Look who's coming to dinner
This versatile improvisation game called the “dinner party” can be played by youth of all ages and youth groups of all sizes. Youth may already be familiar with this game from the popular television show, “Whose Line Is it Anyway?” This game works best if it is played after a group has spent significant time studying a particular book of the Bible or a series of biblical stories with colorful characters.

Goal
The goal of this game is to give youth a deeper understanding of important people from the Bible by encouraging youth to portray a particular character.

Preparation
Write out character summary sheets for the characters you want the youth to portray. Include as much information as you think would be helpful for the particular character to be acted out. Consider including character traits, a character summary, and key Bible passages where the character appears. (If you have a biblically literate youth group, pick more obscure characters to challenge them.)

Hand out the summary sheet to each youth and give them 10 minutes to prepare to play the character. They may want to review the passage where the character appears, to refresh their memory.

If time and technology permit, show a scene from “Whose Line Is it Anyway?” from the Internet.

Game play
In this game, there will be one dinner party host and any number of guests. Each guest will be a different biblical character. The object of the game is for the host to guess the identity of each character.

Each guest will ring the “doorbell” or knock on the “door” to enter the scene. The host will greet each one, and should have a short conversation before letting in the next character.

After each character has entered the scene, the host talks with him or her individually to try to find out more. The host can guess who each character is at any time. Once a character is correctly guessed, he or she sits down.

If you have a few youth in your group who don’t enjoy this sort of activity, you can encourage them to be the hosts and work with them to ask questions of the characters. Or offer to pair up with them as a famous biblical duo (Cain and Abel, Aaron and Moses, Priscilla and Aquilla), while you do most of the talking. You could also ask them to play the part of a moderator who decides when the skit is over, or pair them with other youth who will be acting in order to come up with a script, jokes or insights ahead of time.

Post-game
Lead a discussion about each character. Ask the youth who participated why they portrayed their character as they did. What did they learn about each character that they may not have thought of before? What would they do differently next time? Ask the host what stuck out about each character. How did the host guess who each character was? Talk about why it’s important to get to know these characters—why it is beneficial to know these stories.

This game may also indicate whether the group could benefit from more Bible study!

Learn more: Service Adventure
Service Adventure is a program for young adults ages 17-20 to live in community with a unit leader, and lto earn about serving, worship, and God’s work in the world.