Photo Challenge

Last night at youth group we began our evening with an ice breaker like normal. I picked photos from the 'what's the word' app and created a short version of the game for our teenagers. I randomly assigned teams as people walked into the room and then I projected the 4 images and had the appropriate amount of blanks listed at the bottom of the screen. Kids raised their hands and I called on them to guess the solution. It worked well, I wish I had made more than 10 images.

After our joys and concerns I asked the kids to stay in their same group while we participated in a photo challenge. Nothing too big, just a list of 20 words and a few instructions: must stay together as a group, only submit 20 photos, someone from the group should be in each photo, props must be returned unharmed after use, time limit to return in 30 minutes. Then the teams spread out across the building snapping photos.

* A quick note about cameras. I have several youth cameras. I collect them. whenever someone doesn't want a digital camera, I ask for it. And since our communications team has been through several camera transitions, and I've had a few more donated, I do have several cameras that use. they are definitely not all equal, but they work!

As we regathered I explained that our photos that we just snapped would be used to create our own version of 'what's the word' that I posted this morning on facebook and emailed links to parents. The pictures are okay, but grouped together they look great.

Then we settled into a quick Bible story where I walked the students through the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I used lots of images and projected short snippets from the text. it was okay, but I definitely should have read through my script once more. I was a little shaky, but I think the spirit intervened and provoked our kids into really good discussions in small groups about resurrection and our resurrection at the end times.

Peer Pressure

Last night at youth group one of our brave seniors shared her faith story with our group. Her words weren't perfect. Sometimes she rambled. Sometimes she stumbled over words. Sometimes she told about her story rather than telling her story. BUT her emotion spoke clearly and her perspective was powerful for our group to behold. She shared about being popular, carving out an identity as different than her friends, and standing up to peer pressure, but feeling isolated and lonely in her decision. Eventually caving into peer pressure having to re-frame her mind about who she is and who she is called to be... it was a great story and our students were treated to great conversation afterwards.

Our evening began like any other: a gathering time, ice breaker questions and sharing joys and concerns. Then we moved to the fellowship hall and played group game of Pictionary relay. The 40 words I had on my list took about 15 minutes for the fastest group - but to make the game feel close I caught everyone else up several times throughout the game. Part of the fun for this game is watching kids run across the room to receive the next word, their competitive spirits flying. It was a great game for the evening.

Then we transitioned back to our youth room and got quiet so that we could focus on the faith story. I read scripture Genesis 50:20 to introduce our story about how God can use bad things to good in our lives. Our small groups reacted to the story and also read a little of Micah 6:8 and discussed sacrifice, the practice of Lent, and if God wants us to sacrifice to be Christian.

We closed up worship with a trio of ukuleles leading our music... beautiful!

I am the gate

Last night at youth group we had great conversations. We have a tradition each week of beginning our evening (after some gathering snacks and some sort of weird ice breaker) of sharing our joys and concerns. As we receive these prayer requests from students and leaders with raised hands, we share a moment of community. Sometimes it's kids who want to tell the group about making it to state, or receiving the lead role in the play, or that their grnadmother died... and last night's moment of community was a great moment, with lots of sharing, it began the evening great!

After our Joys and Concerns I explained the game of Secret Agent, which is a great mingling game. The basic premise is to walk around shaking hands with people while secretly one person, the secret agent, secretly scratches/taps the inside wrist of the person that they meet, thus killing them. Once a person is tapped, they need to shake at least two hands before collapsing to the floor in death.  Part of what makes this game great is that kids are talking with each other and the leader of the group can direct those conversations. To make the game a little better of a mixer, I told the kids that they were to keep shaking hands while they each asked the directed question and and both answered it. The game progresses as people share conversation (what was the last movie you've seen, what's your favorite vacation, where would you like to go before you die...) until someone would like to risk accusing someone of being the secret agent. An accuser raises their hand, the game is paused, and the accuser gets to accuse someone. If they're right the game is over, if they're wrong, the accuser is out.

For our group - once was perfect. We had used playing cards to determine who was the killer (the only one with a face) but when we attempted a second time playing the game a handful of kids cheated and killed each other. oh well.

Following our game we headed back into the youth room and dove into some scripture. I projected the Bible verses and we read them out loud as we talked about John 10:1-18. This year we've been reading through John and this was the next logical passage, but to make it especially relevant and interesting we referenced the news story last week about the LCMS pastor who apologized for participating in the Sandy Hook Vigil. The two phrases that stood out to our group which incited good discussion were: I am the gate, Whoever enters by me will be saved... and I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also. What great conversation those two passages held, especially given the Lutheran pastor apology.
 

Super Bowl Sunday

Last night at youth group was unconventional. personally I hate hosting the super bowl party, it's just a darn shame that it's held on a Sunday night conflicting with youth group. it's just too big to ignore, and just not good enough to really do anything with.

To my surprise we had a really good turn out this year I can't explain it, but they also watched most of the super bowl together... strange I know despite the myriad of games that I pulled from my personal shelves in anticipation of a non-football crowd. Here's what I did that worked:

I went to Papa Murphy's ahead of time and cooked pizzas during the game and invited leaders and kids to bring snacks (potluck style).

We pulled in a second TV into our youth room and watched the game on it, while I used the projection TV to broadcast other less important but more entertaining things. We spent quite a bit of time using polleverywhere polls on this second TV, just having fun making fun of commercials. The polls are super simple to setup so we could do them on the spot and add questions. We also used this to play music from spotify during our 35 minute break when New Orleans power was out.

I borrowed the church flip camera and asked kids to show off their favorite Beyonce dance moves after the half time show. to be fair, few of the kids wanted to do this, but I was able to convince a few and generate a pretty sweet video which was then posted to our Facebook page.

We had a service project planned for the week before, which was canceled, and so during the 35 minute down-time we completed this project. BTW this is a super simple project that any group could do. We have a partnership with a local middle school and one of these upcoming weeks is a state-wide assessment test. So we provide a small envelope with goodies like pencil grips, stickers, bookmarks, pencils and hard candy. For our service project we have our high school kids write notes on the envelopes before stuffing them: you're awesome, you can do it, this test has nothing on you, good luck... after we make teams of 5-6 the kids just go to work writing the same note on each envelope filling it with 5-6 clever encouragements before taking them to get stuffed.

And since I'm evaluating... here's what didn't work:
The guessing game that I created was a total bomb. I tried to make it clever: guess the score after the first quarter, who will have the ball in to start the second quarter... but the kids just didn't care enough. perhaps prizes next year.

We had several kids bring friends to our super bowl party - which is really great but I didn't have a whole lot of leaders capture that unique opportunity. pretty much we all just sat in one spot and talked with people around us. I should have forced everyone to switch places a few times to get to know each other.