TBC Youth Group

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.