Murder Mystery Night

Last night was our youth night, which is officially titled Youth@theShed. Remind me to explain that one day.
We had a special theme night last night, "Murder Mystery night". The idea was borrowed from a fellow youth pastor (thanks Phil!) and was kind of a mass Cluedo game. Leaders of each of the connect groups were suspects, random items from the church building
 were weapons and rooms within the church area were... well... rooms.
When Phil told me about it, he described how he made up cards and detective notes for each group just like the traditional  cluedo game, but then rather than turn taking and a slow process of elimination, he had groups dashing from room to room exchanging card information and racing to determine the murderer before any other group. My first thought? How messy and unorganised!
OK, here is the truth, I am a control freak. If things aren't ordered and neat and kids aren't well behaved, then i get a little testy. And uncomfortable. And if I anticipate a lack of order I will fix it. And i do mean FIX IT!.
So I adjusted our game to have each group politely make accusations and then go around each group asking for them to show their cards. Worked in my head.
But in practise, it wasn't as intellectually stimulating as I thought it would be. It was slow, and kids got unsettled, the boys got no action (I have learnt to always include an action/contact game) and it took up our whole entire allocated game time. The girls and high thinkers seemed to enjoy it, but that's mostly not why kids come to youth.
So although it wasn't a bad night, it was one where kids posted on facebook about the awesomeness of youth, and it wasn't one where they will demand a repeat. lesson learnt.
We still have time for them to hang with each other, we still had connect groups, one of my young team members gave his first extended message and did really well, we had a record number of kids for winter in Blayney (64!... bragging!) and there were even a handful of new kids and returning new. So not a complete loss.
I just have to remember to trust God, listen to the wisdom and experience of other successful youth pastors, and let loose and have some fun once in a while.