TBC Youth Group

We went somewhere that cost money last week, so this week it was time to do something free. Which meant falling into the usual default, and having a games night. But we have to stop doing this; half the kids are sick and tired of games nights, and the other half are just in the gym playing basketball, and not being part of the group.

That being said, devotion was good. David used an example from a former atheist who is now a theist; he was convinced by various aspects of nature that the universe couldn’t possibly have formed randomly, there must have been a god behind it. However, he is not a Christian—he believes that there is a god, but doesn’t believe that Christianity is truth. David then read Romans 1:18–23 (which is just part of a larger passage). He said that even though this man was an atheist all his life—he has been very influential among atheists since 1950—and even though it was an amazing thing for him to change his mind, and decide that there is a god, it’s still not enough. This passage says that he is in fact without excuse, if he doesn’t come before God and repent, and accept Jesus as his Saviour. The kids seemed to be paying close attention, and there were a few questions.

We pray that the kids will come to the leaders and ask, if they have any questions. Or, if they’re ready, just go to the Lord and be saved!

Success! We managed to get enough drivers, and get to Laser Quest. (Eventually.)

We welcomed a new leader, named Annesha. We also had another member of the church who volunteered to drive, which was a huge help.

But to start the night, we had our devotion. David found a story (in a book of devotional topics for youth groups) about a man who’d found a cocoon for an emperor moth. He brought it home, and it eventually began to “hatch” (or whatever the proper term is for when a moth starts to come out of its cocoon). However, when the moth got partway out, it seemed stuck, and unable to get the rest of the way out. Thinking he was helping, the man got a pair of scissors and cut the moth the rest of the way out. Unfortunately, the moth ended up deformed, with a swollen body and shrunken, useless wings—it was never able to fly. The lesson was this: The moth’s cocoon was purposely built in a certain way, to be difficult for the moth to get out of; in struggling to get out of the cocoon, the moth builds up strength, and forces fluids to go out of its body and into the wings. By attempting to help the moth, the man actually hurt it—the moth needed to struggle to get out of that cocoon, and because it didn’t, it was not able to form properly. Similarly, although we may not enjoy our struggles here on Earth, we should remember that God is in control, and that if we are going through difficult times, it is because He has deemed it necessary for us to do so. He will use many (most? all?) of our struggles to bring is closer to Him, to make us stronger Christians, or for other uses.

Before, during, and after the devotion, David was constantly counting, over and over, the number of kids present. He kept arriving at a number of twenty-four, which was good because we had twenty-six seats. However, when it was time to go, and everyone went to get into the three vans and one car we had ready, there turned out to be twenty-eight people. Did David miscount? Did four people mysteriously appear out of the ether? We may never know. Luckily, there was another driver on standby, who had agreed to come if necessary. So we called her, and she showed up to take the overflow.

Another good thing happened when we got to the place: Because we had so many people in our group, the two games that we played were peopled almost entirely by members of our Youth Group. (There were three or four other, non-Youth-Group people in each game, but it was mostly us.) It’s always nice to have a game that’s almost entirely your own group.

Unfortunately, on the way home, we got a call. There had been a shooting on Mount Olive, where a number of our kids live, and there were a lot of cops around. A number of the kids in our Youth Group have been in trouble with the police in the past, and we were asked if we can drop the kids off at their doors, where possible, to avoid them getting unnecessarily questioned by the police. (This wasn’t a problem, because we usually do so anyway.) Luckily, none of the kids in the group (that we know of) have bail conditions that set curfews, so there isn’t currently a danger of anyone breaking their bail conditions to come to Youth Group. We got everyone home without incident.

Annesha’s profile coming soon…

Because of Thanksgiving, there was no Youth Group this night.

We did get some good news, though: A new person volunteered to be a Youth Group leader, and she also has a car. Plus, two additional people volunteered to be drivers. So the next time the Youth Group has to leave the church, we should be prepared.

The plan was to go to Laser Tag, but, unfortunately, we didn’t have enough cars to get everyone there. (Twenty-four people, compared to nineteen seats.) So we had to cancel, and settled for a Games Night instead.

Because we’d planned to go out, David didn’t have a devotion planned, so we didn’t have a devotion either. So the whole night was pretty much a wash.

It was decided that the next Youth Group would be Laser Tag again, and that next time we’d strive to make sure we had enough vehicles for the people.

Due to lack of time to plan anything else, we decided to do a movie night, and get some pizza. And it’s a good thing too, because Odele and Kaitlyn weren’t able to make it, so it was just David and Diana as leaders—if we’d done anything more strenuous, we wouldn’t have been able to handle it!

We had three movies to choose from (Crossover, Bend it Like Beckham, and Roll Bounce), and it wasn’t until after we got back to the church, movies in hand, that we realized they were all sports movies (basketball, soccer, and roller skating, in that order). They decided on Crossover.

David ordered pizza, and then we started the movie (later than we would have liked). And, surprisingly, everyone came up to watch the movie; the guys didn’t even have to be forced to leave the basketball behind. (Maybe because it’s a movie about basketball?) When the pizza arrived, we paused the movie to dig in, and then David led the devotion, which was on Matthew 8:5–13. David made the following points about this passage:

• For most of Jesus’ ministry, his miracles were performed on Jewish people, but there were a couple of exceptions, like this one. But whenever Jesus healed a non-Jewish person—at least, as far as David can remember—he also made a point of talking about how much faith they had. He was willing to make an exception to his rule, to make the point about how important faith is.
• Jesus also mentions that many Jews will not come to faith, even though many people who are not Jewish will. Similarly, you can’t judge who is going to become a real Christian from outward appearances; many people who have attended church all their lives still have not accepted Jesus as their saviour, whereas someone who has never been to church can hear the gospel and come to a saving faith immediately.

We turned the movie back on, and finished it. And then, since David was the only leader present who had a car, it took twice as long as usual to ferry everyone home.

Kaitlyn’s profile coming soon…

This was our first Youth Group after the summer break, so of course, it was a planning meeting. There were very few kids there, compared to last year, so when 7:30 rolled around we decided to just go ahead and start planning, and not wait any longer.

We went until around 8:00, and then David wanted to start the devotion. But when he went downstairs, to grab a couple of stragglers, he was surprised to find a dozen guys down there, playing basketball. They had apparently come into the church without us knowing, and started a game. So we brought them upstairs, and did the devotion.

David did the devotion, and we talked about Matthew 14:13–21, and Matthew 15:29–39. David mentioned the following:

• In the Matthew 15 passage, Jesus asks the disciples to feed the people, and the disciples tell Jesus that there is not enough food—even though they’ve already seen Jesus perform a miracle, which fed more people with less food. David suggested that this is not because the disciples are stupid, but because it’s a natural human tendency to not have faith in God, even when He has been reliable to us in the past.
• David also wondered aloud why Jesus bothered to perform the miracle in this way. Why not simply “zap” the people, and take away their hunger? David suggested that Jesus wanted to make it obvious that this was a miracle, so that the people would give God the glory. If he had simply zapped their hunger away, it would have been easy for the people to dismiss it—“we must not have been that hungry in the first place,” or, “we must be imagining things”—but by performing the miracle in this way, there was no way the people could deny what was happening: they began with very little food, and still somehow managed to feed everyone and have leftovers.

After the devotion, we played Boneyard until it was time to go.

We left not knowing what we’d be doing next week; David will have to put a schedule together, based on the suggestions for events, and let everyone know.

May has been a bad month for David, at work, so he hasn’t had a lot of time to plan Youth Group events. Which is why we resorted to having another Games Night.

Not many people showed up at 7:00. (In fact, just David.) People eventually started to come, in dribs and drabs. The first hour or so of the night was simply spent hanging out, John, David, and some of the kids, and talking. (Someone asked what we were doing for the night, and John responded that we were having a three hour Bible study. “Go hard or go home!” Some people weren’t sure if he was joking or not.)

When some more of the boys came, they went downstairs to play basketball, and the rest of us stayed upstairs. Because we were doing the whole night so loosy-goosy, we decided to let them continue playing, and we’d do the devotion at the end of the night, instead of the beginning.

Strangely enough, the boys ended the basketball without the leaders having to go and get them. They actually came up around 9:30, when David was expecting to have to go down at 10:00 and drag them up by their hair. So we did the devotion. John talked about what makes “church” different from what we do at Youth Group; the three things we mentioned that a “church” does, that distinguish it from Youth Group, are:

1. The Church preaches the Gospel—We do that at Youth Group, too.
2. The Church practices the Sacraments (the Lord’s Table, and baptism)—we don’t do that at Youth Group
3. The Church, when necessary, disciplines its members—we don’t really do that at Youth Group, either

Anyone who professed to be a Christian was urged to think about attending a church, if s/he didn’t already. After devotion, we went home.

Next week will be the final Youth Group of the year, and we’ll be having a BBQ to end the year right.

The kids love roller skating, so we pretty much have to do this from time to time. It’s also easy to plan, which is a plus for the leaders. (As long as we can find the right number of vehicles and drivers, of course.)

We started out, as always, with our devotions. John has been going through the Old Testament, and showing how it points to Jesus. This devotion was a bit of a departure, because we talked about the Holy Spirit coming on the believers, on the day of Pentecost. The point was to contrast this with the Old Testament, where the Jews didn’t have the Holy Spirit; sometimes He would come upon a prophet, temporarily, but He wasn’t a part of the normal Israelite’s life, the way that He lives with us. John also mentioned baptism, and there was some interest in the topic, so it will probably be the topic of next week’s devotion.

After this, we simply loaded up into the cars, and went. The place we go to has roller skating from 9:00–12:00, which is a later night than normal for us, but it doesn’t seem to cause problems.

Unfortunately, David had to work an all-nighter on Thursday night, and wasn’t able to make it to Youth Group. So he had John, Odele, and Diana run it without him, and do a Games Night. And, since David is the one who writes these blog posts, he doesn’t have any details about how the night went.

Every year, to end their year, Urban Promise has a “Community Night,” where they bring in the parents and celebrate the kids finishing another year. So for Youth Group, we combined with them, and celebrated with them.

Which meant that we ended the night earlier than usual—which the kids didn’t like.

This was a pretty typical Games Night—unfortunately, because our “typical” Game Nights are unstructured, unplanned, and chaotic.

There were a number of kids already in the church, when the leaders got there at 7:00, and they were playing dominoes and Connect Four. We let them continue on with these games for a while.

David then led the devotion, since John wasn’t there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as smooth as John’s devotions usually are. Also, there wasn’t an opportunity to break into groups after, for discussion. (There was a bit of discussion, with the whole group, on whether you have to be absolutely perfect in order to get into heaven. (Hint: Yes, you do. Which is why it’s impossible for you to get into heaven on your own, which is why you need Jesus to pay for your sins, allowing God to regard you as if you were perfect.))

After the devotions, we played a game where we split the kids into two teams, gave them some old scrap paper, and had them make paper airplanes. For a few minutes, they had to throw the airplanes at each other, and at the end, whichever team had the most planes on their side lost. This made a big mess, which leads us to our next game.

There was some discussion as to whether we should play Boneyard, to finish the night, or if the boys would play basketball. So David had everyone pick up the paper from the floor, and it would be a contest: Anyone who wanted to play boneyard would put their paper in a pile, and anyone who wanted to play basketball would put their paper in a pile, and whoever won, that’s what we’d play. The basketball players won.

So the basketball folks went downstairs to play ball, and a number of others stayed upstairs, where we played

• Sorry
• Connect Four
• Jenga

Incidentally, while playing Jenga, we built a tower that must have set some kind of record.


Surely nobody else could possibly have had a Jenga tower that high before! (We’re just kidding—if there are any Jenga world champions reading this, please don’t leave comments to correct us.)

Movie Nights are something we often resort to, when there is nothing else planned, but this one was actually planned, and on the schedule.

As usual, we started off with a bit of free time, which allowed David to bring some of the guys to the video store, to pick out movies. (The rule is that the movies have to be PG or less—so PG, or G, or Family—which normally causes a lot of arguments. But this time, the guys simply followed the rules, and didn’t put up a fight.)

John then led the devotion, in which he is continuing to bring us through the Old Testament, and how the events there point to Jesus’ life and work. Unfortunately, when we broke into groups to discuss things, David’s group got very off track (although the discussions with other groups went well). One of the main things which sidetracked the discussion was the issue of God speaking to people in the Old Testament; how did they know that it was God who was speaking to them? Fine, you hear a voice, but how do you know that that voice is the voice of God? How do you know you’re not just crazy, or that someone is not just playing a practical joke on you? David didn’t have an answer for that question—“they just knew” wasn’t really a good response—so maybe this would be a good topic for future devotions.

After the discussions, however, most of the kids weren’t interested in watching the movie—Alvin and the Chipmunks—so they went downstairs for basketball, while the ones who were interested—mostly the girls—stayed upstairs and watched. David, who wrote this post, only watched a small portion of the movie, as he was going back and forth between the movie goers and the basketball players, so he can’t critique the movie here.

This was a pretty typical bowling night, for us.

We started out with devotions, which John led. He is still bringing us through some of the major stories in the Old Testament, and showing how they point the way toward Jesus. we then broke into groups, to discuss it.

And after that, we simply piled into the vehicles, and headed for the bowling alley. We had one more person than we legally should have, for the number of seats in our vehicles, but we managed to squeeze in.

Whoops. David was supposed to put together a schedule, but his week was… well, it wasn’t conducive to taking time out for putting together schedules. So he resorted to another Games Night. It didn’t go too badly, though.

Funnily enough, the first question that was asked was if we could play I Never again. So apparently the game really did go well the week before!

But we didn’t. Instead, we played Mafia, which the kids normally enjoy a lot—when they’re willing to play properly. We had mixed results, this time; a lot of kids didn’t want to close their eyes, and some didn’t get the concept. By the end, though, they were trying to stretch it out—they knew who the mafia was, and were purposely trying not to eliminate him—so they must have enjoyed it.

After this, we did our devotions. John had had some further thoughts about devotions, and had come up with an idea to tweak our suggestion: instead of breaking up, initially, he would do the devotion with everyone, and then we would break out into our groups to discuss the devotion. And it worked pretty well, we thought. As we’d predicted, the kids were more willing to discuss things when they were in smaller groups, and, to our delight, they all seemed to grasp the basic facts of the devotion. (That’s no small task, when you’re doing a devotion for a group as diverse as ours.)

After the discussions, we determined that YMAD was done, and let the boys go downstairs for basketball. (They would be more than happy to play nothing but basketball all night long, if we let them.) The girls stayed upstairs, and basically entertained themselves.

This is a bizarre game; how it ended up here on a blog for a Christian Youth Group is a mystery. But here we are.

Mafia is a complex game, but one that the kids generally like (with one caveat, that will be mentioned below). The first step is to divide everyone up into the following characters:

• Mafia
• Doctors
• Detectives
• Civilians

In addition, there is a Storyteller, who is usually in charge of the whole thing. The best way to assign everyone their character is to get some slips of paper, and write down these characters on them. (When we play, with our 15–20 people, we normally have 2 Mafia, 2 doctors, 2 detectives, and make everyone else a civilian, but depending on the size of your group, you may decide to alter those numbers.) Fold the slips of paper up, put them in a hat, and have everyone draw out a slip of paper. It’s important, however, that they keep their character secret.

Once this is set up, have everyone sit in a circle (if you haven’t already). The Storyteller will then tell everyone to close their eyes. This is the caveat: If everyone is willing to play along, and keep their eyes closed during this part, the game will be fun. If they’re not, the game will be ruined, and everyone will think that it’s stupid.

Once everyone has closed their eyes, the Storyteller will have the Mafia open their eyes. They are then to pick someone that they want to kill. (You see why it’s strange for this game to be on this blog?) Of course, they have to do this by pointing silently—and they both have to agree—so that others in the circle won’t realize who the Mafia are. They then have to close their eyes again.

The Storyteller next has the doctors open their eyes. They are to choose someone—again, by pointing silently—that they want to save. (Doctors are allowed to save themselves.) They then close their eyes again.

Finally, the Storyteller has the detectives open their eyes. They are to choose someone who they think might be the Mafia. The Storyteller will indicate to them (by nodding or shaking his/her head) if they are correct in their guess. They are then to close their eyes.

Once all of this is done, everyone can re-open their eyes. The Storyteller now has to tell a story, in the course of which the person that the Mafia killed will die. (The more amusing the story, the better everyone will enjoy the game, so you want someone inventive to be the Storyteller.) Unless the person that the doctors chose to save also happens to be the person that the Mafia killed, in which case the person will not be killed in the story, but will instead be saved.

For example, if the Mafia choose to kill a person in the circle named David, then the Storyteller will tell a story in which David dies. But if the Mafia choose to kill David, and the doctors also happen to choose to save David, then the Storyteller will tell a story in which David almost dies, but is saved at the last minute.

After the story, you should ask the person who died what their character was. (Assuming that someone actually died; if the doctors saved the person, then nobody reveals their identity.) Then it’s time for everyone in the circle to try and decide who the Mafia is. They discuss it for a few minutes, and then put it to a vote, and vote off a person that they think might be the Mafia. If the detectives happened to guess correctly about who the Mafia is, then they should really try and lead the conversation, to get people to vote that person off. (Of course, they shouldn’t be too obvious about it, or else the remaining Mafia are likely to kill them the next round! If the Mafia can eliminate the detectives, it’s probably much better for them.) When someone is voted off, they should also reveal their character.

Once you’re done, you have everyone close their eyes, except for the person who was killed and the person who was voted off, and go for another round. The idea is for the people to find and vote out the Mafia before they kill everyone.

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.

This is a pretty simple game. Get all of the participants to sit in a circle, and one person stands in the middle. There should be enough chairs for everyone except the person in the middle. The person in the middle has to state something that they have never done, but that others in the circle probably would have done. Anyone who has done the thing has to switch chairs with someone else, and the person in the middle has to try and find a seat too. Whoever is left standing is now in the middle, and has to state something they haven’t done.

For example, David lived in the country, and never walked to school (he always took the school bus). So if he were in the centre, he might say, “I’ve never walked to school.” Anyone who had walked to school would have to get out of their seats, and sit down somewhere else, while David himself would try and get into one of the vacated seats.

There aren’t many rules for this game; the only ones we can think of are:

• You have to tell the truth; you can’t say you’ve never walked to school if you really have.
• If you leave your seat, you have to sit down in a different seat—you can’t go back to the same seat you were in. If you’re the only one who stands up, then by default you’re in the middle.

It was a fairly quiet night. We simply rented a movie—The Simpsons Movie—and stayed at the church to watch it. Pizza was ordered, and a church member had also provided some chips and cookies to snack on.

Unfortunately, David wrote this post, but he was ordering the pizza while John was doing the devotion, so he doesn’t have details about the devotion to include here.

There was a lot of confusion between the Youth Group and the Urban Promise YMAD group, who were meeting at the same time. Some of the boys simply went to each group as they wished—meaning that they did their best to avoid going to any of the devotions. It was decided that the Youth Group and YMAD leadership need to meet, to discuss how to handle this situation. We’re planning to meet on Tuesday.