What is Campaigners?

by Robby Kiley, Head Leader

Each Wednesday at 7:15 am, a group of 10-20 Upper School students gather with leaders at the Ottawa House for Campaigners, Young Life’s small group Bible study. Students enjoy bagels and juice and spend time catching up, praying for each other and studying scripture. At other times during the month, Middle School students meet at Caribou for Coffee and Conversations or seniors gather over breakfast to share their lives and help plan out WyldLife club. These are only a few examples of the many small group ministries that help our Young Life and WyldLife leaders accomplish our mission of introducing adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith.

When Young Life began, back in 1941, it was initially referred to as the “Young Life Campaign.” Even back then, small groups were a vital part of the ministry. These groups became known as “Campaigners,” as they were helping accomplish the work of the Young Life Campaign. Now, seventy years later, Campaigners still plays an important role, giving leaders and students time together to build community, pray for each other and study scripture. Although the name may be archaic, Campaigners is still very relevant to kids today.

With kids leading busier and busier lives, Young Life leaders have responded by being more flexible about how and when they meet with teens. We currently have four leaders running small group ministries independent of Coffee and Conversations (WL) and Campaigners (YL), and we expect this number to grow by the end of the year. Our students have shown that they desire to meet together - look no further than “faux-paigners,” a grassroots group that began one morning in 2009 when Campaigners was canceled for Grandparents day. Fauxpaigners continues to meet weekly to this day, and is completely student run. As leaders, our job is to help facilitate these times to encourage students not just to gather but also to nurture their interest in their faith.

Our goal is to ensure that every student has an opportunity to grow in their faith in a community setting. Small group leaders tackle tough topics relevant to their groups. They study the Bible together. They read books by Christian authors. They even attend church together! Through our ministry, we hope to allow students an opportunity to know God better and develop the tools they need to live out their faith. In the next year, it is my hope that our small group ministries continue to develop, so that every leader has his or her own small group, meeting the needs of a specific group of students in the Private School Community. Please pray for us as we strive for this goal!

Summer Camp Testimonials

by Robby Kiley, PSYL Head Leader

Young Life and Wyldlife camps have been billed as “the best week of your life.” A week of rappelling, mountain climbing, tubing, banana boating, go-cart racing, horseback riding, rock climbing, and kayaking await, not to mention a week full of Young Life clubs and a fantastic speaker who is able to present the gospel in a way that is exciting and easy for students to understand. This summer, we took twenty four high school students to Frontier Ranch in Buena Vista, Colorado and thirteen middle school students to Castaway Club in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Students were given the opportunity to have a blast at camp, but, even more importantly, they were able to spend a week with their leaders, taking quality time to talk with their leaders about their lives and their faith.

I could spend pages and pages of text trying to paint a picture of a week at camp, but the best way to get a glimpse into the Young Life camp experience is to ask the kids themselves. We asked our high school and middle school friends to take a couple of minutes out of their time at camp and complete a couple of sentences about their experience. Below is a collection of their answers, which we hope will give you a better idea of what our friends experienced this summer. We hope you enjoy it!

My week at camp was…

• A great experience. It was full of great people, amazing support, and gave me a chance to connect with God on a deeper level.
• Amazing, fun, dirty, a great experience and one of the best weeks of my life.
• Awesome, life-changing and exciting.
• Eye opening. For a long time, I pushed God away, but the activities, people and speakers made me want a close relationship with him.
• A lot of fun. I learned so much about God and myself through all the activities this week.
• Life changing. I was able to meet God and get to know him in a completely new and different way than I ever have before. I was able to reaffirm my faith and for the first time in my life become friends with my sister.
• So much fun! I had a blast doing all the activities! The speaker was amazing!

My leader is…

• Amazing! They are so easy to connect with and super supportive.
• So, so loving and generous! Throughout the week, it was obvious just how much my leaders cared for me, even though some of them were meeting me for the first time.
• Thoughtful, kind, fun and capable of listening.
• Amazing people who know how to relate to us.
• One of the most genuinely kind women I’ve ever met. She is willing to be uncomfortable and still see the positive in any situation.
• Always there for me when I need to talk and always cares.
• One of the coolest adults that I know and great to be around.
• Someone who is always there, I feel I can trust them because I know they support me. They are always willing to help with anything and made this week at camp amazing.

Jesus Christ is…

• My Lord and savior. I totally couldn’t live without him. This week I was able to view God in different ways and draw closer to him.
• The rock of my life. Camp helped me reconnect with him in a stronger way. It felt good!
• Lord, God and most importantly, my friend.
• Going to be welcomed into my life after this week.
• Someone who loves me and gave up everything for me.
• Probably my closest friend. He knows me for who I am and he accepts me and loves me unconditionally.

While these quotes can go a long way to help you understand a week at camp, the only way to truly experience camp is to go for yourself! Young Life has a fantastic Adult Guest program, and we would love to help you come and see Young Life camp live and in person. Young Life has beautiful, four- to five-star quality lodges, and would love to host you for a day, couple of days, or even for a whole week of summer camp or during fall camp. If you’d like to receive more information about Young Life’s adult guest program, please contact the Young Life office. We have several spots available for only $89.50 for the weekend of November 19-21. Your fee includes meals and a fantastic room in Castaway’s beautiful lodge. We hope you might consider joining us!

Robby Kiley
PSYL Head Leader

Summer Camping Is Coming Soon!

By Robby Kiley, PSYL Head Leader

"Who started the idea that Christians ought to have the seat of their pants in patches, or that we ought to hold camps in tents? We are talking about the King of Kings; let's act like He's the one in charge! We're gonna get the classiest camps in the country."
-Jim Rayburn (founder of Young Life)

As strange as it may seem, January means it is time once again to begin talking about Young Life and WyldLife summer camping. Last summer we had great turnout, taking 21 Young Life students to Crooked Creek in Colorado and 24 Wyld Life students to Castaway Club in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. That means 45 students from the Private School Young Life community had a chance to spend a week at some of the most beautiful places on earth -- climbing majestic mountains, parasailing across the sky, spending quality time with leaders who care about them and learning about a God who loved them enough to die on the cross. Camping with Young Life is a remarkable experience, perhaps even the “best week of your life.”

Camping has been an integral part of Young Life’s mission since the first camp opened in 1950 (only nine years after Young Life began its ministry). Young Life’s founder, Jim Rayburn, believed so strongly in this program that he was willing to risk his whole ministry to make it happen. Why would he do this? The answer is simple: Camping affects everything we do in our ministry. It is one of the best tools we have to reach out to students, because it combines everything we try to achieve in ministry in an action-packed week.

I want to take a little bit of time and look at the ministry tools we use in Young Life and WyldLife. These are often called the five Cs: Camp, Contact Work, Club, Campaigners, and Christ. It is my strong belief that camp works so well because it impacts every other C in a positive way. For example, at a weekend or week-long camping experience, everything leaders and students do is planned to foster relationships. It’s packed with tools for leaders to engage in intentional conversations with students and share in activities that they will remember for the rest of their lives. Camp is one giant contact work experience!

Students also get a chance to go to club once or twice a day. Seeing club done well at camp is a huge blessing for us leaders. The amazing clubs at camp get students excited to come back home and join us on a Monday or Friday night. It’s also a blessing for leaders, because we get to steal all of the great ideas that the talented folks running the show have used! How about campaigners? Each night, after club, students and leaders head back to their cabins to discuss the message, and have a chance to share what is going on in their life and faith. This is the same thing we do every Wednesday morning at the Ottawa house with our high school friends, Friday morning with the 11th and 12th grade girls, and the same thing we hope to begin once a month with our middle school friends beginning in January. The only difference between morning campaigners and cabin time is that, during cabin time, students aren’t rushed or thinking about the test they have first hour. They’re in a place where they can take some time and really consider what God is saying to them through the speaker. This is a perfect occasion to invite Christ into their lives! And it works! How do I know? Because, eight years ago, I was one of those students and I accepted Christ into my life at a Young Life camp in Alum Springs, Virginia!

Young Life camping makes a conscious goal of setting up leaders and kids to talk about Christ. Every moment of the day is designed to allow leaders to discuss what it truly means to begin a relationship with Jesus. The program staff and speaker are intentional about everything they do, and their approach bears fruit. On the last day of camp, Young Life holds what they like to call a "Say So" (from Psalm 107:2, 'Let the redeemed of the Lord say so'). Kids who have made a decision over the course of the week to follow Jesus Christ have the chance to stand up and ‘say so.’ Every year I am at camp, I am amazed to witness the impact that this week has on kids’ lives. But even more amazing than all the kids who stand up is the fact that behind every one of these kids is a group of volunteers, staff, committee members and friends that cared enough about these kids to get them to camp. All that time and energy instantly becomes worth it when you are blessed by seeing a kid stand up tall and announce, “Hi, I’m Robby, and this week, I’ve decided to accept Christ into my life.”

If you register for camp before January 31st, you will receive a $100 discount. Camp spots will fill soon, so act quickly by going to the Young Life website: swtc.younglife.org.

A New Season!

by Andy Swanda, PSYL Head Leader

As a Minnesotan, you really need to embrace the seasons. Each one is unique, potentially extreme, and has a beauty all its own. However, this summer just seemed to be shorter than most—there wasn’t enough to embrace! How is it possible that three months can pass so quickly? Just yesterday I was watching my children run off the bus from their last day of school and Private School Young Life leaders were celebrating the graduation of our seniors. Today, my kids are laying out their clothes for the first weeks of school and our PSYL graduates are settling into their freshman dorm rooms across the country! Cabins are closed, schools are open, and a new season is upon us.

This particular season of ministry is an exciting one for me. As you may know, our Young Life area really blossomed this past year as we made the strategic decision to evolve from one area—formerly known as “Minneapolis South Young Life”—to the areas of “Young Life Southwest Twin Cities (SWTC).” The goal behind this move was to set up our individual ministry communities (Bloomington, Edina, Hopkins, Minnehaha Academy, and Private School) for greater independence and ownership of their unique visions to Connect Kids to Christ in their schools. Our goal is grow a deep, pervasive ministry presence for teenagers in every community in the southwest suburbs—and there are over 32,000 teenagers in our greater community! The harvest is plentiful.

Right on the heels of the creation of SWTC, Private School Young Life entered a strategic planning process of its own. After all, PSYL is now an area and needs to start acting like one as we build for our kids’ future. We recognized the many blessings that God has provided us in recent years and prayerfully considered the challenges that lie ahead.

As a result of our planning sessions, we made an exciting decision—Private School Young Life will be hiring a new full-time head leader to oversee the Young Life and WyldLife ministries. Meanwhile, I will re-direct my ministry focus with kids to the Edina community. Young Life once flourished in Edina and has desperately fallen off. We realized that, for the long-term, Edina is the most logical community for me to act as a “player-coach” as we build depth and excellence in our current communities, then consider where God might have us develop a new ministry presence.

What does this mean for Private School Young Life? I’ll still be around, as I’m continuing to direct the greater SWTC area, but I will be present less with kids and more with the PSYL Cabinet and leadership. In the meantime Matt Duer, one of our current Young Life leaders, is serving in a part-time role as the Interim Club Leader for Young Life and WyldLife. Additionally, a full-time staff search is underway as we prayerfully consider God’s right person for this ministry, at this time. Please pray for both Matt and the Cabinet during this transition!

A new season is upon us. This season is certainly going to be extreme and will have a beauty all its own —for both Private School Young Life and the Southwest Twin Cities. May God richly bless our continued efforts in Connecting Kids to Christ, both near and far.