Kickoff, Organize, Skit

Kickoff and Organize

The way I run things is a bit fast paced. But when rehearsed with all of your co-leaders, it is seamless. I don’t ever appear to be out of my depth, and neither should you. If there are things happening on the side such as weird emergencies (there is always that one person who gets stung by a bee right as things are about to start) you let your co-leaders deal with that. You are the steely nerved leader who cast their gaze down the barrels of the enemy’s cannon and grin.

Get everyone to sit down and start your skit. Don’t thank them for coming yet. This happens after they get laughing and let down their guard.

Introduction Skit: Chicken Farmer

Cast: Narrator, Farmer, Hatchery Owner, "Crew" in the truck. These include yourself and your co-leaders and chaperones.

Cast number: 3-13  Narrator can be played by Farmer or Hatchery Owner or any of the crew. The Crew can be made up of 1 to 10 people.

Props: None

Costumes: Farming outfits

Other: Farmer and Hatchery Owner should have funny and distinct accents and personalities.

Skit: You and the crew are in a pretend truck "driving" from one end of the stage to the other. The Hatchery Owner is at the far end where you talk, load up and drive back to your original side.

The truck and everything else are invisible.  You pretend to start the truck, and the whole group "drives" over to the Hatchery owner. You're just bouncing up and down going "brrmmummm" in unison. At one point on the stage you yell "bump!" and you all jump in the air. When they get there, the Farmer gets out of the truck, and walks over to the owner while the other leaders (playing the crew) stay in the truck.

The farmer and Hatchery owner greet, and the farmer announces that he would like to buy 1 dozen chickens, the owner agrees, and they agree upon a price. The script on this is up to you. Be funny.

Upon agreeing on the price, the two spit in their hands and shake. The farmer then turns to his truck, and shouts, "Hey you guys, get on outta that truck an' looaad up these here chickens!"

The Crew gets out, and they load up the chickens. Invisible boxes are stacked in the back of the truck by crew. While the chickens are being loaded, the farmer and owner can chat about the weather (or whatever.)

Once all of the chickens are loaded, the farmer gets back in his truck, and he and the crew all drive back to the Farm. Don't forget the bump.

Narrator comes onto stage and announces: "One week later" then the cast repeats the process 2 more times. The second time, he needs 2 dozen chickens, the third time he needs 3 dozen chickens. On the fourth trip, he announces that he needs four dozen chickens. On each time, make sure the conversation is about the last thing they talked about. Continuity is important.

At the fourth time, when the Farmer announces that he needs four dozen, the Owner whistles, and says, "Man, you must have a pretty good sized farm going on now."

The farmer then replies, "Well, I really can't tell yet, but I think I'm either planting them too deep, or too far apart."

End

Immediate Introduction: Give the members a round of applause, introduce them and yourself and give this speech or one like this:

Tell them they will be asking questions

“Hey everyone I am so glad you could make it out here this weekend. We will be learning the most valuable foundation to our Christian walk. We will be taking an in-depth look at The Genesis Creation Account and some of the most overlooked resources inside of it. Just like the Chicken Farmer, we have taken resources away from Sunday school, Church, retreats like this, Christian self-help books, our friends and yes, even from the Bible and gone our own way without knowing what to do with it. We never bothered to ask how to apply the data. We never bothered turning the knowledge into wisdom, or worse yet: We never knew we were allowed to ask. So that’s what we will be doing. We will be asking tough questions. We will be going into the Chicken Hatchery owner’s home, looking at his books, watching how he runs things, so that when we drive our truck home, we won’t go planting our poor chickens in the ground, but we will actually know what to do with them.”

Tell them it’s ok to ask questions

“Some of us in our lives have already begun to ask the hard questions that never seem to be discussed in the pulpit or in the Sunday School Class. We’ve dug into the depths of the Word of God and have gone in way over our heads and have come out with even more questions than we had to begin with. And that’s alright. When you open the first door behind the taboo topics, there are always five more doors behind it. Some have called it “The Rabbit Hole.” Just how far down does the truth go? We know from the Bible that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. So when we follow truth, we ultimately end up in His plan. So that’s what we are going to be doing. We are going to have a lot of fun doing it.

Tell them they will be learning as a team

“These are team building exercises. You are going to be doing many activities together as small teams. Each team will learn to bind together, work thru personalities, share ideas, problem solve together. Finally you will arrive at the end of the night as a well-oiled machine capable of doing things together that you could have never done on your own.

Tell them there will be food, fun, and prizes

Alright! You already got your itineraries when you checked in, what we are going to do in just a little bit is move all of our stuff to the side and organize into our small groups. These are your teams. By the end of the night, you need to have a team name and a team cheer or song or skit that will be judged by everyone! It’s all going to be fun, but there will be a winner at the end. There’s cookies, there’s punch, and there’s learning. You will learn, you will wonder, but most importantly, you will enjoy every minute of it.”

But first, let’s get you moved in!”

(Divide up the teams and begin Activities)