Summer Game: Hot Dog Messy Chaos

Topic: Messing Up

Bible: Colossians 3:13; Hebrews 4:16

Does your youth ministry or youth group need a fun summer game? Here you go! Use this game for summer camp, Wednesday night, summer event, etc. Messy and fun…perfect for jr highers!

Supplies:

Large sheet of plastic sheeting
Packets of hotdogs
Packets of hotdog buns
Ketchup, Mustard, Relish
Goggles
Hose and Towels to clean up

Directions:

Lay out the plastic sheeting.
On one end, put the hotdog buns, opened and ready for a hotdog.
Make three different piles of buns: the number in each pile should equal the number of students on each team.
On other end of the plastic sheeting, break students into 3 teams.
On go, students will take a hotdog to the other side and place it in a bun.
They can only use their nose to move the hotdog across the sheeting.
The can only use their mount to put it in bun.
And what hotdog is not complete without Ketchup/Mustard/Relish?
Dump condiments all over the plastic sheeting (either in piles or just spread all over).
Each hotdog must have all the condiments on it before students can put it in a bun.
The team who makes all their hotdogs the quickest wins.

Say:

Well that was about as messy as you can get in a game. Who wants to eat their hotdogs right now? Just kidding! I am not going let you eat raw hotdogs that gross. Man, I don’t think I have ever seen a bigger mess. I know I have messed up before, and some of mess-ups have been big. Let’s talk about messing up today.

Ask:

What is something you feel you messed-up so badly it couldn’t be fixed?
How did you feel when you messed-up?
Who was upset at you for messing-up?
How does it make you feel that your mess-ups may disappoint someone?
Why do you think we mess-up?
How do we stop messing-up?

Say:

Well, I have some bad news for you; you are never going to stop messing-up. You may not mess things up all the time or maybe you only mess things up that affect you, but you definitely are going to mess-up stuff for the rest of your life.

How can you say that you may ask? Well, because no one is perfect; we all mess-up or sin. See what we are talking about here is sin.

We can work hard at trying not to mess-up, and when we mess-up anyway we can ask for forgiveness, and if someone messes-up and it affects us we need to give forgiveness.

The Bible tells us Jesus died for our mess-ups or sins against God. So why shouldn’t we forgive those who mess-up in our lives?

Read Colossians 3:13:

“Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”

Why should we forgive those who mess-up in our lives? Because God tells us to, and we need to remember we are also not perfect and we shouldn’t expect others to be perfect either. One thing we can be assured of is once we put our faith in Jesus there is nothing we can do to loose God’s grace and love. See we don’t deserve God’s grace but He gives it to us no matter how bad we mess-up, and that is when we need it the most.

Read Hebrews 4:16:

“So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”

Find a partner and pray for each other to have grace for others. If there is someone you need to give grace to because they have messed-up in your eyes, give it to them. Pray about them, and ask for God’s grace on you, and forgive them.

If you are having a hard time dealing with this, you may be feeling guilty about how you have not had grace for someone. Or you may be dealing with something you have messed-up that you think you don’t deserve God’s grace for. Please come find a leader, we want to walk with you and figure out some next steps.

Close in prayer