Ideas for Group Games for Adults at Church Picnics

Getting to Know You

• Give each adult a name tag with his name as well as a prominent colored sticky dot on it. Depending on how many adults are at the picnic, you might have five to 10 colors of dots. Instruct each person to find every other person at the picnic with the same colored dot and find out his name, hometown, favorite hobby and what he does (or did) for a living. After allowing enough time for these individual conversations, the coordinator can instruct two groups of particular colored dots to converge and ask each member to introduce one other member of his color group to the other team, using the four pieces of information acquired in the initial conversations.

An Information Scavenger Hunt

• Have all the adults find a partner, asking each adult to choose someone she doesn't already know. Give each pair a list of 15 items of information they must find on this modified scavenger hunt. While more traditional scavenger hunts involve finding physical items, this one will entail finding people at the picnic who match the items on the list. Examples include "someone born in July," "someone who is a doctor," "someone who has more than three children." Teams should get the signature of the person next to the appropriate item on the list. In the interest of creating as much interaction as possible, it is best to allow any one person to sign only one item per page.

Working Together as a Team

• Form groups of eight to 10 adults and have each group make a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder facing one another. Instruct everyone to clasp hands with two people in the circle. They should clasp as though shaking hands, thus two right hands are joined and two left. This creates a tangle of arms. Have the group then endeavor to untangle themselves without releasing or breaking the connection of any of the hands that are grasped.

Chariot Tag

• Divide the adults into groups of three and designate an arena area, the boundaries of the game. Two of the three teammates will stand shoulder to shoulder, facing the same direction, and link arms. These two are the horses. The third team member will serve as the driver of the chariot. He stands behind the horses, grabbing their belts, one with each hand. The game coordinator will then go to each charioteer and loosely tuck a colored flag or strip of cloth in the back of the belt of the driver. When play begins, the goal is for the horses in each chariot to endeavor to grab the flags from as many other teams as possible. The drivers are not permitted to grab flags nor to protect their own. Drivers must keep both hands on the belts of their horses at all times. When a team loses its flag it must exit the arena. The team still retaining its flag when all other chariots have left the designated area wins the game.