Free Youth Ministry Game: Letter Launcher

I am always looking for youth group games that require little preparation. After all, we are all busy, aren’t we? Letter Launcher is the perfect answer. It has the energy of a competition and the excitement of a trivia game. The concept is simple. 

Have you ever played Scategories? This game is a large-group version of that. Simply put, you have students race to name as many things as possible from an assigned category. To give it an extra layer of complexity, you assign them a specific letter that each answer must start with.

Here’s what you’ll need to play this youth ministry game: 

• A notepad for each team 
• Pens / pencils for each team
• A host to lead students through the game
• 60-second background music for when they’re writing down their answers. We’ve had a lot of success with this Jeopardy theme remix. 
• Download the screen slides
• Optional: an alphabet dice set that you can roll to randomly pick their letter.

How to play “Letter Launcher:”

• Put your entire group into teams of 2-8 students (creating 4-6 teams is ideal).
• Hand each team a notepad and writing utensils. 
• Choose a category.
• Choose a letter.
• Have students to write down as many things as they can think of that start with the chosen letter within the given category. Here are the categories we’ve used:
  • Food 
  • Restaurants
  • Movies 
  • Activities 
  • Fictional Characters 
  • Bible Characters 

•  
• Start a sixty-second timer. Play upbeat music while they come up with as many answers as possible. 
• Have leaders walk around and confirm answers with each team. Have them read the answers to you, then assign points for the total number of right answers. Every right answer is a point. 
• The team with the most points wins. 
• Bonus Rule: If you want to make it a little harder, you can assign bonus points for double letters. (Eg: Mary Magdalene, Rat Race, and Mickey Mouse).

When you download this free youth ministry game you will receive:

• Game rules and instructions
• Graphics to promote the game on social media
• Game slides with 7 categories for your screens (with editable templates to create any categories you’d like) 

Check out more free youth ministry games and events by clicking here! Our team loves helping youth leaders connect with their students through free youth ministry games, but we are even more passionate about helping you disciple your students with sermons and small group Bible study curriculum. Click here to explore our free youth series with sermon scripts and small group discussion guides.