Ultimate Hunger Games Youth Group Game (w/ cornucopia video)

I'm not sure what it was like for you, but our students were mildly obsessed with The Hunger Games. Paul Turner's ideas for inviting friends as part of the series pretty much rocked, and we had the most friends visit youth group during the series than ever before.

So, we thought it might be fun to cap off the Hunger Games experience with a lock in. And what's better than a lock in? A lock in where you get to PLAY in the first-ever real-life youth group Hunger Games!

Here's the scene as we started in the cornucopia (church basement):

The game went on for 2 hours after this. Here's how it worked:

• Students were broken up into districts. We had 3 districts to accomodate our group size, but of course you could have as few as 2 and as 12 depending on how big you are.
• We used Paul's 4 Week Hunger Games Series leading up to the lock in. We called the points students could earn during the series "Sponsor Points" and let students know that the points they earned would be redeemable during the real-life Hunger Games game.
• The game they played was a modification of Capture The Flag with a flag-football twist. Each district had a team flag to hide. If District 1 stole District 2's flag, District 1 received half of District 2's current Sponsor Points (and District 2 gets to hide their flag again).
• Everybody started out with 4 lives (flag football flags). When they lost a life, we made them report back to us to keep track of things (you could also just give everybody 4 actual flags, but we didn't want people stealing flags). If you ran out of lives, you could buy more lives with your team's Sponsor Points (but the price for lives went up throughout the evening).
• The Cornucopia was filled with all sorts of goodies: snacks, Monster energy drinks, soda, flashlights, water guns, and tons of water balloons. These goodies were pretty much for fun, because the only way to advance in the game was to steal team flags or take individual flags.
• We recommend playing at night (it's much better than during the day).  We made sure to set up boundaries and safety rules throughout the entire church, but also notified the police ahead of time so that they wouldn't mistake us for burglers. But we were far enough away from any houses that there wasn't a risk of bothing our neighbors.
• Strategize. Play. The district with the last man standing wins!

The night was a blast and the students' response to everything was amazing. We finished up the night by watching, of all movies, "The Princess Bride" - by popular demand!

I'd LOVE to hear from any other group that gives this a try! Let us know how it goes!!