When I first came to the parish in 2003, I was blessed to start a youth program from scratch.  Coming from a very small parish back home I knew the one thing that the youth did was a Living Stations of the Cross.  Everyone gets dressed, one guy is asked to be Jesus, and you carry the cross down the aisle of the church.  I looked online and it is very hard to find a script with good explanation.

Now we do have a Living Stations script in our members section that is ready to go and will be developed more and more as I use it, but this will help you learn how to start from scratch or tweak the content you did find.  I will start with what I did.

1) Set up the structure

The congregation will appreciate a structure.  After the first two stations they should have a good idea of what is expected of them.  It will also make it more comfortable for them to delve in to what is happening.  Our basic structure that we used is scripture, a voice (prayer by us), and Jesus’ response.  So just about every station includes that.

2) Scripture

I knew I wanted our script to be enriched with scripture.  So I went to the Vatican website and found what they used that year for scripture.  If you dig deep, you will find that each year they switch it up a bit.  So you can go back and look at what they have used for several years and use that.  You earn some brownie points when you join in prayer with the Vatican anyways!  Or just grab your stations of the cross pamphlets that you use in church and see what they use for scripture.

2) Meditations

For the meditations in our living stations script I used writings from my favorite saint, St. Alphonsus Liguori.  There is already a stations of the cross manual that came from his meditations so that made it easy.  These were what I used for the voice of the person.    I changes a few of the words to make it more youth friendly, but did not want to take away from the richness of his writings.

3) Jesus’ Response

It was important for me to have a part in the script where the youth would hear some things that may have been going through Christ’s head.  I wrote my own words for Jesus (bold I know).  They were very simple and spoke entirely of love.  Our main audience is the youth and I just wanted the youth to know that Christ loved them, so much they might get sick of hearing it.  I had three priests look it over and went with it.

4) Music

I was a music major in college and also do worship often for youth events so I knew what I wanted for music.  If you want suggestions here are a few songs that I use:

Love Song – Third Day
Via Dolorosa – Sandi Patty
Were You There

We also use the short worship song “Come Into My Heart” in between each station.  There are several different verses of it.

I would just recommend using a good mix of music that they know, that they can meditate on, and that truly brings out the meaning of lent.

5) Costumes

To be blunt, I do not know much about costumes.  When I arrived, a lady had already made the costumes and they were amazing, so we have used those every year.  I would recommend leaving this to a pro.  There are not too many ladies who know how to sew that wouldn’t do this for the parish if the materials were paid for.

So that is how I wrote up our script.  There are so many ways that it can be done.  If you need a quick fix, I have seen someone just do the regular pamphlet for a script.  Then they would have stills of a scene for people to look at.  They used a spotlight.  Turned off the spotlight during the transition song and then the next scene was up when they announced the station.

Have other ideas?  Please comment below and let us know what you do.

To play this youth ministry game you don’t need a four square and you do not need to be outside.  Grab some painters tape and map out a larger four square area on the floor.  Try to make it about 2-3 times as big as a regular four square and you can make it a rectangle shape (like a gym) if you need to.  Doing so will actually make the game a little more interesting.

The game is played just like 4-square except with teams.  Each area should have room to allow about 3-4 people to comfortably move around.  Number the four squares in order and make teams.  You need at least four teams.  If you have more than four teams have the extras line up outside of square number four.

Square number one will serve the ball by bouncing it on their side and slapping it to another square.  Whatever square it lands in has to hit it into another square before it bounces a second time.  When someone misses or hit the ball out of bounds, they go to square four and everyone else moves up towards square one.  (square three moves to two, two moves to three, etc.)

You can make up your own rules as things comes up such as can teams hit it twice, can you play off the wall, etc.

Ask any questions in the comments section below!

Enjoy!

Materials Needed
- Sweatpants and shirt or loose clothing for each group
- Lots of Balloons

Directions
Start this youth ministry game by telling each group (typically 3-5 in a group is good) that one person will need to put on the loose clothing over their clothes. When you say go, each group must blow up and put as many balloons in the clothes of the person in the group as they can until you say stop. Be sure put size minimums on the balloons, so that are big enough. When the time is up, tell them that the first person to pop all of their balloons wins. They have two rules. They can not use their hands or the help of anyone else in the room.

The trick to this game is acting like the most balloons in the sweats wins and then twisting the game at the end (That’s why we called it balloon SHOCK!)

Say go and sit back and watch the hilarious ways that they come up with to pop the balloons.

This youth ministry game is probably the one game that has never gotten old at our youth group.  It is a great easy quick game that can be thrown in just about anywhere to get kids moving.  It is one of the only games I have found where kids do not hesitate to hit people they don’t even know with a pool noodle.

Set-Up

Have everyone make a big circle with chairs.  In the middle of the circle have a garbage can or bucket.  One person starts in the middle with a pool noodle (or half of one if it is too big).

Game Play

The person in the middle will hit someone sitting with the pool noodle (no face shots).  Then they will run and put the noodle in the garbage can and try to get in to the seat of the person they hit before the person who was hit grabs the noodle from the garbage can and hits them (try saying that ten times fast).

If they person in the middle makes it to the chair before they are hit, they are safe and the new person hits someone else.  If they are hit before they make it back, they must go again.

If you have more than about 10 people, you can definitely get more than one noodle going at a time.

Other Rules To Mention

- No pushing or intentionally running in to another person.

- The noodle must land in the garbage can or the person starts over.

- You can not hit the person who just hit you.

Be sure to have some thumpin music in the background and this game can go on for awhile before they get tired of it.

Enjoy!

As I was focusing on our last post about safety in networking through sites likes facebook, I decided to write another post focused on developing a web site for your youth group.  I actually do web design and networking for small businesses and parishes on the side, so I have built up some experience and knowledge and have learned many things that may be helpful.

I created a web site specifically for our youth group at www.sacredheartym.com.  I have had this site for about seven years and have made tons of changes to get it to where it is today.  I have it set up now to be very low maintenance, but also offer tons of information that is always current and easy to access.   I will use this post to have you focus on a few aspects of it.   Here are some things that I think have been key in the success of our web site.  There should be more to your web site than links to PDF’s.

Current Pictures – The first thing youth notice about the site is the header images.  I changes these at least quarterly and always use current pictures or memories from trips I want youth to remember.   When they visit the site they are immediately brought back to a great memory they have from being involved in youth group.

Way to Stay Updated – Having a spot for youth to sign up to become a fan on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, and receive updates are key to bringing them back to your web site.  Don’t think you have the time for these things?  I probably spend 10-15 a week on these updates.  It is well worth the investment.

Big Event Promos – For every big event I create a new 150×150 promo ad.  This same picture is used for Facebook events and any other promotion that I do.  For regular events like our monthly adoration, I use the same picture for every month and change it maybe each year.  Having a spot on the home page of your site just for your big upcoming events is a great way to constantly remind them.

Discussions – These have been great for youth who spend time just browsing the site.  I can post something funny, serious, educational, basically whatever I want.  The youth do not need to sign in or set up a user name and password.  They just put their name, email, and their comment.  I have my youth group site set up so I must approve every comment (takes about 3 seconds) before it is posted online.  Which great for when the kids are discussing duct tape and one kids says “why do have to be so abusive with duct tape?,” even though they are joking, you may not want parents reading that.

Also when I know a comment has been sent I can have the quick response time to answer questions or shoot back a quick response to them. I put a discussion on another church’s web site asking youth to talk about their favorite saint.  It was a great way to get them discussing.

Upcoming Events – This section is automated and clears out as events are done.  No maintenance after a simple form is filled out with the event info.

Behind The Scenes – I have a page for the volunteers that has all of the upcoming lessons, pictures of our youth group trading cards (so they can remember names), and also pages for the team for our Diocesan Retreat Program.  All of these files are password protected.  It is a great way to make sure people have the current information they need.

Stewardship – Although it is not up to date when I am posting this, it usually is.  I have a spot for volunteers to sign up to help.  It shoots me an email and I follow up with them.

Online Registrations – Since this is time sensitive, I can’t give you an example that will last forever, but I have found the perfect online registration system for just about any event.  You can embed the registration form in to the site, or you can do what we use for our retreat program and just have it go to the registration site.  The site we use is EventBrite.  The thing I love about it is that you can both manually enter info and it is free or people can sign up online and they pay the site fee (you still pay the typical credit card processing fee).  The reports are great and can be used for mail merging and just about anything you are creative enough to think of.

These are things that have been most helpful for me and really make is that much easier for youth to be involved and to stay informed.

A quick tutorial on how to easily maintain your Facebook and Twitter profiles.  Set up the page on your website and link to it from Facebook.  Link your Twitter and Facebook accounts together and you only have to do it in one spot.  You can actually connect the web site also so each time you make a new post on your site, it updates on Facebook and Twitter also, but I like to add little comments on the Facebook page anyway.  To link your Facebook page to your Twitter account go here.

Now how do you get this set-up?  Well I recommend Parish Web Assistant. You can get all of these feature for your entire parish for about $500.  You can also have them do your maintenance for you.  You simply fill out a form, attach any files you want uploaded, and they do it for you.    You can see all of their features here.

You can have them set up your whole parish site also and your staff will be very happy!  Once you get a site set up, if you do everything yourself and you do it the right way, it shouldn’t cost any more than $75/year.

The biggest mistake I see are sites that are not current and only provide links to PDF’s.  Set up a site now that will remind your youth of the great times they have had, keeps them coming back looking for more, and gets them involved.

Please comment below if you have other ideas or questions!