Got game?

I feel so immensely blessed that I get to volunteer for a position at my church that is so much fun for me.

I don't mind to serve in children's ministry or hand out bulletins or greet people when they arrive.

But I get so excited when I get to help plan an event to get women together for an evening to be encouraged in their faith, grow in their relationships with God and others, and have fun!

And I especially love this volunteer position when it involves color-coordinated table cloths and a theme. Oh, how I love a theme!

I decided to start posting some of the details of our women's ministry events to help other people who might be needing an idea or some inspiration.

Last night, we had our last event of our first "ministry year", so we decided to do something that was just FUN! The first thing that came to mind was a game night. It started as a little seed planted in our brains, but grew into a full-blown theme with a color scheme, party favors, team cheers and even a devotional!

The hardest part was actually coming up with a name. After more than an hour of brainstorming, my co-coordinator, Lara, and I settled on "Girlfriends, Get Your Game On: NOT Your Ordinary Game Night."

We decided to keep most of the details of the evening a secret during all of our promotions of the event.

We played my favorite game, Cranium. But instead of just moving pawns around the game board, we decided to assign the women to teams beforehand and ask them to come dressed not only in a team color, but to create a team identity matching the categories in the game.

We bought tablecloths and paper goods to match the four team colors.



We weren't sure if the women would get on board and come dressed in their assigned colors since we really didn't tell them the details of what would be happening. But the women came through with flying colors!

The Data Heads dressed in red and brought calculators as their "signature item."




The Creative Cats wore blue and decorated their faces to look like cats.


The Word Worms brought a couple of word worms of their own. And they did a cheer in which they spelled their team name wrong and then corrected themselves.



Very creative! ... and funny!



I was the captain of the green team, the Star Performers. We glammed ourselves up with wigs, boas, beads, rings and musical instruments.


Some of us... OK, maybe just ONE of us, even took the color scheme all the way down to her toes. I'm actually starting to really like this nail polish!


We had our own mascot, Barbie with a Brittney Spears wig. This 40-year-old Barbie could use a little glam, too!



We asked the teams to come up with a cheer, chant or song to describe their team. The green team did a little song and dance to the tune of "So long, farewell..." from The Sound of Music.



We dance.

We sing.

We wear a lot of green.

Do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do-do-do.

We're Star Performers.

Don't mess with our team.

Do-do-do-do-do. Do-do-do-do-do-do.

So long. Farewell.

Go green. Go green. Go green!

With about 25 women in attendance, actually playing Cranium was a bit of a challenge. But the women did their best to pay attention, and it was a lot of fun!

We gave a prize basket full of summertime goodies to the team that won the game (hooray for yellow!), and the team with the most team spirit (go green!!).

For our food, we had a pie-judging contest. We asked everyone to bring a pie, but to think creatively. So, "pie" could include anything from blueberry, apple or peach to pizza pie, taco pie or ice cream pie. The bake-off winner was awarded a cookbook for her prize.



Finally, Lara put together an amazing devotional using Cranium as her inspiration. She talked about how each of us is made in the image of God. Even if we don't feel like we are creative, good with words, a star performer or someone who understands data, God has all of those qualities. And since we were created in His image, so do we!

For example, maybe we aren't great with words in terms of writing or spelling, but we might have the gift of encouraging others with our words. She gave lots of other great examples.

Most of the women who attended our event said they had a lot of fun last night. But I'm not sure they could have had as much fun as we did planning it!

For more Women's Ministry ideas, check out:

Sharing Our Secrets
Shades of Blue

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