Messy Olympics

Last night at youth group we hosted our second annual messy olympics. This is an evening dedicated to getting messy with the craziest games I can imagine and then pulling it all together with the message of grace.

A few lessons... first, Thank God for Megaphones! It's difficult to host this event outside in September, you never know what the weather will be like and it gets dark about an hour into youth group time, but we tried this year to have the messiest events outside at the very beginning of the evening, which worked well. Outside also creates other problems like sound, containment, weather and lighting, but staying outside for 45 minutes was a great decision. Second, I was trying really hard to be messy without being wasteful. it's a challenge from my senior pastor, and I was trying to respect food. so in 3 games we wasted food, 2 games we didn't use food (alphabet soup was supposed to be food free), and 2 games we ate food. This was just okay, it's much easier to be wasteful, but I think we can even do with less food next time.

Egg Head (aka Egg Roulette) kids whack an egg over each others head, raw egg and you're out, hard boiled egg and you stay in. we played three rounds and on the third round everyone was given a raw egg except one person, so that there was one winner. First thing we did was get kids in a circle and have them pair up, then we passed out eggs and had them smash each other around the circle. this worked okay, but we had 4 eggs in the bowl for two people to increase the randomness (it meant that if you knew you had a hard boiled egg you weren't necessarily going to get a raw egg on your head), but it was also confusing for some of the kids... you mean we're both out... I also planned to sort kids into teams at this point, but the game was WAY too exciting and team sorting happened later.

once we formed teams things settled down in a nice pace. we had good games and it was under control for the most part. teams were definitely a good idea because it allowed some kids to watch, some kids to get really messy and everyone to have someone to cheer for.

Cracker Stacker - one team member balanced crackers on their head that were stacked by teammates using honey as glue. 2 minutes was plenty. next time a few more rules (like the crackers have to stay by themselves) would be helpful ahead of time.

Pudding Legs - two kids on the team were given panty hose to put over their heads, one team mate was then blindfolded and had to feed pudding cups to their team through the panty hose. Not a super messy game, but I had the contestants go inside to get ready as I explained the game to the teams, it created lots of excitement and energy, plus the kids got carried away with the pudding cups and a little food fighting ensued.

Jello Blow - two kids from each team came to the middle and took an end of a plastic tube filled with jello, on the whistle they both blew and the loser ended up with jello on their face. this game was mostly a fail. jello was too hard and difficult to blow, and it was too easy to cheat. plus it wasn't very messy. I tried this before hand with a coworker and thought it would go over better.

Then we headed inside to play Alphabet Soup. Teams relay raced to a pool filled with water, plastic fruit, ping pong balls, and rubber ducks, to find golf balls on the bottom with letters written on them. great game because it's reusable, exciting, and messy but not in a way that ruins clothes. of course I wish I hadn't put in the donuts in the water... donut water is gross, and it slowed down the game to a crawl. I also used two of each letter because we had so many teams but that was a little confusing too.

Cotton Nose - one team mate was chosen and then smeared with vasoline on their face. cotton balls were spread on the table and students were given one minute to transfer as many cotton balls into a bowl as possible. it worked okay. vasoline is really messy. I think some teams cheated, but it was fun to watch.

Cheeto face - one team mate was chosen and then smeared with whip cream on their face. cheese balls were spread on the table and students were given one minute to toss cheese balls and get them to stick on the face. hilarious! I wish it was a little more controlled, but it was very funny. whip cream does sting the eyes, and cheese balls are difficult to stick, plus the whip cream slides off fast. next time maybe we'll use shaving cream.

we tied everything together at the end with closing ceremonies. I handed out awards to winners of each competition. purchased from oriental trading the medals are "make your own" so we pre printed them to be game specific... awesome! then I gave a little youth talk about why we do messy olympics. Using Romans 3:23 and Romans 5:6-8 I made the case that we're all messy all the time and God loves us while we are messy. It was beautiful, relevant and a very sticky message.

During our closing worship, we really focused the group into some beautiful silence and then had one of our seniors share her faith story. it was great, all about faith mountain top experiences and why camp and the youth group means so much to her.