web01.fireside.fm Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:26:55 -0500 Fireside (https://fireside.fm) Hybrid Ministry - Episodes Tagged with “Summer Camp” https://www.hybridministry.xyz/tags/summer%20camp Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600 Hybrid Ministry is complicated and hard. Or is it? How do pastors and youth pastors create a vibrant extension, not replacement, of what's already happening during their weekly church services? To cater in a digital ministry way to an online focused ministry audience. Reaching Millennials, Gen Z and even Gen Alpha is going to require us to rethink some of the ways we do church. Follow along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick en-us episodic Digital Discipleship made easy Nick Clason Hybrid Ministry is complicated and hard. Or is it? How do pastors and youth pastors create a vibrant extension, not replacement, of what's already happening during their weekly church services? To cater in a digital ministry way to an online focused ministry audience. Reaching Millennials, Gen Z and even Gen Alpha is going to require us to rethink some of the ways we do church. Follow along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick no Digital, Online Church, Hybrid Ministry, Church, Meta, Gen Z, Millennials, Digital Marketing, Church Marketing, Youth Ministry, Student Ministry, Nick Clason, Digital Ministry, Church Social Media, Youth Ministry Social Media, YouTube for Church, YouTube for Youth Ministry, TikTok for Churches, TikTok for Youth Ministry, Instagram for Churches, Instagram for Youth Ministry, Facebook for Church, Facebook for Youth Ministry, Cell Phone Usage at Church Nick Clason nickclason@hybridministry.xyz Episode 184: Amazing, On-Going, Youth Group Retreat Game Pt. 2 + Lock-in Survival Tips https://www.hybridministry.xyz/184 3dfbb3e2-687e-4c7f-b647-db8b6c316c51 Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600 Nick Clason 184 Amazing, On-Going, Youth Group Retreat Game Pt. 2 + Lock-in Survival Tips full Nick Clason In this episode I sit down and share the entire inspiration for this D-Now, Winter Retreat & Summer Camp on-going games with my friend, Andrew Jansen. Andrew is a 10+ year youth worker, and his assassin game sparked this entire podcast mini-series. He expains his creative (and super CHEAP) adaptation to this game. Plus! Andrew shared his lock-in survival guide for FREE! 28:30 no In this episode I sit down and share the entire inspiration for this D-Now, Winter Retreat & Summer Camp on-going games with my friend, Andrew Jansen. Andrew is a 10+ year youth worker, and his assassin game sparked this entire podcast mini-series. He expains his creative (and super CHEAP) adaptation to this game. Plus! Andrew shared his lock-in survival guide for FREE! Andrew's Lock-in Guide: https://www.patreon.com/posts/10-year-veterans-146449370?utmmedium=clipboardcopy&utmsource=copyLink&utmcampaign=postsharecreator&utmcontent=join_link SHOW NOTES Shownotes & Transcripts https://www.hybridministry.xyz/184 BECOME A HYBRID HERO https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry ❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utmmedium=clipboardcopy&utmsource=copyLink&utmcampaign=postsharecreator&utmcontent=join_link 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz -------------- 🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉 We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context! The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe! https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick -------------- 🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU! Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products //VIDIQ https://vidiq.com/hybrid //BEST DYM RESOURCES https://www.patreon.com/posts/9-amazing-dym-142425755 //OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361 //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit -------------- 🕰️TIMECODES 00:00 Assassin Game with Clothes Pins 03:41 Social Media While You’re Busy 05:02 Assassin Game Rules 06:20 Ways to Play the Game 09:31 Pro-Tips 13:42 No Prize? No Problem - Do this! 14:30 Pro-Tip #2 18:52 How are you going to play, moving forward? 19:37 Could you play this game at summer camp? 21:50 Two Final Assassin Rules to Follow 23:47 FREE Lock-in Survival Guide -------------- TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01.378) Well, what's up everybody? I'm here with Andrew. Andrew, how you doing this morning, bro? Andrew Jansen (00:07.725) doing good. God is good. It's a good morning. Getting into my emails and excited to talk about the game thing that you want to talk to me about. Nick Clason (00:17.39) Yeah. I'm glad, like, I hope that talking about the game thing is more exciting than your emails. That's, that's, that's my hope for all of this. Um, but yeah. So I, you know, I, you and I, we've known each other for a couple of years now, mostly through zoom, but we've hung out two times in person. And one of the times that we hung out in person, I was at your church. Um, Andrew Jansen (00:26.057) I hope so too. Yeah. Definitely. Nick Clason (00:44.974) Helping you out with like a like a retreat conference. What would you call that thing? It's a conference, right? Andrew Jansen (00:51.297) Yeah, it's like a student conference between like 250, 500 people give or take which year you're at the conference. Yeah. Nick Clason (00:58.21) Yeah, that's a big, that's a big range. But one of the things that you guys did that I loved was you had this game happening in the background of the conference, I guess. It wasn't like a stage game, though you had stage games. It wasn't like a big thing that in the main general session that took a lot of time, if any time. Like aside from maybe just like explaining the rules. it was like, it was this like assassin type game. tell me, like just explain to the people. Cause what I loved about it was that it was an activity to do in the margins and ongoingly throughout the weekend that kind of kept you, kept students engaged and having something, you know, to kind of like focus on and do like above and beyond just like all the normal conference attend attending like stuff. So. Andrew Jansen (01:33.39) Yes. Nick Clason (01:55.478) Where did this idea come from? How did it go? Like, let's talk about it. Andrew Jansen (01:56.152) Yes. Andrew Jansen (02:00.139) Yes, so like all great ideas, I stole it from, I believe we played this game in my youth ministry growing up. So my youth pastor, question mark, shout out Jake Lindhart. He's a great youth pastor. But I'm sure he stole that from somebody as well before him, but it's the original game was played with rubber bands and you would like, you would like snap a rubber band on. So I grew up in the nineties. Nick Clason (02:18.446) Yeah Nick Clason (02:24.568) Okay. Andrew Jansen (02:29.701) early 2000s youth group era where we did all kinds of things that would get you fired nowadays, but where you would literally snap people with rubber bands and if you snapped them while they weren't looking, then they were assassinated and they would give you their name that they had been given at the start of the game. Nick Clason (02:34.67) Okay. Nick Clason (02:43.04) Yeah. Nick Clason (02:50.432) Was their name like their name or a name of like another person? Andrew Jansen (02:54.145) It's the name. So let me let's explain the game real quick. And then we can kind of go into the like a little bit more of like what we change rules, that kind of stuff. So the game is essentially everybody signs up and then you take everybody and write their name down and then you assign their name to somebody besides them. It's easier to make a list and kind of just go like numbered. Nick Clason (02:57.805) Yeah. Nick Clason (03:05.272) Yeah. Nick Clason (03:20.024) Okay. Andrew Jansen (03:23.693) And like, so number one would have name number two. And then if you have 50 students, number 50 would have number one. And the goal is to assassinate that person and a bit like you win if you get your own name. So that's the, like if you get handed your own name and you've been playing it for a while and it's not like the first person you kill and something that just means your youth pastor messed up and that's okay. Nick Clason (03:27.181) Yeah. Nick Clason (03:31.694) Okay. Nick Clason (03:39.426) Okay. Andrew Jansen (03:49.137) give grace. But if you get your own name at the end, then you are the assassin champion. And that's kind of the concept behind the game. Nick Clason (03:56.461) Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And so like I was saying, like I was watching kids at your conference, like running around, like, you know, hiding from each other. Like one kid came up to me and was like, can you go get that girl over there? Cause she like knows like I'm coming for her, you know? So was like sort of all sort of like strategy and like gamesmanship. So how did you adapt it then for, for this one? Andrew Jansen (04:25.688) for sure. Right. So I believe we did this a few years ago at the same conference with Nerf guns, but I had a whole bunch of like clothes pins at our church that we use for various things. feel like every time we need clothes pins, we just went and bought them until we had thousands of clothes pins. And I was like, we got to do something with these clothes pins. But it's funny when you act, when you're like, Hey, we talked about this assassin's game. Nick Clason (04:35.671) Okay. Nick Clason (04:47.822) hehe Andrew Jansen (04:58.366) It did not go the way that I was like hoping it would go or the way that I was planning it to go. I think they had fun. They had a blast. Like kids were running around like crazy, screaming, like getting really into it. We had to tell a couple of kids to calm down, which that's, I'd rather tell kids calm down than be like, Hey, come on, like get into it. Nick Clason (05:00.046) I'm Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (05:16.386) Right, you should, yeah, you should care about this more, yeah. Andrew Jansen (05:20.33) Right. They were very into it. I kind of talked about it with some of the volunteer board members and kind of figured out what is something that can happen. I think of it as like a meta event. It's always just constantly in motion. Obviously, you don't want to have it happening during praise and worship time or while you're in small groups or the speaker is speaking. all that in between transition, walking around time. Nick Clason (05:29.358) me. Nick Clason (05:38.647) Yeah. Nick Clason (05:42.167) Right. Andrew Jansen (05:49.625) we gave students clothes pins and those clothes pins had the name of their that they wrote their name on the clothes pin and then we handed them their target clothes pin and that was the person that they were trying to go get so you had to clip on the clothes pin Nick Clason (06:03.63) Okay, so in theory, if every kid comes in, signs up, writes their name on a clothespin, then that's your pool of contestants. because one of the things you guys did was you didn't make this required for everyone. You're like, if you want to play, swing by the table and sign up. Andrew Jansen (06:09.666) Mm-hmm. Andrew Jansen (06:22.978) For sure. Cause I mean, if you have, if you make everybody do it, you're going to have like 10 people that are just like, I'm just going to throw away this clothes pin and then they're, they're out. They're not, you're like, Hey, I got you. Where's your clothes pin? And like, I threw it away. Cause I don't care about this at all. Cause I'm a punk eighth grade student or whatever. And like, so, so it's, we wanted to make it be just, if you're, if you're interested in playing this type of game, you know, go, go sign up. We, Nick Clason (06:37.438) Mm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew Jansen (06:53.572) started with them writing their own names. And then I think it turned into kids can't write at all. And like, we were like, who, what is this? What is your name? Like, it was like, my name's Steve. And I was like, that does not say Steve at all. And that is not cursive or that I don't know what font that is, but you need to practice writing. But we ended up making that list and then writing their names down. Nick Clason (06:56.832) Okay. Nick Clason (07:00.972) Yeah. What fart? geez. Andrew Jansen (07:21.472) And then we handed them out at lunch, I think. We made the order and we're like, OK, this student is getting this kid's name so that the list was in a circle, so to speak. Nick Clason (07:23.872) Okay, yeah. Nick Clason (07:34.038) Now, you need to like, there any, are there any like hacks that youth pastors need to think about with like assigning it or is it just like, just do it randomly and it's fine? Andrew Jansen (07:44.993) Yeah, I had it so that was the part that I think went that was the craziest because originally we were just write your name and on the pin and then take the neck though like the last person that wrote their name down take their clothes pin so they just were in order as they went but that got Completely they just started chucking them into a bucket and they were like I signed up and then ran away Nick Clason (08:02.498) Gotcha. Andrew Jansen (08:11.928) So I would say have that like it would be easiest to do. All right get in line Go to a sign-up station get signed up and do either alphabetical order or do the order in which you signed up is the order in which you You know like are trying to get the next person Nick Clason (08:31.981) Yeah. So is that, I mean, that's a pretty like administratively heavy task, right? So like if you're a youth pastor, you're running an event, you're running a retreat or a D now, like would you recommend having a really organized person facilitate some of that off to the side so that you're not having to get sucked down into the weeds on that? Andrew Jansen (08:51.21) Absolutely. Yeah. If you have an intern, definitely that's a great intern task is just sit there, get all the students signed up and write their names down on a clothes pin or how whatever assassin's weapon you're using. But we use like a Nerf gun, I think a few years ago, probably can't get away with rubber band anymore, but yeah. Nick Clason (09:06.936) Yeah. Okay. How did the Nerf gun work? Like how did that, like was it successful would you say? Or was clothespin like a better idea? what, cause I let one of the things, like in a couple of episodes I'm actually gonna talk to another guy and he created an AI like app for taking pictures, like an assassin picture game. So if like, if you can be confidently sure that everyone has a cell phone, that's a great opportunity, like a great way to do it. But. Andrew Jansen (09:34.754) Nice. Andrew Jansen (09:38.434) Yep. Yeah. Nick Clason (09:40.302) Like I like this one being analog, right? In some way, because if kids don't have phones or like whatever, they're able to still do it. How'd the Nerf gun thing like work? Like, was it confusing? Was it like, cause I would imagine if you're on the other side of the room, you get like hit by a Nerf dart. Like, do you know for sure who shot it? Like what if multiple people shot it? Like, you know what mean? Like that type of stuff. was it, was it, did it, yeah, how'd it go? Andrew Jansen (10:06.882) I think it went well. was, they did popsicle sticks and you had a popsicle stick with a person's name on it and you were collecting popsicle sticks. I thought it went well because if you're shooting the Nerf gun and you hit your target, you're gonna immediately go up and be like, hey, I hit you. Like that was my dart that hit you. If it's like crossfire or something like that, I mean, middle schoolers are gonna cheat for sure. Freshman boys. Nick Clason (10:10.721) Okay. Nick Clason (10:17.271) Yeah. Nick Clason (10:24.835) Yeah. Nick Clason (10:31.853) Yeah. Andrew Jansen (10:35.96) typically will be like, I've killed everybody in this room already. I'm like, no, you haven't. We haven't even started yet. that like, like, I'm like, nice try. But the, the, the nerf, I think it worked well because it, the first of all, the nerf gun was very low power. So you had to be, I think you had about five feet to, to like be able to like shoot it and, and hit them. And then, and it was also fun because Nick Clason (10:36.738) That's, yeah. Ha! Nick Clason (10:51.459) Yeah. There you go. Nick Clason (10:59.938) Right. Andrew Jansen (11:03.192) There was one this will haunt my dreams forever because I think it was like a junior high school girl was like carving numbers in her little plastic nerve gun with how many kids that she was like assassinating and she I think yeah, I was like Yeah, I was like Let me know when you're not in the same town that I'm in so that I can sleep well Yeah, it was terrifying but they they got into it which is they this seems to be some Nick Clason (11:08.514) Yeah. Nick Clason (11:15.55) my gosh. That is like what horror movies are made of, bro. Andrew Jansen (11:32.832) a type of game that it's a meta happening all throughout the conference, all throughout the event. And they really, really love trying to assassinate their friends. Nick Clason (11:38.925) Yeah. Nick Clason (11:44.77) Yeah, and if you don't have a budget for a prize for the winner, these types of events are a great way to pit churches or youth groups or small groups or color groups or however you want to break it up against each other. And you can just give 1,000 points to the winner, and 1,000 points is free for youth pastors. And then, yes. Yeah, dude. Andrew Jansen (12:03.565) Yes. Yep, I love points. have unlimited points in my budget. It's great. have trillions and trillions of points. Nick Clason (12:12.288) It's truly the only unlimited thing we as youth pastors have access to, you know, aside from maybe Bibles that were discarded or old couches. But other than that, points are for sure unlimited. So, all right. So is there anything else, any other like pro tips that you would have if someone's like, all right, this sounds like a cool idea. You know, just something to kind of like run on in the background of my D now or my summer camp, my retreat, like. Andrew Jansen (12:17.016) for sure. Nick Clason (12:40.556) You have any pro tips that you'd give a youth pastor so that doesn't flop and fail or like to maybe help them avoid middle schoolers trying to cheat or is that just an inevitability? Andrew Jansen (12:49.56) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they will cheat for sure. But I would say that have your like sign up sheet, your sign up, like the starting of the Assassin's Game, have that organized and fleshed out before you start, because that's the hardest part of getting that train to leave the station is just getting every student signed up and then assigning who their target is in a way that allows it to go like. Nick Clason (12:53.666) Yeah. Nick Clason (13:09.902) Mm. Andrew Jansen (13:17.068) Number one has number two and then all the way through like number 50 has number one. Because if you get off in that process, then you're going to get like someone's going to go, I won because I got my own name. And then you're like, no, how do I fix this? got switched? What got swapped? What happened? Nick Clason (13:20.588) Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (13:35.358) Is there, so is there no mathematical way for them to get their own name until they win? Like is that how it should work? I'm like, I'm not a statistician, so I'm not over here able to like think of this on the fly. So, okay, so there's no possible way for them, like if they get their own name and they didn't win, it's messed up somehow, yeah. Yeah, cause I did remember seeing the guy behind the desk, cause it wasn't you. Andrew Jansen (13:42.508) That's how it should work. If you number them... Andrew Jansen (13:53.997) Something, yeah, something messed up. Yep. So I would say do that either. Nick Clason (14:02.434) But the guy behind the desk, he was like, way to just throw him under the bus. I was trying not to do that. But he was like, like I just saw him like an internal like moment of panic when like some people were like giving him things. He's like, that's, that might not be right. Like that right there was like, this game seems amazing and intricate, but like that moment, like every youth pastor has been there where they have an amazing game. And then there's that moment of panic where they're like thinking, crap, I, something isn't working right. Andrew Jansen (14:02.614) Yeah, it was Dawson. Yeah, he's a great guy. Andrew Jansen (14:15.735) Yes. Andrew Jansen (14:31.998) Mm-hmm. for sure. No, loved Dawson was a youth leader of mine and he you know He's a youth pastor at the church that I was at. So no, I love Dawson. He did a great job It's my fault. I didn't lead him well in executing those things. So it's all it's all on me No, it was it definitely there's a moment of panic when a group of students are like, hey I got like my friend like my friend and I got each other's names and we're not Nick Clason (14:46.798) There you go. Andrew Jansen (15:00.396) the first and last person. And that was all the, that was all the clothes pins were jumbled up in a bin and we did not have a good like start and then like sign up the way, like the best, not, not that it wasn't good. We just didn't have the best version of that that we could have, could have rolled out. And then I would say that one of the reasons why it didn't go exactly the way we had hoped was we had flag football. Nick Clason (15:02.349) Yeah. Nick Clason (15:12.556) Right. Nick Clason (15:16.93) Right, Yeah. Andrew Jansen (15:29.944) and open gym at another location during that free time where they could play assassins. So a quarter of the conference was over at the gyms and everybody that was playing assassins that didn't want to go play flag football or open gym was at our church. And they, if you got a name of somebody that was over there, you couldn't like, was like, well, it was raining. Nick Clason (15:33.41) Mm. Yeah. Nick Clason (15:56.558) Mmm. Andrew Jansen (15:58.999) They, if you weren't over there, yeah, it was a little bit too far to walk, especially in the rain. So it, that, was one of the things of making sure you have an extended free time where you're not like off on different locations or different parts of town or anything like that, where you have like, if you're at a camp where everybody's on campgrounds, it's a good game to play throughout the week or like we're doing a lock-in for New Year's Eve. Nick Clason (16:00.104) It was like too far to walk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (16:16.408) Yeah. Nick Clason (16:22.112) Yeah. Andrew Jansen (16:27.03) And we're doing this, we're actually doing, I'm doing the Assassin's Game with the students at the lock-in when we're gonna try to revamp and correct some of the things that we noticed that did not quite go as planned. Nick Clason (16:33.902) There you go. Nick Clason (16:39.926) Okay, so that's a great, that's a great, so like the things you're talking about is like making sure you have it like the sign up and the assignments of who gets who a little more fleshed out, right? Like that was one of the things you talked about. Are you doing it with clothes pins or like how are you playing at your lock-in? Andrew Jansen (16:48.641) Mm-hmm. Andrew Jansen (16:58.616) Yeah, I still have, we have 900 clothes pins instead of a thousand. we're still looking to get rid of some of those clothes pins. But I think it'll work out well because it's gonna be a smaller group. We're not gonna have 250 students that are running around like crazy. So we're gonna have them sign up. I have a list of all of- Nick Clason (17:18.456) Yeah. Andrew Jansen (17:27.008) I know these students because they're my students. So I'm going to have like some options and a set chunk of time where they can really, you know, get after it and assassinate their friends with clothespins. Nick Clason (17:30.402) That helps, yeah. Nick Clason (17:35.884) Yeah. Yeah. Now, is this a game that you could envision happening? Like if someone wanted to do this over like the course of like a week long summer camp, let's say like a three, four, five day summer camp. Can it last that long? Do you think or does it need to be like a quicker spur? Andrew Jansen (17:51.33) Mm-hmm. Andrew Jansen (17:59.001) I think the more time you have, the better it can go because then you can be a little bit more methodical. People can get into it. I've seen people army crawl through like cafeteria chairs to like get there like is here's another hack for the game. Make sure you let them know what parts of the body are allowed to get assassinated or not because obviously we don't want Nick Clason (18:02.008) Okay. Nick Clason (18:10.13) Hehe. Nick Clason (18:14.059) Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (18:28.238) Probably good, yeah. Andrew Jansen (18:29.036) to, yeah, we don't want to have a horrible situation with some clothes pins or whatever you're using. Definitely the rubber band game needed that. I saw kids like army crawling through cafeteria chairs to like slowly go get their friends like shirt sleeve because it was throughout the week instead of just that like five or six hours over the weekend of the conference where they could play. So I think it lasts for sure. At least two days. Nick Clason (18:36.895) Yeah. Nick Clason (18:47.032) Yeah. Nick Clason (18:51.629) Yeah. Nick Clason (18:55.894) Yeah. So then on like a game, so then on like a gameplay side, like if you, like if you assassinate someone, you get their clothes pin. So you're only at any given moment. You're only carrying around one, right? Like you don't, you don't walk around with like a big handful of clothes pins at any moment. So that way, cause you, bring it back to like home base or whatever to let someone know like this person's out. Andrew Jansen (19:15.734) No. Yep. Andrew Jansen (19:22.978) Yeah, and that lets the person that's doing the sign up and has that list allows them to kind of see like, okay, this person's making their way through all of these people. And you kind of can tell like, okay, and you know, if somebody loses a pin, you have a better chance of going, that was this person. They lost their pin at this point and you can just write the next person's name and give them that pin. Nick Clason (19:32.226) Yeah. Nick Clason (19:47.052) Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, nice. All right, anything else that someone who's trying to do this needs to think through or that you learned seeing it be done? Andrew Jansen (20:01.362) For sure. I would say the two quick things that we didn't really touch on is clear boundaries, like out of bounds, when they can and cannot assassinate somebody is really important. Obviously, hearing about Jesus and praising Jesus through worship music takes precedent over the praising Jesus through fun. I mean, it's still praising Jesus. It's just a different Nick Clason (20:09.132) Mm. Nick Clason (20:23.266) The game, yeah. Yeah. Andrew Jansen (20:28.268) way that we're doing that and we want to have Jesus be the main thing. So making sure that they're not assassinating each other during small group time, praise and worship time, or any of the main session type times is important. So let them know like, hey, we're only doing this during free time, lunchtime, game time, whatever. And have like, I would say have like lights out if you're at a camp for a week. Like, hey, once it's lights out, would. Nick Clason (20:38.231) Yeah. Andrew Jansen (20:56.972) That's just, you're asking for trouble. Like, Hey, why were you in the girls dorm? I was trying to get her like, no, like that's we're not playing at night time. So I would say that would be one. And then making sure like the, out of bounds, like, Hey, we're not, you're not going to be off camp property. You're not going to be off church property. No, you cannot get on the roof. No, you cannot crawl through the drainage pipes and like all of those usual things. Like what can I like, Nick Clason (20:57.09) Yeah. Nick Clason (21:02.917) Yeah Andrew Jansen (21:24.16) latch on underneath the church van and then crawl onto the windshield and like I'm like no what you're gonna die that thing that's don't do that. They get really into it so making sure that you you kind of have those you know outlines of like what the boundaries are for both like physical where they can play the game and then also the times in which they play the game. Nick Clason (21:29.102) Yeah. Nick Clason (21:44.364) Right. Yeah, that's good. It's Nice. And you mentioned that you're going to play this at your lock-in, most any now, how many years have you been youth ministry again, Andrew? So most youth pastors who have at least hit the 10 year mark in youth ministry are team anti lock-in, but for some incredibly weird reason, your team pro lock-in. Andrew Jansen (21:52.769) Yes. Andrew Jansen (21:59.513) Ten years. Andrew Jansen (22:13.342) I am pro. Pro lock-in. Yes. Nick Clason (22:13.492) And so, yeah. So as I said at the beginning, you have a completely free lock-in guide planning sheet down below. If any one of you is insane enough to do a lock-in like Andrew, this can help you. I will not be a customer of this sheet, but I will let other people know that it exists. Andrew Jansen (22:23.17) Yes. Andrew Jansen (22:38.434) For sure. Yeah. And it, it's just everything that I've learned over the years. I love lock-ins. we did lock-ins at, in our youth group growing up, think almost every year are I'm from Wichita, Kansas. And we had a big like Wichita area citywide lock-in with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students that would, sign up for all of this crazy stuff. So, this is just all the stuff that I've learned kind of, some hacks, both attending a lock-in, putting on a lock-in. Nick Clason (22:57.901) Yeah. Andrew Jansen (23:08.188) And I've added some things to it over the years. So yeah, if anybody has any questions, they can email me or reach out to you and you can give them my info or whatever. But it's really helpful. Nick Clason (23:11.948) Yeah. Nick Clason (23:22.156) Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, man. Well, yeah, dude, go for it. Give a give a little bit. Give a give like a sneak peek. Andrew Jansen (23:26.232) Do you want me to talk about it or is that good? For sure. A sneak peek. one of the... Nick Clason (23:35.47) But don't give it all away, because we still want them to go get it, you know what I mean? So like, make it a big old teaser, like cliffhanger, of ultimate proportions. Andrew Jansen (23:39.764) Absolutely. For sure. So first of all, shout out to my wife for making it look super amazing and incredible because honestly, yeah, she's amazing. I wish that I would hire her tomorrow if that were possible. Nick Clason (23:49.112) Dude, your wife is, this shirt right here, your wife designed. Yeah. Yeah, she... Yeah, but she works for you for free, so why would you do that? Andrew Jansen (24:02.082) That's true. It's not for free. do. I have to like rubber feet and like get her food and take, make sure she's locked in on all that stuff. speaking of lock-ins, the, the number one hack from my lock-in survival guide, and this is an exhaustive or, perfect in any way, there's definitely stuff that can be added to it. But I would say that at the end of the night, I always start with, or end with a movie after cleanup. Nick Clason (24:06.286) there you go. Yeah. Nick Clason (24:30.582) Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Jansen (24:31.692) Because once you clean up, you get through all of the things, you're exhausted, you're tired. Hey everybody, it's time to clean up. And then by 5 a.m., 6 a.m., whenever you're winding down the final hours of a lock-in where your body is running on Monster Energy Drink and Tylenol mostly, then you can really let them say they're gonna watch the whole movie and they will probably fall asleep. So you cut out quite a bit of lock in time where it's still like you give your leaders a break. You can get breakfast stuff ready to go if you want to do breakfast, but always do clean up, everybody clean up. And then we're going to go watch a movie. And that really helps. It's still fun. There's still those crazy kids that are like, I just drink four Mountain Dew Code Reds. How am going to sit still during this movie? And they're still like able to have something engaging, but most of the kids will nap and parents will show up and it's just a win. Nick Clason (25:01.728) Yeah. Nick Clason (25:28.75) Bro, a code red doesn't even touch like your level of tiredness at 5 a.m. if you haven't slept. Like I don't care how wired up on sugar you are. And then there's always those kids, right, that it's over. like, I watched the whole thing. It's like, no you didn't, bro. You were snoring logs over there. Yeah, yeah. Andrew Jansen (25:37.095) yeah. Andrew Jansen (25:44.886) Yep, yeah. How did you watch the whole thing where you were completely submerged under chairs and blanket and pillow? yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (25:51.03) What's that drool next to your face? What's that from? Is that from your code red? Yeah, no, I've done that before. I have done lock-ins, to be clear. I always end with the movie as well. It's the best way to just calm everybody down and just get to the finish line. That's what that's called. It's called survive and advance onto the finish line. Nice, dude. Well, hey. Andrew Jansen (26:04.682) Mm-hmm. yeah. Andrew Jansen (26:12.514) survive in advance. I love it. Nick Clason (26:16.726) I appreciate you hopping on. If you're listening, like go grab Andrew's Locket Guide, play Assassin, let us know, let him know if you did it and what other hacks you might have down below in the comments. until next time, my friends, thanks for being here. See ya. Keywords youth ministry, games, assassin game, youth pastors, event planning, engagement, conference activities, youth retreats, fun activities, youth group, d-now, winter retreat, fall retreat, summer camp, on-going games In this episode I sit down and share the entire inspiration for this D-Now, Winter Retreat & Summer Camp on-going games with my friend, Andrew Jansen.
Andrew is a 10+ year youth worker, and his assassin game sparked this entire podcast mini-series.
He expains his creative (and super CHEAP) adaptation to this game.
Plus! Andrew shared his lock-in survival guide for FREE!

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https://www.patreon.com/posts/10-year-veterans-146449370?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Assassin Game with Clothes Pins
03:41 Social Media While You’re Busy
05:02 Assassin Game Rules
06:20 Ways to Play the Game
09:31 Pro-Tips
13:42 No Prize? No Problem - Do this!
14:30 Pro-Tip #2
18:52 How are you going to play, moving forward?
19:37 Could you play this game at summer camp?
21:50 Two Final Assassin Rules to Follow
23:47 FREE Lock-in Survival Guide

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.378)
Well, what's up everybody? I'm here with Andrew. Andrew, how you doing this morning, bro?

Andrew Jansen (00:07.725)
doing good. God is good. It's a good morning. Getting into my emails and excited to talk about the game thing that you want to talk to me about.

Nick Clason (00:17.39)
Yeah. I'm glad, like, I hope that talking about the game thing is more exciting than your emails. That's, that's, that's my hope for all of this. Um, but yeah. So I, you know, I, you and I, we've known each other for a couple of years now, mostly through zoom, but we've hung out two times in person. And one of the times that we hung out in person, I was at your church. Um,

Andrew Jansen (00:26.057)
I hope so too. Yeah. Definitely.

Nick Clason (00:44.974)
Helping you out with like a like a retreat conference. What would you call that thing? It's a conference, right?

Andrew Jansen (00:51.297)
Yeah, it's like a student conference between like 250, 500 people give or take which year you're at the conference. Yeah.

Nick Clason (00:58.21)
Yeah, that's a big, that's a big range. But one of the things that you guys did that I loved was you had this game happening in the background of the conference, I guess. It wasn't like a stage game, though you had stage games. It wasn't like a big thing that in the main general session that took a lot of time, if any time.

Like aside from maybe just like explaining the rules. it was like, it was this like assassin type game. tell me, like just explain to the people. Cause what I loved about it was that it was an activity to do in the margins and ongoingly throughout the weekend that kind of kept you, kept students engaged and having something, you know, to kind of like focus on and do like above and beyond just like all the normal conference attend attending like stuff. So.

Andrew Jansen (01:33.39)
Yes.

Nick Clason (01:55.478)
Where did this idea come from? How did it go? Like, let's talk about it.

Andrew Jansen (01:56.152)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (02:00.139)
Yes, so like all great ideas, I stole it from, I believe we played this game in my youth ministry growing up. So my youth pastor, question mark, shout out Jake Lindhart. He's a great youth pastor. But I'm sure he stole that from somebody as well before him, but it's the original game was played with rubber bands and you would like, you would like snap a rubber band on. So I grew up in the nineties.

Nick Clason (02:18.446)
Yeah

Nick Clason (02:24.568)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (02:29.701)
early 2000s youth group era where we did all kinds of things that would get you fired nowadays, but where you would literally snap people with rubber bands and if you snapped them while they weren't looking, then they were assassinated and they would give you their name that they had been given at the start of the game.

Nick Clason (02:34.67)
Okay.

Nick Clason (02:43.04)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (02:50.432)
Was their name like their name or a name of like another person?

Andrew Jansen (02:54.145)
It's the name. So let me let's explain the game real quick. And then we can kind of go into the like a little bit more of like what we change rules, that kind of stuff. So the game is essentially everybody signs up and then you take everybody and write their name down and then you assign their name to somebody besides them. It's easier to make a list and kind of just go like numbered.

Nick Clason (02:57.805)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:05.272)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:20.024)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (03:23.693)
And like, so number one would have name number two. And then if you have 50 students, number 50 would have number one. And the goal is to assassinate that person and a bit like you win if you get your own name. So that's the, like if you get handed your own name and you've been playing it for a while and it's not like the first person you kill and something that just means your youth pastor messed up and that's okay.

Nick Clason (03:27.181)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:31.694)
Okay.

Nick Clason (03:39.426)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (03:49.137)
give grace. But if you get your own name at the end, then you are the assassin champion. And that's kind of the concept behind the game.

Nick Clason (03:56.461)
Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And so like I was saying, like I was watching kids at your conference, like running around, like, you know, hiding from each other. Like one kid came up to me and was like, can you go get that girl over there? Cause she like knows like I'm coming for her, you know? So was like sort of all sort of like strategy and like gamesmanship. So how did you adapt it then for, for this one?

Andrew Jansen (04:25.688)
for sure.

Right. So I believe we did this a few years ago at the same conference with Nerf guns, but I had a whole bunch of like clothes pins at our church that we use for various things. feel like every time we need clothes pins, we just went and bought them until we had thousands of clothes pins. And I was like, we got to do something with these clothes pins. But it's funny when you act, when you're like, Hey, we talked about this assassin's game.

Nick Clason (04:35.671)
Okay.

Nick Clason (04:47.822)
hehe

Andrew Jansen (04:58.366)
It did not go the way that I was like hoping it would go or the way that I was planning it to go. I think they had fun. They had a blast. Like kids were running around like crazy, screaming, like getting really into it. We had to tell a couple of kids to calm down, which that's, I'd rather tell kids calm down than be like, Hey, come on, like get into it.

Nick Clason (05:00.046)
I'm

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:16.386)
Right, you should, yeah, you should care about this more, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (05:20.33)
Right. They were very into it. I kind of talked about it with some of the volunteer board members and kind of figured out what is something that can happen. I think of it as like a meta event. It's always just constantly in motion. Obviously, you don't want to have it happening during praise and worship time or while you're in small groups or the speaker is speaking. all that in between transition, walking around time.

Nick Clason (05:29.358)
me.

Nick Clason (05:38.647)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:42.167)
Right.

Andrew Jansen (05:49.625)
we gave students clothes pins and those clothes pins had the name of their that they wrote their name on the clothes pin and then we handed them their target clothes pin and that was the person that they were trying to go get so you had to clip on the clothes pin

Nick Clason (06:03.63)
Okay, so in theory, if every kid comes in, signs up, writes their name on a clothespin, then that's your pool of contestants. because one of the things you guys did was you didn't make this required for everyone. You're like, if you want to play, swing by the table and sign up.

Andrew Jansen (06:09.666)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (06:22.978)
For sure. Cause I mean, if you have, if you make everybody do it, you're going to have like 10 people that are just like, I'm just going to throw away this clothes pin and then they're, they're out. They're not, you're like, Hey, I got you. Where's your clothes pin? And like, I threw it away. Cause I don't care about this at all. Cause I'm a punk eighth grade student or whatever. And like, so, so it's, we wanted to make it be just, if you're, if you're interested in playing this type of game, you know, go, go sign up. We,

Nick Clason (06:37.438)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (06:53.572)
started with them writing their own names. And then I think it turned into kids can't write at all. And like, we were like, who, what is this? What is your name? Like, it was like, my name's Steve. And I was like, that does not say Steve at all. And that is not cursive or that I don't know what font that is, but you need to practice writing. But we ended up making that list and then writing their names down.

Nick Clason (06:56.832)
Okay.

Nick Clason (07:00.972)
Yeah. What fart? geez.

Andrew Jansen (07:21.472)
And then we handed them out at lunch, I think. We made the order and we're like, OK, this student is getting this kid's name so that the list was in a circle, so to speak.

Nick Clason (07:23.872)
Okay, yeah.

Nick Clason (07:34.038)
Now, you need to like, there any, are there any like hacks that youth pastors need to think about with like assigning it or is it just like, just do it randomly and it's fine?

Andrew Jansen (07:44.993)
Yeah, I had it so that was the part that I think went that was the craziest because originally we were just write your name and on the pin and then take the neck though like the last person that wrote their name down take their clothes pin so they just were in order as they went but that got Completely they just started chucking them into a bucket and they were like I signed up and then ran away

Nick Clason (08:02.498)
Gotcha.

Andrew Jansen (08:11.928)
So I would say have that like it would be easiest to do. All right get in line Go to a sign-up station get signed up and do either alphabetical order or do the order in which you signed up is the order in which you You know like are trying to get the next person

Nick Clason (08:31.981)
Yeah. So is that, I mean, that's a pretty like administratively heavy task, right? So like if you're a youth pastor, you're running an event, you're running a retreat or a D now, like would you recommend having a really organized person facilitate some of that off to the side so that you're not having to get sucked down into the weeds on that?

Andrew Jansen (08:51.21)
Absolutely. Yeah. If you have an intern, definitely that's a great intern task is just sit there, get all the students signed up and write their names down on a clothes pin or how whatever assassin's weapon you're using. But we use like a Nerf gun, I think a few years ago, probably can't get away with rubber band anymore, but yeah.

Nick Clason (09:06.936)
Yeah.

Okay.

How did the Nerf gun work? Like how did that, like was it successful would you say? Or was clothespin like a better idea? what, cause I let one of the things, like in a couple of episodes I'm actually gonna talk to another guy and he created an AI like app for taking pictures, like an assassin picture game. So if like, if you can be confidently sure that everyone has a cell phone, that's a great opportunity, like a great way to do it. But.

Andrew Jansen (09:34.754)
Nice.

Andrew Jansen (09:38.434)
Yep. Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:40.302)
Like I like this one being analog, right? In some way, because if kids don't have phones or like whatever, they're able to still do it. How'd the Nerf gun thing like work? Like, was it confusing? Was it like, cause I would imagine if you're on the other side of the room, you get like hit by a Nerf dart. Like, do you know for sure who shot it? Like what if multiple people shot it? Like, you know what mean? Like that type of stuff. was it, was it, did it, yeah, how'd it go?

Andrew Jansen (10:06.882)
I think it went well. was, they did popsicle sticks and you had a popsicle stick with a person's name on it and you were collecting popsicle sticks. I thought it went well because if you're shooting the Nerf gun and you hit your target, you're gonna immediately go up and be like, hey, I hit you. Like that was my dart that hit you. If it's like crossfire or something like that, I mean, middle schoolers are gonna cheat for sure. Freshman boys.

Nick Clason (10:10.721)
Okay.

Nick Clason (10:17.271)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:24.835)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:31.853)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (10:35.96)
typically will be like, I've killed everybody in this room already. I'm like, no, you haven't. We haven't even started yet. that like, like, I'm like, nice try. But the, the, the nerf, I think it worked well because it, the first of all, the nerf gun was very low power. So you had to be, I think you had about five feet to, to like be able to like shoot it and, and hit them. And then, and it was also fun because

Nick Clason (10:36.738)
That's, yeah.

Ha!

Nick Clason (10:51.459)
Yeah.

There you go.

Nick Clason (10:59.938)
Right.

Andrew Jansen (11:03.192)
There was one this will haunt my dreams forever because I think it was like a junior high school girl was like carving numbers in her little plastic nerve gun with how many kids that she was like assassinating and she I think yeah, I was like Yeah, I was like Let me know when you're not in the same town that I'm in so that I can sleep well Yeah, it was terrifying but they they got into it which is they this seems to be some

Nick Clason (11:08.514)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:15.55)
my gosh. That is like what horror movies are made of, bro.

Andrew Jansen (11:32.832)
a type of game that it's a meta happening all throughout the conference, all throughout the event. And they really, really love trying to assassinate their friends.

Nick Clason (11:38.925)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:44.77)
Yeah, and if you don't have a budget for a prize for the winner, these types of events are a great way to pit churches or youth groups or small groups or color groups or however you want to break it up against each other. And you can just give 1,000 points to the winner, and 1,000 points is free for youth pastors. And then, yes. Yeah, dude.

Andrew Jansen (12:03.565)
Yes.

Yep, I love points. have unlimited points in my budget. It's great. have trillions and trillions of points.

Nick Clason (12:12.288)
It's truly the only unlimited thing we as youth pastors have access to, you know, aside from maybe Bibles that were discarded or old couches. But other than that, points are for sure unlimited. So, all right. So is there anything else, any other like pro tips that you would have if someone's like, all right, this sounds like a cool idea. You know, just something to kind of like run on in the background of my D now or my summer camp, my retreat, like.

Andrew Jansen (12:17.016)
for sure.

Nick Clason (12:40.556)
You have any pro tips that you'd give a youth pastor so that doesn't flop and fail or like to maybe help them avoid middle schoolers trying to cheat or is that just an inevitability?

Andrew Jansen (12:49.56)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they will cheat for sure. But I would say that have your like sign up sheet, your sign up, like the starting of the Assassin's Game, have that organized and fleshed out before you start, because that's the hardest part of getting that train to leave the station is just getting every student signed up and then assigning who their target is in a way that allows it to go like.

Nick Clason (12:53.666)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:09.902)
Mm.

Andrew Jansen (13:17.068)
Number one has number two and then all the way through like number 50 has number one. Because if you get off in that process, then you're going to get like someone's going to go, I won because I got my own name. And then you're like, no, how do I fix this? got switched? What got swapped? What happened?

Nick Clason (13:20.588)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:35.358)
Is there, so is there no mathematical way for them to get their own name until they win? Like is that how it should work? I'm like, I'm not a statistician, so I'm not over here able to like think of this on the fly. So, okay, so there's no possible way for them, like if they get their own name and they didn't win, it's messed up somehow, yeah. Yeah, cause I did remember seeing the guy behind the desk, cause it wasn't you.

Andrew Jansen (13:42.508)
That's how it should work. If you number them...

Andrew Jansen (13:53.997)
Something, yeah, something messed up. Yep. So I would say do that either.

Nick Clason (14:02.434)
But the guy behind the desk, he was like, way to just throw him under the bus. I was trying not to do that. But he was like, like I just saw him like an internal like moment of panic when like some people were like giving him things. He's like, that's, that might not be right. Like that right there was like, this game seems amazing and intricate, but like that moment, like every youth pastor has been there where they have an amazing game. And then there's that moment of panic where they're like thinking, crap, I, something isn't working right.

Andrew Jansen (14:02.614)
Yeah, it was Dawson. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Andrew Jansen (14:15.735)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (14:31.998)
Mm-hmm. for sure. No, loved Dawson was a youth leader of mine and he you know He's a youth pastor at the church that I was at. So no, I love Dawson. He did a great job It's my fault. I didn't lead him well in executing those things. So it's all it's all on me No, it was it definitely there's a moment of panic when a group of students are like, hey I got like my friend like my friend and I got each other's names and we're not

Nick Clason (14:46.798)
There you go.

Andrew Jansen (15:00.396)
the first and last person. And that was all the, that was all the clothes pins were jumbled up in a bin and we did not have a good like start and then like sign up the way, like the best, not, not that it wasn't good. We just didn't have the best version of that that we could have, could have rolled out. And then I would say that one of the reasons why it didn't go exactly the way we had hoped was we had flag football.

Nick Clason (15:02.349)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:12.556)
Right.

Nick Clason (15:16.93)
Right, Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (15:29.944)
and open gym at another location during that free time where they could play assassins. So a quarter of the conference was over at the gyms and everybody that was playing assassins that didn't want to go play flag football or open gym was at our church. And they, if you got a name of somebody that was over there, you couldn't like, was like, well, it was raining.

Nick Clason (15:33.41)
Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:56.558)
Mmm.

Andrew Jansen (15:58.999)
They, if you weren't over there, yeah, it was a little bit too far to walk, especially in the rain. So it, that, was one of the things of making sure you have an extended free time where you're not like off on different locations or different parts of town or anything like that, where you have like, if you're at a camp where everybody's on campgrounds, it's a good game to play throughout the week or like we're doing a lock-in for New Year's Eve.

Nick Clason (16:00.104)
It was like too far to walk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:16.408)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:22.112)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (16:27.03)
And we're doing this, we're actually doing, I'm doing the Assassin's Game with the students at the lock-in when we're gonna try to revamp and correct some of the things that we noticed that did not quite go as planned.

Nick Clason (16:33.902)
There you go.

Nick Clason (16:39.926)
Okay, so that's a great, that's a great, so like the things you're talking about is like making sure you have it like the sign up and the assignments of who gets who a little more fleshed out, right? Like that was one of the things you talked about. Are you doing it with clothes pins or like how are you playing at your lock-in?

Andrew Jansen (16:48.641)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (16:58.616)
Yeah, I still have, we have 900 clothes pins instead of a thousand. we're still looking to get rid of some of those clothes pins. But I think it'll work out well because it's gonna be a smaller group. We're not gonna have 250 students that are running around like crazy. So we're gonna have them sign up. I have a list of all of-

Nick Clason (17:18.456)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (17:27.008)
I know these students because they're my students. So I'm going to have like some options and a set chunk of time where they can really, you know, get after it and assassinate their friends with clothespins.

Nick Clason (17:30.402)
That helps, yeah.

Nick Clason (17:35.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Now, is this a game that you could envision happening? Like if someone wanted to do this over like the course of like a week long summer camp, let's say like a three, four, five day summer camp. Can it last that long? Do you think or does it need to be like a quicker spur?

Andrew Jansen (17:51.33)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (17:59.001)
I think the more time you have, the better it can go because then you can be a little bit more methodical. People can get into it. I've seen people army crawl through like cafeteria chairs to like get there like is here's another hack for the game. Make sure you let them know what parts of the body are allowed to get assassinated or not because obviously we don't want

Nick Clason (18:02.008)
Okay.

Nick Clason (18:10.13)
Hehe.

Nick Clason (18:14.059)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (18:28.238)
Probably good, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (18:29.036)
to, yeah, we don't want to have a horrible situation with some clothes pins or whatever you're using. Definitely the rubber band game needed that. I saw kids like army crawling through cafeteria chairs to like slowly go get their friends like shirt sleeve because it was throughout the week instead of just that like five or six hours over the weekend of the conference where they could play. So I think it lasts for sure. At least two days.

Nick Clason (18:36.895)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:47.032)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:51.629)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:55.894)
Yeah. So then on like a game, so then on like a gameplay side, like if you, like if you assassinate someone, you get their clothes pin. So you're only at any given moment. You're only carrying around one, right? Like you don't, you don't walk around with like a big handful of clothes pins at any moment. So that way, cause you, bring it back to like home base or whatever to let someone know like this person's out.

Andrew Jansen (19:15.734)
No. Yep.

Andrew Jansen (19:22.978)
Yeah, and that lets the person that's doing the sign up and has that list allows them to kind of see like, okay, this person's making their way through all of these people. And you kind of can tell like, okay, and you know, if somebody loses a pin, you have a better chance of going, that was this person. They lost their pin at this point and you can just write the next person's name and give them that pin.

Nick Clason (19:32.226)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (19:47.052)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, nice. All right, anything else that someone who's trying to do this needs to think through or that you learned seeing it be done?

Andrew Jansen (20:01.362)
For sure. I would say the two quick things that we didn't really touch on is clear boundaries, like out of bounds, when they can and cannot assassinate somebody is really important. Obviously, hearing about Jesus and praising Jesus through worship music takes precedent over the praising Jesus through fun. I mean, it's still praising Jesus. It's just a different

Nick Clason (20:09.132)
Mm.

Nick Clason (20:23.266)
The game, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (20:28.268)
way that we're doing that and we want to have Jesus be the main thing. So making sure that they're not assassinating each other during small group time, praise and worship time, or any of the main session type times is important. So let them know like, hey, we're only doing this during free time, lunchtime, game time, whatever. And have like, I would say have like lights out if you're at a camp for a week. Like, hey, once it's lights out, would.

Nick Clason (20:38.231)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (20:56.972)
That's just, you're asking for trouble. Like, Hey, why were you in the girls dorm? I was trying to get her like, no, like that's we're not playing at night time. So I would say that would be one. And then making sure like the, out of bounds, like, Hey, we're not, you're not going to be off camp property. You're not going to be off church property. No, you cannot get on the roof. No, you cannot crawl through the drainage pipes and like all of those usual things. Like what can I like,

Nick Clason (20:57.09)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:02.917)
Yeah

Andrew Jansen (21:24.16)
latch on underneath the church van and then crawl onto the windshield and like I'm like no what you're gonna die that thing that's don't do that. They get really into it so making sure that you you kind of have those you know outlines of like what the boundaries are for both like physical where they can play the game and then also the times in which they play the game.

Nick Clason (21:29.102)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:44.364)
Right. Yeah, that's good. It's Nice. And you mentioned that you're going to play this at your lock-in, most any now, how many years have you been youth ministry again, Andrew? So most youth pastors who have at least hit the 10 year mark in youth ministry are team anti lock-in, but for some incredibly weird reason, your team pro lock-in.

Andrew Jansen (21:52.769)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (21:59.513)
Ten years.

Andrew Jansen (22:13.342)
I am pro. Pro lock-in. Yes.

Nick Clason (22:13.492)
And so, yeah. So as I said at the beginning, you have a completely free lock-in guide planning sheet down below. If any one of you is insane enough to do a lock-in like Andrew, this can help you. I will not be a customer of this sheet, but I will let other people know that it exists.

Andrew Jansen (22:23.17)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (22:38.434)
For sure. Yeah. And it, it's just everything that I've learned over the years. I love lock-ins. we did lock-ins at, in our youth group growing up, think almost every year are I'm from Wichita, Kansas. And we had a big like Wichita area citywide lock-in with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students that would, sign up for all of this crazy stuff. So, this is just all the stuff that I've learned kind of, some hacks, both attending a lock-in, putting on a lock-in.

Nick Clason (22:57.901)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (23:08.188)
And I've added some things to it over the years. So yeah, if anybody has any questions, they can email me or reach out to you and you can give them my info or whatever. But it's really helpful.

Nick Clason (23:11.948)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (23:22.156)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, man. Well, yeah, dude, go for it. Give a give a little bit. Give a give like a sneak peek.

Andrew Jansen (23:26.232)
Do you want me to talk about it or is that good? For sure. A sneak peek. one of the...

Nick Clason (23:35.47)
But don't give it all away, because we still want them to go get it, you know what I mean? So like, make it a big old teaser, like cliffhanger, of ultimate proportions.

Andrew Jansen (23:39.764)
Absolutely. For sure.

So first of all, shout out to my wife for making it look super amazing and incredible because honestly, yeah, she's amazing. I wish that I would hire her tomorrow if that were possible.

Nick Clason (23:49.112)
Dude, your wife is, this shirt right here, your wife designed. Yeah.

Yeah, she...

Yeah, but she works for you for free, so why would you do that?

Andrew Jansen (24:02.082)
That's true. It's not for free. do. I have to like rubber feet and like get her food and take, make sure she's locked in on all that stuff. speaking of lock-ins, the, the number one hack from my lock-in survival guide, and this is an exhaustive or, perfect in any way, there's definitely stuff that can be added to it. But I would say that at the end of the night, I always start with, or end with a movie after cleanup.

Nick Clason (24:06.286)
there you go. Yeah.

Nick Clason (24:30.582)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (24:31.692)
Because once you clean up, you get through all of the things, you're exhausted, you're tired. Hey everybody, it's time to clean up. And then by 5 a.m., 6 a.m., whenever you're winding down the final hours of a lock-in where your body is running on Monster Energy Drink and Tylenol mostly, then you can really let them say they're gonna watch the whole movie and they will probably fall asleep.

So you cut out quite a bit of lock in time where it's still like you give your leaders a break. You can get breakfast stuff ready to go if you want to do breakfast, but always do clean up, everybody clean up. And then we're going to go watch a movie. And that really helps. It's still fun. There's still those crazy kids that are like, I just drink four Mountain Dew Code Reds. How am going to sit still during this movie? And they're still like able to have something engaging, but most of the kids will nap and parents will show up and it's just a win.

Nick Clason (25:01.728)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:28.75)
Bro, a code red doesn't even touch like your level of tiredness at 5 a.m. if you haven't slept. Like I don't care how wired up on sugar you are. And then there's always those kids, right, that it's over. like, I watched the whole thing. It's like, no you didn't, bro. You were snoring logs over there. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (25:37.095)
yeah.

Andrew Jansen (25:44.886)
Yep, yeah. How did you watch the whole thing where you were completely submerged under chairs and blanket and pillow? yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:51.03)
What's that drool next to your face? What's that from? Is that from your code red? Yeah, no, I've done that before. I have done lock-ins, to be clear. I always end with the movie as well. It's the best way to just calm everybody down and just get to the finish line. That's what that's called. It's called survive and advance onto the finish line. Nice, dude. Well, hey.

Andrew Jansen (26:04.682)
Mm-hmm. yeah.

Andrew Jansen (26:12.514)
survive in advance. I love it.

Nick Clason (26:16.726)
I appreciate you hopping on. If you're listening, like go grab Andrew's Locket Guide, play Assassin, let us know, let him know if you did it and what other hacks you might have down below in the comments. until next time, my friends, thanks for being here. See ya.

]]> In this episode I sit down and share the entire inspiration for this D-Now, Winter Retreat & Summer Camp on-going games with my friend, Andrew Jansen.
Andrew is a 10+ year youth worker, and his assassin game sparked this entire podcast mini-series.
He expains his creative (and super CHEAP) adaptation to this game.
Plus! Andrew shared his lock-in survival guide for FREE!

Andrew's Lock-in Guide:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/10-year-veterans-146449370?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

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--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Assassin Game with Clothes Pins
03:41 Social Media While You’re Busy
05:02 Assassin Game Rules
06:20 Ways to Play the Game
09:31 Pro-Tips
13:42 No Prize? No Problem - Do this!
14:30 Pro-Tip #2
18:52 How are you going to play, moving forward?
19:37 Could you play this game at summer camp?
21:50 Two Final Assassin Rules to Follow
23:47 FREE Lock-in Survival Guide

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.378)
Well, what's up everybody? I'm here with Andrew. Andrew, how you doing this morning, bro?

Andrew Jansen (00:07.725)
doing good. God is good. It's a good morning. Getting into my emails and excited to talk about the game thing that you want to talk to me about.

Nick Clason (00:17.39)
Yeah. I'm glad, like, I hope that talking about the game thing is more exciting than your emails. That's, that's, that's my hope for all of this. Um, but yeah. So I, you know, I, you and I, we've known each other for a couple of years now, mostly through zoom, but we've hung out two times in person. And one of the times that we hung out in person, I was at your church. Um,

Andrew Jansen (00:26.057)
I hope so too. Yeah. Definitely.

Nick Clason (00:44.974)
Helping you out with like a like a retreat conference. What would you call that thing? It's a conference, right?

Andrew Jansen (00:51.297)
Yeah, it's like a student conference between like 250, 500 people give or take which year you're at the conference. Yeah.

Nick Clason (00:58.21)
Yeah, that's a big, that's a big range. But one of the things that you guys did that I loved was you had this game happening in the background of the conference, I guess. It wasn't like a stage game, though you had stage games. It wasn't like a big thing that in the main general session that took a lot of time, if any time.

Like aside from maybe just like explaining the rules. it was like, it was this like assassin type game. tell me, like just explain to the people. Cause what I loved about it was that it was an activity to do in the margins and ongoingly throughout the weekend that kind of kept you, kept students engaged and having something, you know, to kind of like focus on and do like above and beyond just like all the normal conference attend attending like stuff. So.

Andrew Jansen (01:33.39)
Yes.

Nick Clason (01:55.478)
Where did this idea come from? How did it go? Like, let's talk about it.

Andrew Jansen (01:56.152)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (02:00.139)
Yes, so like all great ideas, I stole it from, I believe we played this game in my youth ministry growing up. So my youth pastor, question mark, shout out Jake Lindhart. He's a great youth pastor. But I'm sure he stole that from somebody as well before him, but it's the original game was played with rubber bands and you would like, you would like snap a rubber band on. So I grew up in the nineties.

Nick Clason (02:18.446)
Yeah

Nick Clason (02:24.568)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (02:29.701)
early 2000s youth group era where we did all kinds of things that would get you fired nowadays, but where you would literally snap people with rubber bands and if you snapped them while they weren't looking, then they were assassinated and they would give you their name that they had been given at the start of the game.

Nick Clason (02:34.67)
Okay.

Nick Clason (02:43.04)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (02:50.432)
Was their name like their name or a name of like another person?

Andrew Jansen (02:54.145)
It's the name. So let me let's explain the game real quick. And then we can kind of go into the like a little bit more of like what we change rules, that kind of stuff. So the game is essentially everybody signs up and then you take everybody and write their name down and then you assign their name to somebody besides them. It's easier to make a list and kind of just go like numbered.

Nick Clason (02:57.805)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:05.272)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:20.024)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (03:23.693)
And like, so number one would have name number two. And then if you have 50 students, number 50 would have number one. And the goal is to assassinate that person and a bit like you win if you get your own name. So that's the, like if you get handed your own name and you've been playing it for a while and it's not like the first person you kill and something that just means your youth pastor messed up and that's okay.

Nick Clason (03:27.181)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:31.694)
Okay.

Nick Clason (03:39.426)
Okay.

Andrew Jansen (03:49.137)
give grace. But if you get your own name at the end, then you are the assassin champion. And that's kind of the concept behind the game.

Nick Clason (03:56.461)
Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And so like I was saying, like I was watching kids at your conference, like running around, like, you know, hiding from each other. Like one kid came up to me and was like, can you go get that girl over there? Cause she like knows like I'm coming for her, you know? So was like sort of all sort of like strategy and like gamesmanship. So how did you adapt it then for, for this one?

Andrew Jansen (04:25.688)
for sure.

Right. So I believe we did this a few years ago at the same conference with Nerf guns, but I had a whole bunch of like clothes pins at our church that we use for various things. feel like every time we need clothes pins, we just went and bought them until we had thousands of clothes pins. And I was like, we got to do something with these clothes pins. But it's funny when you act, when you're like, Hey, we talked about this assassin's game.

Nick Clason (04:35.671)
Okay.

Nick Clason (04:47.822)
hehe

Andrew Jansen (04:58.366)
It did not go the way that I was like hoping it would go or the way that I was planning it to go. I think they had fun. They had a blast. Like kids were running around like crazy, screaming, like getting really into it. We had to tell a couple of kids to calm down, which that's, I'd rather tell kids calm down than be like, Hey, come on, like get into it.

Nick Clason (05:00.046)
I'm

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:16.386)
Right, you should, yeah, you should care about this more, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (05:20.33)
Right. They were very into it. I kind of talked about it with some of the volunteer board members and kind of figured out what is something that can happen. I think of it as like a meta event. It's always just constantly in motion. Obviously, you don't want to have it happening during praise and worship time or while you're in small groups or the speaker is speaking. all that in between transition, walking around time.

Nick Clason (05:29.358)
me.

Nick Clason (05:38.647)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:42.167)
Right.

Andrew Jansen (05:49.625)
we gave students clothes pins and those clothes pins had the name of their that they wrote their name on the clothes pin and then we handed them their target clothes pin and that was the person that they were trying to go get so you had to clip on the clothes pin

Nick Clason (06:03.63)
Okay, so in theory, if every kid comes in, signs up, writes their name on a clothespin, then that's your pool of contestants. because one of the things you guys did was you didn't make this required for everyone. You're like, if you want to play, swing by the table and sign up.

Andrew Jansen (06:09.666)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (06:22.978)
For sure. Cause I mean, if you have, if you make everybody do it, you're going to have like 10 people that are just like, I'm just going to throw away this clothes pin and then they're, they're out. They're not, you're like, Hey, I got you. Where's your clothes pin? And like, I threw it away. Cause I don't care about this at all. Cause I'm a punk eighth grade student or whatever. And like, so, so it's, we wanted to make it be just, if you're, if you're interested in playing this type of game, you know, go, go sign up. We,

Nick Clason (06:37.438)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (06:53.572)
started with them writing their own names. And then I think it turned into kids can't write at all. And like, we were like, who, what is this? What is your name? Like, it was like, my name's Steve. And I was like, that does not say Steve at all. And that is not cursive or that I don't know what font that is, but you need to practice writing. But we ended up making that list and then writing their names down.

Nick Clason (06:56.832)
Okay.

Nick Clason (07:00.972)
Yeah. What fart? geez.

Andrew Jansen (07:21.472)
And then we handed them out at lunch, I think. We made the order and we're like, OK, this student is getting this kid's name so that the list was in a circle, so to speak.

Nick Clason (07:23.872)
Okay, yeah.

Nick Clason (07:34.038)
Now, you need to like, there any, are there any like hacks that youth pastors need to think about with like assigning it or is it just like, just do it randomly and it's fine?

Andrew Jansen (07:44.993)
Yeah, I had it so that was the part that I think went that was the craziest because originally we were just write your name and on the pin and then take the neck though like the last person that wrote their name down take their clothes pin so they just were in order as they went but that got Completely they just started chucking them into a bucket and they were like I signed up and then ran away

Nick Clason (08:02.498)
Gotcha.

Andrew Jansen (08:11.928)
So I would say have that like it would be easiest to do. All right get in line Go to a sign-up station get signed up and do either alphabetical order or do the order in which you signed up is the order in which you You know like are trying to get the next person

Nick Clason (08:31.981)
Yeah. So is that, I mean, that's a pretty like administratively heavy task, right? So like if you're a youth pastor, you're running an event, you're running a retreat or a D now, like would you recommend having a really organized person facilitate some of that off to the side so that you're not having to get sucked down into the weeds on that?

Andrew Jansen (08:51.21)
Absolutely. Yeah. If you have an intern, definitely that's a great intern task is just sit there, get all the students signed up and write their names down on a clothes pin or how whatever assassin's weapon you're using. But we use like a Nerf gun, I think a few years ago, probably can't get away with rubber band anymore, but yeah.

Nick Clason (09:06.936)
Yeah.

Okay.

How did the Nerf gun work? Like how did that, like was it successful would you say? Or was clothespin like a better idea? what, cause I let one of the things, like in a couple of episodes I'm actually gonna talk to another guy and he created an AI like app for taking pictures, like an assassin picture game. So if like, if you can be confidently sure that everyone has a cell phone, that's a great opportunity, like a great way to do it. But.

Andrew Jansen (09:34.754)
Nice.

Andrew Jansen (09:38.434)
Yep. Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:40.302)
Like I like this one being analog, right? In some way, because if kids don't have phones or like whatever, they're able to still do it. How'd the Nerf gun thing like work? Like, was it confusing? Was it like, cause I would imagine if you're on the other side of the room, you get like hit by a Nerf dart. Like, do you know for sure who shot it? Like what if multiple people shot it? Like, you know what mean? Like that type of stuff. was it, was it, did it, yeah, how'd it go?

Andrew Jansen (10:06.882)
I think it went well. was, they did popsicle sticks and you had a popsicle stick with a person's name on it and you were collecting popsicle sticks. I thought it went well because if you're shooting the Nerf gun and you hit your target, you're gonna immediately go up and be like, hey, I hit you. Like that was my dart that hit you. If it's like crossfire or something like that, I mean, middle schoolers are gonna cheat for sure. Freshman boys.

Nick Clason (10:10.721)
Okay.

Nick Clason (10:17.271)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:24.835)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:31.853)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (10:35.96)
typically will be like, I've killed everybody in this room already. I'm like, no, you haven't. We haven't even started yet. that like, like, I'm like, nice try. But the, the, the nerf, I think it worked well because it, the first of all, the nerf gun was very low power. So you had to be, I think you had about five feet to, to like be able to like shoot it and, and hit them. And then, and it was also fun because

Nick Clason (10:36.738)
That's, yeah.

Ha!

Nick Clason (10:51.459)
Yeah.

There you go.

Nick Clason (10:59.938)
Right.

Andrew Jansen (11:03.192)
There was one this will haunt my dreams forever because I think it was like a junior high school girl was like carving numbers in her little plastic nerve gun with how many kids that she was like assassinating and she I think yeah, I was like Yeah, I was like Let me know when you're not in the same town that I'm in so that I can sleep well Yeah, it was terrifying but they they got into it which is they this seems to be some

Nick Clason (11:08.514)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:15.55)
my gosh. That is like what horror movies are made of, bro.

Andrew Jansen (11:32.832)
a type of game that it's a meta happening all throughout the conference, all throughout the event. And they really, really love trying to assassinate their friends.

Nick Clason (11:38.925)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:44.77)
Yeah, and if you don't have a budget for a prize for the winner, these types of events are a great way to pit churches or youth groups or small groups or color groups or however you want to break it up against each other. And you can just give 1,000 points to the winner, and 1,000 points is free for youth pastors. And then, yes. Yeah, dude.

Andrew Jansen (12:03.565)
Yes.

Yep, I love points. have unlimited points in my budget. It's great. have trillions and trillions of points.

Nick Clason (12:12.288)
It's truly the only unlimited thing we as youth pastors have access to, you know, aside from maybe Bibles that were discarded or old couches. But other than that, points are for sure unlimited. So, all right. So is there anything else, any other like pro tips that you would have if someone's like, all right, this sounds like a cool idea. You know, just something to kind of like run on in the background of my D now or my summer camp, my retreat, like.

Andrew Jansen (12:17.016)
for sure.

Nick Clason (12:40.556)
You have any pro tips that you'd give a youth pastor so that doesn't flop and fail or like to maybe help them avoid middle schoolers trying to cheat or is that just an inevitability?

Andrew Jansen (12:49.56)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they will cheat for sure. But I would say that have your like sign up sheet, your sign up, like the starting of the Assassin's Game, have that organized and fleshed out before you start, because that's the hardest part of getting that train to leave the station is just getting every student signed up and then assigning who their target is in a way that allows it to go like.

Nick Clason (12:53.666)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:09.902)
Mm.

Andrew Jansen (13:17.068)
Number one has number two and then all the way through like number 50 has number one. Because if you get off in that process, then you're going to get like someone's going to go, I won because I got my own name. And then you're like, no, how do I fix this? got switched? What got swapped? What happened?

Nick Clason (13:20.588)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (13:35.358)
Is there, so is there no mathematical way for them to get their own name until they win? Like is that how it should work? I'm like, I'm not a statistician, so I'm not over here able to like think of this on the fly. So, okay, so there's no possible way for them, like if they get their own name and they didn't win, it's messed up somehow, yeah. Yeah, cause I did remember seeing the guy behind the desk, cause it wasn't you.

Andrew Jansen (13:42.508)
That's how it should work. If you number them...

Andrew Jansen (13:53.997)
Something, yeah, something messed up. Yep. So I would say do that either.

Nick Clason (14:02.434)
But the guy behind the desk, he was like, way to just throw him under the bus. I was trying not to do that. But he was like, like I just saw him like an internal like moment of panic when like some people were like giving him things. He's like, that's, that might not be right. Like that right there was like, this game seems amazing and intricate, but like that moment, like every youth pastor has been there where they have an amazing game. And then there's that moment of panic where they're like thinking, crap, I, something isn't working right.

Andrew Jansen (14:02.614)
Yeah, it was Dawson. Yeah, he's a great guy.

Andrew Jansen (14:15.735)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (14:31.998)
Mm-hmm. for sure. No, loved Dawson was a youth leader of mine and he you know He's a youth pastor at the church that I was at. So no, I love Dawson. He did a great job It's my fault. I didn't lead him well in executing those things. So it's all it's all on me No, it was it definitely there's a moment of panic when a group of students are like, hey I got like my friend like my friend and I got each other's names and we're not

Nick Clason (14:46.798)
There you go.

Andrew Jansen (15:00.396)
the first and last person. And that was all the, that was all the clothes pins were jumbled up in a bin and we did not have a good like start and then like sign up the way, like the best, not, not that it wasn't good. We just didn't have the best version of that that we could have, could have rolled out. And then I would say that one of the reasons why it didn't go exactly the way we had hoped was we had flag football.

Nick Clason (15:02.349)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:12.556)
Right.

Nick Clason (15:16.93)
Right, Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (15:29.944)
and open gym at another location during that free time where they could play assassins. So a quarter of the conference was over at the gyms and everybody that was playing assassins that didn't want to go play flag football or open gym was at our church. And they, if you got a name of somebody that was over there, you couldn't like, was like, well, it was raining.

Nick Clason (15:33.41)
Mm.

Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:56.558)
Mmm.

Andrew Jansen (15:58.999)
They, if you weren't over there, yeah, it was a little bit too far to walk, especially in the rain. So it, that, was one of the things of making sure you have an extended free time where you're not like off on different locations or different parts of town or anything like that, where you have like, if you're at a camp where everybody's on campgrounds, it's a good game to play throughout the week or like we're doing a lock-in for New Year's Eve.

Nick Clason (16:00.104)
It was like too far to walk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:16.408)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (16:22.112)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (16:27.03)
And we're doing this, we're actually doing, I'm doing the Assassin's Game with the students at the lock-in when we're gonna try to revamp and correct some of the things that we noticed that did not quite go as planned.

Nick Clason (16:33.902)
There you go.

Nick Clason (16:39.926)
Okay, so that's a great, that's a great, so like the things you're talking about is like making sure you have it like the sign up and the assignments of who gets who a little more fleshed out, right? Like that was one of the things you talked about. Are you doing it with clothes pins or like how are you playing at your lock-in?

Andrew Jansen (16:48.641)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (16:58.616)
Yeah, I still have, we have 900 clothes pins instead of a thousand. we're still looking to get rid of some of those clothes pins. But I think it'll work out well because it's gonna be a smaller group. We're not gonna have 250 students that are running around like crazy. So we're gonna have them sign up. I have a list of all of-

Nick Clason (17:18.456)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (17:27.008)
I know these students because they're my students. So I'm going to have like some options and a set chunk of time where they can really, you know, get after it and assassinate their friends with clothespins.

Nick Clason (17:30.402)
That helps, yeah.

Nick Clason (17:35.884)
Yeah. Yeah.

Now, is this a game that you could envision happening? Like if someone wanted to do this over like the course of like a week long summer camp, let's say like a three, four, five day summer camp. Can it last that long? Do you think or does it need to be like a quicker spur?

Andrew Jansen (17:51.33)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Jansen (17:59.001)
I think the more time you have, the better it can go because then you can be a little bit more methodical. People can get into it. I've seen people army crawl through like cafeteria chairs to like get there like is here's another hack for the game. Make sure you let them know what parts of the body are allowed to get assassinated or not because obviously we don't want

Nick Clason (18:02.008)
Okay.

Nick Clason (18:10.13)
Hehe.

Nick Clason (18:14.059)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (18:28.238)
Probably good, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (18:29.036)
to, yeah, we don't want to have a horrible situation with some clothes pins or whatever you're using. Definitely the rubber band game needed that. I saw kids like army crawling through cafeteria chairs to like slowly go get their friends like shirt sleeve because it was throughout the week instead of just that like five or six hours over the weekend of the conference where they could play. So I think it lasts for sure. At least two days.

Nick Clason (18:36.895)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:47.032)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:51.629)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:55.894)
Yeah. So then on like a game, so then on like a gameplay side, like if you, like if you assassinate someone, you get their clothes pin. So you're only at any given moment. You're only carrying around one, right? Like you don't, you don't walk around with like a big handful of clothes pins at any moment. So that way, cause you, bring it back to like home base or whatever to let someone know like this person's out.

Andrew Jansen (19:15.734)
No. Yep.

Andrew Jansen (19:22.978)
Yeah, and that lets the person that's doing the sign up and has that list allows them to kind of see like, okay, this person's making their way through all of these people. And you kind of can tell like, okay, and you know, if somebody loses a pin, you have a better chance of going, that was this person. They lost their pin at this point and you can just write the next person's name and give them that pin.

Nick Clason (19:32.226)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (19:47.052)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, nice. All right, anything else that someone who's trying to do this needs to think through or that you learned seeing it be done?

Andrew Jansen (20:01.362)
For sure. I would say the two quick things that we didn't really touch on is clear boundaries, like out of bounds, when they can and cannot assassinate somebody is really important. Obviously, hearing about Jesus and praising Jesus through worship music takes precedent over the praising Jesus through fun. I mean, it's still praising Jesus. It's just a different

Nick Clason (20:09.132)
Mm.

Nick Clason (20:23.266)
The game, yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (20:28.268)
way that we're doing that and we want to have Jesus be the main thing. So making sure that they're not assassinating each other during small group time, praise and worship time, or any of the main session type times is important. So let them know like, hey, we're only doing this during free time, lunchtime, game time, whatever. And have like, I would say have like lights out if you're at a camp for a week. Like, hey, once it's lights out, would.

Nick Clason (20:38.231)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (20:56.972)
That's just, you're asking for trouble. Like, Hey, why were you in the girls dorm? I was trying to get her like, no, like that's we're not playing at night time. So I would say that would be one. And then making sure like the, out of bounds, like, Hey, we're not, you're not going to be off camp property. You're not going to be off church property. No, you cannot get on the roof. No, you cannot crawl through the drainage pipes and like all of those usual things. Like what can I like,

Nick Clason (20:57.09)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:02.917)
Yeah

Andrew Jansen (21:24.16)
latch on underneath the church van and then crawl onto the windshield and like I'm like no what you're gonna die that thing that's don't do that. They get really into it so making sure that you you kind of have those you know outlines of like what the boundaries are for both like physical where they can play the game and then also the times in which they play the game.

Nick Clason (21:29.102)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (21:44.364)
Right. Yeah, that's good. It's Nice. And you mentioned that you're going to play this at your lock-in, most any now, how many years have you been youth ministry again, Andrew? So most youth pastors who have at least hit the 10 year mark in youth ministry are team anti lock-in, but for some incredibly weird reason, your team pro lock-in.

Andrew Jansen (21:52.769)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (21:59.513)
Ten years.

Andrew Jansen (22:13.342)
I am pro. Pro lock-in. Yes.

Nick Clason (22:13.492)
And so, yeah. So as I said at the beginning, you have a completely free lock-in guide planning sheet down below. If any one of you is insane enough to do a lock-in like Andrew, this can help you. I will not be a customer of this sheet, but I will let other people know that it exists.

Andrew Jansen (22:23.17)
Yes.

Andrew Jansen (22:38.434)
For sure. Yeah. And it, it's just everything that I've learned over the years. I love lock-ins. we did lock-ins at, in our youth group growing up, think almost every year are I'm from Wichita, Kansas. And we had a big like Wichita area citywide lock-in with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students that would, sign up for all of this crazy stuff. So, this is just all the stuff that I've learned kind of, some hacks, both attending a lock-in, putting on a lock-in.

Nick Clason (22:57.901)
Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (23:08.188)
And I've added some things to it over the years. So yeah, if anybody has any questions, they can email me or reach out to you and you can give them my info or whatever. But it's really helpful.

Nick Clason (23:11.948)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (23:22.156)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, man. Well, yeah, dude, go for it. Give a give a little bit. Give a give like a sneak peek.

Andrew Jansen (23:26.232)
Do you want me to talk about it or is that good? For sure. A sneak peek. one of the...

Nick Clason (23:35.47)
But don't give it all away, because we still want them to go get it, you know what I mean? So like, make it a big old teaser, like cliffhanger, of ultimate proportions.

Andrew Jansen (23:39.764)
Absolutely. For sure.

So first of all, shout out to my wife for making it look super amazing and incredible because honestly, yeah, she's amazing. I wish that I would hire her tomorrow if that were possible.

Nick Clason (23:49.112)
Dude, your wife is, this shirt right here, your wife designed. Yeah.

Yeah, she...

Yeah, but she works for you for free, so why would you do that?

Andrew Jansen (24:02.082)
That's true. It's not for free. do. I have to like rubber feet and like get her food and take, make sure she's locked in on all that stuff. speaking of lock-ins, the, the number one hack from my lock-in survival guide, and this is an exhaustive or, perfect in any way, there's definitely stuff that can be added to it. But I would say that at the end of the night, I always start with, or end with a movie after cleanup.

Nick Clason (24:06.286)
there you go. Yeah.

Nick Clason (24:30.582)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Jansen (24:31.692)
Because once you clean up, you get through all of the things, you're exhausted, you're tired. Hey everybody, it's time to clean up. And then by 5 a.m., 6 a.m., whenever you're winding down the final hours of a lock-in where your body is running on Monster Energy Drink and Tylenol mostly, then you can really let them say they're gonna watch the whole movie and they will probably fall asleep.

So you cut out quite a bit of lock in time where it's still like you give your leaders a break. You can get breakfast stuff ready to go if you want to do breakfast, but always do clean up, everybody clean up. And then we're going to go watch a movie. And that really helps. It's still fun. There's still those crazy kids that are like, I just drink four Mountain Dew Code Reds. How am going to sit still during this movie? And they're still like able to have something engaging, but most of the kids will nap and parents will show up and it's just a win.

Nick Clason (25:01.728)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:28.75)
Bro, a code red doesn't even touch like your level of tiredness at 5 a.m. if you haven't slept. Like I don't care how wired up on sugar you are. And then there's always those kids, right, that it's over. like, I watched the whole thing. It's like, no you didn't, bro. You were snoring logs over there. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Jansen (25:37.095)
yeah.

Andrew Jansen (25:44.886)
Yep, yeah. How did you watch the whole thing where you were completely submerged under chairs and blanket and pillow? yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:51.03)
What's that drool next to your face? What's that from? Is that from your code red? Yeah, no, I've done that before. I have done lock-ins, to be clear. I always end with the movie as well. It's the best way to just calm everybody down and just get to the finish line. That's what that's called. It's called survive and advance onto the finish line. Nice, dude. Well, hey.

Andrew Jansen (26:04.682)
Mm-hmm. yeah.

Andrew Jansen (26:12.514)
survive in advance. I love it.

Nick Clason (26:16.726)
I appreciate you hopping on. If you're listening, like go grab Andrew's Locket Guide, play Assassin, let us know, let him know if you did it and what other hacks you might have down below in the comments. until next time, my friends, thanks for being here. See ya.

]]> Episode 183: Multi-Day Youth Group Game for Winter Retreats & DNows (Rules, Setup, & Free Files) https://www.hybridministry.xyz/183 3472ad85-ae11-45ee-b285-ac8a9748bb23 Thu, 08 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0600 Nick Clason 183 Multi-Day Youth Group Game for Winter Retreats & DNows (Rules, Setup, & Free Files) full Nick Clason In this special, interview style episode, Nick Clason sits down with Jay Reynolds to discuss a game concept that Jay used for every session during a recent Winter Retreat. This video is just in time for DNow season where you can program games that build over multiple days and can last the duration of your entire winter retreat, summer camp or disciple now event! Jay shares next level expert tips to make sure you win! 29:06 no In this special, interview style episode, Nick Clason sits down with Jay Reynolds to discuss a game concept that Jay used for every session during a recent Winter Retreat. This video is just in time for DNow season where you can program games that build over multiple days and can last the duration of your entire winter retreat, summer camp or disciple now event! Jay shares next level expert tips to make sure you win! BECOME A HYBRID HERO https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry ❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utmmedium=clipboardcopy&utmsource=copyLink&utmcampaign=postsharecreator&utmcontent=join_link SHOW NOTES Shownotes & Transcripts https://www.hybridministry.xyz/183 THE FLOOR FILES (Courtesy of Jay!) https://www.patreon.com/posts/youth-retreat-147249016?utmmedium=clipboardcopy&utmsource=copyLink&utmcampaign=postsharecreator&utmcontent=join_link FREE E-BOOK https://www.patreon.com/posts/complete-guide-142500019 9 FREE GAMES! https://www.patreon.com/posts/142425755 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz -------------- 🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉 We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context! The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe! https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick -------------- 🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU! Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products //VIDIQ https://vidiq.com/hybrid //BEST DYM RESOURCES https://www.patreon.com/posts/9-amazing-dym-142425755 //OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361 //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit -------------- 🕰️TIMECODES 00:00 Retreat Games that Extend the whole Weekend 02:21 Exploring the Game Show 'The Floor' 05:17 Adapting 'The Floor' for Retreats 08:07 Randomization and Contestant Selection 10:40 Categories and Audience Participation 12:13 Prizes and Momentum Building 14:17 Logistics and Setup Tips 17:01 Category Hacks 19:43 Did Jay really just do that?! 21:50 Next-Level Set-up Hacks 25:15 Final Thoughts and Encouragement -------------- TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01.075) Alright, what's up everyone? I'm here with my friend Jay. Jay, how we doing this morning, bro? Jay Reynolds (00:07.379) Man, I'm good, I'm good. It's almost, it's looking like it might want to snow outside. So I might figure out some, hanging in some snow later. Nick Clason (00:15.672) Doesn't snow a lot in Raleigh? Like is that a thing that you deal with very often? Jay Reynolds (00:20.085) No, really never. it basically I'm from the north and I've lived down here if you spill a cup of ice They shut the schools down. It's so it's yeah. It's a big deal around here Nick Clason (00:22.424) Ha Nick Clason (00:28.62) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, mean, certainly that's how it goes in Texas as well. But I'm with you. I'm also from the North. So I know what it was like, but the more years I'm here, like the more I'm forgetting, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, man, it's cold, you know? And I was back home Thanksgiving, during, you know, in Minnesota in November. It was cold. It was a cold experience. And they're like, you're from here. And I'm like, not anymore. So. Jay Reynolds (00:56.969) Yeah, yeah. My in-laws live in Buffalo, and so I just recently spent Thanksgiving in Buffalo. yeah, 20, know, 24 degrees and a wind blowing feels like, you know, seven, you know? And yeah, so. Nick Clason (00:58.149) Ha ha! Nick Clason (01:02.652) yeah. Nick Clason (01:07.808) Yeah, dude. Well, I appreciate you hopping on. I posted a thing in the DIY and Facebook group asking for like retreat games and things that kind of like you could go back to. And you responded with a comment about like you tried to emulate a game show called The Floor. that what it's called? All right. So for people like me who who don't know what you're talking about, like explain this game show to me like I'm a five year old. Jay Reynolds (01:29.119) yeah, yeah, yeah. Jay Reynolds (01:36.501) Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. So, um, it's a game show. I watch it on Hulu. I don't know which network technically has it. Um, but on Hulu it's, uh, Rob Lowe is the host and it's called the floor. And it's basically, I mean, it's, it's a nice floor setup. It's like all led, whatever. And basically the floors is made up of a hundred boxes. And for the game show, every box, so a hundred people have like their specialty category. Maybe it's like, Star Wars characters, you know, or maybe it's like cereal brands or maybe it's like college football teams in the SEC. I don't know. Like it's just everybody comes with their specialty and what you need to do is you basically challenge somebody, you know, it's like it's randomized, you know, it's one to a hundred and it's like, say it lands on, you know, 49 and say their category is cats, you know, and they get to choose who do they want to challenge. and their box 49 is connected to a bunch of other boxes. And so they basically challenge somebody and let's say they challenge somebody it's bridges. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up here, right? But it's just all random categories and then they go up to the front and they challenge. And what the challenge looks like is there's basically a picture on the screen and they just have to guess what it is. So it's pretty simple kind of trivia. Nick Clason (02:46.264) K-E-A-A. Nick Clason (02:58.071) Hmm. Jay Reynolds (03:00.885) And now in the game show they have like each contestant, know when they're battling they have 45 seconds And so if they're like thinking a lot of time like, you know, what is that? Like their own 45 seconds is kind of like going down on the clock think of like when you play chess There's like that like your own time clock So that's how it's played in the game You know on the game show And when I saw that I was like, man, I think I could play that Nick Clason (03:19.51) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nick Clason (03:24.791) Okay. Jay Reynolds (03:28.985) in like a retreat weekend, you know? And so now I have asked multiple times, Nick, with my leadership, can I get an LED floor so that I could really play this game? And of course, what do you think my answer I got is? Nick Clason (03:31.105) Yeah. Nick Clason (03:41.623) Yeah. They probably were like if we had the budget yes, but right now You know the Lord hasn't blessed our our church with the funds to do an LED floor. That'd be my guess Jay Reynolds (03:52.234) Yeah. That's you are 100 % correct. You're 100 % correct. So, so thinking so since I was not, you know, recipient of a blessing of an LED floor, but I still had this, this gumption to want to play this game. So I figured it out. I was like, okay, I can't do a hundred. Like, you know, in programming, you know, there's programming, you're like, man, that game would be a banger, but it might be like three hours long. And it's just like, do I have that amount of time? No, but Nick Clason (04:04.811) Right. Nick Clason (04:20.247) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (04:24.181) What I decided to do is how can I make it manageable and reproducible in my context? And so when we go off to retreat with middle schoolers, we take over a whole campground and we basically use a gym. We convert the gym to like our main auditorium. And so what I did is just use some painter's tape and I created boxes on the ground, basically built a frame and then did 16 boxes. Nick Clason (04:29.645) Yeah. Nick Clason (04:37.006) Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (04:46.445) Okay. Jay Reynolds (04:51.393) And so basically I narrowed down 16 categories. And in that, what I did was I just chose simple categories, just like I mentioned before, simple ones that middle schoolers would want to get into, know, thinking through food, snacks, know, common pop culture type stuff, things that the whole crowd will get into. And so basically what I did was like, okay, 16 boxes, I can do about four, five questions per round and kind of see how it goes. Nick Clason (04:54.604) Yeah. Nick Clason (05:04.758) Right, right, right. Nick Clason (05:19.085) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (05:20.987) Originally when I played it, I was like, okay, I'm just going to pick 16 kids. It's going to be the same 16 kids. You know, when I start the game, what I mentioned is once you win against somebody else, then you take over their box. Right. So in 16 boxes, if you're number 16 and you play against someone who's 15, now you take over their category, right? And, and there's one less person they get kicked out. and then your goal is to take over the whole floor. Nick Clason (05:34.673) gotcha, okay. Nick Clason (05:44.877) Yeah. Nick Clason (05:50.922) Right, gotcha, okay, interesting, that's fun. Totally, yeah. So, you take over the cat, I've been looking it up here while you've been talking, like the setup on the game show looks amazing. So, I can imagine how you can set up 16, how do you, in a retreat type setting, how do you determine your 16 contestants? Jay Reynolds (05:53.097) Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Jay Reynolds (06:13.577) Yeah, so completely random, you know? And what I really did was I just randomized and just picked 16 kids. I mean, some ways that you could do that. And so I would suggest 16 because it's an easy multiple, right? You can do four questions each time and you can carry it through, say, a typical retreat. Maybe there's four main sessions. You know, you could play around with that. If you only have three sessions that maybe you do nine or do some type of multiple of that. Nick Clason (06:16.824) Yeah. Nick Clason (06:26.732) Right. Nick Clason (06:41.346) Right, right, right. Jay Reynolds (06:42.005) But I would say in a typical four sessions, four questions is pretty good and you get the crowd all into it. But how to pick kids. Here's what I originally thought. I would just pick 16 kids and the same kids that were in their box on Friday night would be the same kids playing throughout. But as I thought about it, in my retreat, we had a couple hundred kids and I was like, how should I do this? So. Nick Clason (06:58.862) Mmm. Nick Clason (07:04.503) Right, right, right. Jay Reynolds (07:07.475) I just completely randomized it. It was kind of like a game day decision. And the only people that stayed was if they won out. So Friday night, whoever won, you know, now they had like the large and basically what does it mean to win on like the first session for question? There's 16 boxes. They didn't take over the whole floor, but whoever has the largest section, right? So it's four questions. So it's just like, if they have three, you know, they own like three other boxes, you know, Nick Clason (07:10.935) Yeah. Nick Clason (07:15.63) Mmm. Jay Reynolds (07:37.481) then they have the largest section, they win. And so I would give some type of prize for the night. And the way that the show works is they would do like eight or nine boxes, you know, and you win. And whoever has the most boxes like connected, you know, the largest area on the floor, they would win like a high dollar prize. Right. So I just mimic that. And I was like, here's like tons of candy to like go back in your cabin, that type of thing. And so there was intrigued to win for that night. Nick Clason (07:41.558) Ahem. Nick Clason (07:55.98) Right, right. Jay Reynolds (08:06.557) or that session, even if you don't win the overall. Does that make sense? Yeah. Nick Clason (08:06.657) Right. Nick Clason (08:10.412) Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so and then you're randomizing, you're calling up a couple contestants to go head to head and then are you just asking like trivia questions to them back and forth or like where are you sourcing your questions from? Jay Reynolds (08:26.709) Yeah, great question. So what I did is out of 16, I built like basically in Pro Presenter, I built 16 categories and it's all picture related. And so behind them, there's a big old screen, you know, and let's just say it was a serials, you know, like cereal, like, and so they just have to guess, oh, that's Reese Puffs, that's Honey Nut Cheerios. And what I did instead of like, playing like chess, how the game show is like each has your own 45 seconds. It's a whole lot to manage. Nick Clason (08:38.829) Yeah. Nick Clason (08:43.095) Right. Nick Clason (08:56.385) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (08:56.629) I just put one timer up and so I flipped a little bit of the game show and I made it whoever has the most correct in 45 seconds. And I encourage high crowd participation, right? And so like the kids up there and you know sometimes a kid would get a little bit of stage fright and they're like, oh, I know what that is. That is definitely, you know, Lucky Charms, but I can't, I just can't think of what the name is, but the whole crowd's yelling Lucky Charms, you know? Nick Clason (09:01.912) Gotcha. Nick Clason (09:06.229) Okay. Nick Clason (09:10.37) There you go. Nick Clason (09:14.733) Right? Nick Clason (09:25.599) Right. Jay Reynolds (09:26.365) And so it keeps the whole crowd engaged while at the same time, know, so, you know, a good game, I believe it's just like, it's not just for the contestants on stage, but it gets the whole crowd also into it. Nick Clason (09:29.41) Yeah. Nick Clason (09:37.87) Yeah, and I love that, that you encourage crowd participation rather than try to stifle it because then that makes, that means everyone in the room is able to join in and participate. And yeah, it's not just for the people up there. It's beautiful. Jay Reynolds (09:42.441) Yeah. Yeah. Jay Reynolds (09:48.944) Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And that's where a lot of the prizes, I tried to make them like, maybe there was like, actually, I think that's the year I gave away like some panda hats and like, so I may have like made like a panda shirt or something. That was kind of our little subtle branding. And so that just kind of went with it. It was like, oh, this was for you, but it's also paired with like five bags of candy to share with your cabin. You know what I mean? And so. Nick Clason (09:59.468) Okay. Nick Clason (10:05.015) Right. Nick Clason (10:12.192) Nice, yeah. So there's more incentive for the people in the crowd. Like if their buddy's up there, they might get to, yeah, that's awesome. Jay Reynolds (10:16.915) Yep. Exactly. Yeah. You know, and so that just cries a call a lot of crowd participation. Here's what I didn't expect, but something awesome that happened. So in 45 seconds, you know, you sometimes go into it thinking like, this game is going to be great. This kid's going to get like eight. This kid may get seven, like clear winner. That didn't always happen. Like this kid got eight. This other kid got eight. Time ended. Now I'm like in the moment, like, well, what do I do? Right. Nick Clason (10:26.519) Yeah. Nick Clason (10:36.173) Yeah. Nick Clason (10:41.165) Mmm. Nick Clason (10:44.801) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jay Reynolds (10:45.649) And so, so here's what I did. Like I'll just give a little secret sauce so you don't have to think through it if you play this. And so I just like, okay, you guys tie. How do we end this? And so I basically just put my hand out and you know, and then for the contestants hand behind the back, you know, go to the next one, the first one, you know, high five and answer correctly. Then they got to choose and that was created in the whole, like the whole room, like this anticipation who's going to get it, you know? Nick Clason (10:51.308) Yeah. Nick Clason (11:07.362) Yeah they win. Nick Clason (11:13.527) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (11:14.173) And then it's like the one kid that happened to and they guessed they were so confident and they got it wrong, you know? But then the other kid got it, right? And it just creates like kind of like this little bit of storybook kind of ending whenever they tie. And so it just works, you know, pretty well. Nick Clason (11:20.758) Yeah, dude Nick Clason (11:27.297) Yeah. Nick Clason (11:30.7) Yeah dude, that's awesome. Okay so, a kid wins the majority of the board Friday night. So Saturday morning let's say, you come back to play it again. You're getting random contestants. Now if someone was on the board but they weren't selected or they weren't eliminated, did you swap them out with new contestants? So you just had the people who like, so like one carryover from Friday night and then everyone else was new? Jay Reynolds (11:37.78) Yes. Jay Reynolds (11:52.467) Yep. Nick Clason (12:00.672) on the board on Saturday? Is that how you handled it? Okay, great. Jay Reynolds (12:03.285) That's how I handled it, right? And so some of that, you know, sometimes when you play a game, it's like, oh yeah, that kid, you know, gets participated, but somebody wins before they get there, right? And it's just like, it's kind of that concept. And you know, what, what I had a little bit of the workflow is that every kid who had a box, I gave them basically like piece of paper. I'm number one, two, you know, whatever their number was that went with the box. And so that also helped for, you know, like in the moment there's all these kids around. It's like, oh, it, Nick Clason (12:23.18) Right, right, right, yeah. Right. Jay Reynolds (12:32.445) chose number 12, you know, to be able to cue the folks in the back and be able to set up Prober Center, everything correctly. It was like, we got number 12, you know, coming on up, you know? And, and so it's like while they're traveling, it's able to kind of like cue some of the tech team. So they're able to get the next things all set up. But with that, it was all new kids. Like if you want now when it come to Saturday night and Sunday morning, Nick Clason (12:44.834) Yeah, yeah. Nick Clason (12:49.656) Right. Jay Reynolds (12:58.471) If you won Friday night, you were still on the board, you know, unless you lost, you know? And so, so it is basically kind of like you win, you get to stay in the game and earn the right to keep going. Nick Clason (13:01.186) Right. Right, right, right. Nick Clason (13:08.04) Yeah. Yeah, I think that part's really cool. So did you have a kid make it all the way through or did like a winner from Friday end up getting eliminated on Saturday and you kind of kept daisy chaining it all the way to the end? Jay Reynolds (13:20.529) I think it was... We may have had, at least a Saturday night, we have Friday winter and Saturday morning winter into it. I can't remember Sunday morning. May have had a couple. Because we didn't play it this year, we played it last year. And so I'm a little bit of a year plus removed from like into it. But it just created a cool environment. But also like some of the dynamics, let's say like it was number 15, they beat 16, they beat, you know... Nick Clason (13:29.966) Okay, that's cool. That's cool. Nick Clason (13:35.134) Yeah, yeah. Right. Jay Reynolds (13:49.253) 14, you know, and they had like their pocket, like all the way on the end. Well, the next day we showed up, it was, um, Hey, do you want to like play or do you want to kind of go back and just like sit in your leg little area? And so that's kind of where like, we'll just sit in our area. Okay. Let's throw up a randomizer. What do we get next? Number two, right? They're almost the other side of the floor. And so, you know, it may have been like, Oh, you didn't win, you know, or you didn't play that day or that, that session. Nick Clason (13:52.631) Right. Nick Clason (14:01.506) Right. Nick Clason (14:11.555) Right? Nick Clason (14:18.454) Yeah, to win, but you survived because you weren't on that part of the floor. I get it. Jay Reynolds (14:20.989) Exactly. So some of that, and if you watch the game show, that's how like people will play. Like, I won like three rounds. I have a small little section, but I'm like in an aisle. I'm like all the way in the corner. Maybe it's better. go back and then, know, but it's also like, I'm playing for the category, right? Now let me talk a little bit about categories, you know, cause I, I chose all that myself, the game show, like you, you go in saying, this is my category. And it's like, you're almost like, Nick Clason (14:33.986) Yeah. Nick Clason (14:41.399) Okay, yeah. Jay Reynolds (14:49.393) You're bringing category to the game show. Nick Clason (14:52.01) Yeah, like that's you're an expert in that category is how it works on the game show you're saying Jay Reynolds (14:54.835) Yeah. Yes. But in my context, I don't know. And I'm like, to keep things to be able to be randomized, I was basically like, here's your category. You are now an expert. You know, like you are now an expert on dogs, you know, or you are now an expert on fruit, you know, you are now in and it was all common stuff that's in their world. And so so instead of it being as eclectic as what you might experience, like watching the game show, as I just made it more actually slide on the side of common. Nick Clason (15:01.859) Mm-hmm. Gotcha, okay, cool, cool, cool. Right. Nick Clason (15:14.296) Right. Nick Clason (15:20.429) Sure. Jay Reynolds (15:23.477) and that most people are going to know what it is, right? Because when you think through audience engagement, actually, the more eclectic it gets, the more you minimize participation, right? And so in this context, it's like playing other games, like if you play um or pie in the face type games, it's like you actually want some of those topics that people are going to know. Nick Clason (15:28.417) Right. Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (15:36.302) 100%, yeah. Jay Reynolds (15:49.353) you know, car brands, type of thing, know, shoe brands, you know, like some of those things. And it just creates a higher engagement, which ends up being a better experience for the entire audience. Nick Clason (15:51.586) Yeah. Nick Clason (15:59.982) Yeah, okay, so one like just last little point of clarification I have is when you get two contestants, do you have them bounce back and forth like you say a carb brand, I say a carb brand until the one person can't remember or do you give them each 45 seconds and they have to list as many as they can and then the other person goes. Jay Reynolds (16:18.355) Yeah, no, great question. in using the slides, you know, and for us, we had a screen right behind us. So it's easy for them to see, easy for the whole crowd to see that type of thing. And it was basically like a, you know, person A is person B. So A, know, it's just like, that's let's say it's animals like, that's a panda, you know, next person, person B. that's a, that's an eagle person A. that's a dolphin. You know, that's a shark, you know. Nick Clason (16:30.843) yeah, that's right. Nick Clason (16:41.366) Okay. Gotcha. So it's not like a speed thing against him. It's like, person A, this slide is yours and you either get it or you don't. Got it. Okay. Cool, cool, Jay Reynolds (16:50.517) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, if it takes you a second, know, like animals is pretty easy, you know, but, know, when you get into like, and I think like for, was it like cereals? I may have had a picture of the cereal. I may have had the box and kind of canvad out the name of it or something like that, but make it so it's recognizable. But you're like, it takes you a minute or not a minute, but it takes you a few moments to think about it. You know, the overall timer was 45 seconds. Nick Clason (17:06.71) Right, right. Jay Reynolds (17:17.053) and was just whoever got the most correct, but it was just back and forth, back and forth, that type of thing. Yeah. Nick Clason (17:19.286) Yeah. That's awesome. I love it. Okay. Now you told me when we were texting back and forth, like, do you still have the purpose under file? Like, is that something that, that, you could get and we could give to people who are listening? Yeah, that'd be amazing. Jay Reynolds (17:34.581) Dude, I'd love to, you know? And so, yeah, and I use ProPresenter and so, you know, it's all built in ProPresenter, but I, man, I think it's all built in folders. So if you don't use, you know, if somebody's listening and they wanna try it out, I think I have folders that are all like the images. And I built, I built the floor off 16, but I built like two other categories. So if like something happened, like they, or something glitches, you know, things like that. So I think I technically built like. Nick Clason (17:51.714) Yeah. Nick Clason (18:01.27) Right, you gotta fall back, yeah. Okay. Jay Reynolds (18:03.317) 18 categories. But man, I would gladly share it, you know. Nick Clason (18:07.818) Yeah, that'd be super cool. Yeah, so we'll get that from you and we'll link it down below. I think the thing I like the most about this is that you can make this the game for your D now, your winter retreat, your fall retreat, whatever, and you can just go back to it. And as opposed to every session, let's say you got four sessions over the course of a weekend, you don't have to come up with four things. This thing carries you all weekend long. the more they know it or get to understand the rules of it, by the end of it, the hype level is probably gonna be raising every single time they do it. So maybe Friday night, it's basic understanding and basic learning, but by the end of it, people get the rules, they're locked into it, and they're trying to carry home the ultimate floor champion moniker, if they get to take home that final prize or whatever. I think those are some of my favorite styles of games, things that can just, that well that you can kind of keep going back to. And so that's what I love about it. And I did not understand it at all when we were texting. So as you've described it more, I'm more more into it. And even my wheels now are turning. I'm like, all right, we got a winter retreat coming up. Do we incorporate this? Or do we bring this with us to summer camp or something like that? Because this sounds super fun, super amazing. And just a great way to like, build the competition and build the camaraderie. Jay Reynolds (19:37.181) Yeah. And I think, you know, that's exactly it, man. You know, and if you think through like and how we set it up, like I think we just set up like two or three, you know, or maybe it's like two blocks and just like right as a center aisle. But let's just talk a little bit about that. Like I use painter's tape so that way it's not messing with the floor at all. Super cheap. But then what I did to make it easier is like think through if you were playing like that, that kids like dock game, you have to build boxes. Nick Clason (19:49.485) Yeah. Nick Clason (19:55.319) Right, and cheap. Nick Clason (20:05.709) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jay Reynolds (20:06.451) Yeah. So think of it in that a whole frame on the outside was just solid lines to be able to build it. But on the inside, it was all like, you know, just think through each box by itself, because then when you have some volunteers like, box eight takes over seven, you know, and now you pull that one strip between the two. Now, you know, it's all box eight, right? You know? And so that just makes it easier logistically, because if you run long strips, Nick Clason (20:11.607) Right. Nick Clason (20:16.91) Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (20:26.163) Mmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nick Clason (20:32.558) Totally. Jay Reynolds (20:34.451) like across multiple boxes on the interior, then like, now I have to like weirdly pick up like. Yeah, and that will be logistically, you know, that's like something like, I didn't think of it until I was in the in the in the situation. Now it's an issue is that think through like small like so the boxes say, you know, two or three feet wide, you know, just the interior pieces are all single pieces. Nick Clason (20:40.788) Yeah, cut it and yeah. Nick Clason (20:50.124) Right, yeah. Nick Clason (20:59.852) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (21:00.393) So it's a little bit longer to set up, not much, but a little bit longer to set up, but much easier for flow by game flow. Nick Clason (21:08.046) Yeah, I got you. Okay, so then, you know, seven overtakes eight. On Saturday morning, do you redraw, like, the seven box, or has seven still overtaken eight on Saturday morning for that morning's board? Does that make sense? Jay Reynolds (21:24.713) Yeah. Say seven takes over eight. And so now, yeah. And so basically your goal is to win the whole floor, you know? And so, ultimately, you know, and so now you get down to it is like, let's just say you winner keeps winning and they keep staying, they keep playing all this kind of stuff. And now you get down to it. They have 15 boxes, you know? And so let's just say it's one against number now, like let's say nine that won everything. One didn't. Nick Clason (21:31.458) The whole thing, yeah. Nick Clason (21:40.097) Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (21:51.063) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (21:52.319) play at all. And it's just the kid who just got in that day and they just sat and watched nine keep winning, keep winning. And they get up there and then one who's had no action the entire time. They beat this person who's won everything. It's like a David and glide style matchup. And then they win that round. They win it all, you know? And so that's the other thing. What's intriguing about it. It's like, you know, some games it's like, if you're, could have the sheer advantage. Nick Clason (21:56.278) Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (22:09.918) moment yeah yeah that's cool that's cool Jay Reynolds (22:21.885) or you keep winning and then now it like builds all this momentum. It's nice because it's almost, it's like there's neutralizers built into this game all the way throughout, you know? And it could just be like, just luck of the draw. Like, I don't know, I don't eat cereal. I only eat toast. Like I don't even know. And then that kid who's like, man, just sat, I randomly got chosen. You know, the kid who's like, man, I don't know it. I just eat cereal every day. I don't even know why I'm here, but I know this. And then I ended up winning everything, you know? Nick Clason (22:29.238) Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (22:37.857) you Nick Clason (22:47.351) Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Jay Reynolds (22:50.813) And so that's the cool thing that makes it so easy and fun and all that kind of stuff. Nick Clason (22:57.43) Yeah, that's amazing. Nice. All right, bro. That really does sound super fun, super cool. So any last final parting words about retreats or games or this game in particular before we hit stop and close out the recording? Jay Reynolds (23:15.219) Yeah, dude, I think the last thing I'd say as far as for playing this game, because it builds on itself, you know, think through, I think how I played it was Friday night. I think I only did three questions, you know, because of Friday night, you have the rules, you have all this kind of stuff and not just the rules for this game, but, know, just think through your retreat overall. What is all of it, you know, entail? And so, you know, we did maybe three questions and then that allowed us to choose which other session do we want to do five, you know? Nick Clason (23:25.954) Okay. Nick Clason (23:33.197) Right. Jay Reynolds (23:43.517) And so just think through some of that from a momentum standpoint on how you want to play it. The other thing from a momentum is let your, you know, your session prizes build. So Friday night, maybe it is like a, you know, hat in like two bags of candy, you know, but then Saturday morning, you know, I think we did prizes that like relate. We were going to do like some, some, I don't know, pool games and things like that. So we gave away like beach towels, you know, Nick Clason (23:43.725) Mm. Nick Clason (23:47.447) Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (23:54.669) Mmm. Nick Clason (24:12.436) Okay. Yeah. Jay Reynolds (24:12.871) and candy, right? And so it just kind of built and it just seemed that, you know, as the game builds, because it's over multiple sessions, that if you have budget and that's how you kind of ministry works, I would encourage you to think through, let your prizes build also, you know, and because that is just going to intuitively kind of go in with the whole game, you know, that type of thing. And so for me, my style is I always get other leaders involved, you know, small group leaders, things like that. I'm like, Hey, pick two kids to play, pick two kids to play. Nick Clason (24:26.935) Yeah. Nick Clason (24:32.673) yeah that makes sense Nick Clason (24:40.8) huh. Jay Reynolds (24:42.687) You know, and so, you know, that's how I help in the randomization, you know, but I'm getting other leaders involved in that process. That also helps like in a ministry. it's not like, Jay just picked his favorite kids to play to try to win, you know, well, no, I picked this leader and that lead, you know, and so it's like, I try to, so depending on how the structure is set up, getting other voices involved, help to take away like what could be speculation. Does that make sense? Yeah. Nick Clason (25:04.513) Mm-hmm. Nick Clason (25:09.408) Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I love it, man. Well, I, again, I appreciate your time. I thought this was a great conversation, great game. Like, and that one of the things I think is so, like interesting in the world of youth pastors, cause I did this too once where I was like watching a game show, you know, just at home with my wife and I was like, I can make that into a game. You know what mean? And that's just the way our brain, we never turn off, we never stop thinking, we never stop ideating. And so I've never heard of this concept before, I've never even heard of this game show, but you're so right. It's a perfect youth ministry game and I love the fact that it can span the whole thing. And that's exactly what I was looking for, for all these different conversations, all these different ideas. And so again, really appreciate you hopping on and we'll throw the link to your. Jay Reynolds (25:33.036) yeah. Never. Never. Jay Reynolds (25:48.627) Yeah. Yeah. Nick Clason (25:57.634) your files and stuff like that down below. really appreciate you giving that away and that'll be super helpful for anyone who wants to take it and run with it. Jay Reynolds (26:05.683) Yeah, feel free. And hey, if one of your listeners wants to try it out and they get a little confused or want to kind of process through a little bit more, dude, feel free. You know, they can reach out and connect me with them. I'd love to kind of just help walk alongside someone who's trying to, you know, trying something new in their context, trying something to see what it would work. And I hope for folks who try it. Nick Clason (26:14.851) Yeah. Jay Reynolds (26:25.683) Man, hope you end of the day, if you're gonna play game like this, it's just as much as you having fun with your kids, with your students having fun, because that's kind of the momentum that really builds and getting them all into it. Nick Clason (26:36.364) Yeah, perfect. All right, Jay. Well, I appreciate it, And everyone else, thanks for listening. And we'll talk again soon. See you. Jay Reynolds (26:43.455) Cool, great chat man, take care. retreat games, youth ministry, game show, audience engagement, trivia games, youth retreats, interactive games, fun activities, group games, community building, disciple now, summer camp, dnow, games that build, games that last multiple sessions, youth ministry, student ministry, youth group In this special, interview style episode, Nick Clason sits down with Jay Reynolds to discuss a game concept that Jay used for every session during a recent Winter Retreat. This video is just in time for DNow season where you can program games that build over multiple days and can last the duration of your entire winter retreat, summer camp or disciple now event!
Jay shares next level expert tips to make sure you win!

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Retreat Games that Extend the whole Weekend
02:21 Exploring the Game Show 'The Floor'
05:17 Adapting 'The Floor' for Retreats
08:07 Randomization and Contestant Selection
10:40 Categories and Audience Participation
12:13 Prizes and Momentum Building
14:17 Logistics and Setup Tips
17:01 Category Hacks
19:43 Did Jay really just do that?!
21:50 Next-Level Set-up Hacks
25:15 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

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TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.075)
Alright, what's up everyone? I'm here with my friend Jay. Jay, how we doing this morning, bro?

Jay Reynolds (00:07.379)
Man, I'm good, I'm good. It's almost, it's looking like it might want to snow outside. So I might figure out some, hanging in some snow later.

Nick Clason (00:15.672)
Doesn't snow a lot in Raleigh? Like is that a thing that you deal with very often?

Jay Reynolds (00:20.085)
No, really never. it basically I'm from the north and I've lived down here if you spill a cup of ice They shut the schools down. It's so it's yeah. It's a big deal around here

Nick Clason (00:22.424)
Ha

Nick Clason (00:28.62)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, mean, certainly that's how it goes in Texas as well. But I'm with you. I'm also from the North. So I know what it was like, but the more years I'm here, like the more I'm forgetting, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, man, it's cold, you know? And I was back home Thanksgiving, during, you know, in Minnesota in November. It was cold. It was a cold experience. And they're like, you're from here. And I'm like, not anymore. So.

Jay Reynolds (00:56.969)
Yeah, yeah. My in-laws live in Buffalo, and so I just recently spent Thanksgiving in Buffalo. yeah, 20, know, 24 degrees and a wind blowing feels like, you know, seven, you know? And yeah, so.

Nick Clason (00:58.149)
Ha ha!

Nick Clason (01:02.652)
yeah.

Nick Clason (01:07.808)
Yeah, dude. Well, I appreciate you hopping on. I posted a thing in the DIY and Facebook group asking for like retreat games and things that kind of like you could go back to. And you responded with a comment about like you tried to emulate a game show called The Floor. that what it's called? All right. So for people like me who who don't know what you're talking about, like explain this game show to me like I'm a five year old.

Jay Reynolds (01:29.119)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (01:36.501)
Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. So, um, it's a game show. I watch it on Hulu. I don't know which network technically has it. Um, but on Hulu it's, uh, Rob Lowe is the host and it's called the floor. And it's basically, I mean, it's, it's a nice floor setup. It's like all led, whatever. And basically the floors is made up of a hundred boxes. And for the game show, every box, so a hundred people have like their specialty category. Maybe it's like,

Star Wars characters, you know, or maybe it's like cereal brands or maybe it's like college football teams in the SEC. I don't know. Like it's just everybody comes with their specialty and what you need to do is you basically challenge somebody, you know, it's like it's randomized, you know, it's one to a hundred and it's like, say it lands on, you know, 49 and say their category is cats, you know, and they get to choose who do they want to challenge.

and their box 49 is connected to a bunch of other boxes. And so they basically challenge somebody and let's say they challenge somebody it's bridges. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up here, right? But it's just all random categories and then they go up to the front and they challenge. And what the challenge looks like is there's basically a picture on the screen and they just have to guess what it is. So it's pretty simple kind of trivia.

Nick Clason (02:46.264)
K-E-A-A.

Nick Clason (02:58.071)
Hmm.

Jay Reynolds (03:00.885)
And now in the game show they have like each contestant, know when they're battling they have 45 seconds And so if they're like thinking a lot of time like, you know, what is that? Like their own 45 seconds is kind of like going down on the clock think of like when you play chess There's like that like your own time clock So that's how it's played in the game You know on the game show And when I saw that I was like, man, I think I could play that

Nick Clason (03:19.51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (03:24.791)
Okay.

Jay Reynolds (03:28.985)
in like a retreat weekend, you know? And so now I have asked multiple times, Nick, with my leadership, can I get an LED floor so that I could really play this game? And of course, what do you think my answer I got is?

Nick Clason (03:31.105)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:41.623)
Yeah.

They probably were like if we had the budget yes, but right now You know the Lord hasn't blessed our our church with the funds to do an LED floor. That'd be my guess

Jay Reynolds (03:52.234)
Yeah.

That's you are 100 % correct. You're 100 % correct. So, so thinking so since I was not, you know, recipient of a blessing of an LED floor, but I still had this, this gumption to want to play this game. So I figured it out. I was like, okay, I can't do a hundred. Like, you know, in programming, you know, there's programming, you're like, man, that game would be a banger, but it might be like three hours long. And it's just like, do I have that amount of time? No, but

Nick Clason (04:04.811)
Right.

Nick Clason (04:20.247)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (04:24.181)
What I decided to do is how can I make it manageable and reproducible in my context? And so when we go off to retreat with middle schoolers, we take over a whole campground and we basically use a gym. We convert the gym to like our main auditorium. And so what I did is just use some painter's tape and I created boxes on the ground, basically built a frame and then did 16 boxes.

Nick Clason (04:29.645)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (04:37.006)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (04:46.445)
Okay.

Jay Reynolds (04:51.393)
And so basically I narrowed down 16 categories. And in that, what I did was I just chose simple categories, just like I mentioned before, simple ones that middle schoolers would want to get into, know, thinking through food, snacks, know, common pop culture type stuff, things that the whole crowd will get into. And so basically what I did was like, okay, 16 boxes, I can do about four, five questions per round and kind of see how it goes.

Nick Clason (04:54.604)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:04.758)
Right, right, right.

Nick Clason (05:19.085)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (05:20.987)
Originally when I played it, I was like, okay, I'm just going to pick 16 kids. It's going to be the same 16 kids. You know, when I start the game, what I mentioned is once you win against somebody else, then you take over their box. Right. So in 16 boxes, if you're number 16 and you play against someone who's 15, now you take over their category, right? And, and there's one less person they get kicked out. and then your goal is to take over the whole floor.

Nick Clason (05:34.673)
gotcha, okay.

Nick Clason (05:44.877)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:50.922)
Right, gotcha, okay, interesting, that's fun. Totally, yeah. So, you take over the cat, I've been looking it up here while you've been talking, like the setup on the game show looks amazing. So, I can imagine how you can set up 16, how do you, in a retreat type setting, how do you determine your 16 contestants?

Jay Reynolds (05:53.097)
Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (06:13.577)
Yeah, so completely random, you know? And what I really did was I just randomized and just picked 16 kids. I mean, some ways that you could do that. And so I would suggest 16 because it's an easy multiple, right? You can do four questions each time and you can carry it through, say, a typical retreat. Maybe there's four main sessions. You know, you could play around with that. If you only have three sessions that maybe you do nine or do some type of multiple of that.

Nick Clason (06:16.824)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (06:26.732)
Right.

Nick Clason (06:41.346)
Right, right, right.

Jay Reynolds (06:42.005)
But I would say in a typical four sessions, four questions is pretty good and you get the crowd all into it. But how to pick kids. Here's what I originally thought. I would just pick 16 kids and the same kids that were in their box on Friday night would be the same kids playing throughout. But as I thought about it, in my retreat, we had a couple hundred kids and I was like, how should I do this? So.

Nick Clason (06:58.862)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (07:04.503)
Right, right, right.

Jay Reynolds (07:07.475)
I just completely randomized it. It was kind of like a game day decision. And the only people that stayed was if they won out. So Friday night, whoever won, you know, now they had like the large and basically what does it mean to win on like the first session for question? There's 16 boxes. They didn't take over the whole floor, but whoever has the largest section, right? So it's four questions. So it's just like, if they have three, you know, they own like three other boxes, you know,

Nick Clason (07:10.935)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (07:15.63)
Mmm.

Jay Reynolds (07:37.481)
then they have the largest section, they win. And so I would give some type of prize for the night. And the way that the show works is they would do like eight or nine boxes, you know, and you win. And whoever has the most boxes like connected, you know, the largest area on the floor, they would win like a high dollar prize. Right. So I just mimic that. And I was like, here's like tons of candy to like go back in your cabin, that type of thing. And so there was intrigued to win for that night.

Nick Clason (07:41.558)
Ahem.

Nick Clason (07:55.98)
Right, right.

Jay Reynolds (08:06.557)
or that session, even if you don't win the overall. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Nick Clason (08:06.657)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:10.412)
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so and then you're randomizing, you're calling up a couple contestants to go head to head and then are you just asking like trivia questions to them back and forth or like where are you sourcing your questions from?

Jay Reynolds (08:26.709)
Yeah, great question. So what I did is out of 16, I built like basically in Pro Presenter, I built 16 categories and it's all picture related. And so behind them, there's a big old screen, you know, and let's just say it was a serials, you know, like cereal, like, and so they just have to guess, oh, that's Reese Puffs, that's Honey Nut Cheerios. And what I did instead of like, playing like chess, how the game show is like each has your own 45 seconds. It's a whole lot to manage.

Nick Clason (08:38.829)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (08:43.095)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:56.385)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (08:56.629)
I just put one timer up and so I flipped a little bit of the game show and I made it whoever has the most correct in 45 seconds. And I encourage high crowd participation, right? And so like the kids up there and you know sometimes a kid would get a little bit of stage fright and they're like, oh, I know what that is. That is definitely, you know, Lucky Charms, but I can't, I just can't think of what the name is, but the whole crowd's yelling Lucky Charms, you know?

Nick Clason (09:01.912)
Gotcha.

Nick Clason (09:06.229)
Okay.

Nick Clason (09:10.37)
There you go.

Nick Clason (09:14.733)
Right?

Nick Clason (09:25.599)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (09:26.365)
And so it keeps the whole crowd engaged while at the same time, know, so, you know, a good game, I believe it's just like, it's not just for the contestants on stage, but it gets the whole crowd also into it.

Nick Clason (09:29.41)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:37.87)
Yeah, and I love that, that you encourage crowd participation rather than try to stifle it because then that makes, that means everyone in the room is able to join in and participate. And yeah, it's not just for the people up there. It's beautiful.

Jay Reynolds (09:42.441)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (09:48.944)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And that's where a lot of the prizes, I tried to make them like, maybe there was like, actually, I think that's the year I gave away like some panda hats and like, so I may have like made like a panda shirt or something. That was kind of our little subtle branding. And so that just kind of went with it. It was like, oh, this was for you, but it's also paired with like five bags of candy to share with your cabin. You know what I mean? And so.

Nick Clason (09:59.468)
Okay.

Nick Clason (10:05.015)
Right.

Nick Clason (10:12.192)
Nice, yeah. So there's more incentive for the people in the crowd. Like if their buddy's up there, they might get to, yeah, that's awesome.

Jay Reynolds (10:16.915)
Yep. Exactly. Yeah. You know, and so that just cries a call a lot of crowd participation. Here's what I didn't expect, but something awesome that happened. So in 45 seconds, you know, you sometimes go into it thinking like, this game is going to be great. This kid's going to get like eight. This kid may get seven, like clear winner. That didn't always happen. Like this kid got eight. This other kid got eight. Time ended. Now I'm like in the moment, like, well, what do I do? Right.

Nick Clason (10:26.519)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:36.173)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:41.165)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (10:44.801)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (10:45.649)
And so, so here's what I did. Like I'll just give a little secret sauce so you don't have to think through it if you play this. And so I just like, okay, you guys tie. How do we end this? And so I basically just put my hand out and you know, and then for the contestants hand behind the back, you know, go to the next one, the first one, you know, high five and answer correctly. Then they got to choose and that was created in the whole, like the whole room, like this anticipation who's going to get it, you know?

Nick Clason (10:51.308)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:07.362)
Yeah they win.

Nick Clason (11:13.527)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (11:14.173)
And then it's like the one kid that happened to and they guessed they were so confident and they got it wrong, you know? But then the other kid got it, right? And it just creates like kind of like this little bit of storybook kind of ending whenever they tie. And so it just works, you know, pretty well.

Nick Clason (11:20.758)
Yeah, dude

Nick Clason (11:27.297)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:30.7)
Yeah dude, that's awesome. Okay so, a kid wins the majority of the board Friday night. So Saturday morning let's say, you come back to play it again. You're getting random contestants. Now if someone was on the board but they weren't selected or they weren't eliminated, did you swap them out with new contestants? So you just had the people who like, so like one carryover from Friday night and then everyone else was new?

Jay Reynolds (11:37.78)
Yes.

Jay Reynolds (11:52.467)
Yep.

Nick Clason (12:00.672)
on the board on Saturday? Is that how you handled it? Okay, great.

Jay Reynolds (12:03.285)
That's how I handled it, right? And so some of that, you know, sometimes when you play a game, it's like, oh yeah, that kid, you know, gets participated, but somebody wins before they get there, right? And it's just like, it's kind of that concept. And you know, what, what I had a little bit of the workflow is that every kid who had a box, I gave them basically like piece of paper. I'm number one, two, you know, whatever their number was that went with the box. And so that also helped for, you know, like in the moment there's all these kids around. It's like, oh, it,

Nick Clason (12:23.18)
Right, right, right, yeah. Right.

Jay Reynolds (12:32.445)
chose number 12, you know, to be able to cue the folks in the back and be able to set up Prober Center, everything correctly. It was like, we got number 12, you know, coming on up, you know? And, and so it's like while they're traveling, it's able to kind of like cue some of the tech team. So they're able to get the next things all set up. But with that, it was all new kids. Like if you want now when it come to Saturday night and Sunday morning,

Nick Clason (12:44.834)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (12:49.656)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (12:58.471)
If you won Friday night, you were still on the board, you know, unless you lost, you know? And so, so it is basically kind of like you win, you get to stay in the game and earn the right to keep going.

Nick Clason (13:01.186)
Right. Right, right, right.

Nick Clason (13:08.04)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that part's really cool. So did you have a kid make it all the way through or did like a winner from Friday end up getting eliminated on Saturday and you kind of kept daisy chaining it all the way to the end?

Jay Reynolds (13:20.529)
I think it was... We may have had, at least a Saturday night, we have Friday winter and Saturday morning winter into it. I can't remember Sunday morning. May have had a couple. Because we didn't play it this year, we played it last year. And so I'm a little bit of a year plus removed from like into it. But it just created a cool environment. But also like some of the dynamics, let's say like it was number 15, they beat 16, they beat, you know...

Nick Clason (13:29.966)
Okay, that's cool. That's cool.

Nick Clason (13:35.134)
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Jay Reynolds (13:49.253)
14, you know, and they had like their pocket, like all the way on the end. Well, the next day we showed up, it was, um, Hey, do you want to like play or do you want to kind of go back and just like sit in your leg little area? And so that's kind of where like, we'll just sit in our area. Okay. Let's throw up a randomizer. What do we get next? Number two, right? They're almost the other side of the floor. And so, you know, it may have been like, Oh, you didn't win, you know, or you didn't play that day or that, that session.

Nick Clason (13:52.631)
Right.

Nick Clason (14:01.506)
Right.

Nick Clason (14:11.555)
Right?

Nick Clason (14:18.454)
Yeah, to win, but you survived because you weren't on that part of the floor. I get it.

Jay Reynolds (14:20.989)
Exactly. So some of that, and if you watch the game show, that's how like people will play. Like, I won like three rounds. I have a small little section, but I'm like in an aisle. I'm like all the way in the corner. Maybe it's better. go back and then, know, but it's also like, I'm playing for the category, right? Now let me talk a little bit about categories, you know, cause I, I chose all that myself, the game show, like you, you go in saying, this is my category. And it's like, you're almost like,

Nick Clason (14:33.986)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (14:41.399)
Okay, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (14:49.393)
You're bringing category to the game show.

Nick Clason (14:52.01)
Yeah, like that's you're an expert in that category is how it works on the game show you're saying

Jay Reynolds (14:54.835)
Yeah. Yes. But in my context, I don't know. And I'm like, to keep things to be able to be randomized, I was basically like, here's your category. You are now an expert. You know, like you are now an expert on dogs, you know, or you are now an expert on fruit, you know, you are now in and it was all common stuff that's in their world. And so so instead of it being as eclectic as what you might experience, like watching the game show, as I just made it more actually slide on the side of common.

Nick Clason (15:01.859)
Mm-hmm.

Gotcha, okay, cool, cool, cool.

Right.

Nick Clason (15:14.296)
Right.

Nick Clason (15:20.429)
Sure.

Jay Reynolds (15:23.477)
and that most people are going to know what it is, right? Because when you think through audience engagement, actually, the more eclectic it gets, the more you minimize participation, right? And so in this context, it's like playing other games, like if you play um or pie in the face type games, it's like you actually want some of those topics that people are going to know.

Nick Clason (15:28.417)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (15:36.302)
100%, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (15:49.353)
you know, car brands, type of thing, know, shoe brands, you know, like some of those things. And it just creates a higher engagement, which ends up being a better experience for the entire audience.

Nick Clason (15:51.586)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:59.982)
Yeah, okay, so one like just last little point of clarification I have is when you get two contestants, do you have them bounce back and forth like you say a carb brand, I say a carb brand until the one person can't remember or do you give them each 45 seconds and they have to list as many as they can and then the other person goes.

Jay Reynolds (16:18.355)
Yeah, no, great question. in using the slides, you know, and for us, we had a screen right behind us. So it's easy for them to see, easy for the whole crowd to see that type of thing. And it was basically like a, you know, person A is person B. So A, know, it's just like, that's let's say it's animals like, that's a panda, you know, next person, person B. that's a, that's an eagle person A. that's a dolphin. You know, that's a shark, you know.

Nick Clason (16:30.843)
yeah, that's right.

Nick Clason (16:41.366)
Okay. Gotcha. So it's not like a speed thing against him. It's like, person A, this slide is yours and you either get it or you don't. Got it. Okay. Cool, cool,

Jay Reynolds (16:50.517)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, if it takes you a second, know, like animals is pretty easy, you know, but, know, when you get into like, and I think like for, was it like cereals? I may have had a picture of the cereal. I may have had the box and kind of canvad out the name of it or something like that, but make it so it's recognizable. But you're like, it takes you a minute or not a minute, but it takes you a few moments to think about it. You know, the overall timer was 45 seconds.

Nick Clason (17:06.71)
Right, right.

Jay Reynolds (17:17.053)
and was just whoever got the most correct, but it was just back and forth, back and forth, that type of thing. Yeah.

Nick Clason (17:19.286)
Yeah.

That's awesome. I love it. Okay. Now you told me when we were texting back and forth, like, do you still have the purpose under file? Like, is that something that, that, you could get and we could give to people who are listening? Yeah, that'd be amazing.

Jay Reynolds (17:34.581)
Dude, I'd love to, you know? And so, yeah, and I use ProPresenter and so, you know, it's all built in ProPresenter, but I, man, I think it's all built in folders. So if you don't use, you know, if somebody's listening and they wanna try it out, I think I have folders that are all like the images. And I built, I built the floor off 16, but I built like two other categories. So if like something happened, like they, or something glitches, you know, things like that. So I think I technically built like.

Nick Clason (17:51.714)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:01.27)
Right, you gotta fall back, yeah. Okay.

Jay Reynolds (18:03.317)
18 categories. But man, I would gladly share it, you know.

Nick Clason (18:07.818)
Yeah, that'd be super cool. Yeah, so we'll get that from you and we'll link it down below. I think the thing I like the most about this is that you can make this the game for your D now, your winter retreat, your fall retreat, whatever, and you can just go back to it. And as opposed to every session, let's say you got four sessions over the course of a weekend, you don't have to come up with four things. This thing carries you all weekend long.

the more they know it or get to understand the rules of it, by the end of it, the hype level is probably gonna be raising every single time they do it. So maybe Friday night, it's basic understanding and basic learning, but by the end of it, people get the rules, they're locked into it, and they're trying to carry home the ultimate floor champion moniker, if they get to take home that final prize or whatever.

I think those are some of my favorite styles of games, things that can just, that well that you can kind of keep going back to. And so that's what I love about it. And I did not understand it at all when we were texting. So as you've described it more, I'm more more into it. And even my wheels now are turning. I'm like, all right, we got a winter retreat coming up. Do we incorporate this? Or do we bring this with us to summer camp or something like that? Because this sounds super fun, super amazing. And just a great way to like,

build the competition and build the camaraderie.

Jay Reynolds (19:37.181)
Yeah. And I think, you know, that's exactly it, man. You know, and if you think through like and how we set it up, like I think we just set up like two or three, you know, or maybe it's like two blocks and just like right as a center aisle. But let's just talk a little bit about that. Like I use painter's tape so that way it's not messing with the floor at all. Super cheap. But then what I did to make it easier is like think through if you were playing like that, that kids like dock game, you have to build boxes.

Nick Clason (19:49.485)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (19:55.319)
Right, and cheap.

Nick Clason (20:05.709)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (20:06.451)
Yeah. So think of it in that a whole frame on the outside was just solid lines to be able to build it. But on the inside, it was all like, you know, just think through each box by itself, because then when you have some volunteers like, box eight takes over seven, you know, and now you pull that one strip between the two. Now, you know, it's all box eight, right? You know? And so that just makes it easier logistically, because if you run long strips,

Nick Clason (20:11.607)
Right.

Nick Clason (20:16.91)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (20:26.163)
Mmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (20:32.558)
Totally.

Jay Reynolds (20:34.451)
like across multiple boxes on the interior, then like, now I have to like weirdly pick up like. Yeah, and that will be logistically, you know, that's like something like, I didn't think of it until I was in the in the in the situation. Now it's an issue is that think through like small like so the boxes say, you know, two or three feet wide, you know, just the interior pieces are all single pieces.

Nick Clason (20:40.788)
Yeah, cut it and yeah.

Nick Clason (20:50.124)
Right, yeah.

Nick Clason (20:59.852)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (21:00.393)
So it's a little bit longer to set up, not much, but a little bit longer to set up, but much easier for flow by game flow.

Nick Clason (21:08.046)
Yeah, I got you. Okay, so then, you know, seven overtakes eight. On Saturday morning, do you redraw, like, the seven box, or has seven still overtaken eight on Saturday morning for that morning's board? Does that make sense?

Jay Reynolds (21:24.713)
Yeah. Say seven takes over eight. And so now, yeah. And so basically your goal is to win the whole floor, you know? And so, ultimately, you know, and so now you get down to it is like, let's just say you winner keeps winning and they keep staying, they keep playing all this kind of stuff. And now you get down to it. They have 15 boxes, you know? And so let's just say it's one against number now, like let's say nine that won everything. One didn't.

Nick Clason (21:31.458)
The whole thing, yeah.

Nick Clason (21:40.097)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (21:51.063)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (21:52.319)
play at all. And it's just the kid who just got in that day and they just sat and watched nine keep winning, keep winning. And they get up there and then one who's had no action the entire time. They beat this person who's won everything. It's like a David and glide style matchup. And then they win that round. They win it all, you know? And so that's the other thing. What's intriguing about it. It's like, you know, some games it's like, if you're, could have the sheer advantage.

Nick Clason (21:56.278)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (22:09.918)
moment yeah yeah that's cool that's cool

Jay Reynolds (22:21.885)
or you keep winning and then now it like builds all this momentum. It's nice because it's almost, it's like there's neutralizers built into this game all the way throughout, you know? And it could just be like, just luck of the draw. Like, I don't know, I don't eat cereal. I only eat toast. Like I don't even know. And then that kid who's like, man, just sat, I randomly got chosen. You know, the kid who's like, man, I don't know it. I just eat cereal every day. I don't even know why I'm here, but I know this. And then I ended up winning everything, you know?

Nick Clason (22:29.238)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (22:37.857)
you

Nick Clason (22:47.351)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool.

Jay Reynolds (22:50.813)
And so that's the cool thing that makes it so easy and fun and all that kind of stuff.

Nick Clason (22:57.43)
Yeah, that's amazing. Nice. All right, bro. That really does sound super fun, super cool. So any last final parting words about retreats or games or this game in particular before we hit stop and close out the recording?

Jay Reynolds (23:15.219)
Yeah, dude, I think the last thing I'd say as far as for playing this game, because it builds on itself, you know, think through, I think how I played it was Friday night. I think I only did three questions, you know, because of Friday night, you have the rules, you have all this kind of stuff and not just the rules for this game, but, know, just think through your retreat overall. What is all of it, you know, entail? And so, you know, we did maybe three questions and then that allowed us to choose which other session do we want to do five, you know?

Nick Clason (23:25.954)
Okay.

Nick Clason (23:33.197)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (23:43.517)
And so just think through some of that from a momentum standpoint on how you want to play it. The other thing from a momentum is let your, you know, your session prizes build. So Friday night, maybe it is like a, you know, hat in like two bags of candy, you know, but then Saturday morning, you know, I think we did prizes that like relate. We were going to do like some, some, I don't know, pool games and things like that. So we gave away like beach towels, you know,

Nick Clason (23:43.725)
Mm.

Nick Clason (23:47.447)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (23:54.669)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (24:12.436)
Okay. Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (24:12.871)
and candy, right? And so it just kind of built and it just seemed that, you know, as the game builds, because it's over multiple sessions, that if you have budget and that's how you kind of ministry works, I would encourage you to think through, let your prizes build also, you know, and because that is just going to intuitively kind of go in with the whole game, you know, that type of thing. And so for me, my style is I always get other leaders involved, you know, small group leaders, things like that. I'm like, Hey, pick two kids to play, pick two kids to play.

Nick Clason (24:26.935)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (24:32.673)
yeah that makes sense

Nick Clason (24:40.8)
huh.

Jay Reynolds (24:42.687)
You know, and so, you know, that's how I help in the randomization, you know, but I'm getting other leaders involved in that process. That also helps like in a ministry. it's not like, Jay just picked his favorite kids to play to try to win, you know, well, no, I picked this leader and that lead, you know, and so it's like, I try to, so depending on how the structure is set up, getting other voices involved, help to take away like what could be speculation. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:04.513)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (25:09.408)
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I love it, man. Well, I, again, I appreciate your time. I thought this was a great conversation, great game. Like, and that one of the things I think is so, like interesting in the world of youth pastors, cause I did this too once where I was like watching a game show, you know, just at home with my wife and I was like,

I can make that into a game. You know what mean? And that's just the way our brain, we never turn off, we never stop thinking, we never stop ideating. And so I've never heard of this concept before, I've never even heard of this game show, but you're so right. It's a perfect youth ministry game and I love the fact that it can span the whole thing. And that's exactly what I was looking for, for all these different conversations, all these different ideas. And so again, really appreciate you hopping on and we'll throw the link to your.

Jay Reynolds (25:33.036)
yeah.

Never. Never.

Jay Reynolds (25:48.627)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:57.634)
your files and stuff like that down below. really appreciate you giving that away and that'll be super helpful for anyone who wants to take it and run with it.

Jay Reynolds (26:05.683)
Yeah, feel free. And hey, if one of your listeners wants to try it out and they get a little confused or want to kind of process through a little bit more, dude, feel free. You know, they can reach out and connect me with them. I'd love to kind of just help walk alongside someone who's trying to, you know, trying something new in their context, trying something to see what it would work. And I hope for folks who try it.

Nick Clason (26:14.851)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (26:25.683)
Man, hope you end of the day, if you're gonna play game like this, it's just as much as you having fun with your kids, with your students having fun, because that's kind of the momentum that really builds and getting them all into it.

Nick Clason (26:36.364)
Yeah, perfect. All right, Jay. Well, I appreciate it, And everyone else, thanks for listening. And we'll talk again soon. See you.

Jay Reynolds (26:43.455)
Cool, great chat man, take care.

]]> In this special, interview style episode, Nick Clason sits down with Jay Reynolds to discuss a game concept that Jay used for every session during a recent Winter Retreat. This video is just in time for DNow season where you can program games that build over multiple days and can last the duration of your entire winter retreat, summer camp or disciple now event!
Jay shares next level expert tips to make sure you win!

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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Retreat Games that Extend the whole Weekend
02:21 Exploring the Game Show 'The Floor'
05:17 Adapting 'The Floor' for Retreats
08:07 Randomization and Contestant Selection
10:40 Categories and Audience Participation
12:13 Prizes and Momentum Building
14:17 Logistics and Setup Tips
17:01 Category Hacks
19:43 Did Jay really just do that?!
21:50 Next-Level Set-up Hacks
25:15 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01.075)
Alright, what's up everyone? I'm here with my friend Jay. Jay, how we doing this morning, bro?

Jay Reynolds (00:07.379)
Man, I'm good, I'm good. It's almost, it's looking like it might want to snow outside. So I might figure out some, hanging in some snow later.

Nick Clason (00:15.672)
Doesn't snow a lot in Raleigh? Like is that a thing that you deal with very often?

Jay Reynolds (00:20.085)
No, really never. it basically I'm from the north and I've lived down here if you spill a cup of ice They shut the schools down. It's so it's yeah. It's a big deal around here

Nick Clason (00:22.424)
Ha

Nick Clason (00:28.62)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, mean, certainly that's how it goes in Texas as well. But I'm with you. I'm also from the North. So I know what it was like, but the more years I'm here, like the more I'm forgetting, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, man, it's cold, you know? And I was back home Thanksgiving, during, you know, in Minnesota in November. It was cold. It was a cold experience. And they're like, you're from here. And I'm like, not anymore. So.

Jay Reynolds (00:56.969)
Yeah, yeah. My in-laws live in Buffalo, and so I just recently spent Thanksgiving in Buffalo. yeah, 20, know, 24 degrees and a wind blowing feels like, you know, seven, you know? And yeah, so.

Nick Clason (00:58.149)
Ha ha!

Nick Clason (01:02.652)
yeah.

Nick Clason (01:07.808)
Yeah, dude. Well, I appreciate you hopping on. I posted a thing in the DIY and Facebook group asking for like retreat games and things that kind of like you could go back to. And you responded with a comment about like you tried to emulate a game show called The Floor. that what it's called? All right. So for people like me who who don't know what you're talking about, like explain this game show to me like I'm a five year old.

Jay Reynolds (01:29.119)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (01:36.501)
Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. So, um, it's a game show. I watch it on Hulu. I don't know which network technically has it. Um, but on Hulu it's, uh, Rob Lowe is the host and it's called the floor. And it's basically, I mean, it's, it's a nice floor setup. It's like all led, whatever. And basically the floors is made up of a hundred boxes. And for the game show, every box, so a hundred people have like their specialty category. Maybe it's like,

Star Wars characters, you know, or maybe it's like cereal brands or maybe it's like college football teams in the SEC. I don't know. Like it's just everybody comes with their specialty and what you need to do is you basically challenge somebody, you know, it's like it's randomized, you know, it's one to a hundred and it's like, say it lands on, you know, 49 and say their category is cats, you know, and they get to choose who do they want to challenge.

and their box 49 is connected to a bunch of other boxes. And so they basically challenge somebody and let's say they challenge somebody it's bridges. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up here, right? But it's just all random categories and then they go up to the front and they challenge. And what the challenge looks like is there's basically a picture on the screen and they just have to guess what it is. So it's pretty simple kind of trivia.

Nick Clason (02:46.264)
K-E-A-A.

Nick Clason (02:58.071)
Hmm.

Jay Reynolds (03:00.885)
And now in the game show they have like each contestant, know when they're battling they have 45 seconds And so if they're like thinking a lot of time like, you know, what is that? Like their own 45 seconds is kind of like going down on the clock think of like when you play chess There's like that like your own time clock So that's how it's played in the game You know on the game show And when I saw that I was like, man, I think I could play that

Nick Clason (03:19.51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (03:24.791)
Okay.

Jay Reynolds (03:28.985)
in like a retreat weekend, you know? And so now I have asked multiple times, Nick, with my leadership, can I get an LED floor so that I could really play this game? And of course, what do you think my answer I got is?

Nick Clason (03:31.105)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (03:41.623)
Yeah.

They probably were like if we had the budget yes, but right now You know the Lord hasn't blessed our our church with the funds to do an LED floor. That'd be my guess

Jay Reynolds (03:52.234)
Yeah.

That's you are 100 % correct. You're 100 % correct. So, so thinking so since I was not, you know, recipient of a blessing of an LED floor, but I still had this, this gumption to want to play this game. So I figured it out. I was like, okay, I can't do a hundred. Like, you know, in programming, you know, there's programming, you're like, man, that game would be a banger, but it might be like three hours long. And it's just like, do I have that amount of time? No, but

Nick Clason (04:04.811)
Right.

Nick Clason (04:20.247)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (04:24.181)
What I decided to do is how can I make it manageable and reproducible in my context? And so when we go off to retreat with middle schoolers, we take over a whole campground and we basically use a gym. We convert the gym to like our main auditorium. And so what I did is just use some painter's tape and I created boxes on the ground, basically built a frame and then did 16 boxes.

Nick Clason (04:29.645)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (04:37.006)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (04:46.445)
Okay.

Jay Reynolds (04:51.393)
And so basically I narrowed down 16 categories. And in that, what I did was I just chose simple categories, just like I mentioned before, simple ones that middle schoolers would want to get into, know, thinking through food, snacks, know, common pop culture type stuff, things that the whole crowd will get into. And so basically what I did was like, okay, 16 boxes, I can do about four, five questions per round and kind of see how it goes.

Nick Clason (04:54.604)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:04.758)
Right, right, right.

Nick Clason (05:19.085)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (05:20.987)
Originally when I played it, I was like, okay, I'm just going to pick 16 kids. It's going to be the same 16 kids. You know, when I start the game, what I mentioned is once you win against somebody else, then you take over their box. Right. So in 16 boxes, if you're number 16 and you play against someone who's 15, now you take over their category, right? And, and there's one less person they get kicked out. and then your goal is to take over the whole floor.

Nick Clason (05:34.673)
gotcha, okay.

Nick Clason (05:44.877)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (05:50.922)
Right, gotcha, okay, interesting, that's fun. Totally, yeah. So, you take over the cat, I've been looking it up here while you've been talking, like the setup on the game show looks amazing. So, I can imagine how you can set up 16, how do you, in a retreat type setting, how do you determine your 16 contestants?

Jay Reynolds (05:53.097)
Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (06:13.577)
Yeah, so completely random, you know? And what I really did was I just randomized and just picked 16 kids. I mean, some ways that you could do that. And so I would suggest 16 because it's an easy multiple, right? You can do four questions each time and you can carry it through, say, a typical retreat. Maybe there's four main sessions. You know, you could play around with that. If you only have three sessions that maybe you do nine or do some type of multiple of that.

Nick Clason (06:16.824)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (06:26.732)
Right.

Nick Clason (06:41.346)
Right, right, right.

Jay Reynolds (06:42.005)
But I would say in a typical four sessions, four questions is pretty good and you get the crowd all into it. But how to pick kids. Here's what I originally thought. I would just pick 16 kids and the same kids that were in their box on Friday night would be the same kids playing throughout. But as I thought about it, in my retreat, we had a couple hundred kids and I was like, how should I do this? So.

Nick Clason (06:58.862)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (07:04.503)
Right, right, right.

Jay Reynolds (07:07.475)
I just completely randomized it. It was kind of like a game day decision. And the only people that stayed was if they won out. So Friday night, whoever won, you know, now they had like the large and basically what does it mean to win on like the first session for question? There's 16 boxes. They didn't take over the whole floor, but whoever has the largest section, right? So it's four questions. So it's just like, if they have three, you know, they own like three other boxes, you know,

Nick Clason (07:10.935)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (07:15.63)
Mmm.

Jay Reynolds (07:37.481)
then they have the largest section, they win. And so I would give some type of prize for the night. And the way that the show works is they would do like eight or nine boxes, you know, and you win. And whoever has the most boxes like connected, you know, the largest area on the floor, they would win like a high dollar prize. Right. So I just mimic that. And I was like, here's like tons of candy to like go back in your cabin, that type of thing. And so there was intrigued to win for that night.

Nick Clason (07:41.558)
Ahem.

Nick Clason (07:55.98)
Right, right.

Jay Reynolds (08:06.557)
or that session, even if you don't win the overall. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Nick Clason (08:06.657)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:10.412)
Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so and then you're randomizing, you're calling up a couple contestants to go head to head and then are you just asking like trivia questions to them back and forth or like where are you sourcing your questions from?

Jay Reynolds (08:26.709)
Yeah, great question. So what I did is out of 16, I built like basically in Pro Presenter, I built 16 categories and it's all picture related. And so behind them, there's a big old screen, you know, and let's just say it was a serials, you know, like cereal, like, and so they just have to guess, oh, that's Reese Puffs, that's Honey Nut Cheerios. And what I did instead of like, playing like chess, how the game show is like each has your own 45 seconds. It's a whole lot to manage.

Nick Clason (08:38.829)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (08:43.095)
Right.

Nick Clason (08:56.385)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (08:56.629)
I just put one timer up and so I flipped a little bit of the game show and I made it whoever has the most correct in 45 seconds. And I encourage high crowd participation, right? And so like the kids up there and you know sometimes a kid would get a little bit of stage fright and they're like, oh, I know what that is. That is definitely, you know, Lucky Charms, but I can't, I just can't think of what the name is, but the whole crowd's yelling Lucky Charms, you know?

Nick Clason (09:01.912)
Gotcha.

Nick Clason (09:06.229)
Okay.

Nick Clason (09:10.37)
There you go.

Nick Clason (09:14.733)
Right?

Nick Clason (09:25.599)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (09:26.365)
And so it keeps the whole crowd engaged while at the same time, know, so, you know, a good game, I believe it's just like, it's not just for the contestants on stage, but it gets the whole crowd also into it.

Nick Clason (09:29.41)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (09:37.87)
Yeah, and I love that, that you encourage crowd participation rather than try to stifle it because then that makes, that means everyone in the room is able to join in and participate. And yeah, it's not just for the people up there. It's beautiful.

Jay Reynolds (09:42.441)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (09:48.944)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And that's where a lot of the prizes, I tried to make them like, maybe there was like, actually, I think that's the year I gave away like some panda hats and like, so I may have like made like a panda shirt or something. That was kind of our little subtle branding. And so that just kind of went with it. It was like, oh, this was for you, but it's also paired with like five bags of candy to share with your cabin. You know what I mean? And so.

Nick Clason (09:59.468)
Okay.

Nick Clason (10:05.015)
Right.

Nick Clason (10:12.192)
Nice, yeah. So there's more incentive for the people in the crowd. Like if their buddy's up there, they might get to, yeah, that's awesome.

Jay Reynolds (10:16.915)
Yep. Exactly. Yeah. You know, and so that just cries a call a lot of crowd participation. Here's what I didn't expect, but something awesome that happened. So in 45 seconds, you know, you sometimes go into it thinking like, this game is going to be great. This kid's going to get like eight. This kid may get seven, like clear winner. That didn't always happen. Like this kid got eight. This other kid got eight. Time ended. Now I'm like in the moment, like, well, what do I do? Right.

Nick Clason (10:26.519)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:36.173)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (10:41.165)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (10:44.801)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (10:45.649)
And so, so here's what I did. Like I'll just give a little secret sauce so you don't have to think through it if you play this. And so I just like, okay, you guys tie. How do we end this? And so I basically just put my hand out and you know, and then for the contestants hand behind the back, you know, go to the next one, the first one, you know, high five and answer correctly. Then they got to choose and that was created in the whole, like the whole room, like this anticipation who's going to get it, you know?

Nick Clason (10:51.308)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:07.362)
Yeah they win.

Nick Clason (11:13.527)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (11:14.173)
And then it's like the one kid that happened to and they guessed they were so confident and they got it wrong, you know? But then the other kid got it, right? And it just creates like kind of like this little bit of storybook kind of ending whenever they tie. And so it just works, you know, pretty well.

Nick Clason (11:20.758)
Yeah, dude

Nick Clason (11:27.297)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (11:30.7)
Yeah dude, that's awesome. Okay so, a kid wins the majority of the board Friday night. So Saturday morning let's say, you come back to play it again. You're getting random contestants. Now if someone was on the board but they weren't selected or they weren't eliminated, did you swap them out with new contestants? So you just had the people who like, so like one carryover from Friday night and then everyone else was new?

Jay Reynolds (11:37.78)
Yes.

Jay Reynolds (11:52.467)
Yep.

Nick Clason (12:00.672)
on the board on Saturday? Is that how you handled it? Okay, great.

Jay Reynolds (12:03.285)
That's how I handled it, right? And so some of that, you know, sometimes when you play a game, it's like, oh yeah, that kid, you know, gets participated, but somebody wins before they get there, right? And it's just like, it's kind of that concept. And you know, what, what I had a little bit of the workflow is that every kid who had a box, I gave them basically like piece of paper. I'm number one, two, you know, whatever their number was that went with the box. And so that also helped for, you know, like in the moment there's all these kids around. It's like, oh, it,

Nick Clason (12:23.18)
Right, right, right, yeah. Right.

Jay Reynolds (12:32.445)
chose number 12, you know, to be able to cue the folks in the back and be able to set up Prober Center, everything correctly. It was like, we got number 12, you know, coming on up, you know? And, and so it's like while they're traveling, it's able to kind of like cue some of the tech team. So they're able to get the next things all set up. But with that, it was all new kids. Like if you want now when it come to Saturday night and Sunday morning,

Nick Clason (12:44.834)
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (12:49.656)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (12:58.471)
If you won Friday night, you were still on the board, you know, unless you lost, you know? And so, so it is basically kind of like you win, you get to stay in the game and earn the right to keep going.

Nick Clason (13:01.186)
Right. Right, right, right.

Nick Clason (13:08.04)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that part's really cool. So did you have a kid make it all the way through or did like a winner from Friday end up getting eliminated on Saturday and you kind of kept daisy chaining it all the way to the end?

Jay Reynolds (13:20.529)
I think it was... We may have had, at least a Saturday night, we have Friday winter and Saturday morning winter into it. I can't remember Sunday morning. May have had a couple. Because we didn't play it this year, we played it last year. And so I'm a little bit of a year plus removed from like into it. But it just created a cool environment. But also like some of the dynamics, let's say like it was number 15, they beat 16, they beat, you know...

Nick Clason (13:29.966)
Okay, that's cool. That's cool.

Nick Clason (13:35.134)
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Jay Reynolds (13:49.253)
14, you know, and they had like their pocket, like all the way on the end. Well, the next day we showed up, it was, um, Hey, do you want to like play or do you want to kind of go back and just like sit in your leg little area? And so that's kind of where like, we'll just sit in our area. Okay. Let's throw up a randomizer. What do we get next? Number two, right? They're almost the other side of the floor. And so, you know, it may have been like, Oh, you didn't win, you know, or you didn't play that day or that, that session.

Nick Clason (13:52.631)
Right.

Nick Clason (14:01.506)
Right.

Nick Clason (14:11.555)
Right?

Nick Clason (14:18.454)
Yeah, to win, but you survived because you weren't on that part of the floor. I get it.

Jay Reynolds (14:20.989)
Exactly. So some of that, and if you watch the game show, that's how like people will play. Like, I won like three rounds. I have a small little section, but I'm like in an aisle. I'm like all the way in the corner. Maybe it's better. go back and then, know, but it's also like, I'm playing for the category, right? Now let me talk a little bit about categories, you know, cause I, I chose all that myself, the game show, like you, you go in saying, this is my category. And it's like, you're almost like,

Nick Clason (14:33.986)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (14:41.399)
Okay, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (14:49.393)
You're bringing category to the game show.

Nick Clason (14:52.01)
Yeah, like that's you're an expert in that category is how it works on the game show you're saying

Jay Reynolds (14:54.835)
Yeah. Yes. But in my context, I don't know. And I'm like, to keep things to be able to be randomized, I was basically like, here's your category. You are now an expert. You know, like you are now an expert on dogs, you know, or you are now an expert on fruit, you know, you are now in and it was all common stuff that's in their world. And so so instead of it being as eclectic as what you might experience, like watching the game show, as I just made it more actually slide on the side of common.

Nick Clason (15:01.859)
Mm-hmm.

Gotcha, okay, cool, cool, cool.

Right.

Nick Clason (15:14.296)
Right.

Nick Clason (15:20.429)
Sure.

Jay Reynolds (15:23.477)
and that most people are going to know what it is, right? Because when you think through audience engagement, actually, the more eclectic it gets, the more you minimize participation, right? And so in this context, it's like playing other games, like if you play um or pie in the face type games, it's like you actually want some of those topics that people are going to know.

Nick Clason (15:28.417)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (15:36.302)
100%, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (15:49.353)
you know, car brands, type of thing, know, shoe brands, you know, like some of those things. And it just creates a higher engagement, which ends up being a better experience for the entire audience.

Nick Clason (15:51.586)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (15:59.982)
Yeah, okay, so one like just last little point of clarification I have is when you get two contestants, do you have them bounce back and forth like you say a carb brand, I say a carb brand until the one person can't remember or do you give them each 45 seconds and they have to list as many as they can and then the other person goes.

Jay Reynolds (16:18.355)
Yeah, no, great question. in using the slides, you know, and for us, we had a screen right behind us. So it's easy for them to see, easy for the whole crowd to see that type of thing. And it was basically like a, you know, person A is person B. So A, know, it's just like, that's let's say it's animals like, that's a panda, you know, next person, person B. that's a, that's an eagle person A. that's a dolphin. You know, that's a shark, you know.

Nick Clason (16:30.843)
yeah, that's right.

Nick Clason (16:41.366)
Okay. Gotcha. So it's not like a speed thing against him. It's like, person A, this slide is yours and you either get it or you don't. Got it. Okay. Cool, cool,

Jay Reynolds (16:50.517)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, if it takes you a second, know, like animals is pretty easy, you know, but, know, when you get into like, and I think like for, was it like cereals? I may have had a picture of the cereal. I may have had the box and kind of canvad out the name of it or something like that, but make it so it's recognizable. But you're like, it takes you a minute or not a minute, but it takes you a few moments to think about it. You know, the overall timer was 45 seconds.

Nick Clason (17:06.71)
Right, right.

Jay Reynolds (17:17.053)
and was just whoever got the most correct, but it was just back and forth, back and forth, that type of thing. Yeah.

Nick Clason (17:19.286)
Yeah.

That's awesome. I love it. Okay. Now you told me when we were texting back and forth, like, do you still have the purpose under file? Like, is that something that, that, you could get and we could give to people who are listening? Yeah, that'd be amazing.

Jay Reynolds (17:34.581)
Dude, I'd love to, you know? And so, yeah, and I use ProPresenter and so, you know, it's all built in ProPresenter, but I, man, I think it's all built in folders. So if you don't use, you know, if somebody's listening and they wanna try it out, I think I have folders that are all like the images. And I built, I built the floor off 16, but I built like two other categories. So if like something happened, like they, or something glitches, you know, things like that. So I think I technically built like.

Nick Clason (17:51.714)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (18:01.27)
Right, you gotta fall back, yeah. Okay.

Jay Reynolds (18:03.317)
18 categories. But man, I would gladly share it, you know.

Nick Clason (18:07.818)
Yeah, that'd be super cool. Yeah, so we'll get that from you and we'll link it down below. I think the thing I like the most about this is that you can make this the game for your D now, your winter retreat, your fall retreat, whatever, and you can just go back to it. And as opposed to every session, let's say you got four sessions over the course of a weekend, you don't have to come up with four things. This thing carries you all weekend long.

the more they know it or get to understand the rules of it, by the end of it, the hype level is probably gonna be raising every single time they do it. So maybe Friday night, it's basic understanding and basic learning, but by the end of it, people get the rules, they're locked into it, and they're trying to carry home the ultimate floor champion moniker, if they get to take home that final prize or whatever.

I think those are some of my favorite styles of games, things that can just, that well that you can kind of keep going back to. And so that's what I love about it. And I did not understand it at all when we were texting. So as you've described it more, I'm more more into it. And even my wheels now are turning. I'm like, all right, we got a winter retreat coming up. Do we incorporate this? Or do we bring this with us to summer camp or something like that? Because this sounds super fun, super amazing. And just a great way to like,

build the competition and build the camaraderie.

Jay Reynolds (19:37.181)
Yeah. And I think, you know, that's exactly it, man. You know, and if you think through like and how we set it up, like I think we just set up like two or three, you know, or maybe it's like two blocks and just like right as a center aisle. But let's just talk a little bit about that. Like I use painter's tape so that way it's not messing with the floor at all. Super cheap. But then what I did to make it easier is like think through if you were playing like that, that kids like dock game, you have to build boxes.

Nick Clason (19:49.485)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (19:55.319)
Right, and cheap.

Nick Clason (20:05.709)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Reynolds (20:06.451)
Yeah. So think of it in that a whole frame on the outside was just solid lines to be able to build it. But on the inside, it was all like, you know, just think through each box by itself, because then when you have some volunteers like, box eight takes over seven, you know, and now you pull that one strip between the two. Now, you know, it's all box eight, right? You know? And so that just makes it easier logistically, because if you run long strips,

Nick Clason (20:11.607)
Right.

Nick Clason (20:16.91)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (20:26.163)
Mmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Clason (20:32.558)
Totally.

Jay Reynolds (20:34.451)
like across multiple boxes on the interior, then like, now I have to like weirdly pick up like. Yeah, and that will be logistically, you know, that's like something like, I didn't think of it until I was in the in the in the situation. Now it's an issue is that think through like small like so the boxes say, you know, two or three feet wide, you know, just the interior pieces are all single pieces.

Nick Clason (20:40.788)
Yeah, cut it and yeah.

Nick Clason (20:50.124)
Right, yeah.

Nick Clason (20:59.852)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (21:00.393)
So it's a little bit longer to set up, not much, but a little bit longer to set up, but much easier for flow by game flow.

Nick Clason (21:08.046)
Yeah, I got you. Okay, so then, you know, seven overtakes eight. On Saturday morning, do you redraw, like, the seven box, or has seven still overtaken eight on Saturday morning for that morning's board? Does that make sense?

Jay Reynolds (21:24.713)
Yeah. Say seven takes over eight. And so now, yeah. And so basically your goal is to win the whole floor, you know? And so, ultimately, you know, and so now you get down to it is like, let's just say you winner keeps winning and they keep staying, they keep playing all this kind of stuff. And now you get down to it. They have 15 boxes, you know? And so let's just say it's one against number now, like let's say nine that won everything. One didn't.

Nick Clason (21:31.458)
The whole thing, yeah.

Nick Clason (21:40.097)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (21:51.063)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (21:52.319)
play at all. And it's just the kid who just got in that day and they just sat and watched nine keep winning, keep winning. And they get up there and then one who's had no action the entire time. They beat this person who's won everything. It's like a David and glide style matchup. And then they win that round. They win it all, you know? And so that's the other thing. What's intriguing about it. It's like, you know, some games it's like, if you're, could have the sheer advantage.

Nick Clason (21:56.278)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (22:09.918)
moment yeah yeah that's cool that's cool

Jay Reynolds (22:21.885)
or you keep winning and then now it like builds all this momentum. It's nice because it's almost, it's like there's neutralizers built into this game all the way throughout, you know? And it could just be like, just luck of the draw. Like, I don't know, I don't eat cereal. I only eat toast. Like I don't even know. And then that kid who's like, man, just sat, I randomly got chosen. You know, the kid who's like, man, I don't know it. I just eat cereal every day. I don't even know why I'm here, but I know this. And then I ended up winning everything, you know?

Nick Clason (22:29.238)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (22:37.857)
you

Nick Clason (22:47.351)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool.

Jay Reynolds (22:50.813)
And so that's the cool thing that makes it so easy and fun and all that kind of stuff.

Nick Clason (22:57.43)
Yeah, that's amazing. Nice. All right, bro. That really does sound super fun, super cool. So any last final parting words about retreats or games or this game in particular before we hit stop and close out the recording?

Jay Reynolds (23:15.219)
Yeah, dude, I think the last thing I'd say as far as for playing this game, because it builds on itself, you know, think through, I think how I played it was Friday night. I think I only did three questions, you know, because of Friday night, you have the rules, you have all this kind of stuff and not just the rules for this game, but, know, just think through your retreat overall. What is all of it, you know, entail? And so, you know, we did maybe three questions and then that allowed us to choose which other session do we want to do five, you know?

Nick Clason (23:25.954)
Okay.

Nick Clason (23:33.197)
Right.

Jay Reynolds (23:43.517)
And so just think through some of that from a momentum standpoint on how you want to play it. The other thing from a momentum is let your, you know, your session prizes build. So Friday night, maybe it is like a, you know, hat in like two bags of candy, you know, but then Saturday morning, you know, I think we did prizes that like relate. We were going to do like some, some, I don't know, pool games and things like that. So we gave away like beach towels, you know,

Nick Clason (23:43.725)
Mm.

Nick Clason (23:47.447)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (23:54.669)
Mmm.

Nick Clason (24:12.436)
Okay. Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (24:12.871)
and candy, right? And so it just kind of built and it just seemed that, you know, as the game builds, because it's over multiple sessions, that if you have budget and that's how you kind of ministry works, I would encourage you to think through, let your prizes build also, you know, and because that is just going to intuitively kind of go in with the whole game, you know, that type of thing. And so for me, my style is I always get other leaders involved, you know, small group leaders, things like that. I'm like, Hey, pick two kids to play, pick two kids to play.

Nick Clason (24:26.935)
Yeah.

Nick Clason (24:32.673)
yeah that makes sense

Nick Clason (24:40.8)
huh.

Jay Reynolds (24:42.687)
You know, and so, you know, that's how I help in the randomization, you know, but I'm getting other leaders involved in that process. That also helps like in a ministry. it's not like, Jay just picked his favorite kids to play to try to win, you know, well, no, I picked this leader and that lead, you know, and so it's like, I try to, so depending on how the structure is set up, getting other voices involved, help to take away like what could be speculation. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:04.513)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Clason (25:09.408)
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I love it, man. Well, I, again, I appreciate your time. I thought this was a great conversation, great game. Like, and that one of the things I think is so, like interesting in the world of youth pastors, cause I did this too once where I was like watching a game show, you know, just at home with my wife and I was like,

I can make that into a game. You know what mean? And that's just the way our brain, we never turn off, we never stop thinking, we never stop ideating. And so I've never heard of this concept before, I've never even heard of this game show, but you're so right. It's a perfect youth ministry game and I love the fact that it can span the whole thing. And that's exactly what I was looking for, for all these different conversations, all these different ideas. And so again, really appreciate you hopping on and we'll throw the link to your.

Jay Reynolds (25:33.036)
yeah.

Never. Never.

Jay Reynolds (25:48.627)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Clason (25:57.634)
your files and stuff like that down below. really appreciate you giving that away and that'll be super helpful for anyone who wants to take it and run with it.

Jay Reynolds (26:05.683)
Yeah, feel free. And hey, if one of your listeners wants to try it out and they get a little confused or want to kind of process through a little bit more, dude, feel free. You know, they can reach out and connect me with them. I'd love to kind of just help walk alongside someone who's trying to, you know, trying something new in their context, trying something to see what it would work. And I hope for folks who try it.

Nick Clason (26:14.851)
Yeah.

Jay Reynolds (26:25.683)
Man, hope you end of the day, if you're gonna play game like this, it's just as much as you having fun with your kids, with your students having fun, because that's kind of the momentum that really builds and getting them all into it.

Nick Clason (26:36.364)
Yeah, perfect. All right, Jay. Well, I appreciate it, And everyone else, thanks for listening. And we'll talk again soon. See you.

Jay Reynolds (26:43.455)
Cool, great chat man, take care.

]]> Episode 147: From No Budget to Pro - Summer Camp 2025 Photography & Videography Setup Guide https://www.hybridministry.xyz/147 9afbd76d-e125-41a8-892b-de25bdd3f05d Thu, 01 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500 Nick Clason 147 From No Budget to Pro - Summer Camp 2025 Photography & Videography Setup Guide full Nick Clason Want pro-level camp content without a pro-level budget? In this episode, Nick Clason, of Hybrid Ministry, breaks down the exact gear, tips, and hacks you need to capture incredible summer camp photos and videos—even if you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re using a phone, DSLR, or just your creativity, we’ll help you level up your visual game to create that momentum back at your church that camp deserves! 13:17 no Want pro-level camp content without a pro-level budget? In this episode, Nick Clason, of Hybrid Ministry, breaks down the exact gear, tips, and hacks you need to capture incredible summer camp photos and videos—even if you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re using a phone, DSLR, or just your creativity, we’ll help you level up your visual game to create that momentum back at your church that camp deserves! 📋 "PICK NICK'S BRAIN" Coaching Call https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/coaching 📊 [FREE] HYBRID STRATEGY GUIDE https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book SHOW NOTES Shownotes & Transcripts https://www.hybridministry.xyz/147 🎧 [BONUS PODCAST] Become a “Hybrid Hero" Patreon Members Get All My Resources in the Patreon Shop for FREE! https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry CHURCH COMMS DONE FOR YOU Hire me to run your church website, social media or communications! https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/comms //STUDIO GEAR SHOPPING LIST https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/studio 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz -------------- 🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉 We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context! The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe! https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick -------------- 🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU! Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products VIDIQ https://vidiq.com/hybrid BEST DYM RESOURCES https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361 //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit -------------- 🕰️TIMECODES 00:00 Why Summer Camps Matter 01:14 Why Camp Videography & Photography Matter 03:16 Step #1 No Matter What 04:37 Easy Camp Media Strategy 06:25 Medium [& FREE!] Camp Media Strategy 11:11 Most Difficult [But Best] Camp Media Strategy -------------- TRANSCRIPT 00;00;00;22 - 00;00;28;00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So when I first started in youth ministry, I was like a mission trip guy. All about mission trips. Took my students on their first mission trip, charge them around $1,000, travel, lodging, all the things that you need to do pretty cheap for a mission trip, honestly. And then I was getting ready doing my budget and calendaring process for the next year, and I started thinking, like in the current context in which I was in all the same students, we're going to go back on the same mission trip. 00;00;28;03 - 00;00;56;09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry They're going to write support letters to all the same people. And I was like, it might be too soon. So decided to do a camp, stumbled into an amazing camp experience that we did and produced all by ourselves, trying to keep it dirt cheap and thus invented my love for summer camp at that point. Now, some of you have been all around summer camp, but what became so necessary was the need for amazing videography and amazing photography at summer camp. 00;00;56;09 - 00;01;21;05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so in this episode, I want to tell you how I stumbled into it, and I want to give you three ideas of how you can have amazing camp content that is going to help, reinforce and help your church get on board with your summer camp experience. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So the continuation of that story is I start going to camp, we start adding more and more students, and I'm at my business meeting. 00;01;21;05 - 00;01;42;01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Give me a like, if you've ever had to go to a congregational business meeting. And I had a few naysayers who were like, this is an astronomical amount to spend for camp. What I felt like they may not have been taking into consideration is the fact that, like, I had to get approval to spend the entire amount of money, including the money that students were going to be paying into it. 00;01;42;01 - 00;02;02;13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so, like the total amount of money out of the budget was like five grand. But in totality, I was requesting something like $46,000 to be spent, but that included the $300 student registration, you know, or whatever it was. And so with those naysayers, I then was like, I need I need them to see why this is worth it. 00;02;02;13 - 00;02;23;03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And I need them to get on board. And I need I want the church to support what the student ministry is doing. And so I went to my friend who was my roommate in college and I knew had a degree in like digital media. And I was like, bro, what do I need to pay you to come to camp and create amazing recap videos that are going to make people cry. 00;02;23;06 - 00;02;47;29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And then, the very next Sunday, we were back at church and we shared like a testimony recap video that was like 12 minutes long. And some kids were like, I accepted Jesus at the altar the last night of camp. And I mean, I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye in the room. Camp media is an amazing tool to help your parents, your church, your pastor, your boss. 00;02;47;29 - 00;03;08;03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry See what's going on at camp. And in this video, I want to share with you an easy way to do it for basically free. I want to share with you a medium, difficulty level of doing it. And then I want to share with you a higher level of difficulty and perhaps the most expensive, but probably, as always, as you know, the more you pay, the better the product. 00;03;08;07 - 00;03;35;19 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Let's hop in. Welcome to this edition of How Do I Do? Camp media on the Hybrid Ministry show. So first and foremost, you want to have some sort of text message or, channel back to parents. Okay. So you can send them links to your videos, links to albums, links to photos, whatever it is that you take. And so, like I said, we're going to do an easy a medium and a higher level of difficulty in this episode. 00;03;35;19 - 00;03;59;07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But first and foremost, philosophy, basically, no matter what level of difficulty you do, you need to have some sort of, channel back to parents. That's going to be your number one advocate, especially for the week while you're at camp. Now, once you return, if you have like a student take over Sunday or whatever, like you can you can implement some of these things that you've you've pulled together at camp and find a way to package them and show them to the rest of your congregation. 00;03;59;09 - 00;04;17;20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But while you're at camp, if you want to have a buzz amongst your parents, you need to get it back into them. So, you can do some sort of text message group. You can do some sort of Facebook group. You can even post some of this stuff on your YouTube channel and then send the links to those in your Facebook group or in your text message group, or your parent email chain. 00;04;17;20 - 00;04;32;12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Whatever it is, figure out what works best in your context, but have something easy and preferably something that you can use on your phone. So as soon as you get a link, you can copy the link, you can send it out and you do it all on your mobile device. You don't need to sit down at a computer and try and find a way to do it at camp. 00;04;32;12 - 00;05;00;20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Now, how do you do easy videos at camp? Let's hop in. So the first way that you can do it is you can walk around with your camera, vertical based video, and you can, very simply, you can, auto cut those videos in an app like TikTok or in your Instagram Reels editor, and you can send out daily, shorts, daily TikToks, daily real type videos. 00;05;00;22 - 00;05;19;22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And you can send the links to those in text groups or, in some sort of Facebook became post posts in Facebook. That's super easy. You or leader walk around vertical based video and all you need is clips of anywhere from 5 to 8 seconds. You don't need any longer because you're just going to overlay it with music and maybe some captions on screen and off you go. 00;05;19;27 - 00;05;38;23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry You want to keep those 60s or less. And so the quicker and shorter the videos. So if you have the wherewithal in your mind to walk around, play your camera out five seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds, nine seconds, three seconds and then stitch all those together in like an auto cut feature in TikTok. You're going to be going in and off to the races. 00;05;38;26 - 00;05;58;22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Now. How do you easily, source photos? You tell your students, hey, send pictures on this hashtag, or if they're not going to post on like, Instagram, like that, send photos in this text group and this DM thread, whatever you choose to use some sort of, function to get those photos back to you, create a shared Google Photos album, whatever. 00;05;58;25 - 00;06;15;02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Put all your pictures in here, and then you can crowdsource those, and you can create a slideshow at the end of the night. Or if you're at some sort of camp, like a, like a generate or a feud or a lift or something like that, where you don't have control over what ends up on screen, then you create albums and you send those out in Facebook groups to parents. 00;06;15;02 - 00;06;36;14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry That's the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. Okay, now what about medium? And this is honestly, this is a big step up and it's going to cost you next to nothing. Let's check it out. So genuinely I've done this before okay. And if you want to create daily recap videos again you have control of the screens. So daily recap videos that you can show in your sessions. 00;06;36;21 - 00;06;53;17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Or if you don't have control of the screens at a minimum daily recap videos that you can post to YouTube. Let me show you how you can do it on Cap cut. All right, so if you're watching here on screen, this is what I did, a couple years ago, we didn't hire and have money, for a videographer. 00;06;53;17 - 00;07;13;23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so I would do daily recap videos in the cabin at night, throw my headphones on, and kids are all sleeping. And so I'm here on cap cut out, hit new project. And let's just do these, videos of my dog, okay? And so I would click, all the videos I want to add and I'd click add three. 00;07;13;25 - 00;07;40;14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And here I am now and I can create some sort of video. So there's my dog and there's another video of my dog and there's another little video of my dog. Now, what you can do is you can add animations, and anything if you are doing like a free account, anything with like the little like pro features or things, there. 00;07;40;16 - 00;08;06;18 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Those don't use those. But if you find any of the ones like this one right here, that is free, okay, it'll come right in. And there you go. Boom off you go. And if you want to like add a text that says, you know, like day one recap. Put it right there and hope I'm exporting. Don't want to export quit. 00;08;06;21 - 00;08;25;29 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So there it is. Day one recap. Now I can edit this text click style. And once again you want to make sure you don't add a pro feature. So see those little corners right there. So this one's this one's free. Day one recap. Change the font. Find one that's not a pro font. And off we go. 00;08;26;02 - 00;08;47;15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Right right there. All of these are not pro fonts. And so the main thing if you want to keep it free is that you don't add anything. Pro font. All right. Right here I can add some sort of transition. So here's a transition that's not that is pro don't remind me again. I might not. Oh here's one pull in. 00;08;47;17 - 00;09;15;22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Okay. And there we go. And I go all the way through at the end. I can also add things like, stickers. I can add text to audio, and I can add music. And that's what I do when I add some audio. And so if I want to go to some sounds and find something like this one here, that's not, that's not, pro. 00;09;15;24 - 00;09;41;03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Now I got a video and then I hit export. And we are off to the races. And you'll see here on screen, if you're watching, you can see the finalized video of my dog. It's beautiful. Who doesn't love it? This would take me about an hour after lights out, but I want to let you know that it is completely free, so after you've done your capture video, what if you want photos? 00;09;41;08 - 00;10;01;00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Well, what if you took a leader, not someone who's have an elite? A small group would be a cabin leader, and they're just a dedicated photographer. You're only cost in that. Give them a cell phone. Have them take it on an iPhone. Google pixel, a nice phone. You're only cost in. That is your perhaps payment of their registration fee. 00;10;01;00 - 00;10;25;24 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Unless, of course, you're charging your leaders to go, in which case you're good and you say, hey, listen, your only job is take photos and send these daily recaps back home to parents, and you give them that job. And so all week, their entire sole focus using just their cell phone is to take good photos. And so then with your daily recaps and your lidar photos, you can, bring those back and you can present those to your church. 00;10;25;24 - 00;10;42;23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Now, the last little bit in this is if you want and studio, link down below. You can grab some Bluetooth microphones. You can also take some video on your cell phone, just like I showed you. Stitch it together and cap cut. But you can take students testimonies and tell them, hey, what, what stood out to you? 00;10;42;23 - 00;11;00;17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry How to God move in your life this week? Like all that type of stuff? And you can create a recap testimony video and you can show that on screen the quality is great. You saw the export quality was like 1080p. You can export it even up to 4K, and you can shoot it in 4K on your camera if it if it's able to handle it. 00;11;00;20 - 00;11;20;05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And then you can show that on a screen. You can also post that to something like YouTube and then share it in your Facebook group. But what about the best and probably most expensive? Well, let's dive in. Your final your best is you want those daily recap videos. You want that final big testimony video. Your best bang. 00;11;20;07 - 00;11;38;22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Like, not bang for your buck, right? This is going to cost you money, but you hire a videographer. Maybe you're church or something. Maybe you know someone, but you bring someone in, they bring all their own gear and they, follow students around. They capture footage, and their entire job is to create daily recap videos for you on the big screen at night. 00;11;38;22 - 00;11;59;02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry If you have control of that, or post them to YouTube and then create that testimony video. And if you can hire that same person, or maybe hire a second person to take photos on a good camera that they have, that's going to be your highest barrier to entry. You're probably going to have to a pay for them to go to camp, be pay for their lodging and all that stuff. 00;11;59;05 - 00;12;18;11 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So let's say that's anywhere from 3 to $400, and then you're going to pay them a fee, 800 bucks, 1500 bucks. It is expensive. But if you have the budget, I'm just telling you like it does end up being worth it and you end up with much higher quality footage. And what you can do on your phone and much higher caliber photos. 00;12;18;11 - 00;12;44;14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Now, if you're like, bro, I can't even get anywhere near that, then that medium range won't for you. As long as you're willing to put the work in. As long as you're willing to use cap cut, you can do it for very cheap and frankly, very free. And still get a very, very good result. Now, listen, your camp experience is very important, and students lives are often marked and changed at camp. 00;12;44;16 - 00;13;12;22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And what's also very important is that your people back home support you. Your parents know what's going on, and they can advocate and create a buzz around your student ministry. So don't fumble the bag. This summer on creating amazing camp media and amazing camp content. I'm rooting for you, have an amazing camp and crush it with a digital media this summer so that your church can get on board and support what your student ministry has going on. 00;13;12;29 - 00;13;16;25 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Thanks for being here. We'll talk next time and don't forget to stay hybrid. Hybrid Ministry, Nick Clason, youth ministry, church media, summer camp, camp videography, camp photography, no budget setup, ministry video gear, DSLR for churches, iPhone videography, social media for churches, youth camp content, digital ministry, church content creation, video editing tips, ministry on a budget, content creation, church tech, youth group videos, church photography, media ministry, summer camp tips, hybrid church, ministry marketing Want pro-level camp content without a pro-level budget? In this episode, Nick Clason, of Hybrid Ministry, breaks down the exact gear, tips, and hacks you need to capture incredible summer camp photos and videos—even if you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re using a phone, DSLR, or just your creativity, we’ll help you level up your visual game to create that momentum back at your church that camp deserves!

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We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
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Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
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BEST DYM RESOURCES
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OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
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🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Why Summer Camps Matter
01:14 Why Camp Videography & Photography Matter
03:16 Step #1 No Matter What
04:37 Easy Camp Media Strategy
06:25 Medium [& FREE!] Camp Media Strategy
11:11 Most Difficult [But Best] Camp Media Strategy

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;22 - 00;00;28;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So when I first started in youth ministry, I was like a mission trip guy. All about mission trips. Took my students on their first mission trip, charge them around $1,000, travel, lodging, all the things that you need to do pretty cheap for a mission trip, honestly. And then I was getting ready doing my budget and calendaring process for the next year, and I started thinking, like in the current context in which I was in all the same students, we're going to go back on the same mission trip.

00;00;28;03 - 00;00;56;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're going to write support letters to all the same people. And I was like, it might be too soon. So decided to do a camp, stumbled into an amazing camp experience that we did and produced all by ourselves, trying to keep it dirt cheap and thus invented my love for summer camp at that point. Now, some of you have been all around summer camp, but what became so necessary was the need for amazing videography and amazing photography at summer camp.

00;00;56;09 - 00;01;21;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this episode, I want to tell you how I stumbled into it, and I want to give you three ideas of how you can have amazing camp content that is going to help, reinforce and help your church get on board with your summer camp experience. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So the continuation of that story is I start going to camp, we start adding more and more students, and I'm at my business meeting.

00;01;21;05 - 00;01;42;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like, if you've ever had to go to a congregational business meeting. And I had a few naysayers who were like, this is an astronomical amount to spend for camp. What I felt like they may not have been taking into consideration is the fact that, like, I had to get approval to spend the entire amount of money, including the money that students were going to be paying into it.

00;01;42;01 - 00;02;02;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, like the total amount of money out of the budget was like five grand. But in totality, I was requesting something like $46,000 to be spent, but that included the $300 student registration, you know, or whatever it was. And so with those naysayers, I then was like, I need I need them to see why this is worth it.

00;02;02;13 - 00;02;23;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I need them to get on board. And I need I want the church to support what the student ministry is doing. And so I went to my friend who was my roommate in college and I knew had a degree in like digital media. And I was like, bro, what do I need to pay you to come to camp and create amazing recap videos that are going to make people cry.

00;02;23;06 - 00;02;47;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, the very next Sunday, we were back at church and we shared like a testimony recap video that was like 12 minutes long. And some kids were like, I accepted Jesus at the altar the last night of camp. And I mean, I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye in the room. Camp media is an amazing tool to help your parents, your church, your pastor, your boss.

00;02;47;29 - 00;03;08;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
See what's going on at camp. And in this video, I want to share with you an easy way to do it for basically free. I want to share with you a medium, difficulty level of doing it. And then I want to share with you a higher level of difficulty and perhaps the most expensive, but probably, as always, as you know, the more you pay, the better the product.

00;03;08;07 - 00;03;35;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's hop in. Welcome to this edition of How Do I Do? Camp media on the Hybrid Ministry show. So first and foremost, you want to have some sort of text message or, channel back to parents. Okay. So you can send them links to your videos, links to albums, links to photos, whatever it is that you take. And so, like I said, we're going to do an easy a medium and a higher level of difficulty in this episode.

00;03;35;19 - 00;03;59;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But first and foremost, philosophy, basically, no matter what level of difficulty you do, you need to have some sort of, channel back to parents. That's going to be your number one advocate, especially for the week while you're at camp. Now, once you return, if you have like a student take over Sunday or whatever, like you can you can implement some of these things that you've you've pulled together at camp and find a way to package them and show them to the rest of your congregation.

00;03;59;09 - 00;04;17;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But while you're at camp, if you want to have a buzz amongst your parents, you need to get it back into them. So, you can do some sort of text message group. You can do some sort of Facebook group. You can even post some of this stuff on your YouTube channel and then send the links to those in your Facebook group or in your text message group, or your parent email chain.

00;04;17;20 - 00;04;32;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Whatever it is, figure out what works best in your context, but have something easy and preferably something that you can use on your phone. So as soon as you get a link, you can copy the link, you can send it out and you do it all on your mobile device. You don't need to sit down at a computer and try and find a way to do it at camp.

00;04;32;12 - 00;05;00;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, how do you do easy videos at camp? Let's hop in. So the first way that you can do it is you can walk around with your camera, vertical based video, and you can, very simply, you can, auto cut those videos in an app like TikTok or in your Instagram Reels editor, and you can send out daily, shorts, daily TikToks, daily real type videos.

00;05;00;22 - 00;05;19;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can send the links to those in text groups or, in some sort of Facebook became post posts in Facebook. That's super easy. You or leader walk around vertical based video and all you need is clips of anywhere from 5 to 8 seconds. You don't need any longer because you're just going to overlay it with music and maybe some captions on screen and off you go.

00;05;19;27 - 00;05;38;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You want to keep those 60s or less. And so the quicker and shorter the videos. So if you have the wherewithal in your mind to walk around, play your camera out five seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds, nine seconds, three seconds and then stitch all those together in like an auto cut feature in TikTok. You're going to be going in and off to the races.

00;05;38;26 - 00;05;58;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now. How do you easily, source photos? You tell your students, hey, send pictures on this hashtag, or if they're not going to post on like, Instagram, like that, send photos in this text group and this DM thread, whatever you choose to use some sort of, function to get those photos back to you, create a shared Google Photos album, whatever.

00;05;58;25 - 00;06;15;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Put all your pictures in here, and then you can crowdsource those, and you can create a slideshow at the end of the night. Or if you're at some sort of camp, like a, like a generate or a feud or a lift or something like that, where you don't have control over what ends up on screen, then you create albums and you send those out in Facebook groups to parents.

00;06;15;02 - 00;06;36;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. Okay, now what about medium? And this is honestly, this is a big step up and it's going to cost you next to nothing. Let's check it out. So genuinely I've done this before okay. And if you want to create daily recap videos again you have control of the screens. So daily recap videos that you can show in your sessions.

00;06;36;21 - 00;06;53;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you don't have control of the screens at a minimum daily recap videos that you can post to YouTube. Let me show you how you can do it on Cap cut. All right, so if you're watching here on screen, this is what I did, a couple years ago, we didn't hire and have money, for a videographer.

00;06;53;17 - 00;07;13;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I would do daily recap videos in the cabin at night, throw my headphones on, and kids are all sleeping. And so I'm here on cap cut out, hit new project. And let's just do these, videos of my dog, okay? And so I would click, all the videos I want to add and I'd click add three.

00;07;13;25 - 00;07;40;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here I am now and I can create some sort of video. So there's my dog and there's another video of my dog and there's another little video of my dog. Now, what you can do is you can add animations, and anything if you are doing like a free account, anything with like the little like pro features or things, there.

00;07;40;16 - 00;08;06;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Those don't use those. But if you find any of the ones like this one right here, that is free, okay, it'll come right in. And there you go. Boom off you go. And if you want to like add a text that says, you know, like day one recap. Put it right there and hope I'm exporting. Don't want to export quit.

00;08;06;21 - 00;08;25;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So there it is. Day one recap. Now I can edit this text click style. And once again you want to make sure you don't add a pro feature. So see those little corners right there. So this one's this one's free. Day one recap. Change the font. Find one that's not a pro font. And off we go.

00;08;26;02 - 00;08;47;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right right there. All of these are not pro fonts. And so the main thing if you want to keep it free is that you don't add anything. Pro font. All right. Right here I can add some sort of transition. So here's a transition that's not that is pro don't remind me again. I might not. Oh here's one pull in.

00;08;47;17 - 00;09;15;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And there we go. And I go all the way through at the end. I can also add things like, stickers. I can add text to audio, and I can add music. And that's what I do when I add some audio. And so if I want to go to some sounds and find something like this one here, that's not, that's not, pro.

00;09;15;24 - 00;09;41;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now I got a video and then I hit export. And we are off to the races. And you'll see here on screen, if you're watching, you can see the finalized video of my dog. It's beautiful. Who doesn't love it? This would take me about an hour after lights out, but I want to let you know that it is completely free, so after you've done your capture video, what if you want photos?

00;09;41;08 - 00;10;01;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, what if you took a leader, not someone who's have an elite? A small group would be a cabin leader, and they're just a dedicated photographer. You're only cost in that. Give them a cell phone. Have them take it on an iPhone. Google pixel, a nice phone. You're only cost in. That is your perhaps payment of their registration fee.

00;10;01;00 - 00;10;25;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Unless, of course, you're charging your leaders to go, in which case you're good and you say, hey, listen, your only job is take photos and send these daily recaps back home to parents, and you give them that job. And so all week, their entire sole focus using just their cell phone is to take good photos. And so then with your daily recaps and your lidar photos, you can, bring those back and you can present those to your church.

00;10;25;24 - 00;10;42;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, the last little bit in this is if you want and studio, link down below. You can grab some Bluetooth microphones. You can also take some video on your cell phone, just like I showed you. Stitch it together and cap cut. But you can take students testimonies and tell them, hey, what, what stood out to you?

00;10;42;23 - 00;11;00;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How to God move in your life this week? Like all that type of stuff? And you can create a recap testimony video and you can show that on screen the quality is great. You saw the export quality was like 1080p. You can export it even up to 4K, and you can shoot it in 4K on your camera if it if it's able to handle it.

00;11;00;20 - 00;11;20;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then you can show that on a screen. You can also post that to something like YouTube and then share it in your Facebook group. But what about the best and probably most expensive? Well, let's dive in. Your final your best is you want those daily recap videos. You want that final big testimony video. Your best bang.

00;11;20;07 - 00;11;38;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, not bang for your buck, right? This is going to cost you money, but you hire a videographer. Maybe you're church or something. Maybe you know someone, but you bring someone in, they bring all their own gear and they, follow students around. They capture footage, and their entire job is to create daily recap videos for you on the big screen at night.

00;11;38;22 - 00;11;59;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you have control of that, or post them to YouTube and then create that testimony video. And if you can hire that same person, or maybe hire a second person to take photos on a good camera that they have, that's going to be your highest barrier to entry. You're probably going to have to a pay for them to go to camp, be pay for their lodging and all that stuff.

00;11;59;05 - 00;12;18;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So let's say that's anywhere from 3 to $400, and then you're going to pay them a fee, 800 bucks, 1500 bucks. It is expensive. But if you have the budget, I'm just telling you like it does end up being worth it and you end up with much higher quality footage. And what you can do on your phone and much higher caliber photos.

00;12;18;11 - 00;12;44;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you're like, bro, I can't even get anywhere near that, then that medium range won't for you. As long as you're willing to put the work in. As long as you're willing to use cap cut, you can do it for very cheap and frankly, very free. And still get a very, very good result. Now, listen, your camp experience is very important, and students lives are often marked and changed at camp.

00;12;44;16 - 00;13;12;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what's also very important is that your people back home support you. Your parents know what's going on, and they can advocate and create a buzz around your student ministry. So don't fumble the bag. This summer on creating amazing camp media and amazing camp content. I'm rooting for you, have an amazing camp and crush it with a digital media this summer so that your church can get on board and support what your student ministry has going on.

00;13;12;29 - 00;13;16;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Thanks for being here. We'll talk next time and don't forget to stay hybrid.

]]> Want pro-level camp content without a pro-level budget? In this episode, Nick Clason, of Hybrid Ministry, breaks down the exact gear, tips, and hacks you need to capture incredible summer camp photos and videos—even if you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re using a phone, DSLR, or just your creativity, we’ll help you level up your visual game to create that momentum back at your church that camp deserves!

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--------------
🎉 FREE STUFF 🎉
We have all kinds of FREE Things that you can use in your context!
The best way to pay us back is a review or a YouTube Subscribe!
https://www.linktr.ee/clasonnick

--------------
🛠️TOOLS I USE THAT CAN HELP YOU!
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid

BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361

//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
00:00 Why Summer Camps Matter
01:14 Why Camp Videography & Photography Matter
03:16 Step #1 No Matter What
04:37 Easy Camp Media Strategy
06:25 Medium [& FREE!] Camp Media Strategy
11:11 Most Difficult [But Best] Camp Media Strategy

--------------
TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;22 - 00;00;28;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So when I first started in youth ministry, I was like a mission trip guy. All about mission trips. Took my students on their first mission trip, charge them around $1,000, travel, lodging, all the things that you need to do pretty cheap for a mission trip, honestly. And then I was getting ready doing my budget and calendaring process for the next year, and I started thinking, like in the current context in which I was in all the same students, we're going to go back on the same mission trip.

00;00;28;03 - 00;00;56;09
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They're going to write support letters to all the same people. And I was like, it might be too soon. So decided to do a camp, stumbled into an amazing camp experience that we did and produced all by ourselves, trying to keep it dirt cheap and thus invented my love for summer camp at that point. Now, some of you have been all around summer camp, but what became so necessary was the need for amazing videography and amazing photography at summer camp.

00;00;56;09 - 00;01;21;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this episode, I want to tell you how I stumbled into it, and I want to give you three ideas of how you can have amazing camp content that is going to help, reinforce and help your church get on board with your summer camp experience. Welcome, my friends, to the Hybrid Ministry Show. So the continuation of that story is I start going to camp, we start adding more and more students, and I'm at my business meeting.

00;01;21;05 - 00;01;42;01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like, if you've ever had to go to a congregational business meeting. And I had a few naysayers who were like, this is an astronomical amount to spend for camp. What I felt like they may not have been taking into consideration is the fact that, like, I had to get approval to spend the entire amount of money, including the money that students were going to be paying into it.

00;01;42;01 - 00;02;02;13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so, like the total amount of money out of the budget was like five grand. But in totality, I was requesting something like $46,000 to be spent, but that included the $300 student registration, you know, or whatever it was. And so with those naysayers, I then was like, I need I need them to see why this is worth it.

00;02;02;13 - 00;02;23;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I need them to get on board. And I need I want the church to support what the student ministry is doing. And so I went to my friend who was my roommate in college and I knew had a degree in like digital media. And I was like, bro, what do I need to pay you to come to camp and create amazing recap videos that are going to make people cry.

00;02;23;06 - 00;02;47;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then, the very next Sunday, we were back at church and we shared like a testimony recap video that was like 12 minutes long. And some kids were like, I accepted Jesus at the altar the last night of camp. And I mean, I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye in the room. Camp media is an amazing tool to help your parents, your church, your pastor, your boss.

00;02;47;29 - 00;03;08;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
See what's going on at camp. And in this video, I want to share with you an easy way to do it for basically free. I want to share with you a medium, difficulty level of doing it. And then I want to share with you a higher level of difficulty and perhaps the most expensive, but probably, as always, as you know, the more you pay, the better the product.

00;03;08;07 - 00;03;35;19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Let's hop in. Welcome to this edition of How Do I Do? Camp media on the Hybrid Ministry show. So first and foremost, you want to have some sort of text message or, channel back to parents. Okay. So you can send them links to your videos, links to albums, links to photos, whatever it is that you take. And so, like I said, we're going to do an easy a medium and a higher level of difficulty in this episode.

00;03;35;19 - 00;03;59;07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But first and foremost, philosophy, basically, no matter what level of difficulty you do, you need to have some sort of, channel back to parents. That's going to be your number one advocate, especially for the week while you're at camp. Now, once you return, if you have like a student take over Sunday or whatever, like you can you can implement some of these things that you've you've pulled together at camp and find a way to package them and show them to the rest of your congregation.

00;03;59;09 - 00;04;17;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But while you're at camp, if you want to have a buzz amongst your parents, you need to get it back into them. So, you can do some sort of text message group. You can do some sort of Facebook group. You can even post some of this stuff on your YouTube channel and then send the links to those in your Facebook group or in your text message group, or your parent email chain.

00;04;17;20 - 00;04;32;12
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Whatever it is, figure out what works best in your context, but have something easy and preferably something that you can use on your phone. So as soon as you get a link, you can copy the link, you can send it out and you do it all on your mobile device. You don't need to sit down at a computer and try and find a way to do it at camp.

00;04;32;12 - 00;05;00;20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, how do you do easy videos at camp? Let's hop in. So the first way that you can do it is you can walk around with your camera, vertical based video, and you can, very simply, you can, auto cut those videos in an app like TikTok or in your Instagram Reels editor, and you can send out daily, shorts, daily TikToks, daily real type videos.

00;05;00;22 - 00;05;19;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And you can send the links to those in text groups or, in some sort of Facebook became post posts in Facebook. That's super easy. You or leader walk around vertical based video and all you need is clips of anywhere from 5 to 8 seconds. You don't need any longer because you're just going to overlay it with music and maybe some captions on screen and off you go.

00;05;19;27 - 00;05;38;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You want to keep those 60s or less. And so the quicker and shorter the videos. So if you have the wherewithal in your mind to walk around, play your camera out five seconds, eight seconds, seven seconds, nine seconds, three seconds and then stitch all those together in like an auto cut feature in TikTok. You're going to be going in and off to the races.

00;05;38;26 - 00;05;58;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now. How do you easily, source photos? You tell your students, hey, send pictures on this hashtag, or if they're not going to post on like, Instagram, like that, send photos in this text group and this DM thread, whatever you choose to use some sort of, function to get those photos back to you, create a shared Google Photos album, whatever.

00;05;58;25 - 00;06;15;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Put all your pictures in here, and then you can crowdsource those, and you can create a slideshow at the end of the night. Or if you're at some sort of camp, like a, like a generate or a feud or a lift or something like that, where you don't have control over what ends up on screen, then you create albums and you send those out in Facebook groups to parents.

00;06;15;02 - 00;06;36;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's the easiest, lowest hanging fruit. Okay, now what about medium? And this is honestly, this is a big step up and it's going to cost you next to nothing. Let's check it out. So genuinely I've done this before okay. And if you want to create daily recap videos again you have control of the screens. So daily recap videos that you can show in your sessions.

00;06;36;21 - 00;06;53;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or if you don't have control of the screens at a minimum daily recap videos that you can post to YouTube. Let me show you how you can do it on Cap cut. All right, so if you're watching here on screen, this is what I did, a couple years ago, we didn't hire and have money, for a videographer.

00;06;53;17 - 00;07;13;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so I would do daily recap videos in the cabin at night, throw my headphones on, and kids are all sleeping. And so I'm here on cap cut out, hit new project. And let's just do these, videos of my dog, okay? And so I would click, all the videos I want to add and I'd click add three.

00;07;13;25 - 00;07;40;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And here I am now and I can create some sort of video. So there's my dog and there's another video of my dog and there's another little video of my dog. Now, what you can do is you can add animations, and anything if you are doing like a free account, anything with like the little like pro features or things, there.

00;07;40;16 - 00;08;06;18
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Those don't use those. But if you find any of the ones like this one right here, that is free, okay, it'll come right in. And there you go. Boom off you go. And if you want to like add a text that says, you know, like day one recap. Put it right there and hope I'm exporting. Don't want to export quit.

00;08;06;21 - 00;08;25;29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So there it is. Day one recap. Now I can edit this text click style. And once again you want to make sure you don't add a pro feature. So see those little corners right there. So this one's this one's free. Day one recap. Change the font. Find one that's not a pro font. And off we go.

00;08;26;02 - 00;08;47;15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right right there. All of these are not pro fonts. And so the main thing if you want to keep it free is that you don't add anything. Pro font. All right. Right here I can add some sort of transition. So here's a transition that's not that is pro don't remind me again. I might not. Oh here's one pull in.

00;08;47;17 - 00;09;15;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Okay. And there we go. And I go all the way through at the end. I can also add things like, stickers. I can add text to audio, and I can add music. And that's what I do when I add some audio. And so if I want to go to some sounds and find something like this one here, that's not, that's not, pro.

00;09;15;24 - 00;09;41;03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now I got a video and then I hit export. And we are off to the races. And you'll see here on screen, if you're watching, you can see the finalized video of my dog. It's beautiful. Who doesn't love it? This would take me about an hour after lights out, but I want to let you know that it is completely free, so after you've done your capture video, what if you want photos?

00;09;41;08 - 00;10;01;00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Well, what if you took a leader, not someone who's have an elite? A small group would be a cabin leader, and they're just a dedicated photographer. You're only cost in that. Give them a cell phone. Have them take it on an iPhone. Google pixel, a nice phone. You're only cost in. That is your perhaps payment of their registration fee.

00;10;01;00 - 00;10;25;24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Unless, of course, you're charging your leaders to go, in which case you're good and you say, hey, listen, your only job is take photos and send these daily recaps back home to parents, and you give them that job. And so all week, their entire sole focus using just their cell phone is to take good photos. And so then with your daily recaps and your lidar photos, you can, bring those back and you can present those to your church.

00;10;25;24 - 00;10;42;23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, the last little bit in this is if you want and studio, link down below. You can grab some Bluetooth microphones. You can also take some video on your cell phone, just like I showed you. Stitch it together and cap cut. But you can take students testimonies and tell them, hey, what, what stood out to you?

00;10;42;23 - 00;11;00;17
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
How to God move in your life this week? Like all that type of stuff? And you can create a recap testimony video and you can show that on screen the quality is great. You saw the export quality was like 1080p. You can export it even up to 4K, and you can shoot it in 4K on your camera if it if it's able to handle it.

00;11;00;20 - 00;11;20;05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And then you can show that on a screen. You can also post that to something like YouTube and then share it in your Facebook group. But what about the best and probably most expensive? Well, let's dive in. Your final your best is you want those daily recap videos. You want that final big testimony video. Your best bang.

00;11;20;07 - 00;11;38;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like, not bang for your buck, right? This is going to cost you money, but you hire a videographer. Maybe you're church or something. Maybe you know someone, but you bring someone in, they bring all their own gear and they, follow students around. They capture footage, and their entire job is to create daily recap videos for you on the big screen at night.

00;11;38;22 - 00;11;59;02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you have control of that, or post them to YouTube and then create that testimony video. And if you can hire that same person, or maybe hire a second person to take photos on a good camera that they have, that's going to be your highest barrier to entry. You're probably going to have to a pay for them to go to camp, be pay for their lodging and all that stuff.

00;11;59;05 - 00;12;18;11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So let's say that's anywhere from 3 to $400, and then you're going to pay them a fee, 800 bucks, 1500 bucks. It is expensive. But if you have the budget, I'm just telling you like it does end up being worth it and you end up with much higher quality footage. And what you can do on your phone and much higher caliber photos.

00;12;18;11 - 00;12;44;14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now, if you're like, bro, I can't even get anywhere near that, then that medium range won't for you. As long as you're willing to put the work in. As long as you're willing to use cap cut, you can do it for very cheap and frankly, very free. And still get a very, very good result. Now, listen, your camp experience is very important, and students lives are often marked and changed at camp.

00;12;44;16 - 00;13;12;22
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And what's also very important is that your people back home support you. Your parents know what's going on, and they can advocate and create a buzz around your student ministry. So don't fumble the bag. This summer on creating amazing camp media and amazing camp content. I'm rooting for you, have an amazing camp and crush it with a digital media this summer so that your church can get on board and support what your student ministry has going on.

00;13;12;29 - 00;13;16;25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Thanks for being here. We'll talk next time and don't forget to stay hybrid.

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