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.

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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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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At our lock-in that weekend, I dumped all the shredded paper in a huge pile in the middle of the room. After forming the students into several teams and giving them each a couple rolls of clear packing tape, I instructed the teams to pick one person to be the human snowball and the rest to cover them in tape, sticky side out. When the alloted “wrapping” time was up, I gave the command and each of the sticky kids jumped into the paper and covered themselves with as much paper as possible. When “rolling” time was up, they got out of the pile of shredded paper and a couple judges deliberated on which team had the most paper stuck to their “ball.”

A couple warnings:

• Make sure the wrapped kids’ arms are free so they can brace themselves. We had to send a kid to the hospital for stitches because he fell on his face and couldn’t brace himself.
• Be careful about paper dust. I was surprised how much there was and it actually ruined my video camera within 60 seconds.

Here are some pictures from 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.

Alphabet Game
Fill a little paper bag with strips of paper, each with a funny sentence written on it. Each sentence must start with a different letter of the alphabet. (For example, “Aardvarks sure do look tasty” and “Boy do you look terrible!”) Fill another little paper bag with numbers. Everyone picks a number. The two people who picked the 1 and 2 go first. Player 1 picks out a slip of paper with a sentence on it and reads it aloud. Player 2 must respond with a sentence that starts with the next letter of the alphabet AND makes sense. For example, player 1 says, “Stop! You have a turtle on your shoulder.” Player 2 responds, “That turtle is my pet.” Player 1 replies, “Under what circumstances should you have such a strange pet?” and so on. The first person who either responds with a sentence that does not start with the following letter of the alphabet or who can’t come up with a sentence within the time limit (like 10 seconds or so) loses. Players 3 and 4 then battle one another. When all people have gone, have the winners battle one another. You could also do this with two teams going against one another.

Here’s the list I apparently wrote up for my youth group a while back:

• Aardvarks sure do look tasty
• Boy do you look terrible!
• Can you fit your whole fist in your mouth?
• Dunking graham crackers in pickle juice is my favorite!
• Everyone looks pretty fantabulous today
• Finding Nemo is the worst movie ever!
• Good going, look what you did!
• How is it possible to have a civil war?
• I like how it tickles when the hair on my legs stand up.
• Just you and me now, pal!
• Kaite told me that yellow snow tastes better than normal snow.
• Let me see you lick your nose
• My toenail polish is prettier than yours!
• Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
• Ostriches are very flexible.
• Put your spandex on and let’s go running
• Quiet, my imaginary friend is talking.
• Ritchie is the cutest boy ever!
• Sucking on your toes is yummy.
• Tickling Pastor Rol is not recommended.
• Understand that my name is NOT Seymour Butts!
• Very few midgets can run faster than 10 mph.
• While you were out I decided to…
• X-rays make me feel invisible, like Big Bird!
• Yesterday I talked with a guy whose breath was worse than Tim’s!
• Zip along there, speedy little fella!

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.

Here’s two pictures of the game from my cell phone camera last night:

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.

Supplies needed:
One Rubber Chicken

How to play:
Divide the group into 2 equal teams. Give one team the rubber chicken. As soon as you say “go” the team that has the chicken quickly lines up behind the person holding the chicken and the chicken is passed over one person’s head, under the next person’s legs, so it goes over, under, over, under all the way to the end of the line. Then the whole team yells “Chuck the Chicken!” Meanwhile, the other team (the team without the chicken) gets into a huddle when you say “go” and one person runs around the huddled up team as many times as they can before the other team chucks the chicken. It’s a good idea to have a leader counting how many times the youth runs around their team — this is how many points that team gets during that round. As soon as that team hears the other team “chuck the chicken,” they stop huddling/running and they all run over to pick up the chicken. They then line up and do what the first team did (chicken over, under, over, under), while the other team does what they just did (huddle and have one person run around while another leader counts their points). You do this for a pre-determined number of rounds. Three or five rounds have worked out well for our group. The team with the most points at the end wins!

Thanks, Abi!
This game is provided by Abi Bourckel, a youth worker in Ellicott City, Maryland. Check out her blog at “Not all who wander are lost…”

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.

Setup
1. Setup a field like the image below. We used lots of old tires to outline the field, jail and safe zone, but you can just as easily use cones or whatever. The jail should be small enough to be a tight fit for all the kids on one team. The safety zone should have a diameter of about 15 feet.

2. Cut a twin size sheet in half across the width.

3. Take two 4-square balls and wrap each one in half of the sheet like a lollipop wrapping, so the ball looks like the head of a cheap Halloween ghost. Bunch the sheet together underneath the ball and seal it tightly with a zip tie. When you cut the excess zip tie off, make sure there are no sharp corners or edges. Say hello to your Wawa Man.

4. Make two teams and assign each team to a side of the field.

5. Place a Wawa Man in each safety zone.

Objective: Get the other team’s Wawa man to your side of the field.

Rules
1. Once you cross the mid-way line onto the other team’s territory, you’re free game to be caught by someone on the other team and sent to jail. Determine beforehand how to catch someone. We like to play tackle with high school students, but you can also play two-hand touch, although the games take a LOT longer. (Only girls can tackle girls, but anyone can tackle a guy.)

2. Prisoners must stay in jail until one of their team members makes it safely to the jail and tags a captive teammate. Prisoners get a free walk back to their side of the field, but the valiant hero is still free to be captured.

3. If someone makes it safely across enemy territory and reaches the Wawa Man, they may stay in the safety zone for as long as they want. There is also no limit to how many teammates may occupy the safety zone together. Opponents, however, may not enter the safety zone.

4. When attempting to take the Wawa Man back to your territory, the Wawa Man must not touch the ground. If he does, he is returned back to his safety zone. The Wawa Man also cannot be passed forward, only lateraled backwards between teammates. If you are tackled/tagged outside the safety zone while holding the Wawa Man, you go to jail and the Wawa Man is returned to the safety zone.

5. Play as many rounds as you want. When it’s all over, have fun listening to all the “heroic” stories kids have to tell! The Wawa Man will become a symbol of pride and bragging rights for your group.

Bonus idea: Playing in a muddy field is the best! It’s also fun to play in the snow on a nice sunny day.

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.

Games can be a vital aspect of any youth meeting, so I’m going to introduce a new blog feature to Life in Student Ministry called, Favorite Youth Group Games. Once a week or so I’ll feature one my favorite youth group games and how you can effectively use it in meetings. However, I am continually learning from others, so if you have a favorite youth group game to submit, I’d love to have you cover it here as a guest blogger. Just send me your game post, a picture of yourself and a link to your blog if you have one. You’ll get full credit, of course, with a link to your site.