3 Recommended Books for Student Ministry Game Ideas

A few months ago I wrote a post about my top three favorite websites to get student ministry game ideas. Even though there are countless websites out there with great game ideas, there are also some great books out there that have tons of great game ideas for your students. Most of these books are pretty cheap and would be a great resource to have on your book shelve. Here are three books I have found extremely helpful when it comes finding great games for students.

Best Ever Games for Youth Ministry by Les Christie. A few years ago I sat in one of Christie’s workshops at SYMC on how to do good games and icebreakers. I love this guys energy and creativity. Many of the games and icebreakers he shared with us came straight from this book. In this book Christie shares well over two hundred awesome games that can work for any size student ministry. He breaks the games into five categories: zoomer (high energy games), energy saver (low energy, stationary games), wide open (games for large playing areas), pair up (games that require students to partner up), and crowd pleaser (games that work great with large groups of 50 or more students). This book will also list any supplies you need for each game as well as a quick summary of how the game works.

The $5 Youth Ministry by Todd Outcalt. What student pastor doesn’t love games that take little prep and supplies only cost a few bucks? This book is just what the title suggests, game ideas for $5 or less. The cool thing about this book is it’s pack with so much more than just games. There are practical ideas for teaching, worship, missions, and more. This book explains the games (or other ideas) in quit a bit of detail. It also shares various options for each idea so you can see what works best for your group. Todd has done an excellent job at putting together this helpful resource.

The Hot Seat by Johnny Scott. This is a little book I bought last year at SYMC and have not used as much as I would want to. This book offers quick “in the moment” games that you can do with your students basically anywhere. Like the book above, this book is packed with much more than games which makes it even a better resource to have. One way this book is helpful is it provides great, fun games you can do with your students when your in a bus or van going on a missions trip or headed to an event. It’s a small book so it’s easy to carry around with you and every idea within it requires basically no prep or set up.

If you want to spend less time planning games and more time preparing your message or next event, than get one or all of these books. They will give you great game ideas so you can spend less time planning them yourselves. If your like me, you enjoy doing games with your students (especially middle schoolers), but often times planning and preparing a good game can take up a ton of time. That’s why these books are helfpul. They give you great game ideas that your students will love!

3 Mixers to Help You Get Your Students Interacting

One of my favorite things to do at the beginning of student gatherings is crowd mixers. Usually when you have a crowd of twenty or more students these work great. The reason I love doing this is because many students have their own group they always hangout with. They sit together, hangout together, and are practically inseparable. So one way I like to get them interacting with other students is doing a fun crowd mixer. Mixers are anything that gets your students up out of their seats and interacting with other students in the group, especially the ones they don’t know very well. Here are three of my favorite mixers we have recently done with our students:

Speed Meeting. Speed meeting is much like speed dating, but without the “dating” aspect. What you will need to do is tell every student to get a partner. Once they have a partner, tell them one of them will be person number one and the other will be person number two. Then tell the students who are number one’s in their group to form a circle facing out. Once that circle is formed, tell the other students who are number two’s in their group to form a circle around the other circle, but facing towards the inner circle. Everyone should be facing someone in the other circle. Now this is how the mixer goes. Have a emcee tell either the outside circle or the inside circle to move a certain number of places to the right or left. Each time they do this, they will be in front of someone new. Each time they are in front of someone new, tell them a question or thing they must tell the other person. Have fun with this. Have them share funny, embarrassing, gross, or even spiritual things. This is a great mixer to get students talking to each other especially to students they may never normally talk to.

Lady, Knights, and Horses. You may have seen this mixer done before in a few different variations. To get it set up, tell the students to find a partner. In this mixer, encourage them to find a partner they don’t know or don’t normally hangout with. This mixer also has a game element to it so explain how the “game” works. Like speed meeting, tell them to form two circles. When you say go, have each circle walk in different directions. Then you will yell out one of three things. If you yell out lady, the two students must find each other and one must jump into the other persons arms. If you yell out knights, they will have to find their partner and one of them will have to sit on the knee of the other. If you yell out horses, they must find their partner and one must get on their hands and knees while the other students sits on their back like they would be if riding a horse. Each round, the last group to find their partner and get into position is out and eliminated. So each round you will have one less group until your down to just two groups left to play against each other for the winner.

Who Am I? This is a great mixer to get your students walking around and interecting with almost every student. As students come in, have each of them write the name of a famous person on a sticky note and give it back to you. When it comes time for the mixer, have someone go around and stick a sticky note on each students forehead. Then explain how the mixer works. Everyone must get up and walk around while asking “yes” or “no” questions to try and find out who they are according to the sticky note. Once they think they figured it out, they must come up to you and say who they think they are.

If you have any questions about these mixers or have anything you want to add, feel free to leave a comment below. Also, click here to see some other great mixers you can use with your students.