ReFuel in Review #3

Wednesday Teaching Series: Small Group KICKOFF

Sermon in a Sentence: No actual sermon this week, just some get to know you activities.

Attendance: 41 students/15 Leaders

Worship Playlist: Marvelous Light, From the Inside Out, How He Loves, Beautiful Things

Why We Moved to Small Groups for the Semester: We want to be creative.  Creativity isn't just making something, but trying to improve what you have.  If we keep doing the same thing without trying to improve it, its not going to magically become more impactful or meaningful.  

     We have a larger group of students than we've ever had.  Its been amazing to see so many.  At the same time, it is difficult for us to get their attention much of the time.  They're great students, but its way easy for them (or anybody) to get distracted easily.  We also have many students who are great friends to each other.  It is great, except when its time to have Bible study and they're more interested in what their friend is doing than what God has in store for them.

     As a youth ministry team, we decided the best thing to do was to go to a smaller group format.  My first instinct is to ALWAYS have small groups divided up by age and gender.  My leaders pretty unanimously decided that we should try totally random groups...that we should have all ages and genders mixed up together.  As always, we're just trying new things, trying to make the most of what God's entrusted us with.

How We Split Them Up: We had a series of games during this kickoff.  They were to get into teams, and we kept score throughout the night.  We started what a game called:

• "Student Scramble" ::  I told them that the object of this game was to try to find another person who is the farthest grade away for their own.  They would get 10 points each grade difference.  Then they found a 3rd person that neither of them knew for 20 points.  The last round was to find an adult leader for 50 points.  Then the leaders got together and teamed up to make groups of 6.  They went to tables and came up with a team name.
• "Impossible Shot" :: 1 person from each team went to the front.  They had to throw a volleyball at a styrofoam cup pinned to the wall on the other side of the fellowship hall (a distance of about 70 feet).  A 7th grade girl hit it!  She won 50 points for her team, and half off our spring break mission trip.
• "Beat the Leader" :: Each group sent 2 students and a leader to the front.  They had to answer a true/false type question, or give a more than/less than answer.  If they were correct, they won 20 points and got the hit their leader with a noodle.  If they got it wrong, they got no points and no beatings commenced.
• "Total Recall" :: We watched a bonus feature clip from my favorite movie, Despicable Me.  They had to answer some questions.  How many times did the minion pour radioactive stuff on the other?  What was the minion's job on his nametag?... 20 points for each correct answer.

At the end of this, we tallied up all the points, and declared a winner for the day.  Then we kind of said "surprise! Your team is your new Small Group!"  I know there was some groaning, separating friend from friend, but I think its going to be good.  We had a lot of fun.

Small Group Time :  We had about 15 minutes to split up and go to different parts of the church to have our first small group time.  We really used this to get to know the groups better and to ask them a few questions.  We also used this to get a short informal evaluation of our D-Now from the students...here's a few things we asked:

• How old are you?
• What Grade?
• What's your favorite hobby?
• What's your favorite subject in school?
• What is your favorite worship song and why?
• How long have you been saved?

(D-Now Questions)

• Their Favorite thing about the weekend:
• What they Learned:
• From Jared's teaching:
• From Small group teaching:
• What they wished had been different/better (what they liked the least):
• Any other comments about D-Now:

Favorite Moment: As mentioned earlier, a 7th grade girl (Jaycee) totally dominated the impossible shot!  It was also cool.  We also sang Gungor's "Beautiful Things" for the first time after hearing it at D-Now.  It was very awesome.

Next Week: Making Significant Connections