2 Nemos & Thanksgiving Dinner

Nemo, the little guy/girl with one person being the face & legs and someone else being the hands has been a huge hit since I was in high school.  Around Thanksgiving time we brought out 2 of them acting as children and had them eating Thanksgiving Dinner with their parents.  We actually did it right at the beginning of Club since it had all the leaders participating and we didn't want to have excess set-up time during Club.


We prayed as a family & started eating.  The 2 children were pretty obnoxious and woudn 't eat their food.  Apparently it was too hard (even the stuffing).  So the mom decided to chew it up for them and spit it in their mouths straight out of Ace Ventura.  Right before she spit the stuff, the dad yells "No, that's disgusting.  We're not from Oviedo. (our rival high school).  I think I've got some old jars of baby food."

Dad pulls out the baby food (Thanksgiving stuff like sweet potatoes, turkey, etc.) and the kids go at it.  To be honest with you, I didn't know how funny the skit would be, but the over-exagerated eating of the baby food was absolutely hysterical.

The skit ends when the two children get into a fight over who gets the one jar of dessert, prunes.  The fight was a great ending, because food was flying everywhere.

Throw A Baby If You Have One

A few years ago, a married couple on my team had a baby boy. One week the dad, Mike, was holding his son in Club and walked out of the room. Once he got out, he removed the blankets from the baby and wrapped them around a doll.

When it was time for announcements, Mike came back in the room holding the doll the same way he had been holding his son. As he moved across the front of the room he purposely tripped over a girl's legs and tossed the fake baby about 10 feet across the room, while simultaneously acting as any new dad would act had it been a real child. The reaction of the crowd was hysterical, especially the girl he tripped over.

That's why I loved it when I read this post by Chad Swanzy titled "I dropped a newborn baby last night" complete with pictures. Good stuff if you've got a baby around.

My wife is pregnant, and I'm already getting excited about being able to do this again.

Human Pinata

Wrap a leader up in duct tape with the sicky side out. Stick candy all over the tape.

Then using ropes strung around his arms & legs (or a harness if you have one, which every good leader does) hang him from a tree.

One by one, let the kids beat the candy from the leader with a pool noodle.

If you want to do it inside a building, you could do something similar to this picture I got in an e-mail titled "Redneck Timeout".

Candid Camera Club

A friend of mine shared an awesome idea with me recently.

A few years ago, he got some administrators and a coach to help pull one over on some kids. He set up a camera in one of their offices and had them call a kid in and basically scare the crap out of them. You can use your imagination, but one kid was told that all of her college applications had been stolen and another kid was cut from the basketball team.

At just the right time, the administrator/coach points to the camera and says, "You're on Young Life Candid Camera".

Then you show the videos at club that night.

Note: All of it has to be done in one day, or word will spread & the kids will get suspicious.

Our Heart Toward Them Matters

This cartoon is from the Naked Pastor.

Bear Wake-Up Video

I posted this last year, but with the recent talk about skit ideas, I figured it'd make for some good inspiration. We showed up at 5:30am, put on our school mascot's bear suit, and whipped out a set of borrowed cymbals & our video camera.

Pardon the language, but you can't blame the kid.

All Alone

I've been known to stay on the pot for quite a while. I'm not sure how God feels about it, but many of my best quiet times take place there. I'm an adult, though. I can get up whenever I want. Not so with my daughter.

Today after all my 11 little ones had gone home from school I left my classroom to go pick up my “real children”. One of Emily’s teachers met me in the hall and handed me Emily’s tote bag. I thanked her and said “Thanks for the bag but where is Emily?” She looked at me like I was crazy and said that the other teacher had dropped her off in my room. I went back to the room, no Emily. Her teacher checked her room, no Emily. We checked two more possible rooms and still, no Emily. By now there are 4 adults looking for her. About 5 minutes had passed and I was starting to get a little nervous and her teacher was frantic.

We finally looked in the bathroom of her classroom and there was Emily sitting on the potty. The substitute assistant had taken her to the bathroom about 15 minutes prior and got so busy with the other kids that she forgot about her. Emily was just waiting patiently for someone to come and help her. Her sweet teacher hugged her and started to cry a little while Emily was just smiling, as happy as ever.

She is just so sweet!

Pass The Spam

This is one of the most simple mixers, but it went really great. We took spam out of 2 cans and split the room in 2. Each group formed a circle & got one of the spams (I have no idea what you call a block of spam. Probably a block of spam.)

This is just a game of hot potato but with spam. When the music stops, whoever has it has to take a bite.

Here are a few things that made is successful.

1. Everyone's touching it. That's gross on a few levels.
2. Demonstrate the size of a bite & explain the game while they were all sitting down before forming the circles.
3. Emphasize that the spam has to be passed from person to person and not thrown.
4. Challenge them to be big men & women about eating it rather than chuck it across the room or drop it on the floor when the music stopped.
5. Put a leader inside each circle to monitor the passing and judge who has it when the music stops.
6. Give that leader a camera. We got some great shots of kids passing it and of the kids taking a bite.
7. Don't overdo it. 4 - 5 times is good. You could announce that for the last one the person has to finish it off. Probably won't happen, but it ups the level of urgency to not get stuck with it.

Are You Too Fashionable?

YOU MAY BE TOO FASHIONABLE IF . . .

1. You can look around at church and notice that everybody is basically the same age and they look and dress pretty much like you do.
2. You can’t stand singing a worship song that was “in” five years ago—much less singing a hymn from another century.
3. You believe social justice is more important than evangelism OR evangelism is more important than social justice.
4. The church you go to is so dimly lit during worship that you can’t see the person singing next to you, much less the person singing across the room.
5. You’ve attended a “leadership” conference where you learned more about organization and props than proclamation and prayer.
6. Your goal in spending time with non-Christians is to demonstrate that you’re really no different than they are and to prove this you curse like a sailor, drink like a fish, and smoke like a chimney.
7. You’ve concluded that everything new is better than anything old OR that everything old is better than anything new.
8. You think that the way Jesus lived is more important than what Jesus said–that his deeds were more important than his doctrine.
9. You believe that the best way to change our culture is to elect a certain kind of politician.
10. The church you’ve chosen is defined more by its reaction to “boring” churches than by its response to a needy world.
11. You’ve decided that everything done by the church you grew up in was way wrong and you’re now, thankfully, part of a missional “community” that does everything right.
12. The one verse you wish wasn’t in the Bible is John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.” That’s way too narrow!

Fun Things To Do At The Grocery Store

We don't do flyers anymore.  All our Young Life announcements are exclusively paperless.  But, if I did flyers, I would definitely include this fun list.

While in a Grocery Store

• Every time you turn the corner with your shopping cart, yell “Make Way!!!”
• While scratching frantically, ask the manager if he or she has anything for body lice.
• Bring your own buy one get one free tags and put them on random items.
• Get tubes of Preparation H (or other embarrassing items) and as you go past other shoppers just secretly drop it in their cart. Stand near the checkout and watch what they all do.
• Challenge other shoppers to cart races.
• Set up your own little sample table, but just give out plain animal crackers. Be very enthusiastic about them. “YOU”VE gotta try these!”
• When you see a worker pulling items to the front of the shelf, walk by and push some back. Just keep walking.
• If you can find a freezer with room in it (or make your own room) get inside and look out at the shoppers through the glass doors.
• Bring a fake mouse attached to fishing line (50 feet is good) and drag it around behind your cart.
• Insist that the bagger only put one item in each bag.
• When you stop to look at something, turn your cart sideways so nobody can get by.
• Make up your own language and ask people questions in it. Make the questions sound important.
• Wear headphones and sing out loud.

All Alone On The Potty

I've been known to stay on the pot for quite a while.  I'm not sure how God feels about it, but many of my best quiet times take place there.  I'm an adult, though.  I can get up whenever I want.  Not so with my daughter.

Today after all my 11 little ones had gone home from school I left my classroom to go pick up my “real children”.  One of Emily’s teachers met me in the hall and handed me Emily’s tote bag.  I thanked her and said “Thanks for the bag but where is Emily?”  She looked at me like I was crazy and said that the other teacher had dropped her off in my room.  I went back to the room, no Emily.  Her teacher checked her room, no Emily.  We checked two more possible rooms and still, no Emily.  By now there are 4 adults looking for her.  About 5 minutes had passed and I was starting to get a little nervous and her teacher was frantic.
We finally looked in the bathroom of her classroom and there was Emily sitting on the potty.  The substitute assistant had taken her to the bathroom about 15 minutes prior and got so busy with the other kids that she forgot about her.  Emily was just waiting patiently for someone to come and help her.  Her sweet teacher hugged her and started to cry a little while Emily was just smiling, as happy as ever.

She is just so sweet!

Izzy Dizzy - New Club Character

A few weeks ago at club planning, we were filling in our semester spreadsheet and were thinking of mixers.
All the old ideas came out.  Knight/Mount/Carry, Tape Shapes, etc.  One of our leaders said we needed some new ideas, so we sat in silence and thought about it.
Then, it hit us.  What if we just put a new spin on the old games.  And Izzy Dizzy was born.
We've had her in club twice and she's a huge hit.  Here's how it works.

1. 2 Leaders introduce a mixer to the kids and get ready to play.
2. Just before we begin to play, one of the leaders says that we do this game every year and it's boring.
3. Then her music starts.  We're using "You Spin Me Right Round" (I think that's what it's called).
4. Izzy comes out with tie dye shirt, propeller hat, and whatever else she can that spins.
5. She tells us her name is Izzy Dizzy and she comes to club to make games fun (something like that) and ends with "off the fashizzy".
6. She then tells us we need to put a new spin on things.
7. We ask her what kind of new thing we can do with this boring game & she looks at us like we're plain dumb.
8. "No." she says.  "You just put a spin on it."
9. Then she demonstrates how to spin properly and we play the game.
10. Kids are required to spin until they have to do whatever they have to do for the game.

It's fun, because everyone bumps into each other and everyone's dizzy.

The Psychologist Skit

We just did this skit on Monday. It is my favorite to do and had the kids cracking up.

Mr. Tolson is knocking at the door on the door of Dr. Roberts, the in-house psychologist.

Dr. Roberts: Mr. Tolson

Mr. Tolson: Are you Dr. Roberts?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, come in. Please have a seat. Sorry to have to call you down here on such short notice, but your company asked me to give you a creativity test.

Mr. Tolson: I’ve never taken one of those before.

Dr. Roberts: Well, they’re pretty easy. Actually, they can be fun. Would you like a beverage?