8 Stupid (And Fun!) Youth Group Games
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I found THIS link today in my Youth Specialties update via my email. Thanks Kelli Mahoney for sharing!
Bobbing for Ho-Hos
Got milk? Got some Ho-Hos? How about a big, clear bowl? That’s all you need for this game. Like bobbing for apples, you put the milk and Ho-hos in the bowl and let people bob for the chocolate treats. The person who gets the most of them wins.
Slippery Limbo
Lay a tarp down on the floor. Take some dishwashing detergent and spray it down on the tarp. Add a little water, and you have a slippery surface. Then have the students to line up to do some limbo. If you feel like the floor is too hard, do this activity outside or lay some mats under the tarp.
Turkey Bowling
While this is an excellent idea for Thanksgiving, it is still fun year-round. Lay plastic tarps on the floor. Take ten bottles of soda (still full), and lay them out in a bowling pin pattern. Buy one frozen turkey per team (keep the turkeys frozen until service). Then team members take turns using the turkey like a bowling ball to knock down the soda. Be aware that the sodas may “explode” and spray your audience.
Donut on a String
Tie a donut to a string and the string to a pole. Then have someone lay on the floor. The other person has to hold the pole so that the person laying on the floor can try to eat the donut without using his or her hands. The first team to eat the whole donut wins. (It’s really harder than it sounds.)
Blind Water Balloon Volleyball
Using a van or opaque shower curtain, lay down two bedsheets on each side of whatever his hanging in the center as the “net.” You should not be able to see through the “net.” Have each team sit on their bedsheets with their water balloons. Each team tries to throw over a water balloon so that it hits the sheet on the other side. Because the teams cannot see the other team, it is harder to be ready to catch the flying water balloons.
This Is a What?
Another game that seems simpler than it is. Have everyone sit in a circle. Pick up an object and tell the person next to you, “This is a marble.” He asks, “A what?” “A marble,” you answer. “A what?” he asks again. “A marble,” you say. “Oh, a marble,” he says. The pattern is now established. He then takes the marble and turns to the next person and starts the pattern. As the marble goes around, you start on the next object and the next object. Eventually there will be a lot of these conversations going on at once. The goal is to see how many objects you can pass around the circle.
Living Sculpture
Toilet paper, saran wrap, and tin foil are used to make sculptures out of one person per team. The team with the best sculpture in the time allotted wins. The “sculpture” volunteer stands in a position while the team wraps toilet paper, saran wrap and tin foil around him or her to create a “work of art.”
Milk Chug
This is fun, but ultimately disgusting. It is a good idea to get permission from the parents of students competing, as it will likely result in vomiting. So why is it on this list? Well, it really is a fun competition to do during a service. Have four or five students volunteer to compete during a youth service or activity. At the start of service give each student a gallon of milk. Throughout the service the students chug the milk to see who can finish the entire jug first. It is a good idea to have garbage cans on hand.
6 Comments on this post
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Mike said:
Maybe it’s a personality thing, but I have a hard time using these types of games in my ministry. I didn’t get them when I was a kid and I don’t get them now. My students bristle when we go to an event where these types of things are included. What exactly is their usefulness? Why ask our students to flop around in dishsoap or vomit milk?
I’m not trying to be a jerk or sound superior or anything, I’m just wondering what is the redeeming quality of games like these?
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:19 am -
Steve said:
Mike the redeeming qualities are many….uh ummm. Ok, let’s take this angle. Suppose a friend is invited and absolutely loves the youth ministry because of some the interesting and stupid games that are played so they keep coming back, then one night his eyes are awakened and he or she asks Christ in. Was the stupid game used of God? Absolutely. God even used a donkey to speak.
I have to admit, I’m much more like you and don’t really like stupid games. I would much rather just teach students the bible, maybe sing some songs, but it seems that these kind of games seem to stick around youth ministry and when I ask myself the question of why did I come back to youth group in high school, part of my answer would include games cause you just never know from week to week what’s going to happen. It’s a fun factor.
Thanks for your comment, I would like to hear more about this.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 am -
Mike said:
I guess I struggle with the thought of students who walk out the doors thinking how lame our youth group was - “I’m never going back there again. I’m having a rough time in school, I think my parents are getting a divorce, and my boyfriend says he’s gonna dump me if we don’t have sex soon. I thought there might be somebody to talk to, but they just wanted me to suck pudding up a straw with my nose…”
If students are deciding not to come back, I want them to be leaving because they met Jesus there and don’t want to follow Him yet - not because the game was stupid. I think you’re right, that these games “seem to stick around youth ministry”. I just wonder if they’ve stuck around too long.
Incidentally, Mark Oestreicher has touched on this issue on his blog lately as well with some of the Youth Ministry 3.0 posts.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 pm -
Marilyn said:
Teens like to have something to talk about that links them together at school. I know at our youth group when we do a game or something funny that a teen missed I get approached by many of them asking to repeat it as they heard the talk around school. The game should set the tone for the night and not be solely the night. You get their attention more when you have teen-friendly fun and build trust so they can come to you with more serious matters because you let them be teens!
They like having permission to do silly things that they wouldn’t do otherwise and it allows them to drop their guard of reputations, pride, etc!
Now… I get, what are we doing this week? I tell them the silly game and also the topic. It is what has built our youth group from 15 to 80.
That is why you have silly games.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:31 am -
Suzanne said:
You’ve presented some really good ideas and I’ve enjoyed the information on the site. You must realize though, that drinking that much milk or any fluid so quickly can not only cause vomiting, as you have noted, but also death. It might be wise to scratch that idea. The woman who died last year in California during the radio show contest only drank 2 gallons and she was an adult to boot. She didn’t quite guzzle it either. They gave her 8 oz. water, waited 10 minutes, then 8 more ans so on. It would take less to kill a child. The vomiting is your body’s defensive mechanism to rid the toxicity of water from the body (vomiting is the primary response with milk, but the risk of death exists even with milk, since milk is primarily water). By drinking excessive water or other fluids you can lose vital fluids that can cause you heart irregularities, seizures, comas or death. If there is even a remote possibility of death, you could be opening your church up to a wrongful death lawsuit or a negligence lawsuit, not to mention the devastating injury to a child. In the very least, drinking that much milk can cause diarrhea for days afterward.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:33 pm -
ian said:
In Australia we have 4 terms per year of 10 weeks each. That means that on average we have about 40 weeks of youth group per year. Each youth group night is roughly 90 min.
Maximum we have around 5 years of someone attending youth group (if we are lucky) usually this is 3-4 yrs.
This means that taken at 4 years by 40 weeks * 0.8 (for all those ones that are missed) = 128 youth group nights, 192 hours of youth group.In that 192 hours we are hoping to effectively communicate not only what Christ did, but what their condition is before God and how Christ is their only hope. Further we also hope that we are able to impart key values of community, hope, love, faith, joy and a sense of belonging with the body of Christ.
All of this leads me to question the value of bobbing for ho-hos (whatever they are).
Yes, things need to be fun and the “come again” factor must be there, but for many the high school experience of Christ through youth group is the only experience they may have. Lets drop the games that focus on violence or excessive consumption or are just plain unhygienic.
As a youth group we compete in some ways with already over loaded schedules to teach about the peace that surpasses all understanding, lets give all the respect we can as leaders to those tiny 192 hours.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
