Youth Group Activities

 

Feel Free to discuss these activities or any others that you know of on my message board.

 

General Youth Group Activities

 

I've catalogued a bunch of youth-group activities for quick reference.
These apply to teenagers and young-adults.

1) Discussion. Kids like to talk and need to learn.Talk about a controversial issue or subject so that way children can explore their feelings on select issues and learn to coherently articulate their own viewpoints.

2) Play a song with a good message. Print out a copy of the lyrics for everyone. After listening to the song and a brief period of contemplation, the youth members can discuss what they feel the song meant/explain any symbolism inside and explai nhow it relates to their own life situation. Young-adults can and do relate to music well.

This site is mainly for teenaged kids. Not for pre-teens. And for groups up to say no more than 50 kids. That is not an exact number but this site it oriented for smaller groups.3. Veggie Tales are always cool. Veggie Tales is a Christian cartoon series with talking vegetables, a silly song, and a solid Biblical message.I know a lot of Christian teens really like veggie Tales. Even the older teens and adults like Veggie Tales.

3) Tell a story with a moral message in it. Sort of like a parable. One example is the story of the two frogs:

A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered around the pit. When they saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jumpout of the pit with all of their might. The group of frogs kept telling them to stop because they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died. The second frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. You see this frog was deaf, unable to hear what the others were saying. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.

Obviously that story teaches a very important moral message. It can then be discussed and applied ot every day life. Christian anecdotes are very easy to find. I have some catalogued on my own site here.

4) An ice breaker. Have everyone write four things about themselves on a card. No names, or male or female. All of the cards are collected and mixed. Everyone picks a card at random from the pile. The people then mingle and talk about what was written on the cards until you find the person for your card. During the mingling you will learn a lot about many of the other people. After everyone has found the person on their card, each person must introduce the person that is on their card and tell a little about them.

5) We all have a responsibility to help others. Getting kids involved in this is good. Lots of families do not have food and stuff around the holidays. You can contact an organization like the Salavation Army and they might give you a listing of such people or your church might even have one! You can have the kids raise money through sellling candy, a bake or crafts sale at church, a talent show etc. Use the money for charity. Feed less fortunate families around the holidays. If you can't find any donate the money to a Christian organzation or any other charity. I think the youth should be involved in stuff like this and this is one way to get them there. You can even have a youth-group run can drive at the church. If you know no families give the collected food to a place that does (e.g. soup kitched etc.). You can even have the youth group sponsor a child.They could write letters to and recieve them from their sponsored child as a group. Youth groups change over time though so try to make sure someone is willing to sponsor the child themselves should something happen.Its NOT expensive to sponsor a child. Ask them something how many cds they buy a month or movies they go see. A lot of people waste a lot of money that could be better spent somewheres else. A $16 CD is over half of what it costs to sponsor a child. The one I sponsor is only $28 dollars a month!

6) You can do a group activity together like building a youth group webpage or putting on a talent show or any such thing. The possibilities are endless.

7) You can play lots of word games. For instance, one game starts with "In my grandmother's suitcase I found an x." You have to go through the alphabet. For instance, the first kid: "In my grandmother's suitcase I found an apple." The second kid has to say, "in my grandmother's suitcase I found and apple and an object that begins with the lette b like a book. The third kid says...in my grandmother's suitcase I found an apple, a book and a c... and so on. The game ends when everyone has been eliminated but one person.

 

Specific Christian Youth Group Activities

 

1) If you have access to a dry erase or chalk board you could play Bible Pictionary. Write down something like Noah's Ark on a card and give it to one kid. He draws it while the others guess at it. Harder things to draw would be things like "The Fruit of the Spirit", "Pray Always". The pictures are endless. Jesus Wept, Jerusalem, the helmet of salvation, sword of the spirit etc etc.

2) You could have each kid do a little research and do a small teaching on a Biblical character, a story or an aspect of faith, etc.

3) You can share testimonies one day and have each kid provide information as to his background.

4) Form a prayer circle during the meeting sometime. Everyone can state specific prayer requests they need and then you can all pray holding hands in a circle. You can each pray out loud. Its best to designate someone to open it and someone to close it. If you have larger numbers you may want to pray in order. Some people prefer silent prayer and will be skipped. This is signalled usually by squeezing their hand a bit as normally your eyes are closed and your head down.This of course is pretty standard in Christian youth-groups. It goes without saying.

5) Bible word game. The game starts when one player says "I'm going on a trip with (a Bible character whose name starts with "A" like Adam). The second player says, "I'm going on a trip with Adam plus adds the next name (a Bible character whose name starts with "B" like Benjamin)", The next player says; "I'm going on a trip with the "A" name, the "B" name, and adds a "C" name and so on. The game ends when someone forgets the names.

6) Priority Check. The instructions are as follows:

I want you to step back right now... and take a look at your life. Now... I want you to get out a piece of paper.

Draw a line, and then put 10 evenly spaced dots on the line.

Number below it, #1-10. On the dot labeled #10... write- ME! Now put that to the side, and concentrate on this question.
Between the numbers 1-10, how would you describe your relationship with your best friend? (1 being the lowest, 10 being the highest.)

Pull out the number line, and on the number you chose, write- BF. (best friend)
Put the number line to the side again.

Now, concentrate on this question even harder. Dont lie either, you'd only be fooling yourself. Between the numbers 1-10, how would you describe your relationship with JESUS? (1 being the lowest, 10 being the highest.)

Pull out the number line, and on the number you chose, write- God.

Now.... look at the distance between you and your best friend.
Then look at the distance between you and GOD.

Should the numbers be like that?

7) This is a difficult Bible puzzle you can print out and distribute. I gave you the Mark one as a hint below in red font to see how the game works:

Can you find the names of 25 books of the Bible in this paragraph? This is a most remarkable puzzle. Someone found it in the seat pocket on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping himself occupied for hours. One man from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his john boat. Roy Clark studied it while playing his banjo. Elaine Victs mentioned it in her column once. One woman judges the job to be so involving, she brews a cup of tea to help calm her nerves. There will be some names that are really easy to spot...that's a fact. Some people will soon find themselves in a jam, especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized. The truth is, from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or scholar to see some of them at the worst. Something in our genes is responsible for the difficulty we have. Those able to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who have to be shown. One revelation may help: books like Timothy and Samual may occur without their numbers. And punctuation or spaces in the middle are quite normal. A chipper attitude will help you compete. Remember, there are 25 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph.

I have the asnwers if you need them ;-)

8) Veggie Tales are always cool. Veggie Tales is a Christian cartoon series with talking vegetables, a silly song, and a solid Biblical message.I know a lot of Christian teens really like veggie Tales. They teach a pretty good moral message so even the older teens and adults like Veggie Tales (even non-Christians).

Be creative and try new things!

Vincent Sapone