TBC Youth Group

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.