Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

10 Christian Would You Rather Questions – Part 2

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Christian Would You Rather Questions
A plague on both your houses!

Every Wednesday, we’re currently posting 10 Would You Rather questions on a particular theme. These can be great ‘getting to know you‘ activities for both you and your young people.

If you’re not sure how to play this game, it’s pretty simple – you ask your youth group if they’d rather do/have/be choice A or choice B and they have to decide which they’d prefer. For a more detailed explanation, check out our guide on how to play Would You Rather.

This week, we have another 10 Christian-themed questions. We published 10 of them a few weeks ago and we’ll publish more in the future, so we’ll update the links below as more are produced.

10 Christian Would You Rather Questions – Part 2

Would you rather…

  1. be a prostitute but have helped the spies escape Jericho or be a virgin that gives birth to Jesus and have your reputation ruined?
  2. be Gideon with an army of 300 against 135,000 or Joshua trusting that walking around and shouting would bring down the walls of Jericho?
  3. be David and have it recorded that you had an affair with a married woman and had her husband killed or be like Solomon and have an intimate account of your love affair in the Bible?
  4. have been John and foreseen all that happens in Revelation knowing there’s nothing you can do about it or have to live through it?
  5. have your diet be manna and quail or locusts and honey?
  6. have been Mary watching Jesus be crucified or been one of the thieves next to him?
  7. work 14 years for two wives or get your brother’s birthright by stealing it? (both refer to Jacob)
  8. have been baptized by John The Baptist or been in the upper room at Pentecost?
  9. have been destroyed by water in the flood or by sulfur in Sodom and Gomorrah?
  10. live through a plague of locusts or a plague of frogs?

Discussion / Activities

501 Would You Rather Questions
Get the book – 501 Would You Rather Questions

Here are a few ideas of church youth group activities and discussions you could have surrounding the questions listed above:

  • That God can use anyone, no matter what they’ve done in the past (the prostitute / David)
  • That God can use anyone, even if they don’t believe they’re capable (Gideon)
  • The crucifixion
  • Perseverance and dedication (Jacob)
  • Holy Spirit

If you liked these question ideas, take a look at all our other Would You Rather questions – there are loads more on all kinds of different themes (not just Christian ones).

Question: What other Christian youth group activities could these particular questions be tied into? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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10 Water Games For Youth – Youth Group Games

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Water Games For Youth
Image courtesy of Jackson Romie, Flickr

Last week, we gave you a list of 10 activities that you can do for free with your youth group this summer. The first suggestion on that list was to organize a giant water fight.

If you’d prefer to organize some wet games and activities that are a bit more structured than just a free-for-all, here are 10 fun youth group water games.

There are brief descriptions of each of the game ideas below, along with links to posts that give step-by-step instructions and rules for each one.

Enjoy!

10 Water Games For Youth

  1. Waterface – This relay game is a surefire way of making sure that all your young people get soaked – particularly their faces.
  2. Spongehead – The first game involves the students’ heads getting wet while laying down – Spongehead has their heads (and the rest of their body) getting wet while upright and running around.
  3. Water Balloon Relay – Water relay games are one of the best ways of ensuring all your young people have a chance to get wet – this balloon relay is no exception. Make sure you video this game being played as it’ll be hilarious, with youth waddling, shuffling and crawling their way through the relay.
  4. Water Balloon Toss – This idea is similar to The Egg Toss – the youth group game classic that involves young people tossing eggs to each other and trying to catch them without breaking. Same thing here, but using water balloons instead of eggs.
  5. Bowl Hole – This is a fast and frantic water relay, with an option to make it a little like Spongehead to ensure that the youth get really soaked.
  6. Water Balloon Dodgeball – This idea doesn’t have many rules – it’s basically dodgeball with water balloons.
  7. Human Battleship – This one doesn’t necessarily involve water, but it’s fun to throw water over the young people when the battleships (i.e. them!) get hit.
  8. Water Balloon Baseball – You might think it would be impossible to hit a home run when playing baseball with water balloons. You’d be wrong! Check out the post for how this works.
  9. Water Balloon Challenge – The challenge involves teams throwing the balloons and one of their teammates trying to catch them in a bowl on their head. The only question is how many ‘accidental’ wayward throws will there be?!
  10. Water Balloon Hot Potato – This one’s fairly self-explanatory as well – it’s like a wet version of hot potato. I’d encourage playing the Ultimate version of it where you use more than one balloon and allow random passing.

Question: So those are our 10 suggestions of water games for youth. Do you have any other ideas for similar youth group games? We’d love to hear them in the comments below.

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10 Free Summer Youth Group Activities

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Summer Youth Group Activities
Image courtesy of Nicubunu Photos, Flickr

Today’s officially the first day of summer, so if you haven’t planned what you’ll be doing over the coming weeks yet, here are some ideas for you.

The best thing is that these summer youth group activities are all free, so perfect for your program’s budget! A few of them may have some miscellaneous costs depending on how they’re organized – for example, trips out may need to include the cost of gas or parking, although parents may be able to carpool and offer lifts.

These activity ideas are also a great way to encourage team building, especially if you can include new young people who are due to join your youth group at the start of the new school year.

10 Free Summer Youth Group Activities

  1. Organize a giant water fight – You can keep it free by having the teenagers bring their own super soakers and water balloons. Take a look at these water games for youth for additional game ideas to get the youth wet.
  2. Plan a scavenger hunt – There are many different types you can play, but here are a few ideas from our sister site Scavenger Hunt – at a mall, a 4th of July theme or funny items and tasks.
  3. Go for a hike – This can be done on a nature trail, a state park or in the mountains if you have some nearby.
  4. Go to the beach – I think this one’s self-explanatory enough.
  5. Have a picnic – Go to a local park and have the youth bring their own lunches. Play a few games while you’re there.
  6. Go litter-picking – Beautify your community by picking up trash. This can be a great thing to highlight to your local newspaper or TV stations, as they may want to come out and give your group some coverage. It can also be used as a youth group fundraiser.
  7. Plan a movie night – If you have the equipment available, try to organize it for the evening and display it on a large screen outside. The evening could be just for youth or you could make it a family movie night. Bear in mind that you might need a license.
  8. Organize a games day – There are many different games you can play, but here are a few suggestions of games that will be free if you already have the resources on hand:
    Human Battleship
    Bowl Hole
    Spongehead
    Ping Pong Ball Relay
    Yes Or No Game
    Newspaper War
    Crab Soccer
    The Welly Wang
  9. Run life skills workshops – See if people in your church or local community can come in and help with applicable skills, resume writing, etc. You can find all kinds of life skill ideas here.
  10. Plan a video project – Encourage your teenagers’ creativity by setting them a movie project. Get them to write a script, act and film it, edit the video, etc. You could then play it during a movie night (see point 7 above).

Question: So those are our ideas of some youth group activities you could organize this summer – what other free ideas can you suggest? Let us know in the comments below.

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10 Would You Rather Food Questions

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Food Would You Rather Questions
Which of these would you rather eat a teaspoon of?

Each week, we’re publishing lists of questions you can use when playing Would You Rather. See this post that explains how to play the game.

This week, we have 10 questions relating to food. These ideas aren’t particularly gross – we’ll be publishing some of those in the future!

10 Would You Rather Food Questions

Would you rather…

  1. have to kill an animal any time you want to eat meat or never eat meat again?
  2. only eat fruit or vegetables for one year?
  3. eat for free for the rest of your life but have it be food you don’t like, or only eat food you love but have to pay five times the normal amount for it?
  4. only be allowed to eat your meals with chopsticks or with your fingers?
  5. eat at McDonalds or KFC?
  6. eat a banana peel or an orange peel?
  7. eat a teaspoon of black pepper or a teaspoon of salt?
  8. never eat pizza or burgers again?
  9. only eat ice cream or pizza for the rest of your life?
  10. only eat food that’s so spicy it burns your mouth or food that’s so bland it has no flavor?

Discussions / Activities

501 Would You Rather Questions
Get the book – 501 Would You Rather Questions

These food questions could be used to help lead into any kind of youth group activities that involve food. Here are some example:

If you liked these ideas, we have loads more Would You Rather questions you can use.

Question: What other food-themed questions can you think of? Let us know in the comments below.

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Balloon Hockey – Youth Group Games

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Balloon Hockey Youth Group Games
You don’t have to take balloon hockey quite this seriously

If you like planning fun and energetic youth group games, this week we have a great game idea for you – Balloon Hockey.

Here’s how to play it:

Resources

  • Regular balloons (only a few needed)
  • Long balloons (one for each youth with a few spare)
  • Cones

Preparation

  • Blow up all the balloons
  • Arrange the cones to make two goals at either end. If you don’t have any cones, you can use any other kind of markers to make the goals.

Location

As you’ll be playing with balloons, this is a game that’s best played indoors.

If the air’s still on the day you play this though, you could always play it outdoors. Even if it’s a bit windy, you could still play it outdoors and it’ll just be a little harder for the young people to play.

Teams

Split the youth into two teams. If you have a very large youth group and have enough playing space, set up two playing areas and split them into four teams.

Balloon Hockey Rules

Give each young person one of the long balloons and put one of the regular sized balloons in the middle. Get each team to allocate one of their players as a goalkeeper.

The rules for balloon hockey are then simple – each team has to try to score goals by hitting the regular sized balloon into the opposition’s goal, using only the long balloons to hit it. Players therefore aren’t allowed to deliberately touch the ‘puck’ balloon with any part of their body.

Tips

  • If this game ends up being a bit too frantic with everyone piling in to hit the balloon puck, create zones on the floor using masking tape. Allocate a player from each team to each zone – they’re not allowed to step outside that zone, although they are allowed to reach into a neighboring zone with their long balloon to try to help a teammate. If a player does step into someone else’s zone, have them sit out for x amount of seconds – the amount of time will depend on how long you’re playing for.
  • Have a few spare long balloons and split them evenly between each team. If a team uses all their spares, any further players that have a burst balloon have to sit out for the rest of the game. If this is due to another player deliberately bursting their balloon though, the player that burst it should have to hand over their balloon and sit out instead.
  • If you aren’t able to get hold of any long balloons locally, you can buy them here. Alternatively, consider using pool noodles from the dollar store cut in half.

Winners

The winning team will either be the team that scores a pre-specified number of goals first, or who scores the most goals by the end of the game time.

Question: What others ways can you think of to play balloon hockey? Let us know in the comments below.

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Image courtesy of Clydeorama, Flickr