Category: Blog

Great leaders are not born, they’re made. Or, maybe more to the point, you can’t expect to lead a great game night without a little preparation and practice.

1) Read through the games ahead of time. Make sure all necessary supplies are prepared and in place at game time.

2) Have a couple of fall-back games prepared in case one of your planned activities falls flat.

3) Understand the rules of the games backwards, forwards and inside-out.

4) Run through the games ahead of time. Make sure you can explain the game quickly, particularly if your group is a little squirrelly.

5) Have an upbeat attitude. Depending on the group you might need to be unnaturally “bubbly” to generate enthusiasm.

6) Keep things moving. If a game doesn’t take off don’t let it die a long slow agonizing death. Kill it and move to another activity.

For some slapstick game pointers check out the 7 Sins of Game Leading.

You gotta be careful about pranks because they can so easily backfire. For instance, some time ago I was out and about and found a five dollar bill on the ground (see above.) I tucked the bill into a book I was holding and forgot about it. Recently I found the book – and the fiver – so I tucked the cash into my wallet, feeling so much the richer.

The other day my daughter asked me if she could have some cash to buy firewood for a beach bonfire with her friends. Remembering my great find I took the five bucks out of my wallet and handed it to her. When she went to put the money in her wallet she unfolded the bill and discovered that she was suddenly FIVE BUCKS SHORT! Hardy-har-har! She was in a hurry and didn’t find the joke very funny in the moment, but I cracked up because it turned out that the joke was on me. I wasn’t as generous as I had thought I was.

But here’s what was not so funny about the joke. When we turned the bill over and looked at the back we discovered that it was a Gospel tract. “Disapointed? Jesus won’t let you down.”

Wow. I really can’t image a scenario where the message on the back builds hope. Handing these fake bills out to homeless people is just plain mean-spirited. Dropping them on the floor of the Mall is a little better, but still – the feeling of having your hopes crash to the floor is so unlike the promise of salvation that the whole thing just feels like sick humor. It would be better to attach the tract to a real five-spot. At least  real money would send the recipient’s hopes in the right direction.

Bottom line: short bill = funny gag. Short bill + Gospel message = Thanks for playing. Try again later.

We all need a human touch

I’m learning that some of the of the top websites for youth ministry games and youth group activities aren’t human. They are run by media companies that sell everything from air purifiers to vacation packages. Typically these sites generate traffic by crowd-sourcing their content or outsourcing it to the lowest bidder. They’re not really concerned about quality, they simply want generate traffic.

What makes a website human? Well, humans do. If you click on the “About” page you can find a name, maybe a photo, possibly an email address or a place to post comments. Human websites are powered by people and people have reputations that can be validated. You can have a conversation with a people. Not so much with a not-human website.

I’m not saying that some of these huge websites are evil. Some of them provide a useful resource by providing a platform for people to share knowledge. But they are a little bit like Starlings, an invasive species that crowd out the natives. When you have a site called Best Bible Games on page 1 in the Google rankings, and it’s run by perfectly decent agnostics who have a swarm of linkbait sites that can elbow their way up in search results, it might mean that people are missing out on real gems like Wayne Rice who don’t make it on the front page of Bing!

Here’s what you can do to help the situation. If you link, try and link to a human. They need all the help that they can get.

There’s a common thrash amongst youth pastors – should you use games to attract more kids to your group? Or do games distract from your message?

Both camps, I think, miss the point somewhat. Games are so much more than a means to an end. Play has powerful benefits it its own right. Young people who know how to play well with others have more options available to them.

Consider these real-life scenarios:

A group of twenty teenagers and their youth leaders are standing in the dark on a street corner in San Francisco waiting for a bus that won’t come for another half hour. Every one of them is bone-tired from working in a food pantry. Some of them didn’t bring enough warm clothing. It is freezing cold.

One of the kids has an idea – let’s play Big Booty. What could have been a 30 minute grumble fest turns into a fun-for-all.

Too old for Trick-or-Treat, a high school girl isn’t thrilled by the idea of staying home and handing out candy to an endless parade of Cinderellas, Transformers and Harry Potters. She gets permission from her parents and then meets her friends at a warehouse owned by the family business where they all play a ginormous game of Sardines in the dark.

A group of college age young men and women get together and hang out. They all want to do something besides beer pong. One of them suggests a game of Team Assassin. Hilarity ensues.

Increasingly I’m seeing young people take the games they’ve learned in youth group and and play them with their friends who don’t attend church. Playing group games may not be evangelism, but it’s a great way for people young or old spend a Saturday night.

Colors have cultural meaning

Yellow is a happy color. Think of the big sunny Happy Face that’s as common as dandelions.

That is, unless you’re a Native American. In that case yellow means “danger” and red means “happy.” Of course, red means “danger” to North Americans of European descent.

Using the color wheel in the gorgeous wall chart available through Information is Beautiful you could easily create a quick cross-cultural game where teams have to communicate an urgent message using color alone. Of course, the teams wouldn’t know that the colors have different meanings until one or two rounds have gone past.

Knowing the cross-cultural symbolism of color is also useful for theming games or experiences that involve people from diverse backgrounds.

Design for Blueberry Garden on Gamestorm by Erik Svedäng

Sometimes you read a book that flips a light switch in your head. For me one such book was  A Theology of Children’s Ministry by Lawrence Richards. It changed the way I thought about teaching.

Richards looked at the way children learn best and concluded that heart-knowledge was more effective than head-knowledge. A lecture or a lesson plan can’t penetrate the heart the way friendship can. He believed that faith is best taught by modeling behavior in the moment.

It is in fact our emotional responses to situations that trigger our thoughts and shape our perceptions, rather than an analysis of a situation triggering our emotions. As long as our understanding of the Bible and its teachings is not linked to our emotions, it is unlikely that we will remember and apply appropriate Bible truths. (As cited in People in the Presence of God.)

Certainly this is the way Jesus taught. When he wanted his A-team to learn about trust he took them out in a small boat and into a big storm. And then he went to sleep.

If I had the energy, the patience and the grey matter to go to seminary I might attempt to scribble out a theology of game design. Youth workers can’t drag out a leaky boat every time they want to teach a lesson. But using a game youth leaders could capture the essential experience of fear that the disciples felt, and walk students through it.

There is a catch however. Experiences within a game are endogenous, which is a fancy way to say that what happens in the game, stays in the game.

The endogenous nature of gaming experiences is a good thing if you’re playing Grand Theft Auto. But it’s problematic if you’re trying to use a game as an experiential learning tool. For instance you could create a game where the recitation of Bible verses made it possible to overcome obstacles. Inside the game those verses would be valuable and powerful. Would they retain their power outside the game? Or would they become  just that much Monopoly money?

Important things to think about. And if you’re the thoughtful sort, by all means feel free to post a comment.