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!

We had this in our forum and just wanted to make sure everything still had access to the idea.   Last summer (2009) we started a new idea of making youth group trading cards.  Very simple concept.  We bought a cheap laminating machine (about $60) and lots of sheets.  We made our own photo which you just replace the picture of the person and change the words.  On the front we have their name, picture, a logo, and the web site.  On the back we include info on them like their favorite prayer, saint, their family members, and more.

Every time someone new comes to youth group we take their picture, have them fill out the info, and have their card thrown into the mix the next week.  Every week who ever is on time to youth group and stays until the end gets a random card.  If they have the card they can trade to others for one they do not have.

Every once in awhile we remind the kids that these can be used as prayer cards.  Bring them wherever you go, pray for their family members, through the favorite saints intercession, and say their favorite prayer for them.

The kids still love it and we have enough kids in the the group that no one has all of them yet.  Each week we add more to the mix.  Youth come back a second week just to see their card.  It is also good for the volunteers to be able to take them home and learn and remember names.

It does take some work, we are looking for ways to make the cards a bit easier to make, but it is well worth the investment.  There is always a volunteer to help with the crafty projects.

If anyone would like the editable file that we use, I can email it to you.  Please do two things:

1. Make sure you are our fan on Facebook.

2. Let me know you are in the comments of this post.

I will send you a .png file of a card along with some other things we have done to make the cards a bit fancier.  You will need software that can edit the file, but that is not too  hard to find.

God Bless!