Category Archives: Icebreakers

Activities intended to help a group to begin the process of forming themselves into a team. Youth icebreakers are commonly presented as a game to warm up the group by helping the members to get to know each other.

Icebreakers

Action Bingo (Enhanced)

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Can you perform all the action on the list before someone else? It’s wacky and silly fun for everyone. Have a digital camera ready for some really crazy snapshots!

Description
Participants compete to be the first to perform all the actions on the list

Resources
Worksheet and pen or pencil for each participant

Preparation
Preprint the worksheet. Items can be arranged in a normal bingo grid or simply as a list for simplicity.

Some possible items are:

  • Tell a Joke
  • Pretend you are taking a bath or shower in the middle of the room!
  • Select someone else to sing a song with you.
  • Recite a nursery rhyme.
  • Imitate a comic strip character until someone guesses its identity.
  • Behave like a duck for 10 seconds
  • Say something nice about three different people in the room.
  • Shake hands with three other people in the room.
  • Pantomime a two year old child taking a bone away from a German shepherd dog.
  • Walk from one end of the room to the other with an object between you knees.
  • Act like an egg being cracked and fried.
  • Do an impression of a well known celebrity. Identify the person first.
  • Confer with another person and make a short poem about one of the leaders
  • Select a few people to aid you in selecting a scene from a popular Bible story and act it out.
  • Draw a picture of yourself and give it to someone in the room.
  • Find something in your pocket or purse to give to the person on your left.
  • Retell the story of Goldilocks and the three bears using the name of four other people in the room as the bears and Goldilocks.

ADD Your Own Crazy Actions!

What to Do

  1. Each person must perform all the actions from a list of actions in front of someone and then those who participated or observed that action must sign beside the item.
  2. Whoever gets all the items signed first, wins!

Taking it to the Next Level

Embarrassed? 

  • What is the craziest thing you have ever done? The most embarrassing?
  • Have you ever done something silly that you later regretted?
  • If you could go back and change one thing you did in the past, what would you change? Why?
  • What is one thing you did that was seen by others as a little silly, but that you wished you could do again?
  • Has the possibility of being embarrassed ever stopped you from doing something that you should have done or wish you would have done?

One of our greatest fears is the fear of being embarrassed. We don’t want to lose the respect of others or to be the subject of ridicule. But anything worthwhile in life carries with it some risk. You usually have to go out on a limb to get the fruit. Everything worthwhile in life lies outside of your comfort zone. Some of the greatest achievements in history took place because men and women were not afraid to risk embarrassment and ridicule to reach for their dreams! It’s a good thing the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Christopher Columbus and others weren’t afraid of ridicule. Otherwise we wouldn’t have planes, light bulbs, vaccines, and many of the other technological marvels we enjoy today!

  • ..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value. – Committee advising Ferdinand and Isabella regarding Columbus’ proposal, 1486
  • Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy. – Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
  • Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. – Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
  • Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to to its true progress. – Sir William Siemens, 1880, on Edison’s announcement of a successful light bulb.
  • Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. – Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
  • The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. – Ernst Rutherford, 1933

Application
Don’t be afraid to reach for your dreams! Write down at least one of your dreams and put them up someplace where you will see them everyday!

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Draw Your Name

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Game Description
This is a fun icebreaker activity for youth that do not know each other at all. Youth will try to reveal their name to a partner merely by drawing. No other communication is allowed.

Game Materials
Whiteboard, chalkboard, or simply paper

Game Preparation
None

Game Play
Youth attempt to reveal their name to someone they DO NOT KNOW by using only drawings. This can be done one at a time before the group or in pairs. For someone who’s name is sandy this might be as simple as drawing a beach with sand. For someone like Stephanie it may involve several words like step+hand+knee = Stephanie. Others may prove very difficult.

Optional Discussion

  • Whose name do you think was most difficult to communicate? Why?
  • Would you prefer to see a photograph or hear the story?
  • Do you find it easier to express yourself in words or through images?
  • Have you ever felt handicapped in trying to communicate your faith?
  • In what ways is this activity similar to sharing your faith?
  • What concepts in sharing your faith are most difficult to communicate?

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Famous Friendships

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Description
Use famous friendships to match couples in this icebreaker/crowdbreaker

Below is a list of famous / semi-famous friendships. While this certainly is not a complete list, it is a start. These can be used in several ways:

  • Who am i?: Place a tag/ sticker with each name on the back of people as they enter the meeting. Do not tell them that these are pairs of friends. Their task is to mingle around asking “yes” or “no” questions to discover the character on the tag. After a brief time of mingling have each person find his or her “friend” and share a quality they look for in a friend! (The three stooges are included in case you have an odd number of people.) If the group is small you might give out only one of each pair and then once everyone has discovered his/her identity have them name the friend associated with the person on the tag they have been given.
  • Name the Most Famous Friends: Have youth make a list of famous friends. Award the team or individual youth with the most. Award extra points if Jesus and John are mentioned. Do not count famous couples (i.e. husband and wife).
  • Double charades: Divide the group into 2 or more teams. Divide each team into pairs and have each pair attempt to get their team to guess the famous friends.

Famous Friends
Tom & Jerry
Jesus & John
Snoopy & Charlie
Abbott & Costello
Laurel & Hardy
Batman & Robin
Lone Ranger & Tonto
David & Jonathan
Fred & Barney
Snoopy & Woodstock
Bill & Ted
Thelma & Louise
Lucy & Ethyl
Chip & Dale
Pinky & Brain
Curly & Larry & Moe
Shaq & Hardoway
Betty & Veronica
Archie & Jughead
Luke Skywalker & Han Solo
Lois & Clark
Barnum & Bailey
Calvin & Hobbes
Laverne & Shirley
Beavis & Butt-head
Asterix & Obelix
Bert & Ernie
Chip & Dale
Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee
Gumby & Pokey
Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson
Kirk & Spock
Mutt & Jeff
Rocky & Bullwinkle
Tintin & Snowy
Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn

Be sure to add any famous friendships from recent television shows or youth culture.

Can be used with Active Listening With a Game for after the icebreaker to continue the theme of friendship. Then do a lesson on famous friendships in the Bible.

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Personal Questions with a Twist

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Personal Questions:
Q: How do you usually spend your allowance?
Q: For a person you deeply loved, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing that you would never see your family again?
Q: Would you rather be a member of a world championship sports team or be the champion of an individual sport?
Q: Would you accept $500,000 dollars to leave Singapore and never return?
Q: If you were able to live to 90 and retain either the body or the mind of a 30 year old for the last 60 years which would you choose?
Q: Would you prefer to be extremely successful in scholastics and have a tolerable yet unexciting social life, or have an extremely exciting social life, but only a mediocre scholastic achievement?
Q: If a drug was invented that, in one does, would allow you to live for 1000 years at any physical age you choose, but a side effect was it would make you extremely ugly, would you take it?
Q: For an all expense paid, one week vacation anywhere in the world, would you be willing to kill a butterfly by pulling off its wings?
Q: Would you be willing to kill an innocent person if it permanently ended world hunger?
Q: If God appeared to you in your dreams and told you leave everything behind and travel to the Red Sea and become a fisherman, would you?
Q: Would you be willing to give up EVERYTHING you have now for a pill that would permanently change you so that you only needed one hour of sleep each day to be fully refreshed?

Others can be found in the book “The Book of Questions” by Gregory Stck, PHD.

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Profiles

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Materials

  • Pieces of white paper. (Almost any white paper will work: butcher paper, Mah Jong paper, posterboard, white tissue paper, even newsprint classified ads).
  • Charcoal or a dark crayon
  • Bright light.

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, youth will try to guess the identity of other youth by looking at their profiles.

Preparation
Set up the bright light so that it shines against a wall where you can place the pieces of paper. You will also need someone who can use the crayon or charcoal to follow the edge of the shadow projected onto the paper. Someone with some artistic ability is useful but not necessary.

Icebreaker Activity

  1. As each guest arrives he is taken into a room and asked to stand between a strong light and a smooth wall. Then the person drawing outlines the profile with a crayon or charcoal – outlining only the head.
  2. Be careful to write the name of each subject on the back of the drawing.
  3. When all guests have arrived the profiles are held up to see who can recognise the most people from the profiles.
  4. Show the profiles 1 at a time. Youth can make a numbered list and put the suspected person’s name beside each number.

Optional Debrief

  • How were you able to recognise the profiles?
  • What were some of the distinguishing characteristics that helped?

Optional Conclusion
In Scripture we are told that Jesus was the image of the Father. He was fully God and fully man. When you looked at Him you saw God. When He acted, He acted as God the Father. Many did not recognise Him as God because they focused on his physical form. Yet even though his physical form was different there were many things that revealed who he was. We are also to reveal God/ Jesus in our lives. What are some ways we can do this?

Application

  • As Jesus revealed the father through his words, deeds, actions, heart, etc., do your actions reveal God as your father?
  • Do your actions, thoughts, words, deeds, and heart reveal Christ in you or your old self more clearly?
  • What is something you need to put off to more clearly reveal the image of Christ in your life this week?

Scripture

  • Colossians 1:15 – Jesus was the image of God
  • Colossians 3:10 – we are to put on the image of Christ
  • John 14:9-12 – Whoever has seen Christ has seen the Father

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Everything I ever did

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Materials
None

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, youth will try to guess the key events in another person’s life.

Preparation
None

Icebreaker Activity

  1. Have youth pair up with someone they do not know very well.
  2. In each pair, they will take turns guessing each other’s the most exciting and memorable experiences of another person’s life.
  3. Allow plenty of freedom for creativity, but tell kids that they are to suggest only positive descriptions of experiences.
  4. Partners must then explain to each other which guesses were accurate and which were incorrect.
  5. Allow a few minutes for partners to describe some of the true events in their lives that were not guessed.
  6. After partners have guessed and responded, have them take turns introducing each other to the entire group.

Optional Debrief

  • What were some of the key events that have shaped your life?
  • How did these events make you the person you are today?
  • What decisions have changed your life?

Conclusion
When Jesus met the woman at the well, he spoke to her. In the conversation he mentioned some key aspects of her life so that when she went back to the village, she told them to come meet the man “who told her everything she ever did.” Wow. Jesus just met her and he knew all about her. Jesus spoke to her with compassion and forgiveness. he answered her questions, but most importantly, his purpose was redemption, for her to begin a new life in Christ.

Application
What things might Jesus identify as key events in your life? Are you living in past mistakes or moving forward to a new future with Christ of forgiveness, grace, and redemption. This week, make it a point to tell at least one person about the difference Jesus has made in your life.

Scripture
John 4 – story of the Woman at the well “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did.” (4:29)

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

True or False

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Materials
Index cards or pieces of paper and pens or pencils

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, youth will try to separate the fact from the fiction as they share 3 true statements and one false statement about themselves.

Preparation
None

Icebreaker Activity

  1. Let each person write four statements about them selves on the index card. (They can be in any order, but three must be true, and one must be false.) People should be encouraged to make the false statement sound plausible to make it more fun. The false statement can also be something true about someone else in the group in order to mislead the group about the author’s identity.
  2. The cards are then distributed randomly to the participants.
  3. As each person receives a card they read the statements out to the group. The group tries to decide which statement is false and the identity of the person who wrote it.
  4. Once they guess the correct person, the next person reads his or her card until all cards are completed.

Optional Debrief

  • What is truth?
  • Is there such a thing as absolute truths or are all truth relative?
  • How do you determine the truth of something?
  • How can you validate whether someone’s claims are true or false?

Conclusion
Jesus made many claims about who he was. The Holy Spirit testified to his identity at his baptism. He also asked his disciples who they thought he was. Many people claim different things but not all are telling the truth. While Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, his identity was also verified by those who knew him. His character reflected who he was. Ultimately, he proved he was the Son of God when he rose from the dead on the third day as promised.

Application
If people were to examine your life, would they find enough evidence to convict you of being a Christian? What evidence would they find? How can you a more Christlike life this week?

Scripture
Matthew 16:13-18; Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Biggest Smile

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Materials
Cloth measuring tape

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, youth will make the biggest smile they can.

Preparation
None

Icebreaker Activity

  1. As everyone arrives, inform them you are having a “smiling contest”.
  2. Each person puts on the broadest grin he possibly can.
  3. Using a cloth measuring tape, since it will have to be measured around the curve of the mouth, measure each person’s smile, deciding where the smile begins and where it ends.
  4. Give an award for the biggest smile on a guy and a girl

Optional Debrief

  • Do you smile a lot or rarely?
  • What are some of the things that make you smile?
  • Is it possible to smile when things are going badly? Why or why not?
  • Have you ever forced a smile? Why?
  • Do we only smile when things are going well or when something is funny?

Conclusion
A smile can mean a lot of things. It can be an encouragement, or a greeting. You can smile when something is funny, or when you are amused. A smile can be a gift. Smiles are contagious.

Application
Give a gift of a smile this week.Try smiling at everyone you meet this week. Some might think you a re a little crazy, but you will find others smiling back. You might even make a new friend. Someone who is depressed may find a little encouragement.

Scripture
1 Thes 5:11

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

Family Tree

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Materials
None

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, youth will refer to each other by famous personalities in their fictional family trees

Preparation
None

Icebreaker Activity

  1. Form pairs of group members not related to each other.
  2. Then have each pair create a fictional family tree that shows how the partners really are long-lost relatives descended from a famous ancestor (real or fictional).
  3. Youth must explain to the entire group about their famous ancestors.
  4. During the rest of the meeting, have kids refer to each other by their famous ancestors’ names. For example, if a pair claims to have descended from Solomon, call them “the children of Solomon” or if from David, the “Mighty Men of David”.

Optional Debrief

  • Who are some of the people in your family tree?
  • Who are some of the people you wish you had in your family tree?
  • Have you ever done a genealogical study on your family tree? What interesting things did you discover?
  • Why is our family ancestry important?

Conclusion
Sometimes we think our lives are governed by our parents, by our ancestry, or by those in our family tree. But we each make our own choices. Our past does not have to determine our future. In Christ we are a new creation. We have a heavenly Father and we are his children. We can choose to live as children of God or we can choose to allow other things to take his place in our lives. We can choose to live as a child of God or live according to the flesh. Our ancestry is determines not by our blood, but by our relationship with the heavenly Father as children of God.

Application
What are some ways you can live as a child of God this week?
What are some areas of your past you need to overcome and choose to live as a child of God?

Scripture
Galatians 3:29, Ephesians 3:6, Romans 8:12-17
Genealogy of Jesus: Matthew 1:1-17, Luke 3:23-38

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!

Icebreakers

One Word

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Materials
None

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker, youth will communicate things about themselves using single words..

Preparation
Prepare a list of questions or topics for discussion. Some examples:

  • a favorite food
  • a favorite sports team
  • a favorite song
  • a dream
  • a goal
  • a fear
  • a dream
  • a recent accomplishment
  • a recently solved problem
  • a strength
  • a weakness

ETC.

Icebreaker Activity

  1. Form pairs.
  2. Have pairs sit on the floor and talk to each other by speaking one-word messages back and forth.
  3. Suggest one of the above topics for their one-word-at-a-time discussions.
  4. Optional: Change pairs and repeat the process.

Optional Debrief

  • What does this activity tell you about communication?
  • How did you communicate without words?
  • Read John 1:1-9. How did God communicate to us through Jesus Christ?

Conclusion
A single work can communicate a lot. A lifestyle can communicate even more. Jesus is the Word become flesh. God communicates to us through the scriptures, but Christ is God with us, the living word.

Application
What words might people use to describe your life?
What can you do this week to become more like Christ, to reveal God to the world more clearly?

Scripture
John 1:1-9

Get Icebreakers ebookIcebreakers Ahead: Take It To the Next Level

This 170 page resource not only provides 52 of the world’s most popular group icebreaker activities and games, but also includes lesson ideas and discussion questions to smoothly transition into conversations about the issues common to most groups.

Click here to find out how to get your hands on this incredible resource!