Bonfire

Last night we closed our year of youth group with our annual cookout and bonfire. Great attendance and I think we honored our seniors and welcomed our incoming 8th graders well. It's hard to host the final event of the year on Mother's Day. We did have a good turn out though, it helps when it's a special event I think.

6:00 Dinner - was good we lit the charcoal grills at 4:45 and would have had time to grill everything with two grills going, if we didn't have a grill catastrophe. microwaved/boiled hotdogs instead... burgers worked though.

6:40 Cleanup and announcements - two leaders stayed inside to clean up

6:40 Ice Breaker – the Partner Gamble

Choose a partner and take a place in our circle.

Hold hands with partner so that you know who you belong too.

Round operates like this:

1. Learn their names, grade, school…
2. Share a random fact
3. Gamble on the question – the incumbent makes a guess and the challenger says higher or lower.
4. The winner stays, the loser leaves to find a new partner

Great game for our kids. lots of laughter and fun. Definitely a repeatable game.

7:10 Partner Ultimate Chicken in Vanderveer

You and your partner will be tied together in order to play, only using one arm a piece.

Can only hold the chicken for 10 seconds… leaders are judges

Fun, but a failed game. we only played for about 5 minutes. the legs were too frustrating and funny to be effective. I added a few extra chickens when I realized that it wasn't going to work. and then ended the game shortly afterwards.

7:30 gather at bonfire for drinks and devotion time

Senior Wisdom - we asked questions and the seniors, standing in a line answered one word at a time. was a great way to honor the seniors and have some laughter. 

Singing

Devotion about Josh 1:9 - choosing to look at your life transitions with confidence or fear. then transitioned into Pebble in the Pond where I invited kids to come forward adn mention the name of someone who has made a splash in their life, given them confidence.

the wilderness

Last night at youth group we had really wonderful conversation led by a very courageous faith story. This was our final senior faith story of the year and the young man sharing has been through a lot of dip and turns in his faith over the last few months. When we spoke a few weeks ago in a coffee shop we both came to the conclusion that if I had asked him to share in the beginning of the year his story would have been wholly different. As it is, with graduation looming, some disappointment realized, some difficult expectations laid on him by parents, and some deep reflection, my student found himself deep in the wilderness for this faith story. But after we talked several times and worked our way through his story and what wilderness looks like, I think he gave a very authentic talk about having doubts about faith that propelled our students into a very engaged discussions.

6:30 Gathering

during our gathering I pump the room full of music from spotify and we provide snacks. This week the music was good, but a litttle loud.

6:40 Ice Breaker guess the identity

Using powerpoint images of celebrities I animated the slide show so that celebrities appeared through the disolve feature. I then adjusted the timing to be 30-60 seconds per image. It makes a pixilating reveal of the photo perfect for students to guess. It's always surprising to see how quickly some students are to recognize faces. (I even included one of our senior pastor, which was guessed surprisingly quickly)

6:45 Joys and Concerns

My favorite was "there are few concerns tonight". In actuality I struggle with the pastor care part of this. Often I know about things that the students don't know yet and keep myself from mentioning them. There are always many more concerns than are listed.

6:55 Large Group

We played a short game of charades, divided into three teams, each team had one minute to get through as many words as possible. simple, fun, lots of laughs.

7:10 Bible Story

I shared the story of the Road to Emmaeus with the students. it fit perfectly with the faith story and set up a nice framework to wonder about how God is near us when we don't realize it.

7:15 Faith Story

Was really well done. my senior was funny and serious. He is well respected in our group even if he doesn' come all that regularly. it was a powerful story because he really chose his words wisely and made them count.

7:30 Small Groups

Kind of our last small group of the year, I made one small group all seniors, one all freshman and the other two were mixed. The freshman small group I also added two Juniors who were seniors which really helped keep the conversation on track.

8:10 Worship