Luke Trouten, Youth Pastor at Northwood Church in Maple Grove, MN, donated the instructions for the game Whip ‘n Strip for you all! It looks like it has the potential to become a pretty violent game, so it must be fun! The name alone makes you a bit curious about how to play. Fortunately, you can just download Luke’s PDF of the game’s instructions below.

Luke has this to say about the game:

This game works better outside, but can be played in a gym. A single game can take anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour depending on how strategic the students get. I’ve brought this to every camp/youth group I’ve worked at and it’s always been a hit. In the summer we get face paint and go Braveheart style, it’s pretty intense.

Download “Whip ‘n Strip” instructions

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Join us at 2:00 PM EST this afternoon in our LIVE YM Talk. Our featured guest is Joshua Griffin, high school pastor at Saddleback Church, and he’ll lead us in a discussion about working with high school students. See the LIVE YM Talk page for details on how to join the call and/or the live chat.

Adam Wormann, an old friend who graduated from the youth ministry program at Philadelphia Biblical University with me, sent me today’s Freebie Friday to share with you.

Based on a segment from Jay Leno, the eBay game is where you show a picture of a random item for sale on Ebay. The PowerPoint linked below contains various obscure pictures of items that were sold and the Word document contains information about that auction, including the number of bids and final sale price. You can have players:

• Guess the final sale price (within certain percent)
• Guess the number of bids (within a certain number)
• Give a price/number of bids and play “higher or lower”
• Give points to whoever gets closest
• Be creative and come up with something else!

All of these items were actually on eBay and really sold as indicated.

Download eBay game details

Download eBay PowerPoint game

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There is NO LIVE YM Talk this afternoon. We’re scheduled for next week, though, March 6, 2009, for 2:00 PM as usual. Talk with you all then!

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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Been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer? Life In Student Ministry has an outstanding team of youth ministry veterans waiting to mentor you one-on-one! [Mentorship made free for you thanks to YouthBytes video curriculum.]

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.

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 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.