I hope your youth group took a few weeks off. I really do. You needed the break, your students needed the break, and so did your family. But now it time to plan for the first time you meet again in 2015. For many of you that’s either Sunday, Jan. 4th or Wednesday, Jan. 7th. Whenever you start up, I’d do it with a slow pace, especially if its the Sunday before they’ve started back to school.
I’ve got a few ideas:
1) Go buy up the Christmas candy stuff that is by now 75-90% off! Makes for great game ideas and prizes. In fact, the candy canes could be crushed up to make and sell heart-shaped peppermint bark candy for Valentine’s Day. Red/silver Hershey’s Kisses can be repackaged for V-day treat bags. (Just let the kids eat the green ones while they work.)
2) Christmas Decoration Scavenger Hunt: I bet you can read right through this idea. This is a way to get the church decorations back down and in their storage. Points for different things, etc., and each box/item has to go past a point judge so that the right stuff does make it back into the right place.
3) Candy-Cane-A-Yard: Stores will GIVE you their leftover candy canes if you say its for a church and you promise to take them all. Come up with a list of people who really blessed the youth group in 2014. Make yard signs that say, “Thanks for being a fresh breath of air for our group” or “You were really sweet to us this Christmas.” Sneak up on your benefactors’ house, stick the candy canes in the yard, leave the sign to be seen out the front door, and then “ding-dong-ditch” back into the cars for the next stop.
4) New Year’s Party stuff is even 50-75% on sale. Buy it all up, have a party and make sure there’s a chance for a devotional time that reminds students that “Old things are gone; behold, the new has come.”