An activity for a small group with a visitor is almost the opposite of an activity for a group that already knows each other. The one that loosens up people who know each other by heart is usually the same one that freezes whoever arrived today. The six below come from that difference, made to protect the person who came for the first time, with the time and the materials of each one.
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Each person gets two pieces of paper. On the first one, they write an object they used to carry in a pocket or a backpack fifteen or twenty years ago: a Discman, a phone card, a particular keyring. On the second one, something they have today that their younger self would have thought impossible.
Collect the papers in two piles, the “back then” pile and the “today” pile. Whoever is leading reads one “back then” and one “today” at random, and the group tries to guess whether the two belong to the same person, and to whom.
Wrap-up
Nobody can predict their own story. What looks impossible today to the person who just arrived, being part of a group like this one, is the same size as the impossible that their twenty-years-ago self never saw coming.
Passage
Sarah, already old, hears that she is going to have a son, and laughs to herself at the idea. The answer that comes back is a question: “is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:12-14, NIV). Yesterday's impossible is somebody's today.
Closing
A moment of prayer, each person for the “impossible thing” that somebody else described wanting, without naming who wrote it. The person who arrived today is not asked to pray.
Why this activity works
The group engages with the objects, not with anybody's life. The visitor takes part like everyone else, without having to explain who they are, and the “before and after” does not touch a wound, it touches nostalgia, which is the only safe ground in the past for a first night.
How it goes
Each person writes down, without saying it out loud, one item for the snack at the next meeting, and drops the folded paper into the basket. Nobody agrees with anybody, nobody sees anybody else's. The snack becomes a mystery.
Once everyone has dropped theirs in, whoever is leading pulls the papers out one by one and builds the list in front of the group. Then comes the question: does this add up to a snack that works? There is bread, but did anything come to put on it? Is the only drink soda, and what is left for the person who does not drink soda? What is missing for the snack to be complete and for nobody to leave without an option?
On a video call, each person sends their item by private message to whoever is leading, who reveals them all at the end.
Wrap-up
A snack is not only the sum of what each person brought, it is whether the parts go together and whether there is an option left for everyone. If only soda came, whoever does not drink soda is left out right at snack time. In a small group that is still getting to know each other, the visitor is exactly the person who can end up without an option, because they are the only one whose taste the group does not know yet.
Passage
When they rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, each family raises the stretch in front of their own house. The wall closes not because somebody did all of it, but because each piece connected to the next one (Nehemiah 3, NIV).
Closing
The person who arrived today is the one who writes the item that was missing, the thing to go on the bread or the drink for whoever does not drink soda. They come in completing the basket, not being the gap. And at the next meeting the snack is literally what the group put together, with their contribution in it.
Why this activity works
Writing blind protects the visitor, who does not speak and is not exposed, and it is the randomness that makes the gap show up. If each person named their item already thinking about the whole, nothing would ever be missing, and the point, that a group needs variety and spare options, would never appear.
How it goes
The small group has just multiplied, and half the room is missing the people who went to the other group. The risk is that the whole night revolves around whoever is no longer here, and that the person who arrived today feels like an intruder in the middle of a longing that is not theirs.
Give a piece of paper to each member of the group and ask each of them to write, without showing it to anybody, one thing they miss about the bigger group. Collect those folded papers and leave them in the centre, face down. They are not going to be read.
Then give a piece of paper to the person who arrived today and ask for one thing only: that they write something they noticed or liked about this group tonight. Whoever is leading reads that paper out loud, and only that one.
On a video call, the papers become private messages to whoever is leading.
Wrap-up
A group that has just multiplied looks at itself and sees the chairs that emptied. The person arriving today looks at the same room and sees a group that is already whole. Both things are true, and the group needs the newcomer's eyes to remember the second one.
Passage
Surrounded by the enemy army, Elisha's servant sees only the threat and panics. Elisha prays: “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see”. And the servant sees that the hills were already full of horses and chariots of fire, that had been there the whole time (2 Kings 6:16-17, NIV). Sometimes what is missing is the looking, not the thing.
Closing
Whoever is leading collects the face-down papers and prays once for the people who went to the other group, by name if they know them, without reading what was written. The newcomer's paper stays in view. They are not asked to pray.
Why this activity works
The asymmetry is the care. The group's longing stays on the face-down paper, honoured without being staged in front of somebody who has just arrived. And the eyes of the newcomer, the only person in the room with no memory of what was lost, are what lift the night. Reading the longings and keeping the observation to yourself would do the opposite: it would sink the visitor into a loss that is not theirs.
How it goes
This group was born a little while ago, out of a bigger small group that multiplied. So there are two crowds in the room: the people who lived that group and know what it was like, and the people who came from outside and never saw it.
The activity uses both, and whoever is leading introduces it without putting anybody on the spot. Say something like: “those of you who came from our old group will remember what it was like; those of you who arrived today, whether it is your first or your third time here, will imagine what it was like just by looking at us”.
Give a piece of paper to each person. Whoever came from the previous group writes, in one sentence, one good thing that marked that group. Whoever just arrived writes, also in one sentence, how they imagine that group was, from the little they have seen of this one.
Shuffle all the papers and read them at random. The group tries to guess which sentence belongs to which person. Nobody is hunting for the newcomer's sentence, everybody's is up for guessing, and that is what lets theirs be just one more in the pile.
Wrap-up
A newly multiplied group thinks it lost its own face along with the people who went to the other group. This activity shows the opposite. The identity stayed, and it is so alive that somebody who arrived today, having never seen the old group, can describe it just by looking at you.
Closing
A light moment of prayer. Each person gives thanks for one thing about the group's face that showed up in the sentences read out. The person who arrived is not asked to pray.
Why this activity works
The game is to attribute each sentence to a person, never to hunt for the newcomer's, otherwise the care turns into its opposite.
The secret, which stays with you: among the others, their sentence either goes unnoticed, and then they already blend into the group, or it is recognised, and it is right, because the group has an identity that a stranger picked up. Both paths prove the same thing, the multiplication did not carry away who the group is.
Preparation
Prepare the tickets in pairs, each number on two tickets, and shuffle them. Nothing beyond that. The pair is drawn, not arranged.
How it goes
A crowded meeting, a lot of people. As at a bank counter, each person takes a ticket. When whoever is leading calls a number, the pair holding it finds each other and has one minute to discover one silly thing they have in common. A room of thirty people turns into a pile of conversations between two.
Before you start, make the hunt clear: something trivial, along the lines of “takes coffee without sugar”, “likes papaya with oats”, “would rather go to a mall than to a park”. No personal questions, no “tell us a bit about yourself”. The triviality of the task is what protects, and it holds for one visitor or for five, because nobody has to tell anything about themselves to find out that the other person also skips the sugar.
Wrap-up
In a crowded meeting the visitor disappears into everybody else, and the crowd that looks welcoming is where it is easiest to feel alone. What takes somebody out of anonymity is not being seen by thirty people, it is making contact with one. When the newcomer finds out that somebody there also takes coffee without sugar, a bond has started, a small one, and they have stopped being just one more in the crowd.
Passage
In the middle of a crowd pressing in on him from every side, Jesus suddenly stops and asks who touched him. The disciples find the question pointless, there are far too many people. But he had felt one person that nobody else noticed (Mark 5:30-32, NIV). In the middle of the crowd, what you feel is the touch of one.
Closing
At the end, each pair tells the group the silly thing they found. The newcomer's pair tells it for them, sparing them from speaking in front of everybody, unless they want to themselves.
Preparation
Turn four corners of the room into grocery aisles: produce, bakery, cleaning, drinks. In each aisle, leave a poster, a large sheet or a card on the table in plain view, with two or three questions written on it.
The idea behind the questions is what makes the activity work, and without it the activity falls apart. Each aisle connects a grocery item to a curiosity, almost always biblical, always about imagining and never about knowing. This is not a quiz. Nobody has to get anything right, and that is what puts the newcomer at ease, because guessing is allowed and usually goes further.
Swap them freely, as long as the question is about imagining, light and with no right answer.
How it goes
A crowded meeting. Instead of one giant circle, people move through the aisles in groups of six or seven, and in each aisle they pick which of the questions on the card they want to take up. The person who arrived today moves around together with their host. Give a few minutes per aisle and rotate the groups, like pushing the trolley to the next section.
Wrap-up
A crowded meeting turns into an audience, and an audience is where the visitor disappears the most. Breaking the room into aisles gives back the conversation of people looking each other in the eye. And a question about imagining is level ground: nobody knows the answer, so the person who arrived today guesses alongside somebody who has been in church for ten years.
Passage
Facing a crowd of thousands who are hungry, Jesus does not speak to all of them at once. He tells them to sit down in groups of about fifty, and it is like that, group by group, that everyone is fed (Luke 9:14, NIV). The crowd does not eat together, it eats divided up.
Closing
In the last aisle, each little group picks one answer they liked to bring back to everyone. The one who presents is somebody from the little group, never the person who arrived today, unless they offer themselves.
Why this activity works
The trick is that the question has no right answer. A question about biblical knowledge exposes whoever does not know, and the visitor is exactly that person. A question about imagining does the opposite, it levels everybody at guessing, and the freshest guess tends to be the newcomer's.
Everything changes, and the leader's instinct works against it. Part of leading is reading the moment the group is in: in a conversation between two people, a personal question makes complete sense. In the middle of the activity, with everybody listening, the same question does not always fit.
The urge is to integrate them fast. Plenty of questions, a nudge to talk about themselves, an invitation to pray… What feels like welcome to the group can land as an interrogation for whoever just arrived, and someone who felt interrogated on the first night may simply not turn up on the second.
The visitor did not come to be the centre. They came quietly, to see how it works, leaning on somebody they already know. A good part of caring for them is resisting the urge to turn them into the subject of the night.
The right activity changes with your meeting. A group that is still getting to know each other, a meeting right after a multiplication and a crowded meeting ask for quite different care with whoever arrives. That is why we separated the six by type of meeting, and not into one single list.
There is not one single activity that protects whoever just arrived. It changes with the state of the group on that night.
Nobody there knows anybody well, and now there is a complete stranger too. The way through is to engage objects and play, not people's lives. On this page, activities 1 and 2.
Half the group is missing the people who stayed in the other group, and somebody new arrives in the middle of that. The visitor needs to come in as an addition, never as somebody who came to fill an empty seat. On this page, activities 3 and 4.
In a crowd the visitor disappears, even though it looks like the most welcoming setting. The way through is to break the room into small conversations, where they are seen without being exposed. On this page, activities 5 and 6.
It depends on your meeting. If the group is still getting to know each other, use an activity built around objects, which engages what a person brings rather than who they are. If the small group has just multiplied, use one that receives the visitor as an addition. If the meeting is crowded, break the room into small conversations so they do not disappear.
The activity engages what the person does or writes, not their life. Whoever arrived today is never required to introduce themselves, to pray out loud or to speak in front of everybody. In a good activity with a visitor, they take part like everyone else and leave without having been the centre of anything.
Not necessarily. The best of it is before the meeting, at the welcome or over the snack: that is where everybody learns their name and who invited them.
When the group sits down, whoever invited them can introduce them in one sentence, agreed with them beforehand. The round of name, age and job is what embarrasses, and an activity built that way tends to freeze a visitor.
It depends on who has arrived, but on the first night usually not. Praying out loud in front of people they do not know is the kind of exposure that can keep somebody from coming back. In the activities on this page, the closing prayer never passes the turn to whoever just arrived. They pray when and if they want to, with nobody asking.
Whoever invited them, or whoever looks after the welcome in the group, meets the person on arrival, introduces them to the others by name and explains what is going to happen before it happens. No exposing and no pushing. The right activity comes after, so they take part without becoming the centre of the night.
Want to keep the six activities? We send the PDF by email, free of charge and with no sales talk.
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