Sermons for Youth: Valentine's Back to Back

Materials
A variety of simple Valentine's images. (e.g. Cupid, hearts, etc) You can also use simple Valentine's cards for the design.

Activity
Form teams of six people. Instruct each team to sit in a line, one person behind another, and take a vow of silence for the duration of the game. Give the first person in each line a pencil and a piece of paper. Then show the last person in each line a simple image of an object associated with Valentine's Day. That person must use his or her finger to draw the object on the back of the person in front of him or her. This continues until the drawing reaches the first person in line. He or she must draw it on the piece of paper. Have judges determine which team's picture closest resembles the original picture. If time permits, play more rounds, letting team members change positions if they wish.

Application
Things get distorted the farther we get from the source, especially when we have our backs turned on God. In todays world, too often love has degraded to lust, and commitment in relationships has been replaced with convenience.

Debrief
1. Define "love" and "relationships" in Biblical terms. How would the world define "love" today? What guidelinesdoes the Bible give for intimate relationships? What are the world's standards for relationships?
2. In what ways has "true love" been distorted over time?
3. How can we get back to a Biblical view of relationships and love?

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Sermons for Youth: Valentine Balloon Shavers

Game Materials
You'll need heart shaped balloons, razors and shaving cream or whipped cream

Game Objective
Shave the cream from the balloon with the razor without popping the balloon.

Game Play
1. Break your group into boy-girl couples.
2. Each guy blows up a heart shaped balloon and sits in a chair facing the girl.
3. The girl then spreads the shaving cream or whipped cream onto the balloon while the guy holds it in his mouth.
4. The girl then attempts to shave the cream from the balloon with the razor.
5. The first couple to remove all the cream from the balloon without popping it wins.

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Youth Leadership Lessons: True Love

Materials
Paper and pencils for each group of youth

Activity
Have a competition between teams of children to name as many things as possible that are associated with love. Based upon these lists have kids form a definition of “true Love.” You could also make a list of things on your own (like those listed below) and play a game of charades.

Possible Items
Heart, Chocolate, Roses, Carnations, Dinner, Kisses, Cupid, Love, Valentine Card, Be Mine, I'm Yours, Beloved, I love you, True Love, Be My Valentine, Romance, 14th, courtship, Date, February, Arrows, Boyfriend, Girlfriend, Candlelight, Candy, Diamonds, Flowers, Forever, Gifts, Hugs, Infatuation, Love Letters, Lovebirds, Lovers, Only You, Passion, Pink, Red, Poetry, Relationship, Secret admirer, Sweetheart, Flirting, Serenade, Love Songs, Stuffed Animals, Cuddle, Honey, Casanova, Amore, Wink, Heartthrob, God, Sacrifice, Marriage, Wedding, honeymoon, ring, family, (sex).

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Youth Leadership Lessons: Has Christmas lost it's meaning?

What is Christmas to you?
Is Christmas all about shopping, waiting in line, going in debt, gaining weight, visiting relatives, and holiday music and Christmas parties?

Apparently a lot of American's associate those things with Christmas and aren't too merry about it. In fact it seems that most American's have something about Christmas they they dread. Here are some survey findings commisioned by Consumer Reports Magazine:

• 28 percent hate shopping for gifts - (68 percent worry about having to wait in line to buy them, and 37 percent "abhor" getting in debt over it)
• 37 percent worry about gaining weight
• 24 percent aren't looking forward to seeing relatives
• 23 percent hate the seasonal music
• 16 percent hate going to holiday parties

(Source: RC/Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

This should remind us that during the Christmas Season, we need to make sure the whole world knows the real "Reason for the Season" That a Savior has come.

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Sermons for Youth: Giving

"In God's sight, my giving is measured not by how much I give, but by how much I have left after I make my gift. Not by its size is my gift judged, but by how much of me there is in it. No one gives at all until he has given all! No one gives anything acceptable to God until he has first given himself in love and sacrifice."

A.W. Tozer

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Youth Leadership Lessons: Explaining Suffering

Perhaps to be able to explain suffering is the clearest indication of never having suffered. Sin, suffering, and sanctification are not problems of the mind, but facts of life-mysteries that awaken all other mysteries until the heart rests in God.

-Oswald Chambers

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Sermons for Youth: Quotes - A Christmas Heart

"The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small."
- Dr. Suess

"Christmas is for children. But it is for grownups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts."
- Lenora Mattingly Weber

"It is not even the beginning of Christmas unless it is Christmas in the heart."
- Richard Roberts

"Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree."
- Charlotte Carpenter

"It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air."
- W. T. Ellis

"Mankind is a great, an immense family. This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas."
- Pope John XXIII

"The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has no Christmas in his heart."
- Helen Keller

"Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart...filled it, too, with melody that would last forever."
- Bess Streeter Aldrich

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
- Charles Dickens, Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

"They err who thinks Santa Claus comes down through the chimney; he really enters through the heart."
- Mrs. Paul M. Ell

"Until one feels the spirit of Christmas, there is no Christmas. All else is outward display-so much tinsel and decorations. For it isn't the holly, it isn't the snow. It isn't the tree not the firelight's glow. It's the warmth that comes to the hearts of men when the Christmas spirit returns again."
-- Anonymous

"Christmas is not in tinsel and lights and outward show. The secret lies in an inner glow. It's lighting a fire inside the heart. Good will and joy a vital part. It's higher thought and a greater plan. It's glorious dream in the soul of man."
- Wilfred A. Peterson (The Art of Living)

"This is Christmas: not the tinsel, not the giving and receiving, not even the carols, but the humble heart that receives anew the wondrous gift, the Christ."
-- Frank McKibben

"Christmas ... is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart..."
- Freya Stark

"Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas."
- Calvin Coolidge

"There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions."
- Bill McKibben

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Sermons for Youth: Bridges to Happiness

Only the person who never gives up in life, who persists with his wish to find and fulfill the promise of himself, makes this truly self-liberating discovery: those places that he once mistook as being impassible barriers to his happiness
become as bridges to the same, but only if he learns to welcome them as part of his journey.

Guy Finley

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Youth Leadership Lessons: A Third Way

Without the knowledge of our wretchedness, the knowledge of God creates pride.
With it, the knowledge of God creates despair.
The knowledge of Christ offers a third way, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.

-Blaise Pascal

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Youth Ideas: Daffynitions

Introduction
Next time you have a lesson on a difficult theological concept, distribute a list of words for which kids are unlikely to know the exact definitions:

Examples
atheism, atonement, beatitude, covenant, eschatology, Eucharist, predestination, gnosticism, grace, justification, meek, propitiation, repentance, sanctification, supplication, transfiguration, etc.

Activity

1. Have each student define the words, one word at time on a small piece of paper. They must write their name, the word, and then the definition. Participants can write phony definitions when they don't know the real definitions, but the phony ones should sound as realistic as possible to score points.
2. Collect all the definitions. Also have one prepared for each with the correct definition for comparison.
3. Read the various definitions out loud.
4. After you read the definitions, let students vote for what they think is the closest to the real definition-one vote per student.
5. Add up the votes, reveal the real definition, and then award points as follows:
   • Kids who write correct definitions earn five points for each one.
   • Kids whose phony definitions receive the most votes earn five points per vote.

You can also allow the students to discuss the various definitions and which one is the closes to the true definition and why. Its a great activity to promote discussion.

NOTE
If your group is so large that it is hard to keep track of definitions, create smaller groups.

Variation
Instead of using a definition of a word, do the same thing with Bible teachings. Just ask students to write: "What the Bible teaches about: " Use any Biblical concept. Play it the same way.

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Sermons for Youth: Circle of Love

Materials
* Tennis ball (small ball)
* newsprint and a marker.
* A Bible.

Activity
1. Form kids into circles of 10-20 people.
2. Ask each group to sit in a circle.
3. Explain that you're going to toss the ball to someone across the circle.
4. The receiver is to pick out another person across the circle that has not received the ball yet and toss the ball to him or her.
5. Continue tossing until everyone in the circle has had a chance to catch and toss the ball.
6. Repeat the pattern, catching and tossing to the same people as before. But this time, ask kids to each say one thing they really "love" (basketball, skateboarding, trench fries, movies, and so on) before they toss the ball to someone else.
7. On the third round, repeat the catch-and-toss pattern, this time asking kids to each say one thing they really love about the person they're tossing the ball to (this will probably be much harder than the previous round).

Debrief
* How did you feel when someone told you something he or she loved about you?
* Why is it easier to talk about things we love than about what we love in others?
* What's one thing we can do in our group to show we love each other?
* Write the answers to the last question on newsprint. Then vote on the best idea and do it at each class.

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Sermons for Youth: Candy String Race

Materials
String and a piece of candy for each two persons. (Polo mints with the hole in the center works well.)

Activity
Have two contestants face each other. Have a long piece of string with a candy of some sort tied to the exact middle. Put each end in a contestants mouth. Say go and the contestants will pull the string into their mouth and move their way toward the center of the string to get the candy. The person who gets the candy in their mouth the first is the winner.

Application
Paul wanted the Philippians to know that being first, or getting possessions and things, was no longer important to him. Winning was also not important. He was willing to lose everything if he could have Jesus. His only concern was Jesus. In the game, the candy was in the center of the string. But it wasn't titles or accomplishments that Paul focused on for the center of his life. He wanted Jesus to became the center of his life. (Philippians 3:4-9)

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Youth Bible Studies: Blind Guide

Materials
Blindfolds for 3 or four youth/ children

Activity
Choose 3 or 4 volunteers and blindfold them. Then divide the group into two teams for each volunteer. The objective of one team is to direct the blindfolded person through an obstacle course you have created while the objective of the other opponent's team is to lead the blind-folded person astray. The Blindfolded person will not know which team to trust... If the blindfolded person completes course, the team leading him wins; if he is led astray the distraction team wins.

Application
1. Sometimes in life, the right path is difficult to see and even more difficult to follow
2. We need to learn to differentiate the voices around us so we can make wise decisions

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