Indoor Game; All Ages; 30 or more kids

This game was submitted by Ish Engle, youth pastor at First Christian Church of Cushing, Oklahoma.

There are seven boxes in the field of play, home plate and a “do not cross” line (about 10 feet from home plate). The boxes range in point value from 1-7 and are randomly placed in the outfield, usually with the higher numbers farther from home.

Only the pitcher of the non-batting team is allowed past the “do not cross” line. They stand about 6-8 feet from the plate.

The ball should be a Nerf-style basketball/soccer ball that won’t fly to far even if Babe Ruth hits it. For a bat, a wiffle ball bat is perfect, although a broom stick with a pool noodle over it works well, too.

The pitcher pitches, the batter bats. After a successful hit (there are no strikes or balls, and its only foul if it goes behind home plate), the batter runs to any point box they choose. They may run to as many as they like in any order that they like, but they only get points for the boxes they touch. To receive points, they must touch the box AND return home safely.

The fielding team tries to get the batter out by fielding the ball and pegging the runner. The runner may dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge to avoid being hit.

The entire side bats, outs are not tracked. Once one side has batted, teams switch places. When they have batted the inning is over. The game is usually played to 3 innings.

Its a lot of fun, and the soft ball/bat combo serves to make the sluggers and the “not-athletically gifted” more equal. You will find that those kids who hit and run to the 1 or 2 point box and back will be your lead scorers in the end. Slow and steady wins the game!

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 30 or more kids

Troy Young, student pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Danville, KY, sent me this game idea. I haven’t tried it yet, but can’t wait to do so!

Buy 3 or 4, 20″ bicycle inner-tubes. Split the youth up into groups and see how many students they can fit inside of the inner tube. You will be blown away! Our students were like, “There is no way we are getting in there.” We got over 30 students into each inner-tube. It sounds simple but they loved it, and they loved the competition against the different groups.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

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Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

This post has been sitting as a draft for almost a year. Sorry! Better late than never, I guess.

Justin Ross has a great youth group game idea of combining Musical Chairs with Dodge Ball. When the music stops, one team runs across the room to sit in a row of chairs while the other team tries to peg them with dodge balls. Whoever is hit with a ball is out, as well as the last person to sit down. Then teams switch roles.

Read more details on his site about how to play this high-energy game.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Youth ministry budgets are often slim, but that doesn’t mean your youth group fun has to be. Summer events are great for building relationships, earning trust, and meeting pre-Christians. Here are five summer youth events I’ve done that cost $5 or less total.

1. Movie night on the big screen
Hang a big white sheet on the side of your house and setup a projector and sound system from church in the grass or driveway. Invite kids to come over at dusk and watch a movie on the BIG screen with their own lawn chairs, blankets, bug spray and snacks. I did this last week. Here’s a picture of my setup I posted on Twitter. Always fun!

2. Swim party
My wife and I are blessed enough to live on a great swimming lake, so youth kids swim here pretty often to cool off during the summer. A guy in our church even made volleyball poles for us to use in the lake, too. Suh-weet!

3. Photo scavenger hunt
Get a bunch of adults to drive teams of teenagers around town with their digital cameras taking pictures of things on a predetermined list. Meet up someplace afterwards where the group can watch all the pictures together on a TV or projection screen. Here’s the list I used with my group this year, along with all the pictures they took.

4. Night games
If your church, a family you know or a park near you has a lot of wooded area, meet up at dusk to play some night games, like Capture the Flag, Sardines, Mission Impossible or even Hide and Seek. Encourage them to come dressed up in camouflage gear and dark clothes. Afterwards have a bonfire and a time of worship.

5. Mall madness
Mall Madness events are great if it’s unbearably hot outside and you all want to be in air conditioning. I already blogged four Mall Madness ideas. All four of them are dirt cheap or free.

Other ideas from the community

I asked on Twitter for other people’s ideas for good summer youth events that cost $5 or less. Here are their suggestions:

ruthEbabes: waterfight…. huge pile of water balloons and some buckets and tada!!!! Mad cheap summer fun!

Shelby_Craig: Laser Tag…we just did a laser tag at $5 a game and then went to a local gymnastics and took over the place for $5.Total trip $10

Saraeden: we do all-nighters at the church. Guitar Hero, movies, contests, games . everyone brings snack - 7pm to 7am … free … awesome. and parents volunteer to come in and cook us breakfast.

Briandurr: It’s still tough to beat the old stand-by video scavenger hunt & watch the videos afterwards over pizza. or the “Dive-In Movie” watching Jaws from the pool. (& grab Jr. High girls feet when the shark shows up)

mikelovato: we’re doing an event next friday called Frisbee Friday (not original to us) just show up at a park to play ultimate frisbee - free

lilkup: park, ultimate frisbee, wiffle ball, (should be more, but can’t think)

Josh Cook on my Facebook wall: Going to the park is often our best cheap outing. Picnic. Bring a lunch.

What ideas do you have that could be added to this list?

Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

This game idea is submitted by Russell Martin, a worship leader in Texarkana, Texas.

Gather many rolls of toilet paper and put them in the middle of the room. Divide the group into two teams and put them on either side of the room. Play normal dodge ball rules. If you hit someone, they are out. If they catch the “ball,” you throw you are out, etc. After round one then play again. This time, however, an adult leader gets to play god. The leader tells the youth that at any time they can tell someone they are out, or put someone back in no matter what. Whatever the leader says goes!

After the game the youth will probably complain about it not being fair, about you not being fair. Use this time to talk about God being fair and just.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 4 or more kids

We played this a couple weeks ago in both our Jr. High and Sr. High ministries. The facial expressions and reactions are priceless!

The game is pretty simple. I broke students up into teams of about 4-5 people, projected an image of 20 Jelly Beans from PowerPoint, gave each team a corresponding answer sheet and a zip-lock bag of Jelly Beans. The object was to try to identify all 20 Jelly Bean flavors within 10 minutes.

It sounded fine until the kids realized that half the Jelly Beans were sweet (Banana and Peach) and half were gross (Moldy Cheese and Baby Wipes) and there was no way to tell which was which until they actually ate it. One of our Jr. Highers got the Vomit flavored bean stuck in her throat and almost puked! It was awesome! Others ran to the water fountain screaming! lol

I got the Bean Bazooled boxes by Jelly Bean, but unfortunately their site was out of stock, so I purchased them from this shop on eBay instead ($2.25/box with $5.50 S&H total for 1-18 boxes).

Bean Bazooled Answer Sheet
Bean Bazooled PowerPoint

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor Game; All Ages; 4 or more kids

Supplies: One Twister mat for every 4-5 students. One Twister spinner.

Tonight with the Jr. High students we played Twister with a twist. Instead of laying the mats flat on the floor, I taped them to the walls of the gym and we played it standing up. Since the competition was your mat versus all the other mats, I allowed some of the students on teach team to sit out and support teammates against the wall. They helped hold people up, acted as human stools and supported those who were falling. It worked pretty well for the most part. It worked better when I allowed everyone to stand and substituted “left foot” and “right foot” for “left ear” and “right ear.” Eventually, though, we took the mats off the wall and played a normal game of Twister on the floor.

Here are some pictures of it from my cell phone.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Ben Schnipper of Mexico, Missouri submitted this game. Sounds hilarious! Thanks, Ben!

Indoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

Supplies: Twinkies, babyfood, food injector (preferably one with a a sharp pointed end)

Unwrap all the twinkies and fill the food injector with baby food. Insert the food injector 3/4 of the way into the Twinkie long ways and at the same time inject the baby food and pull the injector out. Do this to all of the Twinkies except four leaving those normal. Place an equal number of Twinkies on two plates placing two of the normal ones on each plate and place in the fridge for a couple hours.

Split your students into two teams and tell them you are going to have a Twinkie eating contest. When you say go one member of each team must race to their plate eat a Twinkie completely and then race back and tag the next person. First team to clean their plate wins.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor or Outdoor Game; All Ages; 10 or more kids

This game idea was submitted via email by Pastor Jon Eagleson. It looks hilarious! Just watch this video to get an idea of how it works.

Play a regular game of soccer, but with one twist. Everyone has to use binoculars! You could use the binoculars to magnify everything or even flip them over to make everything really really small but still visible, with no doubt the same effect.

It might be hard to buy a lot of binoculars for something like this, so maybe try using paper-towel rolls instead. It doesn’t have the magnifying effect, but it’s much more cost effective.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.

Indoor or Outdoor Game; Sr. High Only; 20 or more kids

While I would never recommend the TV show MXC (Most Extreme Challenge) to anyone due to the dialog’s sexual overtones, I happened to see this on TV and thought it would make a great youth group game. Rather than explaining it, just watch this video clip I put together:

We played this tonight at Sr. High youth group and it was a blast! I bought two 10 foot poles of PVC for a couple bucks each, which worked okay except that some of our taller guys could easily jump and snag the flag without too much difficulty, so I’d recommend using a pole that’s closer to 15 feet tall. Also make sure you have everyone take off their shoes and jewelry before playing.

SUBMIT YOUR GAME: If you have a favorite youth group game, tell me about it. If I publish it, you’ll receive full credit, a link, lots of gratitude and a warm feeling inside that comes from sharing with others.