By Daniel Amador
Last Friday from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m, Judson Baptist church had a lock-in for 6th to 12th graders (including the adult staff). A lock-in is when a group of people (in this case, a church or youth group) get together in one building, and stay locked-in and awake for at least twelve hours. They usually have games, activities, snacks, and movies.
There were around 50-60 people that came. It was organized by the Judson Baptist Youth Group and Village Church of Oak Park, who encouraged everyone in the church to bring their friends. Also, Jonathan Miller, ODE’s very own gym teacher and one of the youth group pastors for Judson and organizers of the event, told a bunch of his 6th to 12th grader gym class students about it, and they were told to bring their friends.
People started coming at 7:00 p.m, and played games for a few hours. Then the staff called everyone together to tell them a bit more about the lock-in, the rules, and what they would be doing. There was laser tag, foosball, dodgeball (and other gym-related games), board games, non-stop movies, carpet ball, two kinds of mafia, Underground Church, lots of snacks, and endless pizza (24 boxes, to be exact)!
For laser-tag, they played teams, free-for-all, and even had a tournament (congratulations to Nathan Canada, who was the winner of it)! There were sixteen guns in total, so eight players for each team in team games. The laser guns were a bit tricky to use and the staff had to fuss with them to get them to work, but everyone eventually understood how to use and play with them.
Around a third way through the night, the staff called everyone together to meet in the sanctuary, and they showed everyone a very metaphorical, moving, and interesting video about Jesus and how he came to earth to save everyone from sin (you can see it if you go to http://www.fallingplates.com/en#!/player). And after the video, one of the staff named Josh Edwards (the youth pastor for Village Church of Oak Park) shared his testimony about how he became a Christian and a little about his faith journey. He told us to meet in small groups of 2-3 people, and share our beliefs and where we are in our faith. Then he prayed, and we were dismissed to continue with the activities.
They played a game called Underground Church with almost everyone; this is basically how you play it: There are three people with pool noodles who are called kurgs (real name is unknown), two medics, and everyone else are just ordinary people (the number of kurgs and medics vary). The kurgs have the power to make people out (in which they sit on the ground and can no longer play) by whacking them with a pool noodle, and the medics have the power to get people back in by tagging them. The way the kurgs win is by getting everyone out with the pool noodles, and the way for everyone else to win is by “killing” all the kurgs, and the only way to do that is by pointing a flashlight at them.The staff who weren’t playing hid several pieces from two flashlights all around the building, so that the people would have to search for all the parts and had to piece them all together so that they would work. But they could not kill all of the kurgs with just one flashlight, so they had to put the pieces together and then have both of the flashlights in the same place, to finally win.
At around 6 am, everyone got together to clean up, and were split up into groups to get it done quicker.
It was an amazing time for people to get to know each other, try something new, learn about God and His love, and to just have fun! I really enjoyed it, and I hope everyone else did too!