If you have been in youth ministry long enough, chances are that you have used up your known arsenal of great games that all of your students enjoy. Finding new games can be a challenge, and sometimes next to impossible. So in those times when your creativity has seemed to dry up, how do you find fun activities that everyone can be good at? Try this: create one!

Here’s how we created some really fun games from scratch…and they were really cheap!

1. Choose a Simple Task.

You will want to choose a relatively simple task that a group has to perform together. Don’t make the task too challenging because you will be making it more difficult and giving them more to shoot for in the next steps. The task that we had our students perform was to build a tower out of straws. We gave them masking tape to hold the straws together.

2. Raise the Stakes.

Here the idea is that you want to offer something really amazing (or goofy) for the winners, or something really awful (or messy) for the teams that don’t win. This will motivate each team to try even harder and work together even better. We told the groups that each tower had to bear the weight of multiple heavy objects, and to raise the stakes even more, we had a huge box of chocolate for the winning team to enjoy.

3. Add a Handicap.

Finally, you will want to make the task more challenging. You can make certain members of each team blind or one handed or you can give a time constraint, for example. The handicap that we gave our teams was that in order to build their towers, they could only grab one piece (straw or piece of tape) at a time, and they could only send one student at a time. We gave them 20 minutes to complete this challenge before we began the weight testing. Even though it seemed like a long time, this was just the right amount of time for each team to gather all of their necessary materials and to construct a strong enough tower.

Bonus Tip

Adding upbeat music in the background will raise the feeling of intensity throughout the activity so the students will feel more excited and have more fun.

What are some really fun group games that you know that anyone can be good at? Share with us in the comments below!

Frequently drinking specialty coffee or eating Doroto’s Locos tacos, Brant Cole is often mistaken for just another student. With his wife Christine, he has been in youth ministry since 2010. Gifted in relational connections and transformational preaching, Brant finds it to be one of the highest privileges to do ministry with and to students. To him, student ministry is extremely important because students are not just the church of tomorrow; they are the church of today. Brant has his M.A. in Pastoral Studies and Congregational Leadership from Moody Theological Seminary, and currently serves as Youth Pastor at WALLOON LAKE COMMUNITY CHURCH in Walloon Lake, Michigan. You can connect with Brant on FACEBOOK and learn more about his church’s youth ministry on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM.