DHDC – Double Happy Double Crappy (Life Story Option)

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Relationships and stories, these are two of the most powerful tools we use in Young Life. Double Happy Double Crappy (DHDC) is one way we leverage that for the gospel and discipleship in our area.

In our campaigners each week we break up into groups and everyone gets to share their “high/low”, or their high point and low point of the last week. Over the years, “high/low” has been renamed “happy/crappy”, a happy and a crappy thing going on in the last week. Apologies if “crappy” isn’t your style, you don’t have to use it! Students look forward to sharing brief stories about their lives and it helps us all grow our friendships and relationships.

In our FYL group each week we hear a life story each week until we have heard everyone’s story. At the beginning of the year I give a couple tips and guidelines about how to do this effectively and either my wife or I go first to give them a model as an example. For many people this is a challenging and faith-building experience. One simple guideline is that I tell them to aim for the “10 minute version” of their story (in the beginning I share a little about the 2/5/10/30min and 2 hours version of your life story and when each is appropriate). I have learned over doing this for almost a decade in our FYL group now to put a timer up that they can see so they have a sense of time. Before the timer there were a couple times the stories went painfully long.

One thing we know about our leadership community is that they love “community”. When we talk to them and when we’ve done surveys we always find two things. First, the thing that they enjoy the most is “community”. Second, the thing they want more of is “community”. This is no joke, they have an insatiable appetite to know each other and be known. Since we have several teams of YL, WL, and YoungLives clubs in our area many leaders have said that they want to know other leaders better too. But time is limited and we have lots of important things we need to cover in our monthly area leadership meetings.

So effectively, we have limited time, lots of leaders, and they all want to know each other. What we came up with is “Double Happy, Double Crappy” (DHDC). In advance we ask one leader from each team to tell us two “happy” events from the their life that anyone who really knew them would know. We also ask them to identify two “crappy” events from their life that helps us to know them. I ask them to take about one minute for each one, so four minutes or so. Most people rush through it and go a little too fast so I tell them to keep that in mind. Then we take a few minutes and allow the crowd to ask questions. Then we move on to the next person.

This has been a great way for us to give a brief glimpse of our stories and common struggles and highlights. We simply cycle through and have one leader per school each month. It also allows for some leaders who have been around forever to tell their stories to newer leaders. Nearly all the time there is more than meets the eye in every person you know or you think you know. At the end we all pray for those who shared and, if time allows, give a time for people to talk individually with those who spoke.

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