Reflections on first Youth Group

Last Friday I assisted in the set up and running of the Benefice's Youth Group at the village hall.  I worked with the layperson who has overall charge of the youth activities, a lovely woman called Janet. She already had a rough idea of what she wanted the kids to do during the session, but wanted some activities to keep them excited and involved.  The theme she had decided on was 'stars' so we decided to make the activities have a star wars theme as that is the big film of the moment.

First I had to plan which activities we could do.  Enter the trusty friend - Google!  I searched around the web for youth group star wars games and managed to find a few interesting ones.  Janet and I looked them over and decided we were going to do three activities from what I had found:

1. An obstacle course based on podracing, where the course looked a little like a podracer and the teams had to get two cups of water around it multiple times without spilling any.
2. A 'bombing run' team game where they had to use chairs to get from one side of the room to the other, drop off a 'bomb', then return to base.
3. A blindfolded drawing competition called force drawing where they were to draw Kylo Ren whilst blindfolded 

We used emails for all of our planning as we are both quite busy during the week and that seemed to work well.

On the day we realised we hadn't arranged who would be bringing the paper and pens for activity 3 so we had to drop it but in the end that turned out for the best as everything else we had planned led up to the end of the night anyway!  We arranged the hall ready for the children's arrival and set up the conference room and kitchen ready for other activities.

How I felt after realising there was no paper

As they arrived we had them create name badges for themselves, and once everyone was there we sat in a circle in the conference room.  In the center of the circle Janet set up a star whilst she was talking about the importance of stars in the bible, particularly in the story of the three wise men as it is currently epiphany.  She then wrote 3 prayers onto star shaped cards and let the kids know that at any point they could come and write a prayer during the evening.  The kids were interested by the talk but were slightly agitated as they wanted to get on and get involved in activities.  Perhaps next time we can make it slightly more interactive by having them draw things related to what we're talking about, or asking them to write their prayer right at the start so they have something to do right off the bat.  Or even better we could do an activity as a starter beforehand, then have the sit down after that, same as I would when planning a lesson.

Obstacle course set up

We went on to do the podrace, split them into 2 almost even groups (we had 9) and after I demonstrated to them what they had to do they got on with it with great vigour!  The competition was fierce but in the end the girls team won as they were the most careful.  It was good to see them developing team work skills and cheering each other on.  If I did it again I would create more obstacles and provide more cups so we could have smaller teams increasing the competition and number of times we can do it.

They then went on to cut out and get cooking some star shaped pastries in the kitchen followed by 5 minutes of playing with the football and getting to socialise before we moved onto the bombing run.  Each team was given 6 chairs to get from one side of the room to the other and they had to work as a team to do so.  The girls got into the swing of it faster, the boys were quite boisterous about it.  I think next time it'll be mixed groups to avoid some of the silliness that happened. In the end though in the real run the boys won by a hair.

After this their pastries were ready so they had them, as well as a drink before going back to the football.  I think next time we should save their cooking creations for at the end as they sit down together again as I'm not sure they all had one.  If they didn't want it they could then at least take it home with them. 

Our prayers of thanks

Finally we met back in the conference room around the star we had made at the start.  The kids weren't interested in writing a prayer, they seemed embarrassed at the thought of being the first one to do it.  So after a moment of trying to get them to start I told them that instead of seeing it as a prayer, see it as something you are thankful for.  After saying this they were more willing to write it down.  We placed it around our star and put electronic tealights on each one.  We then went round the circle stating what we were thankful for, though no-one was forced to do so, and ended it with Amen.  This showed the kids that a prayer doesn't have to be asking for something it can just be about saying thank you and I think it lessened their feeling of embarrassment.

Overall the evening went very well and I look forward to doing it again next month!  Youth work is so vital to mission and to the sense of community in a church.  I'd like it if as well as the quiet time at the beginning and end we could've had  a small bit in the middle to talk about what epiphany is all about, but that can be built upon in time.  It was interesting to see the similarities and differences between running this and teaching a lesson.  Obviously as this is more voluntary you need to capture their imagination a little more, and give them more freedom, but at least knowing how to use 'the teacher voice' helped a couple of times throughout the night! Plus seeing them all having fun and working together as teams was brilliant.