Insight

Team builders - more than icebreakers

Team building games and activities are great ways to help groups develop cooperation, decision making and communication skills. Team building exercises can be adapted for many different settings and public domain examples are found freely available across the web.

In the next few days I will post some of my favourites, used over the years in youth clubs, youth weekends, camps and as team building exercises with new groups.

A key part of these exercises is facilitating a time of group discussion after the activity. Remember to ask open-ended questions, helping the young people to reflect on what they have learned. Team building games can also provide a useful entry point to teaching themes for your group i.e. working together (the church), making choices (guidance), values and leadership.

Much depends on the role of the youth leader. A well planned and prepared activity, followed up with thought-provoking questions can be a significant learning experience.

Team building activities can be simple games, or involve creative problem-solving, or ‘pen and paper’ group survival situations. These games can challenge your young people’s values, cooperation, decision making and leadership skills.There are two classic types of ‘pen and paper’ survival games – selecting equipment and selecting people.

Consequences - a youth group discussion starter

A simple group discussion starter based on the party game of consequences i.e. his name/ her name/ where they met/ he said/ she said/ where they went/ what they did/ and the consequence was?

This exercise assumes your young people have some background knowledge about the life of Christ. Invite them to sit in a circle of 9 people and give everyone a piece of paper and a pen. If you have a large group, break into two or more circles.

Explain that you are going to play the game consequences and ask a series of 9 questions. They write their first answer at the top of the paper and then fold it so that the answer cannot be seen.

The paper is then passed to the person on their right. This is repeated for each question, until all 9 questions are asked. If someone can’t answer a question they simply write a question mark, fold the paper over and pass it on.

Reflections on leadership - more food for thought

‘The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.’ Harvey S. Firestone

‘As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.’ Bill Gates

‘Leadership is the transference of vision.’ Hal Reed

‘The only real training for leadership is leadership.’ Anthony Jay

‘He who thinks he leads and has no one following him is only taking a walk.’ Anonymous

The church - a youth group discussion starter

A youth group discussion starter on the church. Exploring the New Testament images of the church and discovering the importance of each person playing their part in the life of the church. A themed night of icebreakers and activities can also be found in the earlier post The Body of Christ.

TOWER BUILD

Don’t say too much about the theme of the session at first. It is introduced through the object lesson that follows the tower build exercise.

Divide your group into teams of four. Explain the task is to work together to build the tallest free standing structure or tower they can with the materials provided. Give each team an identical selection of materials which they can use to build the tower. This can include a limited amount of,

Cardboard, newspaper, plastic straws, pipe cleaners, lollipop sticks, plastic cups, paper plates, paper clips, cardboard tubes from toilet of kitchen rolls, tape.

Encourage each team to use all of the resources they are given and to involve everyone in the planning and building process.

Give each team 15 minutes to construct their tower. Then ask each group to step away from their free-standing tower to determine the winner. Depending on the size of your group, come back together as a whole (or divide) to discuss any lessons learned from the project.