Saturday, March 18, 2006

A Conference Wide Youth Lock-In Activity

Every year Mennonite churches in Bucks, Montgomery, and some neighboring counties of Pennsylvania hold a recreational all night lock-in at a local Mennonite school for youth in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. It begins on a Friday evening at 9:00 p.m. and ends Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m. The activities include worship times, movies, karaoke, snacking, and a wide variety of sports among other things. The sports included soccer, extreme dodgeball, wallyball, fosseball, ping pong, and basketball. The two movies were "Herbie: Fully Loaded" and "National Treasure."

I took a few pictures of the closing worship time and the karoke activity three of which are shown below.


Closing worship time was held in the bleachers in the school's gymnasium. I think there were around 340 youth and 80 adults at the Lock-In. The two following pictures were from the karaoke time. They often came up in large groups though some performed solos, duets, or trios.


7 comments:

Ginnie Hart said...

Those are the memories kids never forget! I have lots of them :)

sage said...

Sounds like fun for the kids, penance for the leaders!

consise10 said...

Looks like it would have been loads of fun for all those teens.Setting many sporting and other practical activities is definately the way to go for a 'lock down'.

Minka said...

I remember similar things in my childhood and it was always so exciting. Great for you to be involved in such things.

Tim Rice said...

Hi, ginnie. You're right and you are among the blessed.

sage, you certainly have a way with words. :) I'll have to ask my church's youth pastor if he felt like it was penance. He served on the committee that planned the whole event.

Thanks, consise10. I know the youth I talked with enjoyed the event though they were just barely awake by the time it was over.

Thanks, minka, for your thoughtful comments. I enjoyed being involved. It is also fun sometimes just relax and observe all the youth involvement and participation in the activities while being an available resource person.

Crystal said...

The "lock-in" is an interesting concept, but boy is that a big group! 400 people! Wow!

Tim Rice said...

Thanks, crystal. If you think 400 people is a lot, you should see our national Mennonite youth convention for those in the nineth through twelvth grades. They occur every two years now and usually have seven or eight thousand youth attending for five and a half days.