Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

It has been so much fun to create YLHelp.com! I’ve received so much positive and helpful feedback through the comments, emails and personal conversations. I’m glad it is helping! Also, lately I’ve been receiving lots of great club and game ideas that I’ve been able to pass along. Thanks! Keep them coming. Imagine a team meeting with thousands of the best YL and WL leaders in it… that is what this is meant to be.

If you are new, I wanted to highlight a couple key resources on the site:

Club Plans

These are fully-planned and ready-to-go club plans with all the details.

One great place to start is in this full semester plan you can download.

Here are a couple of the most popular club downloads:

Thug Club

Yellow Club

Birthday Party Club

Club Talks

Our most powerful tool is a clear picture of Christ. If people see who Christ is clearly, they will fall in love with him. Here are a couple popular tools for club talks:

Club Talk Worksheet. From Bible study to talk outline in a worksheet and Bible study that you do on your own. BTW, I hope to put more of these together.

Powerful illustrations:

Blood Diamond

Tom Brady "There’s Got to be More than this…"

Ladder Illustration

Campaigners

There are so many things we can do in Campaigners! The key is making sure we do it. Have food/snacks, have fun, pray, open the Bible together. If you do those it will be great! Here are some tools that have been popular:

Work Crew Weekend Bible Study - This could be 3 or 4 campaigner meetings too.

Cabin Time Continued - 10 Camp follow-up Bible studies for personal use or campaigners meetings.

Getting Them to Talk: Faces Sheet - A sheet to help people describe how they are doing.

Another way to make the most of this site is to subscribe. You can do this through email or an RSS feed. Click here for more information about both. Tell some friends too!

If you are interested in who the heck would make a site like this or if you want to check out my Facebook click here.

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?

MESSAGE PREP “TOP 10 LIST” by J Rinne

1. Know your subject and plan way ahead. I like to have a message done at least a week prior to the day I am gonna give it. I like to rehearse it out loud or to a few people before I give it in club. Funny but I like to lock myself in the bathroom and turn on the shower get in and rehearse the talk to the wall. This way no body will interrupt me, I am relaxed and I am not self conscious that someone will hear me and think that I am talking to myself.

2. SCRIPTURE, STORY, MAIN POINT. Start with the SCRIPTURE. This seems to be a pitfall for most people that I talk to about messages. We try to find a really funny story or a really good video clip or song that we like and then tryt to find a scripture that relates somehow and then teach kids about Jesus. I say start with the SCRIPTURE and THE MAIN POINT you want to make and then pray and look for good stories, video clips, song, ect. It seems like we should find this first because the story is usually how we gain the crowds approval and get them to listen to us. But we are about Scripture and so we should start there. Make your MAIN POINT and stick to it.

3. Pray a good deal as you prepare and have folks praying as you speak.

4. If you are not the one speaking know that your role as a prayer warrior/supporter for the person speaking is very important. DO IT!

5. I use www.crosswalk.com to help prepare my talks. There are great resources like references, commentaries and cross references to help you prepare. You can also look at all different translations. Also very helpful are the search bars… for example I can’t remember where the story about Jesus healing the blind man is so (instead of looking through the whole new testament paragraph by paragraph) in the search bar I can type “Jesus blind Man” and it will find all the references for me. I recommend it and it’s FREE.

6. Be bold. Know that kids need to hear the truths that you are talking about. Jesus is worth sharing.

7. Know your crowd. Don’t use real religious words. Speak about Jesus in a way that is simple and concise.

8. Look at the crowd, individuals and vary your tone and volume as you speak. This will keep you interesting.

9. Go up with one 3×5 note card and have all your main points written on this card. This card is ONLY if you get lost in your talk. Know your talk so well that you only need to glance at it to keep your talk flowing.

10. I am not an expert nor do I claim to have this dialed. These are just some things that help me and they might help you too. Above all be faithful to God and be faithful to what he tells you to tell your high school and jr high friends.

Thanks J!

I suspect many of you are going to be doing cross talks in the next few weeks. I want to pass on to you one of my best resources for cross talks. The document below is a harmony of the cross story that I created several years ago.

The cross is obviously an incredible event (a little bit of an understatement), yet when we approach it for club talks it is a little longer than time allows to read the entire thing. This download gives a Biblical outline of the events and their references so you can highlight the key events that you feel you want to go into more detail. Let me remind us again that it is essential to read the words of the Bible in club talks, never summarize the entire event.

Here is a tip…

Often a Gospel story will be a little too long to keep kids attention if you read the whole thing. Here are some ideas…

1. Find “break points”. These are places where you can stop to clarify what is happening in the story, any confusing terms (i.e. Pharisee, disciple, etc.), and to paraphrase it yourself. You can even draw a line in your Bible so you remember where to stop.
2. Find the key phrases and just paraphrase the rest. A great example of this is the cross story. It is simply to long to read in its entirety. Find the key phrases that you need to read out of the Bible. By the way, NEVER paraphrase the whole story, always read out of your Bible when giving a talk.
3. Read the beginning of the story early in your talk, then tell a personal story, application, etc and leave the ending for the end. This can build anticipation and draw more attention to the story. A good example of a story like this is the Woman caught in adultery. Leave them with people with rocks raised over their heads wondering what is going to happen next

I had the privilege to be with all of the camp speakers this summer. As part of this time they compiled their best talk illustrations. Many of them are time-tested ones many are familiar with. There were dozens of these. There were five that really stood out to me and I want to share them with you in this series of posts. I am also trying them in my club so I know how they work. I’ve used two so far, I’ll be using more soon.

THE LADDER

In this illustration you use a ladder to illustrate how people try to climb to the top in life or in Christianity or really anywhere. You have a ladder in your club talk. This is how I used it last Monday…

I told a story about how my dad has been absent and has a lot to make up in my life. I then transitioned into Zaccheus (Luke 19). It worked great because he was short and had to climb the tree. When I read that part I climbed the ladder and talked about how all of Zaccheus’ stealing left him with a lot work on in his life.

Then I told them how a lot of us feel like being a Christian has to do with going up and down based on our actions. I went to church this week (climb two steps up), but I cheated on my test (climb two steps down). I went on Work Crew (climb three steps up), but this weekend I was out of control (climb three steps down), and so-on, you get the point.

I then continued the story and highlighted that when Jesus wanted to eat at his house, what Jesus wanted was a relationship. I noted that Jesus didn’t immediately ask him to stop stealing. An ongoing relationship with Christ is more important than how high or low you are on the ladder.

I also took a brief moment to say that the ladder only counted when Jesus went up high on a cross (I climbed to the top) and gave up his life for ours (I spread out my arms like being on a cross).

It had the potential to be an A+ talk but for some reason I felt like I didn’t do a very good job, maybe a C+.

Let me know what you think about this…

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.

Check the target

Did you hit your mark? Ask for feedback. Ask key kids too.

It is wise before your talk to to ask an experienced leader to listen carefully, and time the talk also. Ask for constructive feedback. You will get a bunch of "great job" and "way to go". Those help and are nice to hear. But it really helps to hear from one or two people:

What should I do again?

What should I tweak next time?

My senior leader always gave me a letter grade (It was always B-, B, B+, A- or A+), one thing to change and 3 things that I did well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Plato’s order of perception

1. Credibility (who are you?)
2. Compassion (do you care about me?)
3. Content (what do you have to say?)

Use at least 2 of these: Something…

1. Personal
2. Visual
3. Interactive
4. Surprising
5. Tangible

Review your notes and write at least two or three key “feelings” that should be obvious (anger, excitement, frustration).

Give them the “real deal” not what it is “supposed” to be like, but how real is this for you?

Ask: Why should they listen to you?

Read the rest of this entry »