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    Wednesday, December 15, 2010

    The Amazing Christmas Race

    It is that time of year again and my wheels have been spinning with some new Christmas ideas and I thought I would share what I'm doing this Christmas to see if it can help any of you all out there.

      First off, let me share an amazing resource with you.  Many of you may know this, but Minute to Win It hosted by Guy Fieri is a sess-pool of amazing youth group game ideas and there Christmas ideas are just as potent as their other games.  I grabbed some of my great ideas from this site here: Minute to Win It Christmas.

      Our theme this year is the Amazing Christmas Race (as you can see from the above picture).  BTW We created that logo here in our office, so feel free to steal it if you like.  The key idea of the race is that we all in our lives are racing for something, we live our lives racing around for more money, more gifts, more other stuff and we miss what our life race is really about: Jesus.  Jesus is what we should be living for, racing for and looking forward to.  We have a guest speaker coming in to give an evangelistic message about his race for fame and how God showed him the real race he should've been running for was for Jesus, not for fame.  He will then share about sin, the cross and the meaning of the Incarnation with our students.

      The theme is closely following the show "The Amazing Race" in that we produced a film series of our youth leaders going around our city (Pittsburgh) doing the amazing race.  This project was a lot more work than I anticipated and would've been impossible without our iMac, so just cautioning anyone from trying it without time and a Mac.  I usually would display the videos on youtube or something, but each of them are about 8 minutes long, which is a bit long...but I was stuck with what we shot...

      We will end the series on the night of December 22nd, which is our Christmas Party. Here is the layout of the night (with some descriptions)

    6:45-7pm- Registration, hang out, get some drinks listen to some Christmas music

    7-7:15pm- Grab food, eat, sit at tables and hang out

    7:15-8pm- Games
                      - Face the Gingerbread Man (from Christmas Minute to Win it)
                      - Wreath Madness (from Christmas Minute to Win it)

                      - Total Recall (A video based game where you have (2) 2 minute clips of Christmas films and after each 2 minute clip ask specified questions.  Leaders at the tables have the answer keys and will verify the person who gets all the questions correct)
                      - Santa Beard (A game where you have pairs (as many as you want) come together and one person is "Santa" and the other is the "Beard Builder".  The Beard Builder uses Foam Shaving Cream (must be foam, NOT gel) and they then attempt to build the best Santa Beard they can within 3 or 4 minutes
                      - Cookie Decorating (We are having 300+ cookies for each of our teens to have about 3 cookies per person to decorate)

    8-8:05- Move from Gym to 2nd Floor Fellowship Hall

    8:05-8:30- Evangelistic Message based on the "Amazing Race" theme


    So, that's our Christmas Party in a nut shell.  What are you doing?