Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

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.

Last Saturday we planned out our Fall 2011 clubs. I’ve mentioned it before but here is how we do it:

1. I ask each leader to come with three new fully planned themed clubs (mixer, game, skit, additional fun things to spice it up)
2. I write all of their ideas on a board with minimal explanation (do this part quick)
3. We review the list to see if there are any obvious clubs that are basically the same, and then combine them
4. I have everyone take a piece of paper and write down their top 5 (you could do as many as works for you obviously)
5. This part may sound lame, but… I have them close their eyes and raise their hands as I say each club and I write down how many people voted for it (I don’t want people to think their idea was bad or know who did or did not vote for their ideas)
6. When we are done I circle the top ideas. This semester we needed nine new clubs.
7. Since I am the senior leader, I make some executive decisions about some of the clubs, but usually 95% of it is what we vote for.
8. We then break up into teams and plan the clubs in detail.
9. We finally come back together, explain our plans, tweak the ideas as a group and write them down.

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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

I hope you all have a lot to say about this one!

As you may have picked up, I tend to have lots of ideas. Some good, some not so good, but either way I love ideas! You may have also realized I am from Arizona and in the Western Division of YL. I’d say I am very, maybe even extremely, familiar with most of the “norms” and standard approaches to club, campaigners, camp, assignments, etc. as we do them here on the West coast. So when I end up interacting with people from another part of the country who do YL differently I get really excited to be exposed to new ideas. I might not always like them, and lets be honest, we usually like “our” ideas better due to familiarity, but there is more than one way to skin a cat (I think they say that in some parts of the Carolinas?)

From time to time I get to experience these new ideas. This year I was part of a training class at Lost Canyon in the Spring, and as you might imagine, a lot of people from the frozen East coast came to Arizona looking to thaw out. Ironically it snowed, but that is another story. But, of the 150 or so people there, only five or so of us were from the Western Division. I loved hearing all the ideas and norms from their parts of the country. Then this summer we took our YL kids to summer camp that was being led by the Southern Division. Once again I saw all kinds of different approaches and ideas that had great reasons behind them. I even took some of those things and incorporated them into my assignment (war room in the afternoon, WC leads the new Christian walk, other things too). Even on this blog I have seen people chime in on some things such as how cabin unity outfits have become too competitive in other parts of the country, which generally isn’t the case at camps I go to regularly.

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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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In the last year or so others really jumped into the mix online with all things YL. I was amazed as nearly every month another blog or associated Twitter account started posting really great YL stuff! Here are some of the ones I have been really impressed with!

YLPlaybook (@ylplaybook) – The best spot for games and skits!

Young Life Leaders (@YoungLifeLeader) –I pretty much steal all my good ideas from here.

Youth Leader Stash (@ylstash) – Great info for YL and Youth Ministry in general from great dude.

TotalYLmove (@totalYLmove) – Hilarious! If you’ve ever felt odd and alone in YL, you will find you are not alone here.

Official YL twitter (@YoungLife) – The mothership has landed on Twitter! Good info on here from the source!

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A few years ago my wife and I were able to do something we had dreamed of for years, we moved close to a high school and started hosting club. You can read about this in a previous post. Before we hosted our very first club (all area club with 200 kids in our back yard, which ruined all my plants by the way), my genius wife talked to some other people with experience hosting club and came up with a plan.

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For those of you on Twitter, like me, there is a fantastic resource for YL ideas. I’ve been following it for a few months. It was quiet for a little while but has recently been posting some great ideas. I recommend you check it out!

https://twitter.com/younglifeideas

My friend Matt Golley, an amazing artist who I’ve mentioned him before, is pioneering YL in Puerto Rico. There has never been YL in Puerto Rico! How can that be?!? This is a really well-done video about the need of the kids there, one-third of the population is under the age 18, and there is tremendous local church support for YL. If it sparks you interest, get in touch with Matt mgolleyyl (at) gmail (dot) com.

Plain. Simple. Yellow Club. Kids wore yellow to school and to club that day. Bang! Yellow Club.

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…