Spiritual Games Outdoor For Family

Playing games is a great way to find
spiritual guidance while maintaining a
certain level of fun and keeping the
lessons interesting. Especially for kids
and teenagers, finding a way to
connect to their spirituality without getting bored or overwhelmed can be
challenging. Being a kid is hard
enough without all that religion stuff.
But there are ways to introduce
religious and spiritual games and
themes to youngsters and adults alike, while getting everyone outside
to have fun. 1. Crime Scene Set up a crime scene outside
and assign five people the task
of being criminals. None of the
criminals can tell anyone they
were chosen---not even other
criminals. Then, pick five participants to stand "on trial"
as they would have in biblical
days. This means the five
accused stand in front of the
rest of the group and are
subject to questioning and accusations. Of the five
participants on stage, only
three are actually criminals. Let
two criminals stay among the
group. As the group decides
who is guilty and innocent, you can talk to the group
about false accusations. Once
they have chosen the fates of
the criminals, show them that
two guilty people went free. In
this way you can show them that sin is always hiding
among us, and that we should
never be too quick to judge. 2. Water Balloon Lesson This next game is to teach the
group the importance of
following God's word. Before
the group goes outside, give
one student a piece of paper
with instructions on it. The instructions should say
something along the lines of,
"Whatever I ask of the group
today, don't do it. Whatever I
tell you to do during the group
activity today, do not listen to me. Even if I tempt you, say
no." During the group meeting
outside, ask for a few
volunteers for an activity. Tell
the group that participants will
be given a prize. Try to coax the person you gave the
instructions to the front of the
group. When s/he refuses, pick
another volunteer. When you
have three or four volunteers,
take some water balloons that you'd been hiding in your
"activity bag" and throw them
at the volunteers. Explain to
the group the importance of
listing to God's word because
he puts in rules in place to protect us. Then throw water
balloons at the rest of the
group and let the water
balloon fight ensue. 3. Plagues Coming to Dinner Learning about the plagues
can be hard, especially
memorizing their order. Based
on the "Who's Coming to
Dinner" improv game, you can
have each plague come to dinner. The rules are simple.
Have one person who will be
the host walk away. Pass out
10 slips of paper with the
plagues on them to 10
participants. Don't let them show anyone the slips. When
the "host" comes back, have
each plague "arrive for dinner"
acting out their plague. Once all
the guests (plagues) arrive, the
host must guess what plague each person is. Then the group
must help the host "seat the
guests at the table," or put the
plagues in order. To make the
game more exciting, you can
give participants props, or use clues to help the host. For
example, if the host is having
trouble guessing which guest
is blood, you can squirt that
participant with a water gun of
red water. Just be sure you tell the group to wear old clothes.