The annual Anchor Christmas Party happened December 13th this year. A little earlier but we decided that holiday season gets crazy for our leaders and we didn’t want most of them to have to miss out on our Anchor family celebration. The party was a blast!! We had: - Christmas cookie decorating - Tons of Christmas music and decorations - A Christmas Photo-booth - TONS of Christmas themed games!! Check out the pics and info below to learn more!! Group Relay Games The Penguin Relay Easy game. Every splits into teams of 4 and lines up on a line. Across the room there is another line. Each team gets a empty milk carton (or you can use balloons). Taking turns each team member must put the milk cartons between their legs and “waddle” across the room and back without dropping their carton. If a team member drops the carton they have to run back and start over. The team to have all of their members go there and back first wins.
Anchor Christmas Tree Mini Games We had our Anchor Christmas Tree on stage and did a bunch of different mini games to give students the opportunity to win a present out from under the Anchor Christmas party. I had our leaders bring “white elephant” gifts. Here are the gifts we had under the tree. 1. The Story ( If you have never heard of it… Its SWEET!. It is a narrative version of the bible. So it is a read through of the whole bible but reworked to be more of a “story” format For more information go to http://thestory.com/ 2. A Empty Tissue Box- filled with rocks and wood chips. 3. Basketball Hoop Headband- At Target in the men’s section that have many items for Christmas presents from a company called Buxton. I couldn’t find it online for some reason but it is something like the link below. Attached below is a video of me breaking it as alley-ooo slammed on one of our students!! Link to product is here. 4. Fingers Lights- This is another really weird toy from the Buxton I got at target from like $5. Link is here. 5. A Perfume Set- One of our sixth grade boys won : ) 6. Mini Playing Cards- The smallest I have ever seen. 7. $20 Gift Card- One of our leaders just happen to have a $20 cash card that they didn’t really want. Decide to toss it into the mix!! I know there is other presents but if you are planning doing something similar you can make sure the prizes are both really good and really bad!! Mini Games Santa Limbo- We put on Feliz Navidad and had the kids compete to win in a limbo contest. The original idea was that they would have giant pillow stuff in their shirt or sweatshirt but….. I forgot the sleeping-bags/pillows. So the limbo competition seemed like a fun enough idea. Retrospectively I would always pick students who are relatively the same height because the shorter students always had an edge over the taller. Christmas Movie Trivia- Looked up random clips from Christmas movies like Elf, Home Alone, and The Grinch. Then asked students very specific questions about the random parts of the clip. The point was to ask them things that they would know if they paid close attention to the clip not if they no random facts about the movie. Example: I asked the student two questions. 1. What is the little boys name? 2. How old was he?
SERMON: I like for our Christmas party to be a party. I think it would be weird if at a birthday party every single year I invited some random guy to stand up in front of everyone and preach. So I gave a very very short synopsis of our Christmas series and celebrated a fundraiser we had been doing for month as a group to raise money for water filters for SEED ministry. (seedlivelihood.org) We managed to raise money to buy 3 water filters that will forever change the lives of three families in need. I talked about how Christmas can be a hard time and how my whole life I hated Christmas because I came from a broken home. But I shared about the hope of Jesus as he is our Emmanuel. I talked about how Emmanuel means “god with us” and how because Jesus set his glory aside and become man we will never be alone again. That the God of the universe understand what is like to be one of us because he became one of us. I talked about how we are family with God and with one another. I encourage students to hang out and worship together even when we take a couple weeks off from meeting. Then we took our annual Anchor Christmas Family Photo. What an amazing night and amazing year of ministry!!
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This fall The Walking Dead premiered its fifth and final season. The show has had an incredible following and the season premiere episode actually had more viewers than the previous years Super Bowl Sunday game!!! I know it was hard for me to believe but it is obvious that the zombie “fever” is a culture phenomenon. Plenty of our teens are obsessed with the show and despite the content ratings so many of them have seen every single zombie movie and show that has come out. I am a strong believer that Jesus doesn’t not share the stage with what is culture says is cool but I do believe that Jesus is apart of redeeming culture. Looking into the theme of zombie I found the fad could easily open up a “non corny” conversation about the redemptive world of God. So ZOMBIE NIGHT happened at Anchor this October the Sunday night before Halloween. I outline below some of the wacky ideas I had include an interactive live action apocalypse game, jello brain eating competition, and zombie makeup. 1. Zombie Apocalypse Game OUTLINE OF GAME Certain number of students are makeup as Zombies Certain number of students a geared up as Survivors The boundaries of the games are explained to students. Zombie base is explained to students. Human base is explained to students. Survivors must find the cure for the disease. If they find the cure and take it to the zombie base then they win. At the beginning of the game all of the Survivors gather at their base. Survivors have flag football flags wrapped around their waste. Each Survivor has three flags which equal three lives. Once the a survivor has of his/her flag removed they die and become a zombie. Survivors are given a limited amount of nerf guns and limited amount of ammo. They are free to run and shoot zombies. They are not allowed to push or knock over zombies. If a zombie is hit with a nerf bullet then they are dead and return to Zombie base. They will be reentered into the game when the leader yells “Zombie’s Come Back To Life” Zombies spread out in groups or individually around the boundaries. Zombies are not allowed to run but can only “zombie run.” If a Survivor has their flag removed they lose a life. If all three of their lives are taken then they a go to the zombie base and then emerge a zombie. Survivors need to find the cure before the time limit. Zombies need to get the survivors before the time limit. TIPS THE CURE- The cure needs to be something that is obvious and labeled. We chose a cross (I know its a little corny but it works with the sermon later). The team has to work together to carry it to the zombie base. ZOMBIE SPREAD OUT- Make sure that zombies are not all just hanging out by the base. Force them to move about. I made a rule that only a certain amount of zombies could be in the zone around the base at a time. ONLY A COUPLE OF SURVIVORS- We had about 45 students at our zombie night so we only have 4-5 survivors and played about 3 rounds. PICK THE RIGHT STUDENTS- Picking the right students to be the survivors is key. You need to be selective because some of them will not be as into the idea of survivor. Like there was a girl who simply wanted a nerf gun to shoot a boy she liked and no one else. She was obviously the first one to go from the team. OPTIONAL GIFT BOXES- I had a bunch of storage containers that I flipped upside down labeled with a survivor logo. In some of the containers I had more ammo, guns, and extra lives. But in some I put signs that said “You Got Bit!!” which made whoever flipped over the box surrender all their lives and instantly become one of the undead. You can be creative with what you think will work. 2. Brain Jello Mold Competition- I found at Party City some jello molds that look like brains. Found a recipe online for brain jello molds that just uses food coloring and strawberry flavored jello. While the jello molds thickening in my fridge I kept adding M&M’s to it to fill it with little color specks. The game was a one on one between two “zombies” as they attempted to get the most M&M’s out of the brain mold in 1 minute. 3. Zombie Sermon- Don’t Be The Walking Dead 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:20-23 My point of doing a Zombie night is to be redemptive about what is cultural. Zombies are already something that teens know about and joke about all the time. So I thought I would go into the bible and talking about "spiritual deadness." My talk was centered around how sin is an "infection" that leaves us (apart from Christ) spiritual dead like the "walking dead" or "zombies." Therefore we are called to PUT TO DEATH our sinful nature and come into a NEW LIFE with Christ. We need the CURE for our infection of Sin which is Jesus and need to not walk in our former ways of sin no longer. My point will be to not be a Zombie but to truly be a Survivor. Then I gave advice to Survivors on how to keep their faith alive in hard times.
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