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This Year…Fasting Conversation Was Our Best Campaigners!

2010-08-30T17:50:00Z

Over the summer I normally try to post a couple things that I learned over the previous school year. These are a little late, but I really wanted to pass them along anyway. Also 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

When it comes to preparing campaigner lessons, I’ve tried it all. Fortunately the plan is not the most important part of campaigners. If the meeting includes honest sharing, a conversation about scripture and prayer, you pretty much can’t go wrong. With that said I’m always trying to provide the best content that is relevant. What I’ve done for the last few years is simply go through books of the Bible (ex: Mark), or sections of scripture (ex: Sermon on the Mount), or similar verse-by-verse type things. Here and there I’ll mix in some different approaches, but this is what I’ve found to be my favorite.

One of the benefits of letting scripture dictate the topics is that you might just end up talking about something you wouldn’t ever think of talking about with your group. This happened this year when we studied the Sermon on the Mount. One of the weeks the section was about fasting. I need to be honest and say that I had low, very low, expectations about having this be a campaigner study. In fact I thought about skipping it or just combining it with the next section of scripture. But I decided to stick with it.

As it turned out, it was one of our best campaigners all year. I should say that this campaigners group last year was a guys-only group of juniors and seniors that I’ve known for several years, but many of which have not been Christians very long. We each picked some issues we were dealing with and picked something to fast from. One person picked TV for two days, another person picked drinking soda. Nothing too extreme, but I was impressed that they were taking it seriously.

When we met the following week, each person had a story to tell about their experience. In fact at the end of the year when we talked about our personal highlights from campaigners all year long, most of the guys said it was the fasting Bible study. One guy pulled a note out of his wallet that he wrote during his fast and said he kept it with him all year to remind himself of what God put on his heart. So I encourage you to take a risk sometimes in campaigners, you might be surprised!

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This Year…Don’t Give Up

2010-08-23T17:08:00Z

In my community there is an often-avoided neighborhood nestled in an otherwise pleasant and upscale part of town. In the past years this area has been one of the most violent square miles in our state and has faced other significant challenges.

In this neighborhood there is a middle school and a team of amazing teachers who love their students. I remember meeting with one of the teachers five years ago. She has an amazing heart for Christ and for her students. Many of her students come back to her classroom after school weekly, even when they are in high school and beyond. She knew that Young Life would be a great bridge to connect these kids to Christ. When we met five years ago we dreamed of opening a Wyldlife club at the school. In fact she had one kid in particular on her heart that needed Wyldlife right away. Over the years we were able to get some of the kids to YL camps and occasionally to club. We kept praying and strategizing to reach these kids. Then a little over a year ago the kid who needed Wyldlife desperately four years earlier was finally convinced to go to Woodleaf. He met Christ in a powerful way and started growing quickly in his faith.

In the last year we finally started that Wyldlife club. Fortunately we had four years of leaders built up and one key leader who we had been praying for five years. In its first year the club regularly had over 50 kids at club and the same amount at camp, strong campaigners and the leadership is thriving.

What I learned this year is not to give up. The timing was perfect this year but wouldn’t have been right any sooner. It reminds me of Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Sometimes things fall into place right away, sometimes it takes five years, sometimes it takes longer, but I encourage you to not give up.

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This Year…Use Facebook to Ask For Stuff for Club

2010-08-16T15:52:00Z

Usually when I need something that I don’t have I just Google it and start my search. I do this with things for club, things for my home, all kinds of stuff. I bet you do that too.

In my spare time I like to read Wired magazine and all kinds of other sources of technology information. One thing that tech journalists are always covering is the battle between Google and Facebook. Google has a monopoly on internet information. Facebook has a monopoly on information and access on your friends. So it dawned on me (and probably many of you too) one day, instead of looking to Google for information and stuff I need to get, why don’t I look on Facebook. For instance I wanted to sell my car and buy a different one. Instead of putting my car on Craigslist or Autotrader, I told all my friends on Facebook. The benefit is that they know me, for better or worse haha, but many of them know a lot about my car and probably have been in it before. So a few weeks later, my car was sold at a great price to someone who really needed it.

Earlier this summer I needed some supplies to do program at camp. Some of the supplies are the types of things I would only need once a week for four weeks. So I asked people on Facebook if I could borrow them and sure enough some of the stuff I needed I simply borrowed. Some people even dropped it off at my house the same day I posted the request.

So if you are looking for supplies for club or campaigners or pretty much anything, I’d recommend posting your request on Facebook. If you are friends with some parents from your club or other adults, they might really enjoy being able to help out by tracking down things for your club. In fact it is really nice because when you post the request people don’t feel bad if they don’t have it or can’t make it happen soon enough, but when you call people to help sometimes they feel obligated.

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This Year… We Added More Junior Leaders

2010-08-14T06:02:16Z

I have been a leader for over 15 years now in YL. In the first half of my experience I rarely saw high school students have much of a role in the leadership and execution of the club. I realize this is different across the country and some areas have been doing this for decades. Then about 6 years ago I recognized that the strongest club in our area always had students as a part of their leadership team. I would train them and encourage them but I thought that was nice and kept on doing things the way I was used to doing in my club. Then other clubs in my area started adding junior leaders and they were having stronger campaigners, stronger clubs, camp, everything.

So what did I do? Well I finally got smart and in the past two years junior leaders have been an indispensable part of our club. In fact, in the 9 clubs in our area, all of them have a junior leader team, even our Wyldlife clubs. Our junior leaders do pretty much everything our traditional leaders do in YL: music, skits, talks, lead campaigners, help planning, contact work, area leadership meetings, etc. We have also seen more graduated students stick around to be leaders after high school.

At one school this year we had over 20 qualified and leader-recommended kids who wanted to be leaders the following school year. So we arranged using a classroom once a week for 6 weeks and I did junior leader training at lunch time in the high school. We are doing more and more of this and it is going great.

This Year…Don’t Give Up Over the summer I normally try to post a...
This Year…Fasting Conversation Was Our Best Campaigners! Over the summer I normally try to post a...
This Year…Use Facebook to Ask For Stuff for Club Over the summer I normally try to post a...

Photography tips on taking better pictures at YL events

2010-06-29T03:26:26Z

What do kids like pretty more than anything else? Pictures of themselves! Just check out Facebook… Wait it is called Face book, as in, I want to see my own face. Yes, that is the idea. Random tangent, I almost did a program skit recently that was going to be about my newest invention, “MyFace”, a new website that combines the best of both worlds, you can steal that idea if you want.

So right now there are so many pictures from our various YL and WL trips on Facebook right now I haven’t even begun to look at them. Honestly I just start with the ones I’ve been tagged in. So in the midst of a plethora of pictures, how can we stand out? Take better pictures. Some people spend a ton of money on new cameras, but really any camera will do a great job if you just know some simple rules of photography. My friend Alex, a leader in Cave Creek, put together an awesome overview of some tips. He is a great photographer and his skills really have been a great tool for his YL club. For you staff out there, I think it should be a required 1 hour training at NST, we take so many pictures in YL, we could make them so much better with just a little training. With all that said, here are Alex’s great tips…

Great Pictures Tips for YL leaders.pdf

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Pumpkin Smash Club

2010-01-28T20:15:27Z

This may be a little too late to use with pumpkins, but you can file this away for next October/November, or it might bring to mind a similar creative idea to do with kids.

Erin from Silicon Valley YL sent me this idea and said this…

“We got a few hundred pumpkins the day after Halloween for super cheap. We had a huge “Pumpkin Bash”! …I would recommend something like this to anyone working with Middle Schoolers (as long as they have a good team of leaders!)”

Thanks Erin!

Pumpkin Bash in Detail.doc

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Camp Unity Outfits

2010-05-31T05:09:30Z

Last summer I wrote a brief post about camp unity outfits. There were some great comments and ideas send in by you too. Thanks!

While I was on assignment last summer I tried to take a few pictures of some of the camp unity outfits I saw, so here are a few you can use and steal as needed! You can click on the pictures for larger versions. If you have ideas for this summer, leave a comment. I’m looking for an idea for my guys and we leave in a few days!

1. Old Ladies

2. White T’s with Letters

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

4. Tie-Dye with Spray Letters

5. Caped Crusaders

6. In-N-Out Workers

7. Ladybugs

8. Bumble Bees

9. Men with Ties

10. Classic Nerd

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Talk Idea: Resurrection and Brandon Heath’s “I’m Not Who I Was”

2010-05-08T23:16:11Z

Last Monday I gave the Resurrection talk. I always like to include a part about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this talk.

I love the resurrection talk. It is often under-stated most times I see it at club or camp. The resurrection is the power for our new life in Christ! You can even see that last summer when I spoke at YL camp, I moved all the talks a day earlier just so I could do an entire talk about the resurrection.

One way I wanted to illustrate the new life that is possible through the resurrection is through a song. I’m not much of a singer, though I lead songs and worship every week, there is a big difference between being able to sing and being a “singer”… anyway. So I “sang” Brandon Heath’s “I’m Not Who I Was” to my club in my talk. I put the words up on the screen so they could see them. Then after my talk I used the following video, which is a video of YL leaders doing “cardboard testimonies” (I’m even in the video briefly). Brandon used it in his concerts last year when he sang the song. I challenged them to think about how Jesus’ power could come into their life and change them.

I’m Not Who I Was – Brandon Heath – Concert Video from W. Ashley Maddox on Vimeo.

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Sorry if you got the last post…

2010-05-08T23:01:32Z

Hey sorry if you got the last post that I deleted from ylhelp. It was meant to go on my personal blog. I try to keep my opinions separate from the resource-focused stuff on ylhelp.

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Summer Camp Shirts

2010-05-02T00:12:00Z

Like many of us I am starting to look for summer camp shirts. You may have noticed the link on ylhelp about Retro Fashions. Ryan and Kylie at Retro have been active in YL for many years and have worked with our YL area to provide great shirts for all of our activities. I highly highly recommend them from my personal experience. In fact I think they have even gotten better over the years. They have a “we will beat any price” promise that I have never proven wrong. They even do artwork free of charge. Anyway, I was looking at some of their designs they have done in the past as I’m thinking of some for this year and I thought I’d pass them along for your viewing pleasure. These are some of my favorites…

PS… Check them out if you need a great design or price. http://www.fashionablyretro.com or just email RyanDurkin@FashionablyRetro.com

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