A few weeks ago, I was tasked with leading an evening of youth group on the topic Fruit of the Spirit. We have about 250 teenagers in the group and a normal youth service starts with praise and worship and focuses around someone preaching. Not that I dislike preaching, but I wanted to do something to shake the routine and keep the youth more active. To do that, I created a nine-station rotation with one adult or student leader for each station. Each station focused on one fruit of the Spirit, and I tried to include many different kinds of activities to make little to no repetition.
Our church theme this year comes from Colossians 2:7, which says “Be rooted and built up in Christ, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” When we are rooted in Christ, it will show in our lives—in the way we, think, speak and act. The fruit of the Spirit is what our lives naturally produce when we are living in Christ.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)
My aim was to have each station last about five minutes. In reality we were closer to ten, because it takes time to get a group of teenagers settled and focused on each activity. We had groups of about 30 teenagers, but this would actually work better with smaller groups, or if you have a very small youth group to do all the stations one by one together as a group. Included are the PDFs to the worksheets (A5 size, and I printed double-sided) and a PDF of the whole rotation plan available for download.
Love
Big Group Discussion
ASK: How has someone ever shown love to you?
ASK: How have you shown love to someone else?
Goodness
Individual Writing
Display three posters, each with one verse on them:
- Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For his mercy endures forever. (1 Chronicles 16:34)
- Everything good comes from God. Every perfect gift is from him. These good gifts come down from the Father who made all the lights in the sky. But God never changes like the shadows from those lights. He is always the same. (James 1:17)
- If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:11)
Everyone gets a paper, one side to do during the service and one side to do on their own at a later time:
DURING SERVICE:
- List three ways you learn about God’s goodness from these verses.
- List three ways God has been good to ME.
AT A LATER TIME:
- How can people see goodness in me?
- What is one thing I can do this week to show goodness to someone else?
Joy
Group Game
Blow up a balloon and write “happiness” on it. Everyone has to hit the balloon so it stays in the air and every time they hit it, that person has to say one thing that makes them happy.
After playing for a while, take away the “happiness” balloon and get out the “joy” balloon. This balloon is filled with helium and has “joy” written on it. Tell them that every time something makes them happy, it is only temporary–good grades, good food, friends, etc. You go up… but then you come back down again. But the JOY of the Lord is permanent–it stays up forever. No matter what happens, good or bad, you can have the joy of God in your life.
Self-Control
Preaching
Have the students describe how a water filtration system works (if they know)–stones, sand, etc. that filter out the bad things from the water and allow only the pure, clean water to get through. If they don’t know, either explain it to them or use a different example of a filter.
Explain that God gave us our own filtration systems in our minds. Not everything that pops into our minds has to come out. Bad thoughts can enter our minds, and that in itself is not a sin. But what are you going to do with it? Are you going to dwell on it and let it come out in some way? Or are you going to filter it out and only let pure words and actions out? That is self-control.
You can also think of it as a stoplight:
- Red means STOP before you speak or act.
- Yellow means THINK about your choices.
- Green means to DO what pleases God.
Peace
Group Activity
To prepare, make one poster for each group by using masking tape to spell the word “peace” on it. We also colored ours with highlighter so that when we removed the tape the word would still be visible, but if you have enough time to write a lot for this activity, coloring should not be necessary.
Using markers, have as many people as possible write things on the poster–including over the tape–that take away their peace. They can write things that are stressful, that make them angry, that make them anxious, etc. Fill up the paper as much as possible so there is little to no white remaining.
When the poster is filled, remove the tape so the word “peace” is clear between all the words. Tell them: Peace does not mean that nothing bad will happen in your life. But it does mean that you can have the peace of God even in the middle of those things. They do not have to bring you down as long as you are filled with God’s peace.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)
Patience
Individual Writing, Group Discussion
Give everyone a paper with these ten things listed:
- Standing in line
- Waiting for your teacher to grade a project
- A lesson that you are not interested in
- Sitting in traffic
- Waiting for God to answer your prayers
- People around you talking during church
- Someone with a speech impediment who talks slowly
- Waiting for food to be ready when you are hungry
- Finishing high school
- Learning something new
Tell them to write numbers 1-10 next to each line based on how hard it is to be patient in that situation. 1 means it is the hardest and 10 means it is the easiest. Give them some time to fill them in.
*To save paper, I ended up writing those ten things on a poster and “numbering” them A up to J and giving everyone a small piece of paper to write the letters in order from “hardest to be patient” to “easiest to be patient.” Therefore, I have not linked a worksheet for this one.
If everyone finishes before time, ask one of the following questions and discuss together:
- What was number one for most of you (where is it hardest to be patient)? Discuss why, etc.
- When does God need to be patient with YOU?
- Who in the Bible showed patience? How?
Kindness
Discussions in Pairs
Give two people one paper with two scenarios on it. Let them take time to read the scenario and discuss their answer with one another. Encourage them to use all the time and come up with more answers if they can.
*These examples are what I used here in Uganda. Some parts may apply where you are, and others probably do not. You can use these as examples to come up with your own applicable scenarios:
- There is a new student in your class. He came from another school and does not know anyone at New Horizon, or know anything about the school and organization. How can you show kindness to him?
- Your neighbor is a jjajja (grandmother) who lives alone. About once a week her daughter visits to do some chores and bring some food, but for the rest she receives no visitors and has no help. She can still walk and do some things, but you can see that she is often in pain. How can you show kindness to her?
- You are walking down the road in the village and see a young child sitting in the soil. He has soiled himself and is crying, and no one seems to be around to care for him. How can you show kindness to him?
- A girl in your class does not like you, but you don’t know why. When the teacher is not around, she says mean things to you and talks badly about you to others. Most of the things she says are not true. How can you show kindness to her?
- During a lesson, your classmates are not listening to or respecting the teacher. The teacher is trying his best to get everyone’s attention, to maintain discipline and to make the lesson interesting, but he has lost control of the class. How can you show kindness to him?
- One evening as you are doing homework, your auntie comes home from work. It looks as if she has been crying, and you can see she is not fine. How can you show kindness to her?
Faithfulness
Group Brainstorm
SAY: Faithfulness means both being faithful to God and being faithful to other people. We are not faithful to other people only if they are faithful to us; we are faithful because of who WE are, not because of who they are or what they do.
One one paper, write “Synonyms” and on the other write “Antonyms”. (Synonyms means words that have the same, or similar, meaning. Antonyms means words that have the opposite meaning.) Have the group think of words that relate to faithfulness (such as commitment, promise, loyalty, etc.) to write on “synonyms” and words that are the opposite of faithfulness (such as adultery, disloyal, cheating, abandon, etc.) to write on “antonyms”. The idea is to give people a better idea of what faithfulness is. Censor the words they give–if it does not fit or is not appropriate, you do not have to use it.
Gentleness
Individual Writing
Everyone gets a paper and they can spend the five minutes filling it in. If they do not finish they can finish it in their own time outside of the service. The paper will define gentleness as “the quality of being kind, tender, and not having extreme emotions”. On one side, they must first write about someone they know who is gentle and what shows that that person is gentle. Then they write about someone they know who is NOT gentle and what shows that they are not gentle. On the other side, they must answer if they believe Jesus was gentle or not and give evidence to support their answer.
To print the whole session with notes: "Fruit of the Spirit" Youth Group Activities
Please if you try this, or any of the activities, leave a comment and let me know how it went with your group!
