silent laughter

Last night at youth group our students played one of their favorite games - Silent Football. This is one of those games that you either love or hate, but either way only can be played once in a while to keep it fresh.

Our evening was definitely shaped by student conflicts of musicals/plays at every high school and a cross country banquet too. I was sure that our attendance would be abysmal  but was surprised to see a handful of new students join us and others who haven't been around much. Just proves that you can just never predict this group.

I planned silent football anticipating lower numbers but when we had strong attendance divided our group into two groups to play.

Following a good 30 minutes of silent laughter during the game we returned to the youth room for our large group. It could have been great! Looking at John 6:1-15 there is a segment of dialogue between Jesus and the disciples that can seriously be taken in all kinds of ways. Was Jesus being sarcastic? cynical? stern? Were the disciples overwhelmed? concerned? flippant? joking... there are a lot of options and I intended to use three students to read and re-read the dialogue in all the versions. But the students were overcome with laughter and literally couldn't get through it even once. Alas, I yanked them from the stage and continued minus this powerful example.

The small group conversation that followed was interesting as kids talked about miracles, Jesus being elected as a president (6:15) and how they react to God's power in the world. Not a bad night, not at all!