For a quick & easy game that is absolute chaotic fun, try ‘Bouncy Ball Madness’. You know those little rubber bouncy balls you can get at the dollar store? The ones that bouncy like crazy? Always keep some of them on hand. They are a blast. Here are two games we play with them. Continue reading »
This is a bit off-topic, but I just had to write about it. After all, people in youth ministry need computers! I’ve been a mac user for less than a year now. I had thought about switching for a few years, but it was the Mac OS X Tiger that won me over. Such features! Such ease of use! Such reliability! I had to switch! And now that Leopard is out and running happily on my iMac, I am all the more delighted that I made the switch. I’m not sure how any sane person can continue using Windows when they know Leopard is out there. But I digress. This is not meant to be a Windows vs. Mac dissertation. This is meant to tell you about three really cool new features that make the Mac OS X even better. Now I realize that these are not terribly technical, mind-blowing features, but they have certainly made my computing experience a whole lot more enjoyable. Continue reading »
I am a firm believer in having a youth group executive or youth council or whatever you call it - a group of the core, committed youth that you can mentor and develop into dedicated and properly equipped leaders. Why, you may ask? Because it is these kids that will be on the church boards, leadership committees, pastors, missionaries, Bible school professors, and the like. The dedicated ones now are going to be the dedicated ones years down the road. They will be the church. I am absolutely convinced that investing large amounts of time, money, effort into developing these teens is well worth it. But this isn’t meant to be an essay on why we should invest in our kids, (that may come later), but rather a how-to on creating a vision for your youth group leadership. Continue reading »
By some, this activity is loved. By some, this activity is dreaded. Either way, this is a fun olympic-style competition that puts everyone on an even playing field. The basic idea is to have a series of about twelve events that each team will try to earn points at within a certain time limit. So for example, if you have twelve events and six teams, each team starts at a different event that they will do for three minutes. At the end of the three minutes, they report to the score keeper and then rotate to the next event. Continue reading »
The topics of money and laziness should apply to just about every youth you’ll ever meet. This study on Proverbs six deals with both of those issues and more. There is a lot of stuff in this chapter, so you may want to divide this study into two and take a little more time on each topic. Either way here is a brief overview of this jam-packed chapter of Proverbs. Continue reading »
Because there are so many ‘characters’ in this game, it is very theme-able. The old west, aliens, sea creatures, dinosours, food chain - whatever you can come up with. For this explaination I’m going to use the good ol’ food chain theme. Continue reading »
Dave has a passion for discipleship and has a great deal of experience in youth ministry through his work at camps and youth groups in Central Alberta. Read more about Dave on the about page.
