Youth Ministry

A Billion Youth Group Games

03/30/2012 By Luke 1 Comment

Photo from JonAcuff.com

Truth be told, I really dislike thinking about and planning youth group games. I think it’s due to a slight revulsion to the “mostly games” flavor of youth ministry. They can also take up a lot of time planning and playing the game, not to mention $$$$. But, I completely see the value in building team unity, breaking the ice, developing friendships, and just being generally awesome. I personally long for a “Game Master”, who could take my lesson for the night, and make wonderful experiential games to drive home the point. If that’s you, hit me up!

I’m a fan of super simple, addicting games. Our ministries personal favorite at the moment is Smash Face:

The object of the game is to get the people around the circle into the center and smash the volleyball at them. The center is where loser’s must sit until someone in the middle catches it or one person is left standing. There are three types of players the Smashers wait for the opportune moment and then smash the volleyball into the middle with all of their might, and Saviors who will sacrifice there body for others to stay in the game. There are also the assassins who attempt to take out the players around them. With a mixture of all three playing the game can become possibly the funnest sport of all time. Players on the outside serve the ball and hit it back and forth, until it has been hit at least three times, then the ball is “smashable”. Assassins are optional.

Before that, it was Poison and Dodgeball. Jon Acuff had a recent post that I thought was worth sharing where he asked for people to share there favorite youth group game. There’s currently over 400 comments, so take some time to read through them if you looking for some new ideas. This one sounds awesome, but I’m always a little apprehensive about turning off all the lights with hormone enraged adolescents:

Death in the Sanctuary. Always played at night. One person in pulpit holds a flashlight, everyone else army crawls under pews or otherwise tries to get to the front of the sanctuary without being caught. If the person with the flashlight catches you, you have to go back to the back of the sanctuary. First one to touch the communion table is the next one in the pulpit. Many rug burned elbows and knees followed, so I started bringing knee pads to overnights.

Oh wait, here is the reason why I don’t like these games:

We played a game called Joust. Guys would use a panty-hose to hold an egg in place on their forehead. Girls would ride on their shoulders and using rolled up newspaper, try to break everyone else’s eggs by beating them in the head. (That was a 911 call waiting to happen.)

We played this game at youth group but instead of a rolled up newspaper we used dead fish…. it was awesomely yucky.

I like a short time for games at the end of our time together, rather than allowing games to dominate our time. We also do “Nights of Nothing”, where we just spend time building relationships, and doing whatever sounds fun!

Filed Under: Youth Ministry

A Night of Silence – Youth Silent Retreat

02/02/2012 By Luke 4 Comments

Several weeks ago, we purposefully ditched our normal routine for Youth Group to create a private and intimate environment for being silent. We spent 3-4 weeks discussing God’s purpose for our life, and so it was the perfect time to reflect on that. We created an intentional space for our youth (and our leaders) to deepen their relationship with God, through listening. Silence can be deafening, overwhelming, and awkward, and we took that into consideration as we planned this event. We had five different stations, each with a different experience that the youth could enter into, but that they could also take with them. I don’t want to create experiences that aren’t replicable for them, so these were all easy and simple to setup and execute. Here are two pictures, the first of the main room divide up with curtains, and the second of our prayer wall.

And a quick video walk through of the room.

Overview.

Be Still - A space for rest, reflection, and stillness.
Pray – An opportunity to put our requests (10) before the group, and to pray for those that had been offered (10).
Meditate – Slow, reflective thought on one small passage: Be still and know that I am God.
Worship – Connecting with God through music and lyrics
Surrender – Prayer positions and our devotion to God.

Outcome.

We had a time of debriefing at the end, I was very curious about their experience. They LOVED it! In fact, they’ve been asking when we are going to do our next one! When I get back from Cambodia we’ll be doing another one. It was an amazing night. Over an hour of listening to God, in silence. Our youth did an amazing job surrendering this time as an offering to God. Most of them connected with 1 or 2 of the stations really well, with Surrender and Pray being the most popular. An hour of silence is tough for most people these days, and I was nervous that this wouldn’t work, but they all immersed themselves into it. We started our experience in a different room, as I wanted to set the tone for the environment that they were going to enter into.

Free Resource.

Here is our guide book, if you are interested in seeing specifically what led them through each station. Click here to download the guide. You can download the full “kit” here as well (Night of Silence (116)), it includes the station posters, guide book, leaders thoughts, and artwork. Tim Schmoyer also posted this as a Free Friday Resource at StudentMinistry.org and was featured on Churchleaders.com.

Filed Under: Curriculum, Spiritual Formation, Youth Ministry Tagged With: night of silence, silence, silent retreat, youth ministry

The Voice of YouTube: Porn, relationships, and ninja skills

01/27/2012 By Luke 1 Comment

The Internet Parent

This is an extension of my previous post, Jesus is Losing on the Internet.

It’s no surprise, that youth turn to the internet for advice on just about everything. We all do. I couldn’t tie a tie without YouTube. When Wikipedia and other websites went black to protest SOPA on 1/18/12, America’s IQ was halved. But seriously, a phenomenom called Adolescent Abandonment exists.

Surrogate Parent

Culturally, teenagers have been outcasted for a long time, but in recent years there has been a dramatic increase due to SEVERAL factors (increasing divorce rate, decreasing parental interaction, extended period of adolescence, decrease in intergenerational mingling, etc…). So teenagers are using the internet for sources on sexuality (which is primarily taught through porn, 90% of it being physically and verbally aggressive Bridges 2010), identity, relationships, homework, spirituality, athletics, and just about anything you could name, like ninja skills.

Some Research

Here are some quotes from a research paper I wrote about Parental Involvement with Adolescent Sexual Identity Formation:

In ranking the overall percentages of sources for information on sexuality, parents (14%) at best rank as the 4th source, falling well below peers (51%), boyfriends/girlfriends (34%), and school (33%) (Wallmyr, 294). In one study, 55% of youth aged 13-15 responded that they had the ability to talk to their parents, but when asked their preference for information, parents where listed as 4th on the list (Turnbull, Preferences 281). With some 60% of adolescents turning to websites and magazines for “continued education”.

“Parents did not think it necessary to openly discuss sexual matters with their adolescent children because values should be transferred through parental respect. Their children, on the other hand, believed that open discussion was necessary for this transmission to occur. They concluded that the result was a bilateral withdrawal from family communication about sex.” (Involvement 185).

The research is clear:

Youth turn to the internet for education and information
Youth are searching for open dialogue
The internet has some good resources for teens, but they are overwhelmed by the abundance of garbage, and the Porn industry will do ANYTHING to grab ahold of their mind and their wallet at ANY age

A New Approach to Evangelism

In a recent post about comment-evangelism, I mentioned the need for Christians and the Church to rise to redeem the Internet. In one comment, I said that YouTube might need a different approach than what traditional news and blog sites need. Rather than just responding to media, sites like YouTube require content creation.

One great example of this is Tim Schmoyer’s recent venture with Youth Questions. Youth can submit anonymous questions which Tim responds to through YouTube videos with answers from youth leaders, teachers, counselors, parents, and other teens who’ve submitted video answers. Here is the most recent video that yours truly makes a brief appearance in responding to this question:

I’ve tried talking to my mom about letting me sit alone with my bf (boyfriend) and having a conversation alone with him since we are never alone, but she thinks that we are gonna make out, and do “other things” but we wont. She wont believe me when I tell her that. I dont know what to do. Please help me :’(

We Must Respond

The internet has created a social disconnect from real relationships, so how do we as the Church respond to this? I think that taking truth directly to people, wherever they are, is a great strategy.
XXXChurch has been controversially taking the good news of Jesus to porn-conventions to rescue those who are trapped in a depressing and abusive lifestyle for years now, as well as resourcing the Church in battling pornography and sex addictions.

What does YouTube evangelism look like? We obviously don’t want to digitally revive the trend of people screaming on the street corner, so what are some ways we can experiment with this? Youth are desperately searching for answers.

Evangelism without discipleship doesn’t work. How do we move beyond consumable content and connect people with real community?

What about parents?

Shouldn’t we be working to reenable parents to be the prime source of information? I’m glad you asked that question. YES. But it needs to be a both/and, not an either/or.

I’m excited to see this as a growing trend within the Church (and even within school systems to a limited degree). The number of parental resources available (on the internet) is growing by the minute. Some amazing work has been done by the Fuller Youth Institute in creating Sticky Faith, which I think will not only equip parents to be the clearest voice on spirituality in the lives of their children, but it will also create a foundation for open conversation which will help to restore force. The family force that is. But like many things, this is a long process of unoutsourcing parenting. In the meantime, their are MILLIONS of youth searching for answers.