Last night I had a game night for our Middle School Youth Group at Crossroads, called Fusion (Yeah, I know it's been the same name for 10+ years with the original logo Noel designed fo rme. What can I say, I like the name, and I already have a logo for it). Having started the year this fall with 2 middle school kids, I wasn't really sure what the turn-out would be. We ended up with 17 kids, plus 6 high school leaders and 3 parents stuck around to help. The theme for the night was "Gross Games".
We started the night off with this clothespin game, which was actually pretty painful. The guys tried to be tough, but you could tell it hurt. Then I stuck two of the leaders in, Chris and Mike, and let the kids go to town on them. It still hurt. We then moved into a pretty twisted one, involving the kids eating melted snickers out of the middle of a diaper. I've changed enough diapers to tell you that it looked EXACTLY like a big 'ol-nasty pile baby poo. The visual killed some of the kids, others ate right through it. We then had another game that involved eating M&M's out of a flour filled cookie tray. The kids ended up with big white gotees, which I could see, but they couldn't. Funny.
My personal favorite for the evening was the game "Trout Smack". This game involves putting an egg on your forehead via a pair of pantyhose, climbing on someone's back and then proceeding to try and break the egg on the other team by smacking them with a trout. It was tougher than it looked, but the kids had fun. Eventually, the leaders had to play. Mike/Tiffany went up against Lori and I. Couple of observations:
- Tiffany can swing a trout really hard.
- Catching a trout in the melon at full speed will make you see stars.
- Apparently this whole process makes you smell bad in the end. So my wife says.
- Short people have very short reaches (Lori).
The next game involved pouring gross stuff into a blender, progressively worse, until no could hold it down. I saw it come out one kids nose. Alka-Seltzer spew worked pretty well, but it didn't come out anyone's nose. We played a couple more games, including sardines. Here's how sardines works: One person hides, everyone else tries to find them. As you find them, you hide with them, until you have 20 people packed in a small space, like a closet. The house on the property Crossroad's has purchased was perfect for this. It has a ton of secret hiding places, and is pitch black at night. The guys had more fun scaring the girls than anything else.
We ended the night with a bonfire, make smores. This kid, Cameron, a sixth grader, enapsulates everything I dig about Middle Schoolers. He'd taken the egg from the trout-smack game and spiked his hair with it. Prior to this, he was telling me this crazy story about a rabbit that roamed the world stealing crackers, threatening to blow up the world. That is exactly why I dig middle school kids. They are my people.
More pictures here.
5 comments:
That clothespin game looks painful!
That makes me totally miss youth ministry. Other things I learned the hard way...when playing with fish, some dude will end up with one in his backpack that his mom will find weeks later...you have to tell middleschoolers to shower after games with fish and eggs, or they show up for church on sunday smelling like a kind of funk that no one needs to smell and if someone doesn't get hurt during the game, it's a flop!
What did the gross games have to do with church? I mean did they learn anything besides that eating snickers out of a diaper (makin it seem like poo) is a little demonic? Sad what goes on today.
Keith, One way to look at it would be to say that they have absoloutely nothing to do with church. In the same way that I love hanging out with the kids and teaching them about their faith, I love spending time with them and doing random fun stuff - whether it's playing video games, eating pizza, or going on a road rally. Not sure if you're familiar with youth ministry - but all of the time spent with them outside of a classroom setting helps you "earn the right to be heard".
I think what Hitler did the jews was demonic, Keith. Is eating a snickers bar out of a diaper really something demons would do? I missed that part of the bible. What I think is sad is when people like Ingrid spread their hate around the world and call it edificiation. What seems demonic is how Ingrid (http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com/about.php) spreads her hatred of Jews, Black, Catholics and others.
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