PREPARATION
You need lots of board games, so ask your team to bring in as many as they can. You will also need: a cup, water, a Bible, the ability to show a video, paper and felt-tip pens.
GAME ZONE
15 mins
Place a number of board games around the room for your young people to explore and play with. These should, in the main, be games that do not last too long, such as Connect Four, Pass the Pigs and Jenga. This is a good place for leaders to show off their retro games. You could even give a prize to the leader who brings in the most obscure / oldest game.
WATER IN THE FACE
10 mins
Play the game your group enjoys regularly playing the most. If you can’t think of one, here is my youth group’s favourite game. Get the group to sit in a circle and pick someone to stand in the middle. The person in the middle has to come up with a category: for example, colours. He or she will whisper a colour to one of the leaders or write it on a piece of paper. The person in the middle then receives a cup with a very small amount of water in it. Those in the circle take it in turns to announce a colour. If they hesitate for too long, repeat an answer or say the same colour as the person in the middle, the person in the middle can throw the cup of water over them. The person who has been splashed then becomes the person in the middle and chooses a new category.
The point of this game is that sometimes there doesn’t have to be a point! The hope of today’s session is that we understand that God is as interested in and delights in our play just as much as when we are doing things we consider much ‘holier’.
KEY POINT
God is creative. We only need to look around us to see this. Think about a sunset and the stars in the sky, the intricacies of tiny flowers and insects, and the complexities and differences in the billions of people on earth. It is also interesting that Jesus was a carpenter when he was on Earth. The Greek word used here is ‘tekton’, a better translation of which is ‘artisan’; a role that involved not just banging wood together but skilfully creating woodwork. In God’s creativity we see his sense of fun.
We are not just created to work but are made with senses of humour, a divine desire to build stuff, play around with things and make fun together. There’s a beautiful verse in Zephaniah 3:17 that says: ‘The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save, he will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.’ When his children have fun God sings over us.
THE PROBLEM OF PLAY
5 mins
Either as a group, in small groups or in pairs, ask the following:
• What is the best game you have ever played? Why was it so good?
• On a scale of one to ten, how competitive are you?
• Why do you think we play fewer games as we get older?
• If you were to play a game with the whole of the church during a church service, what game would you play?
• Why do you think we sometimes believe God is less interested in our play time than our church time or school time?
VIDEO: HOME
10 mins
Search for ‘Ethos Home’ on YouTube and click ‘Ethos: Home// Inhabiting the story of the prodigal’. This film contains teaching on the prodigal son, and especially the perspective of the older son, who refuses to go to the party.
KEY POINT
The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 is most used and known for communicating God the Father’s unconditional love and welcome, no matter how far we stray from home. But the story is told in response to the muttering of the Pharisees in Luke 15:2. The older son in the story represents the Pharisees, and the tragic thing about him is that when a massive party is thrown because his brother has come home, he refuses to go in. The root of his problem is that the relationship he has with his father is based on ‘slaving’ for him. He simply does not realise how much his dad loves him and delights in him.
We can often be like this and need to continually remind ourselves that faith is about a relationship with God the Father and that he delights in us just as much at the party or on the sports field as he does when we are at church or serving others.
GOD IN MY PLAY
10 mins
Using A4 paper and felt-tip pens, divide the paper into seven columns, one for each day of the week. Divide each column into the waking hours of the day, with wake-up time at the top and bedtime at the bottom. Ask your young people to draw boxes between the hours they would classify as play time. Fill these boxes with the typical activities they would take part in during these times, from sports to computer games to hanging out with friends. Ask them to consider the amount of time each week that play takes place. Is it too much or too little?
Using a different colour, ask them to make any changes they feel God is prompting them to make in their play lives. Challenge them to think not only about the quantity of play but also the quality. Are the play activities life-bringing and God-honouring? Is there a good balance between playing alone and with friends? Ask them to share their plans with a friend and pray for each other.
