Parable of the talents activity
This week we had a really fun joint activity (with the Young Men). We called it a talent night. The night of the activity the youth were all given “talents” (paper coupon type things) They were instructed to go around the cultural hall and participate in different activities. We had 5 different stations: Name that tune, musical chairs, scripture pictionary, shooting a hoop, and a refreshment table. Everything cost a talent to do.
If they succeeded they got back their talent and then some extra talents. The refreshment table only cost, no reward. They were supposed to go to each station at least once to try it out then they could go where they did the best or where they wanted to practice. The leaders went around and kept the youth on track by rewarding good behavior with a talent and taking a talent away for any non-participating behavior. One leader was chosen to
represent satan. He was to try to get the youth to spend their talents or get them to do something off task so they would lose a talent. He never took or gave talents even though he had some in his hands as if he were just like everyone else. Another leader was assigned to be like a prophet and encourage the youth to do everything they could to earn talents and reward them for good behavior. The rest of the leaders were just talent
takers/givers. The leader playing satan did so good. He is a leader that all the youth love to be around. He was able to get them off track so well. He also would promise talents for unappropriate behavior and not follow through, especially after they lost a talent. He would say, well you just lost one so I can’t give you one right back. But he would sit and agree with them that it wasn’t fair! At the end of the night we had the youth sit and we told the parable of the talents. Then we talked about the different kinds of talents people have. We pointed out that musical (name that tune) and athletic (basketball shooting) talents are well recognized but that they aren’t the only talents out there. Some people have the talent to have fun and help others feel included (musical chairs) and others have the talent of knowing the gospel and living it well (scripture pictionary). We then had
the youth count up their talents. The one with the most got to go through the refreshment line first and purchase whatever refreshments were left with whatever talents they had. The person with the next most was next and so on down the line. We added this part because some of the youth didn’t care if they had talents and just spent them all on food and then didn’t participate and the leaders had no talents to take from them. They were really sad to realize that they started out with only 6 talents and purchased only a few
treats but those who multiplied their talents got better more expensive treats or lots of smaller treats because they didn’t waste their time. All in all it was a very successful activity!
