Fun Bible Games for Teens and Youth Groups

Random games and icebreakers are fine to play in our youth groups, but often we'd rather go beyond the realm of entertainment to teach and inspire Christian teens in their faith. Here are nine fun Bible games that combine a great time with a great lesson.

Bible Charades

Playing Bible Charades is simple. It requires a little preparation by cutting up small pieces of paper and writing either Bible characters, Bible stories, books of the Bible, or Bible verses. Teens will act out what's on the paper, while the other team guesses. Bible charades is a great game for both individuals and groups of teams.

Bible Jeopardy

Played like the Jeopardy game you see on TV, there are "answers" (clues) to which the contestant must give the "question" (answer). Each clue is attached to a category and given a monetary value. The answers are put on a grid, and each contestant chooses a monetary value in the category.

Whoever buzzes in first gets the money and is able to choose the next clue. The monetary values double in "Double Jeopardy," and then there is one final clue in "Final Jeopardy" where each contestant bets how much of what he/she has earned on the clue. If you want to design a version to use on your computer, you can visit Jeopardylabs.com.

Bible Hangman

Played just like the traditional Hangman, you can easily use a whiteboard or chalkboard to write out the clues and draw the hangman as people miss letters. If you want to modernize the game, you can even create a wheel to spin and play like Wheel of Fortune.

Biblical 20 Questions

Played like traditional 20 Questions, this biblical version requires similar preparation to charades, where you will need to predetermine the topics to be covered. Then the opposing team gets to ask 20 questions to determine the Bible character, verse, etc. Again, this game can easily be played in large or smaller groups.

Bible Drawing It Out

This Bible game requires a little prep time to determine topics. Remember, though, that the topics will need to be drawn, so you want to make sure it's a verse or character that can be illustrated in the time allotted. It will also require something large to draw on like a whiteboard, chalkboard, or large paper on easels with markers. The team will need to draw out whatever is on the paper, and their team needs to guess. After a predetermined period of time, the other team gets to guess the clue.

Bible Bingo

Bible Bingo takes a bit more preparation, as it requires you to create cards with various Bible topics on each, and each card needs to be different. You will also need to take all the topics and have them printed to pull from a bowl during bingo. To save time, you can try a bingo card creator like BingoCardCreator.com.

Bible Ladder

Bible Ladder is about climbing to the top, and about putting things in order. Each team will get a stack of Bible topics, and they will have to put them in order of how they happen in the Bible. So it could be a list of Bible characters, events, or books of the Bible. It's simple to create index cards and use tape or Velcro to put them up on a board.

Bible Book It

The Bible Book It game requires the host to give a biblical character or event and the contestant needs to say what book of the Bible the clue is from. For characters or actions that occur more than once, it can be a rule that it must be the first book in which the character or action appears (often characters are referenced in both the New Testament and Old Testament). This game can also be played using whole verses.

Bible Bee

In the Bible Bee game, each contestant has to quote a verse until players reach a point when someone can't recite the quote. If a person cannot quote a verse, he or she is out. The game continues until one person is left standing.