Picture Madlibs

Last night at youth group we dove into some creative activities by playing picture madlibs. It was a great way to build on the past few weeks of energy, incorporate new people, and spend an evening with doing more artistic activity rather than being physically active. It required a little preparation, but was well worth the laughter and fun.

A few weeks ago during our house groups I challenged each group to submitted 30 picture poses (a list I had provided). Those poses were mostly adjectives or short phrases (just winning the lottery, smart, annoyed, acting like a dinosaur, on a roller coaster...). I've been sifting through the photos in the last two weeks trying to match the pose to the words and deciding which pictures were the best to use. Then I pulled out pictures in groups of 10 to create a crazy word list, which corresponded to a powerpoint slide show of the 10 pictures. Of course, all of this was unknown for our students.

So last night, after a warm-up game of reverse charades, I divided the group into 8 teams (because I had 8 slideshows). The simple instructions were to write a story that included all 10 words/phrases in order. The story needed to have at least 10 sentences and each team was given a name (tigers, coffee cups, spacemen...) that was also to be included in the story as a theme somehow. The groups were given 15 minutes, then reported back to the youth room where I had setup the projector. As each group read their story aloud, I asked them to pause each time they used one of the provided words and I showed the next photo.

Part of the success of the game was the unknown: kids had no idea that I was going to use the photos, or what photo would come next. The stories were clever, and though some had plot, many would have been flops if it had not been for the funny pictures associated with them. The whole experience took about 30-35 minutes. I transitioned into small groups by reading the Bible story that we were about to study as a madlib with about 25 of the best photos included in the story. This part was just okay, I think it was too silly to actually jump-start conversation and I think people were too distracted by the photos to hear the story.

Small groups studied the passage of Jesus healing the demoniac in Luke 8:26-39. It's a passage that can go lots of ways. You can talk about chains, or additions, or encountering Jesus. Unfortunately I think the silliness of madlibs and some unclear setup by me, made the Bible study a little disjointed. I think small groups work better when I spend the first few minutes getting everyone really into the study by opening up the topics. Leaders seem to have a better time thinking of their own questions and the conversations are smoother. Even with 25 minutes last night there were still kids wishing they had more time in Bible study.

Other notes about the evening:
Two small groups used our booths in the youth room and decided afterwards that we'll have to install some more barriers or noise eating materials in the room because it was difficult to concentrate. I think the problem was that one group was laughing a lot as they shared and the other was quite serious. Hopefully we'll be able to fix this issue before too long and we'll have ideal small group spaces!