Monday, April 23, 2007

Youth Ministry in the 80's

So I have this large series from Youth Specialties called "Ideas" and it is exactly what it sounds like. 49 books full of ideas for youth ministry. There are games, skits, bible studies. You name it, it is here. But the best part of this series is that it is from the 80's, So it is hilarious to look at some of the things they suggest. You look at some of the ideas and say, "WOW!!! There is NO WAY I could get away with that now!"

For example From Ideas 13-16 Page 13 "FLOUR POWER"
"Select three girls and three boys for this event. The guys are sent out of the room. While they are out, one girl gets a mouthful of flour. One of the boys are brought in and told to try and guess each girl's favorite flower. If he is correct, he wins a kiss from that girl. Of course, whatever he guesses for the girl with the flour in her mouth is correct. She starts to kiss him, but instead spits flour all over his face. Do the same with the next two guys." Really??? I can just imagine this scene a few weeks later, "So Jon when was your first kiss?" "Oh, well it was at this youth retreat, and my youth pastor made me kiss these two girls, and then a third one was going to kiss me, but then she spit flour in my face instead." ... Like I said, I just can't imagine doing something like that today. Actually let me clarify… earlier I said I can’t imagine getting away with it… what I really meant was, this is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. Not only would I not want to get away with it, I wouldn’t even think of trying something like that…. However there are some other ideas that are super awesome… just highly unsafe… I came across a super sweet game though, and I would to love to play it, but safety would be a factor.

The basic premise, is one guy goes out and hides with a lit candle. You arm all your kids with a water gun, and a unlit candle. They then try and find the guy with fire, light their candles and sneak back to HQ without all the other kids squirting out their candle. What an awesome night game!!! But I can just imagine all the things that could go wrong... candle's in the face, hair on fire, all the brush around the camp on fire... yeah so I don't think we'll play this game with fire... but man that must have been sweet!
Anyway back to hunting down games for the weekend, any suggestions?

1 comment:

Brad and Karla said...

let me know if you need some small games still/