Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Over the summer I normally try to post a couple things that I learned over the previous school year. If you have anything you learned from last year that you would like to tell me about, send it my way smcgever (at) pv dot younglife dot org

Our talk sequence for club is pretty traditional. Normally we do an intro talk, an incarnation talk, a bunch of “person of Christ” talks, then sin, cross, resurrection, coming to Christ, living for Christ… that sort of thing.

All of those topics lend themselves to pretty obvious scriptures, Bible stories, main points, etc… except one. The “person of Christ” talks are the bread and butter of YL talks. It allows us to talk about the most amazing person in the history of the world. I love these talks. The challenge is that it is a rather broad topic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a leader who has been through leader training and talk training ask me for the n’th time, “what exactly am I supposed to be talking about?” And I don’t have the stats to back it up, but I almost never get the dreaded Monday afternoon “I’m not ready for my talk” call about the incarnation, sin, cross, resurrection, etc… but I do get that call about the “person of Christ” talk more than the rest. I think the problem again lies in that the topic is very open-ended and broad.

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Over the past few weeks a lot of students in our area have been asking each other to prom. It is a simple question with really only two answers.

We are going through a chapter of Mark each week in our club talks this semester. We are on Mark 8 right now. I knew I wanted to do Mark 8:37-40 where Jesus asks, “Who do you say I am?” That combined with all the prom hoopla led me to put together this club talk.

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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…

You may have noticed that the updates of the Sync through Mark have slowed down. There are a couple of reasons, but I want to let you know that we hope to continue them in the Fall. In the mean time, we will shirt our focus to summer camping, follow-up and some insights from the year-in-review. BTW… If you have any insights from the year or have something to pass along, let me know.

Here is the fifth installment of Sync through Mark…

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on these in email and conversations. Any feedback you’d like to post in the comments? Anything that has really helped or could be added to make it more useful?

Here is the fourth installment of Sync through Mark…

Here is the second installment of Sync through Mark…

Thanks to Andi and Karen for your helpful edits too!

Here are the first club talk and campaigner plans for Sync through Mark.

We are very excited to announce a wide-spanning project called “Sync”. Simply put, the first project is a weekly club talk through a story in each chapter of the book of Mark with a corresponding Campaigner plan. Here are some thoughts behind it:

• Club talk resources can really help new and experienced leaders plan club talks
• Campaigners often needs an extra boost, having a ready-to-go Bible study makes it easier
• I have found it is easy to follow-up with a campaigners based on the club talk rather then introducing a whole new topic
• A major strength of our club talks is that they are Christ-centered, lets try more of that in Campaigners
• Often times in Campaigners I find myself asking the question, “what should we cover?”. This lets the author of Mark have a say in that.
• The Gospels and the Gospel of Mark are the outline of our traditional club talk sequence, so it will flow naturally with most club talk semesters.

I have invited a bunch of the best speakers and YL people I know to help on this project. Each week will combine the ideas of some of the best people out there. Even better, we can collaborate through the comments on each post to improve them. We will be adding about one per week until we get through Mark!