Communion

Last night at youth group we played one of our more dangerous games: the bus game. On its surface it doesn't seem to be more than just a game of tag, but when you throw in a few crazy rules and put it to music - oh baby it gets crazy.

We began the evening with a quick warm up (a powerpoint quiz) and then moved on with Joys and Concerns and then into the next room for the bus game. This time we created three buses, and had two chasers and two people being chased. Then we throw in all kinds of rules like:
Bus Stop - everyone changes seats on the bus
Chinese Fire Drill - everyone leaves their seat and runs around their bus and then finds a new seat
Rosa Parks - everyone moves forward two rows and the front two rows move to the back
Forrest Gump (right and left) - everyone shifts seats leaving columns of open seats

During this game I find a microphone essential! The game is a game of chase, but when we add one of these crazy rules, we have to be able to quickly identify who is the new chaser and the new runner (the two people left without a chair).

After a crazy game like the bus game we took a few minutes to settle back into the youth room. I think changing locations is really helpful for this transition, as is a reminder that we are changing modes in our youth group time.

For this evening I led a Bible study up front - so all students were given a Bible as they entered the youth room (another mood changer). I used powerpoint to walk students through the story (highlighting verses that I wanted to draw attention to). The story of John 6:25-68 is probably not used often in youth groups, and it was a struggle for me to teach about. There isn't much story to use and there is an awful lot of repetitive talk, so the powerpoint was really useful to skip over that repetition and focus on Jesus being the Bread of Life. I ended the study by talking about our own communion with God and then Pastor Katy led us through communion before heading to our small groups and discussing the tradition of communion and forgiveness in our own lives.