Campaigners/Discipleship - Young Life Mt. Hood Region

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Campaigners/Discipleship
`a
Quotes
“The heart of being a
disciple involves living in
intimate union and daily
contact with Christ.
Discipleship—the effort
both to be a disciple and
to make other disciples—is
about the immense value
of God at work in one
individual’s life and the
resulting impact on
other lives.”
—Bill Hull
“Christianity without
discipleship is always
Christianity without
Christ.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“If the Son of God thought
it necessary to focus his
life on a small group
of men, we are fooling
ourselves to think we can
mass-produce disciples
today.”
—David Platt
“Every church needs to
be able to answer two
questions. One, do we
have a plan for making
disciples? Two, does our
plan work?”
—Dallas Willard
Campaigners/Discipleship is one of the most important priorities of our
ministry. Christ’s command, The Great Commission, compels us to give
the same amount of effort to make disciples as we spend to introduce
kids to Christ. “Disciple making” happens when a leader makes a focused,
intentional investment in the life of a teenager and can be further nurtured
through a small-group community of believers called “Campaigners.”
The Purpose of Campaigners
When young people have a vision for their relationship with Jesus that
extends beyond themselves, to their friends, family, people in their
community, the whole world will change! Young Life leaders, who are living
out this vision on campus, get to invite young people to be a part of the
team, sharing the love of Jesus as they grow in their relationship with Jesus
together. Campaigners are a group of students committed to growing in
their relationship with Christ and sharing this relationship with others. We
can’t lose the “mission” part of Campaigners or we lose a critical piece of
what Christ has asked each disciple to do.
The History of Campaigners
The goals of Young Life Campaigners have changed very little since its
conception in Gainesville, Texas. From the start, a core group of kids who
caught the vision for Young Life came together with their leaders to learn
more about what it means to love and follow Jesus, and love their friends for
His sake. They prayed for their school and strategized how to most
effectively use the tool of the Young Life club to reach their peers. The
original name of Young Life was “Young Life Campaign,” so it was only
natural to call those who were very involved “Campaigners.”
As Young Life began to have success in reaching disinterested kids, the staff
saw the obvious need for a follow-up program. About this time, Jim
Rayburn became good friends with Dawson Trotman, who had founded a
ministry called The Navigators a few years earlier. The two of them often
shared ideas—Rayburn talking about how to win people for Christ in a
relational way, and Trotman expounding on the great discipleship methods
for which The Navigators became famous. Rayburn, in Young Life, started
to borrow many of the styles and strategies Trotman championed in
Navigators for making disciples.
Four Elements of Effective Campaigners
C.A.R.E. — Community, Adventure, Responsibility, Education
The goal of Campaigners is to start kids on the road to maturity in Christ.
We are given the incredible privilege of being involved with kids during this
crucial time in their lives. As young Christians they are beginning to explore
what it means to follow Christ and, at the same time, as adolescents they
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are deciding what things they will count as important. These two
characteristics provide the potential to produce people radically committed
to Christ. We want them to become fellow ministers with us in transforming
their high school. To nurture this kind of radical commitment, we need to
include both a meeting (for everyone) and one-on-one time (for a select few)
in our plans (the 3-12-50 principle). Our meetings need to strike a balance
involving the head (knowledge), the heart (emotions), and the hands (actions).
One model is to have a short inductive Bible study (30 minutes), share and
pray together (20 minutes), and always include a time of application
(10 minutes). Effective Campaigners meetings should have these elements:
Community, Adventure, Responsibility, and Education.
Community. Community is built through mission, fellowship and worship.
Having a mission bonds Campaigner kids because they are working toward
something together; specifically, transforming their school for Christ. Kids also
need to learn how to have supportive, caring relationships. We need to give
them the chance to get to know each other more deeply by having them share
what Christ has been doing in their lives, having fun together and praying
together. A vital part of community is experiencing the larger body of Christ.
Kids need to visit local churches with you and begin their journey of
involvement in church community for the rest of their lives.
Adventure. Following Christ is the great adventure! We are talking with kids
about changing their world and seeing their own life and the lives of their
friends be transformed. Their involvement in ministry at their school — their
mission — can take on the characteristics either of a task or of an adventure.
Often it is unpredictable or even frightening, but the results are always a
deepening in our relationship with Christ as we obey. We need to encourage
and challenge kids. Adventure also means planning a change of pace in our
meetings—dinners together, projects, trips, fun, etc.
፪ Media
Media 1
Teac
Te
aching Ide
deaa 2
Campaigners: Catching The Vision—YL
National
w.yo
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ub
Video 01
Media 2
Mango Discipleship Tree—http://vimeo.com/59980049
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Media 3
Helpful tools and videos at this site: www.campaignerstraining.com
Ꮾ
Reading
Required
The Master Plan of
Evangelism
(Robert Coleman)
Recommended
Lifestyle Discipleship
(Jim Petersen)
Multiply—Disciples Making
Disciples
(Francis Chan)
Transforming Discipleship
(Greg Ogden)
Video
This Is Our Mission
tiny.cc/comesee39
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Campaigners/Discipleship
Ꮬ
Assignments
Assignment 1
Read “The Greening of a
Discussion Leader” in the
Appendix. Become
familiar with what it
means to “ask questions that make kids the
expert.”
Assignment 2
Prepare a Campaigner
lesson on any topic and
list 3 questions using the
question-asking principle
above.
Assignment 3
Watch this Lord of the
Rings trailer and discuss
how you could use this in
a Campaigner meeting to
talk with kids about our
task as followers.
http://tiny.cc/LOTR2
Responsibility. We are working to teach kids to be contributors in the kingdom
of God. One helpful tool to use is club. Club may not be the place most kids
serve once they leave high school, but it is the place where they can work to
change their world now. Teach them the principles of contact work and why we
do it. Having Campaigners learn to reach out and love those outside their
comfortable peer group may be one of the best life lessons you can teach them.
How to Give Campaigners Responsibility:
Ţ Pray for club kids.
Ţ Go over specific ways in Campaigners they can care for others in their
school.
Ţ Get feedback from your Campaigners on how others are responding to club.
Let them help you generate new ideas on how to reach out.
Ţ Build a prayer strategy with Campaigners: Have them write down friends
they want to pray for and help them think through ways to reach and
share Christ with them.
Ţ Have them help sell camp and even have a role in cabin time.
Education. Every Campaigners meeting needs a teaching time based on
Scripture. The focus of the time is to look at what the Bible teaches about how
to live out the great commandments to love God and our neighbor as ourselves.
We should teach principles that deal with our inner lives and how they apply
to our outer lives. When kids understand these basic principles, they are in a
position where God has access to every area of their lives. It is better to focus on
mastering a few essentials than a bunch of outward Christian behaviors—most
likely what God wants to do in their lives is much more radical than our ideas
anyway! Once these are firmly established in their lives, they are prepared to
walk with Christ for a lifetime. Our hope is that kids will fall in love with Christ
through God’s Word and the work of the Spirit.
Teaching Method
What we teach is only part of the task. How we teach may be even more
important in terms of what kids take away and eventually learn. The most
common learning situation follows a general lecture format—we give a talk and
kids listen. This is the simplest meeting to prepare: You decide what you want
kids to learn and then you tell them. It is also the method we find most used—
it is how schools and churches most often teach. This is good for
communicating information but has not proven very effective for formation and
transformation. We have the potential to remember 10% of what we hear,
50% of what we see, and 90% of what we discover. Simply telling kids what
they should do, even if we are right, usually won’t produce lasting change in their
lives.
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One way to facilitate discovery is through sharing and discussion. Good
discussion is built by asking open ended questions where “kids are the
experts.” See the article “The Greening of a Discussion Leader” in the
Appendix to more fully understand this principle. “Never tell what you can
ask” is a great principle for Campaigners.
Non-Christians at Campaigners
If we are doing a good job of providing community, adventure, responsibility
and education, Campaigner meetings are going to begin to attract some kids
who have not made a commitment to Christ. It is natural they would want to
come to a group that provides so much of what they need in their lives. We
should welcome them, but it is important to remember that the purpose of
Campaigners is to make disciples. We need to plan our meeting to build up
and challenge our most mature Christian kids and not lower the bar to
specifically accommodate non-Christian kids who may attend. Your
Campaigner group may start with marginally interested kids but they come
because they see a difference in you and are experiencing and seeing the love
of Christ. In this way, we are discipling kids before they begin a relationship
with Christ.
Ꭷ
Discussion
Question 1
What do you remember
most from your
Campaigner experience as
a kid or from the person
who discipled you?
Question 2
Which of the 4 Elements
of Effective Campaigners
excites and which
intimidates you the most?
What Materials Should You Use?
There is no shortage of good Campaigner/Discipleship material. In the
Appendix, we have listed just a few of the many options (See Campaigner
Resources for YL 101) and there are numerous materials and support on the YL
National website. Each leader should always be developing a “tool belt” of
resources they are familiar with and comfortable using.
В
Process
Idea
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Spend
a few
minutes
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two
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aching
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community,
adventure,
responsibility
and
education
in
Jeopardy
opardy
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that you’ve been a part of.
Take a passage of Scripture with a couple other leaders. Read it through several times and
then try to come up with a list of 3 to 5 good questions about the passage.
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