TBC Youth Group

We had the planned meeting with Urban Promise, about how we should handle the integration between Youth Group and YMAD. The decisions weren’t revolutionary; it was simply decided that kids would be in either the one or the other; if they’re in Youth Group, they shouldn’t be downstairs with the younger YMAD kids, and vice versa. We also decided that it would be a good idea to try and change the way we do devotions; if we did it in smaller groups, instead of one big group, the kids would be more likely to take part, instead of sitting quietly. Finally, we also decided that on nights that we’re at the church—Games Night, Movie Night, etc.—we should have more of a schedule, so that we know what we’re doing when.

So we decided that it made sense to make this night a Games Night, so that we could lay down the rules for the kids, and try out some of our ideas. Diana volunteered to put together a schedule for the night, and she would come up with some games, while David would come up with some others.

It worked very well. We started the night with a game called I Never, which didn’t seem like it was working at first. The kids didn’t seem like they were into it, and some refused to take part. But as the game progressed, the interest got higher and higher, and we ended up playing it a lot longer than we’d planned to.

After this we took a few minutes to go over the rules, and then segued into our devotion, in which John is continuing to bring the kids through the Old Testament, and how an understanding of the Old Testament is critical to understanding who Jesus is, and why his work was necessary. Unfortunately, John wasn’t at the meeting with the Youth Group, so he wasn’t aware of the idea of breaking the group into smaller groups, for individual devotions, so we did it like normal this time. (When he was told about it after, though, he agreed that it would be a great idea.)

When the devotions were done, we had a brief time of planning, in which we asked the kids for ideas for activities they want to do for the next couple of months. (With the idea that David would put together a schedule.) This didn’t take long—it never does—and David will probably have to come up with some ideas on his own, to round it out.

After this, David tried to lead his next game, and quickly realized that it wasn’t going to work. He had planned to do a “Camera Phone Scavenger Hunt,” wherein the kids would need to find pictures of different items, but to his great surprise, few of the kids had camera phones. So he tried to make it a regular scavenger hunt, and it failed pretty miserably. Most of the kids were simply taking some free time, and waiting for 9:00, when YMAD would be done their activities, and we could use the gym for basketball.

Which brings us to the end of the night, when the boys went downstairs to play basketball. (Luckily, there weren’t many girls this night.) We let them stay late, until around 11:00.