INCREASING THE AMPLITUDE, AND ADJUSTING THE FREQUENCY OF YOUR CLUB MINISTRY
Young Life’s mission statement is to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. Too often we equate the motion of planning/prepping/running clubs with the achievement toward our ultimate goal of kids coming into a saving relationship with Jesus! There is freedom within this mission to modify the methods of ministry while still fulfilling the mission statement.
AM/FM waves modulate their amplitude and frequency, and similarly we can modulate the AM/FM of our programmatic events. Modifying clubs in both their energetic feel (AM) and frequency (FM) can free leaders up to achieve our mission more effectively and broadly.
Amplitude Modulation: Changing how amped up club feels. Three modulations can be Pep-Rally, Hang Out, and Service.
Pep-Rally - Traditional clubs feel like pep-rallies (lots of energy, loud, laughter, cheering) and they usually require a large crowd to feel right.
Hang Out - This can be anything that best fits kids in your school (3-on-3 basketball tournament, fishing expedition, or a backyard bonfire with an unplugged guitar set). Any platform that offers a gospel proclamation can aid in reaching varying types of kids so that they can hear about Jesus in a more conducive setting.
Service - This has the least energetic feel but can work on occasion. Post-Christian European Young Life does this often and has had great success in their specific ministry field. This can also work for affluent highly entertained kids who are hard to impress, but service is universally agreed upon in culture as altruistic and good.
Frequency Modulation: Changing how often club occurs. Three modulations can be Weekly, Bi-Weekly, and Monthly.
Weekly - The traditional way in which most areas have run club. This works best when kids have easy access to transportation and the population is dense, so they can get to club in within 15-20 minutes.
Bi-Weekly - This rhythm has benefits when transportation is a strain. In rural settings, kids face large geographical distances to get to a central club location. Modulating the frequency of programmatic events might also help busy non-college volunteers. Areas can run a pattern of alternating weeks between Campaigners and Club to free volunteers to invest their time more wisely in the heartbeat of Young Life, incarnational evangelism.
Monthly - Once a month clubs become a don’t miss event. This might be longer than the typical club and can include food. This is for more extreme circumstances based on kids and leaders. For example, busy young professional leaders with families or kids in rural settings with huge distance obstacles.
This idea of modulating the amplitude and/or frequency of programmatic events can help achieve our mission better! Our goal is not to run the most pristine events, but it is to give kids a chance to hear the gospel and respond.
Gospel proclamation should never be relegated solely to club talks and AM/FM modulation gives the power of evangelism to more of the one-on-one/small group settings between leaders and kids. By modifying the amplitude and frequency of clubs frees leaders to increase time to meet more kids and deepen already existing relationships. With this freedom to change the AM/FM of events the leaders can then intensify intentional gospel conversation in their contact work.
Truly, the best Young Life is yet to be done!
-Mountain State Region