A Singing Game for Your Next Gathering

As part of my retreat documentation--and saving good ideas that might be useful later--let me record an activity that my mom and dad really liked.  It could be used as entertainment or game when that's needed, but I think it might make a good getting-to-know-you exercise too--or team building.

On Saturday night, we were already separated into groups of 6-8 sitting around tables.  We had the fruits of the spirit on the screen (from Galatians 5):  love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  We had 5 minutes to generate a list of songs that had love in the title or the lyrics.  It could be any song, from hymns to camp songs to pop songs.  We had to be able to sing it.  If someone else sang your song before your turn, you had to choose another song.  We went from table to table.

Then we went on to joy and peace.  And then we went on to a different game.  Most of us got into this game, but I could see there would be a point of diminishing returns.

It's a neat game, because all ages can play, so it works for mixed groups.  And the whole group has to sing, so it's fine for the non-singing among us.  We were a group of people who grew up singing in church, at camp, and in school--would this game work as well for folks who hadn't?

We also changed groups midway through, which kept us working with other people, and no one group had an advantage for very long.

I want to keep my eyes open for other Bible passages that would work well.  If we had spent the week-end doing a different kind of Bible study, this game wouldn't be as effortless--but I imagine that it's very tweakable.