June 2009 Please note that some links may have expired due to the ever-changing nature of the Internet. Let us know if you find anything unexpected or offensive so we can remove or change a link. Youthwork magazine and CCP ltd are not responsible for the content of external sites accessed from youthwork.co.uk Unorthodox activities Where are the ice-breakers, games and ideas that explain a risky, radical discipleship to teens? John Allan finds them and highlights the best online. The trouble with kids these days is that they can't sit still. You know? That's why we have to do all these fancy teaching outlines with interactive bits. Games, video clips, group exercises... what a fuss. Why do they need it? Now back in my youth group days in the sixties, forty-minute talks were the order of the day. Well, that and a few CSSM choruses. Never did me any harm – made me the man I am today. Of course, it was after they ended National Service that it all went wrong, you understand– that was when the rot set in... OK, OK, I don't really mean it. In fact I think young people learn a lot more through today's interactive methods than we ever did through lengthy addresses. I've now lived long enough to watch most of my generation grow up into not-very-exciting adult Christians, and I think in our teenage years we learned a good deal about how to sit still on our bottoms, but not so much about radical, risky discipleship. Any technique that brings people unforgettably face-to-face with real gospel challenges – however unorthodox it may be – has got to be better than just another talk. The trouble is, we often end up giving them ‘just another talk’ because most of us aren't all that brilliant at planning unorthodox activities. Where do we get great ideas from? Well, if you don't know the name of Wilderdom, you should, because they have a remarkable collection of ‘group activities, games, exercises and initiatives’ ready for plundering online. It's all carefully classified, too: psychological, multicultural, team building, ice-breakers... Ah, ice breakers. You always need a few good warm-up dodges up your sleeve, don't you. So it's good that veteran Grahame Knox (I trained him, good grief – suddenly I feel ancient) has generously put his book of ice-breakers on the Internet free of charge. Then there are 25 more (helpfully sorted by group size) at Icebreakers.ws. Not enough? OK, try About.com for another hundred ideas. That should take care of your programme for a year or two. Ice-breakers are also at Community4me, but they're just one of the categories of group-building exercises there; and as well as mountains of activities, you'll also find papers about the theory of building groups. For less intellectual, physical games, try the East Cambridgeshire Guides, or for ideas from the business world, check out the amazingly creative Thiagi newsletter. If I could squash in just one more recommendation, I'd be tempted to go for the well-organised Group Games, but in the end it has to be Learning Pages – where you'll find not only some great games and exercises we haven't covered yet, but also quotations and stories you can use in talks, and ‘hints and tips’ on many aspects of training. (Maybe they should update it, though: guidance on producing overhead transparencies isn't exactly cutting-edge these days.) OK, enough about games already; let's highlight some other ideas. If you ever want to find out quickly how to get the best out of something technological – Windows 7, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, the iPhone? - point your browser to Butterscotch, which offers a wide range of easy but expert tutorials on everything from working with Wikipedia to switching to Mac. If you're finding (like me) that free virus software AVG is becoming too greedy, and hogging too much of your system resources, give a spin to its Czech rival Avast!, which offers the same protection but (for my money) works much faster. Or there's Avira from Germany: even more powerful, and a shade quicker (though you don't get anti-spyware protection with Avira unless you buy their paid-for version). You want to make instant slideshows out of your Slumber Challenge photographs? There's no easier way than Smilebox. You can also make scrapbooks, photobooks and postcards, with stacks of designs to choose from and hundreds of embellishments you can try. Mind you, if you don't even want to create the slideshow yourself, you can achieve amazing results by just throwing a few pictures and a piece of music at Animoto and watching what it can produce all by itself in just a couple of minutes. It may seem crazy letting a piece of software create the slides, decide the transitions and work out the order of everything, but the job it does is immaculate and the time it saves is unbelievable. Which at least saves you from getting bored hanging around. But then that's the trouble with young people today: they can't sit still. Don't get me started. John Allan is based at Belmont Chapel, Exeter, UK, and is a regular contributor to Youthwork magazine. Back to main page