Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

This may be old news to you, but there was a pivotal moment in the New York Giant’s season that led to their Superbowl victory. Some would say that the moment had nothing to do with the X’s and O’s, or the coaching, the preparation, or anything like that. Some would say, even the players, it came down to an object lesson. The object lesson came when a high school teacher was given the opportunity to speak at the NY Giant’s chapel and handed out poker chips, told them to put their name on the chip, and asked them if they were “all in?” You can hear more about it here:

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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

You know how it is easy to miss something once, but then when you hear it twice, three times, then over and over you start to think… there must be something to this! This year in our area we had to two themes that kept coming up.

The first theme was to “pray big”. Many of us are familiar with Ephesians 3:20, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…” But I think we often do not put this into our prayers or expectations. Maybe we don’t pray this way because we have prayed this way in the past and it didn’t work out, maybe we don’t pray this way because we feel selfish to ask for something so lofty and great. Listen here… Pray big and don’t stop praying big! Many of us prayed big this year in the lives of students, in the lives of leaders, in our own lives. Go “over-the-top” in your requests, you can’t over-ask God. One of my favorite book titles of is “Your God is Too Small” by JB Phillips. We do not want to be under-praying, you never know what you may be leaving on the table, as James says, “you do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2).

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I recently had the privilege of teaching two seminar sessions on how to dig deeper in scripture at the YL Western Division Student Staff weekend. This is a topic I love to talk about, I even teach a class on it at a local university. Those who attended asked me to post some of my notes. I have included similar notes on another post about how to study scripture while crafting a club talk. You can find that post here.

Here are two websites I shared:

Blue Letter Bible

Bible Maps

Here are my notes, which are pretty rough, but I hope they are helpful:

I was pointed to a site that is awesome for making scripture memory cards in a nice format. This could be helpful for leadership meetings, work crew training, campaigners. Basically it will format the cards for you in a nice format.

It is called Verse Card Maker from Michael Scott, but not the one from the paper company.

Every year when I get back from camp I have club kids who want to keep cabin time going. So I sit down and pull together the best follow-up camp and campaigner resources I can find. This year I put a considerable amount of work into developing the best 10 camp follow-up Bible studies I could come up with. I decided to call these “Cabin Time Continued”.

Here are the 10 topics included in the study:

First 5 Camp Review

1. Christ at Camp and at Home
2. Person of Christ
3. Sin
4. Cross
5. Resurrection

Second 5 Foundational Topics

6. Christ in You: Identity in Christ
7. Christ as Lord: Deity and Ruler of my life
8. Christ Forgives: When we go our own way
9. Christ Communicates: Word
10. Christ Communicates: Prayer

It is a 48 page booklet that has worked well with my club kids. I printed 100 copies and ran out within a week of being back from camp. I’m going to print more. If you are interested in getting some for your camp follow-up, email me at smcgever@yahoo.com.

It can be used in a group or individually. The format is centered on interacting with scripture through questions and creative learning.

In case you are interested, here is a sample… It is all set to print on both sides, fold and hand out.

Cabin Time Continued – Lesson 8 Christ Forgives: When we go our own way

Recently I have had some requests to order these, I’m trying this link to handle it, let me know if you have any trouble with it.

For years I have been helping people do club talks. The main error most people make it not starting with the main point and the core scripture. I decided to put together a different approach to message preparation.

The "TalkPrep" is basically a Bible study that leads to a club talk. It forces you to start with the scripture, determine your main point, then your challenge and intro. There are also lots of helps along the way.

This is perfect for the person doing their first or second talk, and also for those who want to improve their preparation and speaking.

I’m considering making more of these, I’d love your feedback!

When you are teaching scripture, it is critical to ask yourself, "What does God want them to know through this text?" We often are tempted to have an idea for a talk that we bring to the scripture rather than letting it speak for itself. Technically this is called eisegesis.

Trust me, when you get stuck trying to pick a scripture for a talk, you need to pick it early so you don’t force your idea into the scripture. You know you have done this if while doing your talk you have no idea how to transition into your challenge/main point.

Let the Bible speak for itself. Your explanation of the word should be the highlight of your talk, not your super funny intro story. Our strongest tool is a clear picture of Christ and nothing else.

Here are some club talk scriptures and possible themes. Hope they help!

Know your scripture inside and out. One tip is to print it out on paper and then write all over it. Make sure you know the key words and pay attention to the verbs in the story.