Main Point: Help students to get used to opening up in small groups
Students Arrive:
- make them feel welcome
- learn names and interests
- give new people a New Person Form
Bring it Together: (about 15 minutes after start time)
“Hey, glad to see you all here. Welcome to INSERT NAME OF YOUTH GROUP!”
Introduce New People:
Give students a Blow-pop, Skittles, or Snickers bar, etc.
Youth Challenge:
Choose an upfront game from our “Up-front Games” list (CLICK HERE)
Invite two students to volunteer and challenge one another. (Soda Slam, Surgical Glove Blow-up, Joust, or just a burp contest. Be creative!)
Announcements:
Upcoming activities, events
Games:
You can choose games from the game list (CLICK HERE)
Divide to Small Groups Discussion: Pass out 3X5 Cards- fold in 6. When you fold the cards into 6, you then instruct the students to draw to the best of their ability a symbol, a stick figure drawing, anything that would best represent your feelings to the following questions:
1. Who is the person you can be the most honest with? (if it is your friend, possibly draw their picture or a picture of something that makes you think of them.–ex. If your friend always wears a baseball hat, maybe draw a hat to represent him.)
2. What is one great fear you have?
3. What is one talent or skill that you have?
4. What are your friends like?
5. What is the inside of your room like?
6. What do I think about churches?
Now we'll go around the group to my right- we'll share one symbol, drawing, etc. at a time and the explain the answer- explain your answer as much as you want and be sure to listen to everybody else’s answer!
1. Share whichever symbol/drawing you thought of the quickest.
2. Share the symbol that you think would surprise us.
3. Share the symbol that is the hardest to be honest about.
4. Share one other symbol
Wrap Up: The “we are here for ya!” talk
Thanks for coming
Ton's of fun stuff coming up that we hope you can come to
“For those of you that are new to our youth group, we are here for you guys. We want you to have a place to come, be heard and express yourself. We'll always have a great time- sometimes we'll talk about things that are important to you- like friendship, family, and the choices you make in life and how they effect you- and we're here for you to help you if you want it. Sometimes these talks will lead to discussions about God. . . and that's okay. Each of our staff believe in God and have a relationship with him. Don't worry- that doesn't mean anything funky- we won't pound on your head with Bible's or make you sell flowers in airports or anything; we just think a relationship with God is very important and if you would like to ask us about that we'd love to talk to you about that. But most of all we're here for you and we're gonna have a blast this year- starting next week for free root beer floats- we're gonna hand out fliers right now so you can bring your friends next week. Everybody gets free root beer floats.
See you next week!!!”
