in the beginning - of the year

Last night at youth group we began our year... and we're off and running. 49 students and 13 leaders made for a very full youth room, loads of energy and very powerful evening.

Some news things for our group this year will include:

technology - we've installed a big screen TV and computer in the main youth space which allowed us to open the evening with spotify songs (thanks to some great lists made by YoungLife), a powerpoint trivia warm up game, youtube clips during our large group, and some interactive polls (polleverywhere.com).

small groups - we always have small groups to debrief our experiences, but this year we are establishing permanent small groups that will meet each week. We experimented with this last year during house groups and I think our group is both large enough to support them, diverse enough to need them and craving depth enough to appreciate them. So a few weeks ago I sorted leaders into teams to lead small groups and we had kind of a draft for the students. Last night they found out who and where they would be each week during small group and began those great conversations.

So the evening unfolded as planned:

Gathering + Snacks

Opening Game: Powerpoint quiz game – hipster slang

Joys and Concerns

Ice Breaking Game: Train Wreck  

Poll (What's the hardest part of being Christian? - getting up on Sunday mornings)

Large Group - John 1 Lesson

Small Group Sorting

Small Group conversations

Worship

To make Trainwreck even better we had categories which helped them think of ideas and move our conversation from the summer towards how we see ourselves. I didn't know if we could play this game for 20 minutes like we did, but every once in a while I paused the game and had kids talk with their neighbor. that and the categories really helped hold their attention and the game didn't get tired.

The lesson was great! I worked hard to scorre the message and we talked about the choice that we make with a mirror - to reflect ourselves and see our flaws or to reflect others and the light of God. the youtube clips aren't perfectly smooth from powerpoint, but it wasn't distracting because I used them at the beginning. since the talk was focused on reflections I handed out mirrors to each person as they left as a reminder.

Small groups really focused on how we see ourselves, our reputations and the ease and difficulty of being who God wants us to be - a total win in all the groups!

And then we closed everything up beautifully during our worship moment by writing on the backs of the mirrors: you are a child of God, holy and dearly loved, Jesus loves you and so do I. it's a phrase that Marilyn Sharpe uses and we adopted it into our group last year. we close the evening by saying those words to each other, they were perfect to write on the back of a mirror.