Don’t Shoot The Messenger

Hi friends!

It’s been a hot minute, huh? Sorry for the silence… things are full steam ahead here in Thomas world and I have so much to tell you. So much to write about. So much to blog. AHHH. There are (quite literally) not enough hours in the day for all of the things I want to do. But, alas, we’re here. And super pumped about it.

SO, in honor of Kickoff time, I have a really fun Youth Ministry game for you. Or teacher game. Or use-at-your-next-family-reunion game.

Let me just tell you a little bit about Kickoff time… school has started. Which means that the Youth Ministry season (my actual job, by the way, for those of you scratching your heads) is now in full swing. Sunday was the launch for all regular programming for the year. Yes, we were exhausted come 9:00pm Sunday night. Yes, it was SO.STINKIN.FUN. Probably the best day of Kickoffs we’ve had in my time here.

But anyway, I thought it would be fitting and fun to show you a little glimpse of what we did to kick things off. This game was thought up by the one and only Mitch Thomas (husband). He’s awesome and also works with kids for a living (I’ll have to do a full post just on what he does sometime) so he’s remarkably good at coming up with games out of thin air. And this one was AH-MAZING. Like, we were in stitches laughing the whole time and the kids loved it amazing.

Here’s how it went if you want to try it with your youth group, team, class, family, or group of friends sometime.

DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER

SUPPLIES: Notecards and a marker.

OBJECTIVE: Teams are trying to act out a scenario or item using only their group members (no props!) for points.

SET UP: Come up with a list of things the groups will have to act out or represent beforehand. We used the following: The Solar System, A Household Appliance, Riding the World’s Scariest Roller Coaster, A Pyramid, Chip (one of our Youth Group leaders) At Work, The Fireworks Show at Disney World (complete with characters). Write one on each note card. Note: The best ones are things that will utilize the whole group! For example… “Someone throwing up” is less inclusive than “a Cooking Class Getting Sick Because of Rotten Food”.

RULES: Divide group into at least two teams (we had four teams of about 8 people each) and have teams spread out from each other. Each group will choose a messenger. At the beginning of each round, the messengers meet in the middle to receive the “challenge” for the round. Show just the messengers the task that teams will have to act out (every team is doing the same thing). On “GO”, the messengers will run back to their teams and convey the challenge. Give the teams 10-15 seconds to get themselves together before the “judging” starts. Note: We wanted it to be pretty spontaneous, so we didn’t give them tons of time.

TO WIN: We awarded teams points based on creativity, full group participation, and “beautification of the rendering”. Whatever the heck that means. 🙂 Since we had four teams, we gave the best group four points, the second best three points, and so on. At the end of however many rounds you do, see which team has the most points!

We had a BLAST with this game! It was hysterical to see what they came up with and was just enough team building to help students get to know each other and just enough fun to make it feel like a legitimate game. You rock, Mitch. I knew I liked you. 🙂

Happy Kickoff y’all! And all of you Youth Directors/Pastors out there… you guys are CHAMPIONS. And we heart you.

PS. In other news, next week is…. WEDDING WEEK! Yep, Mitch and I are cashing in on two years and we’re going to be partying hard here on the blog. We’ve got some really fun posts lined up including a game that we’ve been dying to play and we need YOUR help! Here’s what we need from you: a question. Any question where the answer is either Mitch or Leslie. Examples: Who is messier? Who is most likely to…? Which of you….? I’ll leave it at that… you’ll have to wait to see how we play. Get those questions in and we might use them in the game! You can submit your questions by leaving a comment below, emailing us (ohthefun@gmail.com), or via Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Can’t wait to see what you’ve got!