On Saturday night Alycia and I hung out with another youth pastor and his wife. Since we were a quartet of Christians hanging out, we obviously broke out the hexes and played a mean game of Settlers of Catan. There are few things that combine the worlds of Christianity and nerdom as well as Catan; it’s a super nerdy game that Christians love to play.
The only thing that could make Catan better is if it was big, like giant.
Based upon the photographic evidence above, someone decided to make a big version of Catan. I don’t know who this person is but I want to be his or her friend. Catan is great but a giant version would mix things up and add in some heavy lifting and cardio.
Here are some other Christian games that would benefit from being bigger.
Dodge Ball
Dodge ball is the youth group game of choice. Whenever we ask our students what game they want to play, they inevitably answer dodge ball. There’s just something so satisfying about throwing a ball at another human being. Imagine how much more awesome it would be if the balls were 10 times as big? Instead of kids getting hit and walking out of the game, they would get hit and fly 10 feet through the air before crashing down on the ground. It’d like a giant, red, rubber bowling ball knocking over anyone in its path. With a giant dodge ball like that people probably wouldn’t mind getting picked last, or not even picked at all.
Ninja
I didn’t even know Ninja existed until two years ago. If you’ve never played, the game is pretty simple. All the players stand in a circle with both hands out in front of them. Each player gets one move of his or her body to try and hit the arm of the player next to him or her. If both of a player’s hands get hit, that player is out. I haven’t seen a game of ninja break out anywhere else other than at Christian events. Christian camps, Christian concerts and Christian colleges are the perfect settings for Ninja. Making Ninja bigger and better would mean moving it to Japan with actual ninjas. It would be amazing to watch a group of actual ninjas playing Ninja, jumping around and flipping over each other. It would be like the training scenes from Batman Begins, just with more Jesus.
Catchphrase
I’m pretty sure secular people play Catphrase but Christians have really helped its popularity and sales. Catchphrase isn’t just a great game to play with friends on a Saturday night, but it also works to kill time with students during Sunday school. A bigger and better version of Catchphrase wouldn’t need a bigger clue-thingy, but a bigger circle. Instead of just passing off the clue-thingy to the person next to you, imagine if you had to get up and jump over a bunch of obstacles to pass it off. It would definitely add a bigger and better element to the game as well as raise the potential for injuries. And playing games with a high potential for injury only helps grow our faith.
Christians love games. As I said in my second post ever, it’s because they give us an opportunity to brag and get our competitive juices going. Playing bigger, better versions of some of Christendom’s most beloved games only elevates the bragging and competition.
Bigger, better games would also give us the opportunity to be more Christlike, even when we want to gloat over a victory and rub it in someone’s face.
What other games would benefit from a bigger, better version?
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