is only one school within a half hour of us which means every away game is a good drive.  Since we started Young Life here four years ago, we have built relationships with the coaches and athletic director, and we show up at practices—not just games. This year we started asking if we could ride to away games, and the coaches were very much in favor of the idea.  Now our leaders have the chance to not just watch the games—but interact with the players on the way to the game, watch the game, and usually stop for dinner on the way home with the team too.  It is great for career leaders that can only commit one night to contact work a week, and it is also a great chance to get to know kids that never come to Young Life but are on the teams with Club kids.  It takes a little time to build the relationships with the coaches, but having a leader that is a teacher/coach or a parent approach the other coaches would help.

Thanks Dan! What did you learn this year? Let me know at smcgever (at) yahoo dot com.

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 Andi from Elk Grove, CA…

We started a new club this year and one of the things that we did to help train leaders and make sure we continued doing contact work was to have club every other week.  Then on the opposing week we did contact work together as a team. For contact work we went bowling, did the eat the menu event, played ultimate frisbee, had a pizza party, rode segways with chimps, you know the standard stuff. It was a lot of fun and it helped our leaders continue to do contact work and not just come to club.  We also set contact work goals and held each other accountable for obtaining our goals.  We also reevaluated our goals often. 

Thanks Andi! What did you learn this year? Let me know at smcgever (at) yahoo dot com.

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 Tanita from Tucson, AZ…

Kids like to cook together–weird thing I learned after I invited 4-5 kids to come over and cook dinner together on a Monday night when there wasn’t YL and 16 kids showed up. They learned how to peel a potato, slice vegetables, sauté, and all sorts of cooking stuff that none of them had ever done before. The kids LOVED it, guys and girls put on my aprons and followed a recipe and made dinner & dessert. But they loved the "family" home feeling of making and eating dinner together. They begged to do it again. I suggest you find a recipe that has a lot of prep to give kids something to do, cutting veggies, preparing spices, etc.

The next time I invited kids over to cook again, 25 kids showed up…that was a little crazy…

SO, Top Chef club was the most popular club we had over the year…there were sandwich stations set up with different supplies provided, and then teams of 4-5 kids had to create a sandwich that was judged by a couple leaders.

PS… If you have things you learned this year, email me! smcgever (at) yahoo.com or find me on Facebook.

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.

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 Jason in Flagstaff…

Don’t set a club start date.  Instead set a goal for leaders knowing 100 or 200 kids (or whatever goal you think is appropriate for your school/club) and once they know kids by name and are committed to praying for them then you will start club.  This starts the year focused on contact work, prayer, and recognition of what’s truly important.  Relationships.

Here is an idea I got from my friend Tanita and Keith. You buy some plastic pink flamingos, then you go put them a friend’s yard (preferably someone with a sense of humor and a connection to YL). Then you leave a sign on one of them that says, “You’ve been flocked by XYZ YL!”. Then the letter explains that it is a fundraiser for camp and that for $25 (or whatever you choose), they can have them removed. For $10 more they can “flock” whoever they choose. And for $10 more they can purchase “Flocking Insurance” so they will not be flocked again. Of course the letter also says that you will gladly remove them for free as well.

My friends who have done this say almost everyone makes a contribution and thinks it is great. It is great contact work with kids and allows them to be a part of the fundraising. You will also get a chance to introduce new people to YL.

Here is a letter you can use…