Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

It may be too late, but I thought I’d pass along our Christmas campaigners time from tonight.

We opened, as we always do with a game, then we sang some Christmas carols, did some announcements (including an update on Raju, the Developing Global Leaders student staff we are helping support), and then moved into our Bible study before closing with prayer requests and prayer.

For our Bible study we divided up these parts to act out:

Luke 1:26-38 Angel speaks to Mary

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Our club is finishing up the semester tonight with a Ugly Sweater Christmas party. We begin the night with Christmas cookies, my wonderful wife makes a bunch of cookies and then we let kids decorate them with icing and frosting. We try to keep it clean, but if you are wondering if 50, 75, or even 100+ kids can do this, the answer is yes! We also have a small Christmas tree in our hallway with small Christmas ordainments that each club kid can write their name on and put it up on the tree. We had that up for the last two weeks and it will stay up until after Christmas. After the cookies, we will sing some Christmas songs, then do a huge white elephant gift exchange (the key is a really strict time keeper!), and then tonight we are doing a leader cardboard testimonies followed by a leader panel Q&A time.

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Last night, Danny, one of our excellent leaders did the “need” sin talk. The “need” talk is often used the week before, or the night before, the traditional sin talk to help introduce the impact of sin on our society and our personal lives. This theme is built upon the following week with a talk that focuses more on the impact of sin on our relationship with the Lord. The need talk is a good transition to help people think about sin and its reality.

Danny opened up his talk with references to some of the recent news in the paper and on TV. He didn’t need to, but in the past I’ve even brought in that day’s newspaper to show them how sin is so easy to spot. Then he transitioned briefly about some things that have hurt him, then he played the video below. After the video he walked them through Romans 3:23 and a few other ideas about sin. He closed with some very open sharing about his own life and how sin has impacted it. Finally he gave them a challenge and introduced the talk for the next week and about our hope in Christ as well.

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This might sound confusing, but follow along… last week we did Young Life, Young Life club. So basically a club with a “theme” of “Young Life”. We did this near the beginning of the semester to somewhat introduce some of the newer kids to a little intro to YL. We asked kids to come in any YL gear they might have. I also save up random leftovers from previous camps and such and gave them away during club, especially to the newer kids. We also had some of our junior leaders do the “If I Weren’t In YL…” skit.

Here is our plan and also the video of the skit.

Next week we are having an All Area Valentines club. In the past we have done lots of fun things along the lines of the “dating game”. Here is something new we are going to try…

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I’m doing the talk tonight and I had already decided to use Mark 1:9-11, the baptism of Jesus. I was hoping to talk about the incarnation and the start of Jesus’ ministry.

My wife told me of an amazing news story about a woman who, for years, thought she must have a different set of parents, things just didn’t add up with the family she grew up with. Maybe you heard about this story, her name is Carlina White. Basically she was snatched away from the hospital as an infant and raised by another family. Then over the years she grew skeptical of her family and had a hunch that she was from another family. She searched Google, then a national database of abducted children and then got in touch with the police and eventually told them, “I don’t know who I am”. Here is a news clip:

So here is my plan for my talk tonight…

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My friend Twiggs years ago showed me a short foreign movie about the famous story of the drawbridge operator who closed the bridge on his son in order to save the people on the train. If you can watch it in its entirety, I recommend it. We watched it after camp with an all-area campaigners and had powerful small group discussions afterwards.

I used this earlier this year in a cross talk. I think there are lots of ways to use this clip. It is not a perfect analogy of the cross or atonement (for example, Christ’s death was voluntary by Christ, not an “accident”), but there are some very powerful themes that this clip is able to get right to.

Earlier this year we had a follow-up discussion in campaigners about this clip. Here are a few of the questions we used…

Q: What do you think those people were thinking when they crossed the bridge?

Q: How is this similar about the way people treat God?

Q: How did the father feel about his son?

Q: How do you think the father felt about the people on the train afterward?

Q: What does the movie motivate you to do in your relationship with God?