Last night at Youth Group we focused on three ways to experience God in our world right now. It seems to me that many Christians spend their faith life waiting and hoping for a future with God in heaven, so I wanted to spend a full evening thinking about how we experience God right here and now. I loved the format we used last night, all together for three large groups, each followed by 10-15 minutes of small group questions in the same room. Maybe it was just a great mix of students or the right questions, but it worked well. Deep conversations, good experiences, and a lot of fun. The worst part of the evening was my opening game - WAHH. Could it be we just had too large of a group? This game was one of my absolute favorites in Minnesota a year ago, and here we couldn't really get off the ground. Sure there were lots of laughs, but the game was fizzling and drying fast, so I pulled the plug and hope to restore it in a later week.
The evening began with a need to stall just a bit while food was prepared, so I attempted to lead the game of WAHH. The real ice breaking game was played after dinner, called Ships and Shores. One of our adult leaders led the game and did a great job. The basic premise of the game is follow silly commands until the group is whittled down to a single person who wins, kind of like Simon Says. There are several commands which force the participants to get in groups of 3 or 4 which works nicely to eliminate students as the game progresses. I was really proud of my leader and students for their inclusion of some of our differently abled students. Even as students were being called out, they were so generous by letting others stay in! so heart warming!
Our first experience was about allowing God to direct our lives: chaos into order. Each student was given a colored shape and instructed to find and sit with students with the same color. Once seated, the groups were given basic instructions (no talking, turning over their paper, or touching anyone else's shape) and then the goal: to form two squares from the their collective shapes. I just used tangram designs and had pre-printed a large Bible verse on the back of each square. The illustration was right on, allowing kids to debrief as they talked about how difficult it is to know where to go in life and find God's ultimate design for their lives.
Our second experience was about the size and capacity of God's forgiveness. For this experience we invited each student to extend their arms, as though they were on a cross, for about 6 minutes, during which I played the song East to West by Casting Crowns and read facts about the crucifixion. It is an intense experience, many students can't hold their arms out for 6 full minutes, even our most athletic students. But the difficulty of the experience also led to good conversation. In their small groups they also read the story of Runaway Bunny and talked about how God is willing to do anything, even death on a cross, to forgive us and draw close to us.
Our third experience was about the community that God gives us. During this experience I distributed note cards and markers, inviting students to think about their garden friends (thanks Tiger for the good idea). Garden friends are friends that you keep especially close to you. I paraphrased the two stories about Jesus taking Peter, James, and John with him up to the mountain (first for the transfiguration, and second for the garden of Gethsemane prayer), and asked the kids to consider who they would want for those two moments in their own life (the happy and sad). We debriefed for a few minutes in large group also talking about who God would want us to include, and who we've decided to exclude from our garden friends.
We closed everything, as usual with our prayer and praise time. A great evening, pretty intense and deep but with lots of good balance. I did notice that two of our more severely handicapped students had a difficult time participating in the evening. So there's still room to change!
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Prayers of the People
Last night at youth group we spent the evening focusing on prayer. After a meal and a short ice breaker we broke kids into four groups and had them rotate through four stations which were designed to help students experience prayer in new ways.
Ice breaker: Eyes and Toes. The group forms a large circle and in instructed to look at everyone else's toes. On command (eyes), students look up and stare at someone else's eyes in the circle. If that person is staring back, both people are removed from the circle, as partners they sit down to learn fun facts about each other until all participants are out. When everyone is out, the group reforms into a circle and people introduce their partners to the group with their new fun facts.
Prayer Stations:
#1 One Liners - posted on one wall is a journal entry from a teenager. after reading, students are given post-it notes and asked to write one line prayers and stick them to the journal entry on the wall. We used an anonymous blog and edited out any mentions of names or personal information. I was surprised to see what resonated with students from the blog. Relationships, school, homework procrastination, difficulty with parents, all of these got lots of prayers. The point of the station was also quickly learned that a prayer cna be a short intercession.
#2 One Word - in a darkened room, students huddled around a table and smooth stones. Rotating around the circle, each student took time to create one word with the smooth stones as a prayer. Words ranged from names to countries, families, topics, and events. this was the most contemplative station, and the sound of stones moving across the table top was a beautiful break in the silence as students concentrated on the one word prayer being offered by their peer.
#3 Maps - at this station I hung maps of our city, our country, and our world on the wall. Using bingo markers to make dots, students came up to the map one at a time and marked a spot on a map, then explained to the group why that particular place was on their mind or in need of prayers. They concluded each explanation by saying: "Lord in your name," and the group responded with "hear our prayer." This station was amazingly visual and allowed some of our differently abled participants to really be a part of experience. Schools, vacation destinations, families, conflicts were all prayed for. Surprisingly the station allowed students to connect with each other quite a bit as they explained pieces of their lives that they don't always share, like a brother who lives far away or a concern that they have been wonderign about.
#4 Dinner Prayers - at this station students were instructed to write the words to the prayers that we sing each evening before we eat dinner. It was definitely a servant station to help newer students learn the prayers that we sing each night, and we'll use these poster boards in weeks and years to come as we pray. When they were finished writing on a poster board they were also instructed to write their own song/prayer. Of all the stations this was the most silly. Partly my fault, I left out the hula hoops from our gathering time so there was a little more activity than desired. Only one group tried to write a prayer, and it was also probably too short of a time to come up with something useful. Many groups loved to write though, which made this station a good release for our students.
This weeks group was preceded by a mission trip meeting for all 8-12th graders going on our summer mission. I never allow our regular youth group time to be dominated by one of these meetings because there are kids who come to youth group who don't attend the summer trips and kids who come on the trips who don't regularly attend youth group.
Ice breaker: Eyes and Toes. The group forms a large circle and in instructed to look at everyone else's toes. On command (eyes), students look up and stare at someone else's eyes in the circle. If that person is staring back, both people are removed from the circle, as partners they sit down to learn fun facts about each other until all participants are out. When everyone is out, the group reforms into a circle and people introduce their partners to the group with their new fun facts.
Prayer Stations:
#1 One Liners - posted on one wall is a journal entry from a teenager. after reading, students are given post-it notes and asked to write one line prayers and stick them to the journal entry on the wall. We used an anonymous blog and edited out any mentions of names or personal information. I was surprised to see what resonated with students from the blog. Relationships, school, homework procrastination, difficulty with parents, all of these got lots of prayers. The point of the station was also quickly learned that a prayer cna be a short intercession.
#2 One Word - in a darkened room, students huddled around a table and smooth stones. Rotating around the circle, each student took time to create one word with the smooth stones as a prayer. Words ranged from names to countries, families, topics, and events. this was the most contemplative station, and the sound of stones moving across the table top was a beautiful break in the silence as students concentrated on the one word prayer being offered by their peer.
#3 Maps - at this station I hung maps of our city, our country, and our world on the wall. Using bingo markers to make dots, students came up to the map one at a time and marked a spot on a map, then explained to the group why that particular place was on their mind or in need of prayers. They concluded each explanation by saying: "Lord in your name," and the group responded with "hear our prayer." This station was amazingly visual and allowed some of our differently abled participants to really be a part of experience. Schools, vacation destinations, families, conflicts were all prayed for. Surprisingly the station allowed students to connect with each other quite a bit as they explained pieces of their lives that they don't always share, like a brother who lives far away or a concern that they have been wonderign about.
#4 Dinner Prayers - at this station students were instructed to write the words to the prayers that we sing each evening before we eat dinner. It was definitely a servant station to help newer students learn the prayers that we sing each night, and we'll use these poster boards in weeks and years to come as we pray. When they were finished writing on a poster board they were also instructed to write their own song/prayer. Of all the stations this was the most silly. Partly my fault, I left out the hula hoops from our gathering time so there was a little more activity than desired. Only one group tried to write a prayer, and it was also probably too short of a time to come up with something useful. Many groups loved to write though, which made this station a good release for our students.
This weeks group was preceded by a mission trip meeting for all 8-12th graders going on our summer mission. I never allow our regular youth group time to be dominated by one of these meetings because there are kids who come to youth group who don't attend the summer trips and kids who come on the trips who don't regularly attend youth group.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Semaphore
Last night at youth group we talked about truth, specifically how do you know that the Bible is true, and what that should mean to us. To begin our evening we played an icebreaker game that I call Jello, then played a game about communication using Semaphores, followed by a short discussion including a few stories from me, and then moved to small groups before closing the evening with campfire worship.
JELLO
During this game one person stands in the middle of the circle and attempts to get out of the circle by walking up to someone in the circle, pointing at them, saying one of the silly words, and then counting to ten as fast as possible. In reaction, the person pointed to, and the person on each side of them, performs an action that matches the word. If the counting person is able to get to ten before the three people are able to complete the action, they can join the circle and the person who failed to correctly do the action takes their place in the middle of the circle. I always begin this game by teaching three actions: Jello, Kamikaze, and Hamburger. Then we play the game until it seems that everyone understands how to play, or if one person is in the middle too long, I will rescue them by taking their place and teaching a new action. We concluded 20 minutes of play, adding in the following signs: Elephant, Hammock, Fire Hydrant, and Cheeseburger.
SEMAPHORES
This game was a game I invented for the evening to begin our conversation about the difficulty of communication. I split our group into teams and then explained that they would be competing against each other to communicate a code from one side of the room to the other. The communication style used would be semaphore (which is the spelling out of letters using flags or arms). So teams were given the Semaphore instructions sheets and were given a few minutes to form a strategy. Then each team sent part of their team to the far side of the room where a basket was filled with slips of paper containing codes to be transmitted. The other part of the team was shown where answers where (pictures of different colored shapes) and were told that they would only get two guesses for each code, if guessed incorrectly twice, their team would have to choose a new code. For some extra fun I decided to make the codes not match the pictures exactly, but require some interpretation, so the code for red square actually said: RED FOUR SIDES. It wasn't terribly confusing, but it definitely required some extra thought. After the kids picked up on the interpretations the code givers started to interpret before sending a code, sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly. One group had decided ahead of time to use abbreviations for all their transmissions and were really lost when the code was "gold" instead of yellow. All of this difficulty worked it's way into our conversation which followed about how we communicate and the difficulty that we have communicating accurately sometimes.
We transitioned into our conversation and I shared a few stories about miscommunication (John's college homework assignment and a story about the telegraph). Then started talking about how we know that the Bible is true, accurate. This conversation then led into the small groups, framing a deeper discussion about getting the truth out of the Bible rather than being bogged down with the exact words, translations, or how authentic the story might be. The lesson was about reading the Bible for the truth, rather than reading it like a history book.
The small groups each ended with the same conclusion: we should try to read our Bible more.
JELLO
During this game one person stands in the middle of the circle and attempts to get out of the circle by walking up to someone in the circle, pointing at them, saying one of the silly words, and then counting to ten as fast as possible. In reaction, the person pointed to, and the person on each side of them, performs an action that matches the word. If the counting person is able to get to ten before the three people are able to complete the action, they can join the circle and the person who failed to correctly do the action takes their place in the middle of the circle. I always begin this game by teaching three actions: Jello, Kamikaze, and Hamburger. Then we play the game until it seems that everyone understands how to play, or if one person is in the middle too long, I will rescue them by taking their place and teaching a new action. We concluded 20 minutes of play, adding in the following signs: Elephant, Hammock, Fire Hydrant, and Cheeseburger.
SEMAPHORES
This game was a game I invented for the evening to begin our conversation about the difficulty of communication. I split our group into teams and then explained that they would be competing against each other to communicate a code from one side of the room to the other. The communication style used would be semaphore (which is the spelling out of letters using flags or arms). So teams were given the Semaphore instructions sheets and were given a few minutes to form a strategy. Then each team sent part of their team to the far side of the room where a basket was filled with slips of paper containing codes to be transmitted. The other part of the team was shown where answers where (pictures of different colored shapes) and were told that they would only get two guesses for each code, if guessed incorrectly twice, their team would have to choose a new code. For some extra fun I decided to make the codes not match the pictures exactly, but require some interpretation, so the code for red square actually said: RED FOUR SIDES. It wasn't terribly confusing, but it definitely required some extra thought. After the kids picked up on the interpretations the code givers started to interpret before sending a code, sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly. One group had decided ahead of time to use abbreviations for all their transmissions and were really lost when the code was "gold" instead of yellow. All of this difficulty worked it's way into our conversation which followed about how we communicate and the difficulty that we have communicating accurately sometimes.
We transitioned into our conversation and I shared a few stories about miscommunication (John's college homework assignment and a story about the telegraph). Then started talking about how we know that the Bible is true, accurate. This conversation then led into the small groups, framing a deeper discussion about getting the truth out of the Bible rather than being bogged down with the exact words, translations, or how authentic the story might be. The lesson was about reading the Bible for the truth, rather than reading it like a history book.
The small groups each ended with the same conclusion: we should try to read our Bible more.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Four On A Couch
Last night at youth group we played one of my top five youth group games: Four on a Couch. It's a dreadful name game because everyone in the circle has a new name, but it's loads of fun, and a good way to spend some time as a group. The concept of the game is simple. Each person writes their name on a slip of paper, puts it into a hat and draws a new secret name to be played with during the game. Then the group divides into two and sits in a circle of chairs, identifying four of those chairs as a couch by pushing them together. Teams sit every other person and leave one extra chair in the circle. The game is played by allowing the person sitting next to the open chair to call a name from someone in the group. Whoever drew that name moves across the circle to the empty chair, leaving a new empty chair ready for the next person to be called. And though it seems simple, the object of the game is to get 4 people of your team onto the couch and it's more difficult than it appears.
It works best if you have an even number of boys and girls, but as that is rarely the case, doling out hats works as well. Last night we asked one team to remove shoes and played a game of socks versus shoes. It's fun to play with an actual couch, but because we have a few students with disabilities the chairs meant that wheelchairs could be used all around the circle. We try to make all of our games and activities inclusive this way, with varying degrees of success, but this game was very inclusive and everyone could participate fully! Yay!
The easy way to play the game is detailed above, but if you're up for a challenge, or you've played the game once or twice, you can ramp up the difficulty by adding the following rule: every time you sit down, you exchange names with the person on your right. That ensures lots of confusion and even the smartest kids in the group have a hard time remembering who has who's name.
We followed the game with a great discussion about names and how they shape our identity. Then we read a passage from John 1 and talked further about the names that we call God, what they really mean, and the way that God changes our name (as he did with Peter).
This was a pretty classic youth group evening for our group. It came on the heels of the 30 hour famine (Friday/Saturday), so I wasn't sure how our attendance would look. Personally, I was still exhausted from the famine and the extra energy it took to plan the event, so I needed something that was a little easier to plan and the couch game, name conversation is just about the easiest that it can get for me.
Yesterday we also experimented with a new event called Parent's Night at Confirmation. No students, just parents going through a sample confirmation evening. It was a mild success. The attendance was a little lower than expected, though we managed to make it just as chaotic as a normal evening of confirmation :) I think we'll have better response at the beginning of the school year next year and I'm looking forward to making it better!
It works best if you have an even number of boys and girls, but as that is rarely the case, doling out hats works as well. Last night we asked one team to remove shoes and played a game of socks versus shoes. It's fun to play with an actual couch, but because we have a few students with disabilities the chairs meant that wheelchairs could be used all around the circle. We try to make all of our games and activities inclusive this way, with varying degrees of success, but this game was very inclusive and everyone could participate fully! Yay!
The easy way to play the game is detailed above, but if you're up for a challenge, or you've played the game once or twice, you can ramp up the difficulty by adding the following rule: every time you sit down, you exchange names with the person on your right. That ensures lots of confusion and even the smartest kids in the group have a hard time remembering who has who's name.
We followed the game with a great discussion about names and how they shape our identity. Then we read a passage from John 1 and talked further about the names that we call God, what they really mean, and the way that God changes our name (as he did with Peter).
This was a pretty classic youth group evening for our group. It came on the heels of the 30 hour famine (Friday/Saturday), so I wasn't sure how our attendance would look. Personally, I was still exhausted from the famine and the extra energy it took to plan the event, so I needed something that was a little easier to plan and the couch game, name conversation is just about the easiest that it can get for me.
Yesterday we also experimented with a new event called Parent's Night at Confirmation. No students, just parents going through a sample confirmation evening. It was a mild success. The attendance was a little lower than expected, though we managed to make it just as chaotic as a normal evening of confirmation :) I think we'll have better response at the beginning of the school year next year and I'm looking forward to making it better!
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