Leader Hunt

Last night at youth group we played a camp favorite in our building called Leader Hunt. The entire evening was centered around getting to know each other better, getting to know our adult leaders better, and getting to know God better.

Leader Hunt was a perfect way to get our kids exposed to our leaders, and show off their more silly sides - and it was super simple. I collected a list of 5 strange facts from each adult leader then made a list of all the facts randomized. For my purposes, I also dropped one of their strange facts, and I also made a master list of who's facts belonged to whom and photocopied for the leaders. Then I dismissed the leaders to hide throughout the building and asked teenagers to get into pairs or triples. While the leaders hid, I read through the entire list of crazy facts with the students and went over rules, then dismissed them for 30 minutes of running around, asking questions, and getting to know our leaders.

 We returned to the youth room and counted up scores. With 48 items on the list the highest score was 13. we probably had too many crazy facts, but it worked out. Once back in the room I read through the list again and asked kids to shout out correct answers which was rewarding for leaders and enlightening for students. Then we broke into our new small groups for the spring semester. The tedious process that I used was to do a role call, sorting each leader into their group and their kids. I've tried to think of other ways, but given that we had 6 friends join us last night, and about half of our core group was missing, this was the best way. it only takes a minute or so to read the list and get everyone to the right space.

In small group the kids got to know each other better by using a few small group resources. The Comfy Chair is a deck of cards that has three questions on each card of varying depths. the choice allows a student to answer one question depending on how comfortable they are with the group. The Ungame is a similar card deck with one question per card. I asked students to read the card aloud and and say the name of someone in the group who was to answer the question. then the card reader could also respond. And finally I also used a milestone bowl for one group. This item has a mousepad with 10 milestones on it, and a clay bowl with 10 matching tokens. on your turn you randomly grab a token, match it to the milestone and then talk about the corresponding milestone in your life: high point, low point, new beginning, quest, gratitude, remembering, loss...

We closed our evening with our normal prayer and praise - a few songs, then a devotion from John 8:31-38. I invited students to think about what they learn about God from a passage like this, then I read it aloud, and after a moment of reflection I asked them to share aloud. good answers for that huge group and that quiet space!

**an added bonus to the leader hunt game is that we can carry it over for the next few days. I'll be posting these crazy facts to the facebook walls of teenagers who didn't make it to youth group over the next few days.