Here are some games and ideas to build a great atmosphere in your foyer before your big night or even upfront on stage before the event starts.

Pizza Race 

This is perfect if you plan to have pizza on the night anyway or to give the winning team pizza as their prize.

  • Choose contestants or teams and tell them to order a pizza, whatever pizza they want and from wherever they want. Just make one stipulation that they can’t order from the same place as the other team/contestant.
  • They one who is wins is the one who gets their pizza delivered to youth first, including getting it brought up on stage.
  • When the pizza is delivered you also have an awesome opportunity to bless the delivery person by giving them a huge tip and displaying to your youth the value of generosity.
  • Tip: have this as a game that you setup at the start of your pre-show and run another segment or 2 in the middle whilst you wait for the pizzas to arrive. Make sure your MCs keep referencing back to the ‘Great Pizza Race’.

The love Chair 

This is a classic stitch up and a great way to humble that guy who thinks he’s a real ladies man.

  • Pre-choose a girl to come and sit on the ‘love couch’, then select a guy who think he’s a real ladies man, but also someone you know is going to be able to take a laugh and bounce back from this well.
  • Once you have selected the guy tell him that he has 30 seconds to sit down next to this girl and use the best pick up lines he has to impress her.
  • What you don’t reveal to him is that the ‘love couch’ is rigged.
  • You have the girl already sitting on the “love couch”. Get the guy to sit next to her whilst disguising the hole in the “chair” and as they go to sit next to her they will fall straight through.
  • Setup: The “love couch” can be made from 2 chairs and some material spread over them with a chair size gap between them. Add some cushions to make it look good and just make sure there is no material slack where the gap is.

Trivia head shave 

You will need one to two leaders that are willing to have their heads shaved for this game, so it’s fair to say it is not a game you can do more than say once every 6 months, but this will have teenagers talking about it for months.

  • Have two leaders selected to have their heads shaved and electric hair clippers ready for them.
  • Sit them in 2 barbers chairs at the front facing the audience. If you can have a camera setup to capture the back of their heads and display it on a screen that’ll really add to the segment.
  • Split the room in two and have a trivia competition. Every correct answer earns that team a shave, they can select one person to come up and shave a strip in their leaders head.
  • First team to completely shave their leader’s head wins.
  • This is a great segment for catching everyones attention and creating a real buzz.

Rollercoaster Toilet

This another great stitch up for someone in your youth group. Select your victim and have some fun.

  • Select a volunteer to come and play this game. You tell them that they will be sent out the back with a leader and told to act something out and the audience have to guess what it is, call the game something like “extreme charades”.
  • Make sure to select a volunteer who is able to handle people laughing at them.
  • Once they have been sent out of the room and cannot hear you, the leader will tell the volunteer that they are to sit on the chair up on stage and act like they are on a roller coaster including making sounds.
  • Whilst this is happening the MC will inform everyone else that the person coming onto the stage is going to sit on the chair and act like they are going to the toilet.
  • When the volunteer comes up on stage, stand back and watch the magic unfold as everyone believe they are pretending to go the toilet but they believe they are acting like they are on some intense rollercoaster ride. Gives the youth some great laughs.

Perspex kiss 

This is sure to gross some people out and that’s how you know you’ve got a great segment on your hands.

  • Select two volunteers to come up and participate. They will be competing to clean their side of the perspex the fastest.
  • Have two leaders hold up a piece of perspex between the two volunteers at head height. On the perspex will be crackers stuck on by cream cheese or you can just smear some chocolate over both side.
  • On your count they must eat everything on their side of the perspex the fastest only using their mouth.
  • It looks hilarious as you can size tongues and lips smeared over the perspex desperately trying to eat and lick off all the food, whilst getting completely grossed out that they can see someone just 5mm away from them doing the same thing on the other side.

Dunk Off 

As simple but as epic as it gets. Get all those guys who think they are the next Jordan or Kobe and see if they really have what it takes.

  • Set up a basketball ring and the recommendation would be to lower the ring so that dunking is achievable for most people, this will mean that you will see some dunks or at least attempts with some actual flair.
  • Select as many volunteers as you want and line them up.
  • Get the crowd to give them a fast clap as a lead in to the dunk and watch the competition ensue.
  • At the end let you or more favourably the crowd be the judge. This is sure to create some hype.