This Thursday we’re looking at Young Life College and large group structure.
Lots of folks from around the country shared how they structure their YLC large groups.
- Who leads large groups?
- Each group is lead by a pair of students and an adult couple. We have a freshman guys group, a freshman girls group and a co-ed group.
- Where are they hosted?
- Dorms – easy access
- People’s Houses – homey feel
- What’s the format?
- We eat, serving dinner or snacks (like “Campus Cookies,” or cheese sticks from a local favorite Pizza shop.);
- We hang out. This time is great for fellowship. Before and after large group to give them time to build community
- Announcements
- Worship,Teaching, Discussion, Prayer
- We open with two worship songs. After that we have a Campaigner share their testimony. Then a leader teaches. Originally we just taught on whatever we wanted to that week, but we are currently trying going through a book in the Bible.
- We lead a conversational discussion of a specific passage and event of Jesus’ life.
- We do two songs of worship; a sharing time of how people have seen God working in their friends’ lives; and then we have a lesson. We try to keep discussion going during the lessons. We want to foster community in any way we can.
- Topical studies have worked for us. We’ve done a video and discussion format as well.
- We have a large group/small group hybrid. We start everyone together (all freshmen and coed) then we split up into small groups for discussion/prayer/sharing.
- We run it like a mini club with:
- 1. Mixer
- 2. One or two fun songs
- 3. Walk-on/announcements, etc.
- 4. Two to three worship tunes
- 5. Talk
- 6. Breakout discussion groups.
