Youth Group Game and Lesson on Evangelism
Aaron Helman

Bible: Matthew 13:44
Topic: Telling others about Jesus

Use this youth group game and lesson to challenge the way your students think about sharing Jesus with their friends.

As students search for hidden treasure with no direction from their friends, they will learn how important it is to share directions to the most important treasure of all: Jesus.

Opening Game – Hidden Treasure
Supplies:
 A “treasure” (something like enough candy for the winning group)
 Clues written down to the location of the treasure: both true and false

Before the game starts, hide the treasure somewhere in the building, or outside, if that works with your location. Split the students into two groups.

Choose one student from each group and pull them aside. Tell them where the treasure is, but tell them that they cannot give their teammates any hints at all.

Send the surely confused students back to their groups and tell everyone to start looking for the treasure—without giving them any rules or hints to where it may be.

After teams have been looking for a while, start passing out clues. For every true clue you give the students, also give them a false clue.

After the students run around confused for a few minutes, eventually give them enough true clues to allow one of the groups to find the treasure.

Ask:
 Wasn’t that a confusing treasure hunt?
 Did the false clues make it a lot harder to find what you were looking for?
 Wouldn’t it have been easier if I had given you directions at the beginning of the game?
Teach – Evangelism
Say: Now, I’m going to confuse you all just a little bit more. What if I told you that (names of students you pulled aside at the beginning) knew where the treasure was the entire time?
Pause and allow students to react.
Say: That’s right, they knew exactly where the treasure was. They even knew that some of the clues I gave you were wrong!
If they had spoken up, your entire team would be enjoying candy right now!

Ask:
 What kind of friend keeps their mouth shut when they know something that could help their friends?
Say: Sadly, a lot of you may be that kind of friend this year.
You see, as you go back to school, you’re going to rub elbows with a lot of people who don’t know Jesus on a daily basis. You may even become close friends with some of them.

Ask:
 What kind of friend would you be if you didn’t tell them about Jesus?
Say: If you know Jesus, you already have found the greatest treasure in the entire world.
Ask:
 What reasons do you have to not tell your friends about Jesus?
 Do you agree that knowing Jesus is like having a treasure?
 If you think of knowing Jesus as a treasure, does that motivate you more to share him with others?
Say: It’s easy to just go throughout the school year focused on yourself. It would be really easy for you to just worry about your assignments and making sure you got in with the right group.
It would be easier to not worry about telling people about Jesus this school year. But if you did that, you would be withholding the secret to the greatest treasure there is.

Read: Matthew 13:44
“The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

Say: Isn’t that verse so cool? It shows us how excited we should be over the fact that we know about Jesus and Heaven.
The man in this story was so excited that he rushed to give away everything he had so he could get the treasure.

Now, if he was that excited, don’t you think he told all of his friends once he got the treasure?

Wrap up
Maybe you’ve never thought of having a relationship with Jesus as having a treasure. I hope that after reading that verse, you will.

Think of how many people in your school don’t know Jesus and are just blindly wandering around looking for something.

Just like in the game, they don’t have clear direction on where they should be looking. They’re receiving false advice on where they should be going. They’re waiting on someone to tell them something that makes sense.

You could be that someone. Someone needs to tell the students at your school about the greatest treasure they could ever have. Is it going to be you?

The above article, “Youth Group Game and Lesson on Evangelism” was written by Aaron Helman. The article was excerpted from www.ministrytoyouth.com web site. September 2017.

The material is copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.

This article may not be written by an Apostolic author, but it contains many excellent principles and concepts that can be adapted to most churches. As the old saying goes, “Eat the meat. Throw away the bones.”