Youth Ministry Ideas » Youth Ministry Icebreakers

Everyday Im Shuffling

Steve — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:02:10 +0000

This is an oldie but a goodie. If you have never tried playing a game called shuffle your buns for your youth ministry, then you need to because its a great warm up ice-breaking – possibly chair-breaking experience!

How to play:

Have your students circle up with their chairs. Have one student step into the center of the circle and when you say shuffle and pick a direction, the student in the middle is trying to get into the open chair but has he or she tries the group is “shuffling their buns” into the empty chair making it difficult to get into the space. If the student gets in the chair before the next person shuffles – then the person that was supposed to shuffle into the chair now has to go into the center and be the person to try and get into the open chair.

Tips:

Switch directions. So right in the middle of playing yell out SWITCH and have the circle go the opposite direction.
Some guys and gals are too aggressive so just remind them to take er easy
You may have to have more then one circle going depending on how large your group is. Too big is bad and too small won’t work very well either.
Play some music while doing this – a popular song that you may or may not want to use at the time of this post is party rock anthem – only bc its upbeat and they use the phrase, “Everyday im shuffling” but you hafta make the call what is appropriate in your church setting.

Another great thing about this is there is virtually no set up at all and it’s fun when you and or your leaders play too!

3 Questions That Will Inspire Discussion

mikequery — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:55:04 +0000

In my time as a youth ministry leader, I’ve lead many Bible discussion groups for high school aged kids in the Bay Area. Most of them have been fun and engaging, but many have been dull, lifeless, and uninspiring. I’ve learned a lot from those not so great sessions, and what I’ve come to realize is that inspiring teens to want to learn about God means you really have to speak to the heart.A teenager’s life is filled with insecurity (how do I look to my friends?), fear (I don’t know if I’m going to make the team!) and worry (so much homework…), so they want to hear something that will speak to what they’re going through. Also, the word needs to be packaged in a way that is attractive to them. Consider Jesus’ approach to teaching:

This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;

though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

Matthew 13:13 (NIV)

Jesus realized that people needed illustration and animated discussion to get points accross. Unless we’re in a lecture hall that we paid thousands of dollars to sit in, we all need stimulation to understand deeper insights.

The following are 3 questions that should help stir discussion in your smaller groups (6-12 kids). A good approach to take would be to open with a question, engage in conversations with several kids giving answers, before looking at a scripture that relates to the topic, or an issue that relates to the questoin.

1. What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

This is a great question because the answers will almost certainly be up the wall. It’s usually not a bad idea to ask the question, then open with your own crazy story to give teens the time to think of their own. Don’t be afraid to set the bar high with some wackiness…just make sure it’s not too outlandish.

The spiritual concept you’d want to drive here is that your true self comes out in crazy situations. It isn’t always negative…sometimes crazy stories illuminate instances of courage or love. Try looking for scriptures that talk about being real.

2. What is the hardest thing to talk to parents about?

Parents will always, always be a sensitive and emotional issue for teens. One thing to be wary about going into a time with teens is to get an idea of the backgrounds of some kids in the group, so you can be sensitive to their tougher situations. For example, this may not be a good question for a group that largely consists of kids from broken homes.

Scriptures that talk about love, honesty, and being freed up from guilt would be good for this question after 10-15 minutes of discussion. James 5:16 comes to mind, which talks about getting things out on the table in order to feel refreshed.

3. What do you look for most in a friend?

A goal everyone should always have is how to be more loving. In high school, teens are constantly plagued with insecurity, and are always wondering what people are thinking of them. Getting a group together and talking about great qualities will inadvertedly encourage everyone when they start seeing ways they’ve exhibited them already, and how there can be hope for a confident and secure high school life.

Scriptures about loving one another would be great to bring up here. John 13:34 is a great passage that talks about how taking the initiative to love will actually attract people to you. The best way to get friends (which everyone in high school wants more than anything) is to be active in loving people. You could also look at 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, which talks about changing yourself to win people over.

Mike Query is a web dude for http://www.bacc.cc and contributes to various Christian, technology and community service blogs.

Kahootz

Steve — Tue, 17 May 2011 02:01:14 +0000

Kahootz (made up word basically for a game that makes it appear that you have telepathy) – is a fun game to play in your small group. It takes only two people to mesmerize the rest of your group.

How To Play:

You will be the one to tell your group that you can communicate to your partner (other person that knows how to play) by getting in “Kahootz” with him or her. Tell your group that you are going to have your partner leave the room and once he or she can’t see or here, together you and the group pick any object (it really can be anything, even a spec of dirt) and then once decided, bring back your partner.

When the partner comes into the room – tell everyone that in order for your to communicate with your partner you have to get into Kahootz with him or her so you need to tell everyone that you must have absolute silence for this to happen.

*Side Note* Getting them all to be quiet is important to giving your partner the clue as to what the object is because the object that he or she will guess correctly will always be the object after the 1st person who makes a noise after you told the group to be quiet.

For example, you tell everyone to be quiet and then “jonny” laughs or snickers or says this is lame – you need to ask your partner if he or she is in kahootz with you because as long as you and your partner both know that jonny was the 1st person to make a noise in the group after you asked for quietness – then your partner will know that the object the group had selected will always be the object after you mention something about jonny.

So let’s say that the group picked a cup on the counter, so what will happen is you will be looking at your partner and say is it: this lamp, the partner will look and say nope, then ask, is it this pencil and he or she will say nope and you can do this for however long you want, but once you say, is it jonny’s coat – he or she will say no, but this will also let your partner know that the correct object then is the next object you mention.

The key is to make sure that you and your partner know who the first person to make some type of noise is because that is the person you are playing off of for the correct object. If your partner is unsure, then they should say that they are not in kahootz yet and tell everyone to be quiet again and start over until you and your partner or both certain of who this person is before you start mentioning different objects in the room.

Congratulations – you totally mesmerized your small group!

Play as many times as you want and if someone in your small group thinks they know how it works, have them whisper in your ear and if they have it right – then they can be the new partner to send out of the room – if they are not correct – then they can’t play because they won’t know how to play.

Of course make it as fun as you can by holding your hands to your head and act like you are trying to beam the information to him or her.

I hope this makes sense – please leave a comment if you still have any questions about how to play this game.

Have Fun!

Starburst Get To Know You Ice Breaker

Steve — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:38:35 +0000

This youth ministry idea is to get your students sharing stuff about themselves.

Here’s how it works:

When your students come into your group setting – be it small or a large group (however small groups work best and if you have a large group break them into small groups first) ask them to grab some starburst candy out of a bowl.

If they ask how many pieces – say it’s up to you but not more then….(whatever limit you want to set) and then once the group has taken any where from 1 piece to 10 pieces or whatever your limit is… then explain to them that they need to share with the group something that they currently like to do, or something interesting, or something someone may not know about them, but they have to share based on how many starburst they took from the bowl so that student that took 10 pieces has to share 10 things about his or herself.

Another variation of this game could be:

Have them share something specific based on the flavor or flavors that they picked. For example: If they picked an orange piece of candy they have to share something funny about their past. If they pick a pink one they have to say who there favorite girl teacher is/was and why.

So just make it fun and be creative which ever way you decide to do this ice breaker for your youth ministry

Not Too Light Not Too Heavy Activity

Steve — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:43:10 +0000

I actually thought this was a great youth ministry idea after seeing all the different too light too heavy bud-light commercials. This is an activity that can be developed around a passage or passages of scripture or themes.

I’m not sure how theologically this will line up, but there are certainly many scripture passages like in I Tim. which speaks about elder qualifications and speaks of people with great sober minded character and not a person with extreme sides to them.

How to do this:

Have clip of the commercial ready to go and you can choose to edit out the bud-light part if you wish. Play the clip and then have groups of teens come up with their own too light too heavy clip based off of some different themes and then at the end tag it with Jesus not too heavy not too light.

Here are some themes:

Evangelism/Witnessing
Worship Leading
Greeter
Serving Food

Try and get them to get it to 1 minute in length or less. Preview them to make sure they are ok to show in front of group. Show the videos and then talk about how being too light or too heavy in how we do our Christian walk isn’t the best way to live for Jesus.

Jesus showed us a great example of not being too light or too heavy. He didn’t try and razzle and dazzle and sound trumpets when he performed miracles, but rather often told people not to tell anyone. He was not too light or too heavy on the woman caught in adultery.

Note: there are certain situations where being too light or too heavy was ok (example when he was before pilot and was quiet, when Jesus turned over the tables) but Jesus shows us the best all round way to live life!

Hope this sparks some interest in your youth ministry about having conversations about Christians that are too light with their Christianity and those Christians that are giving Christianity a bad name due to being too heavy. Maybe you could also talk about: Can you be too extreme/heavy as a Christian.