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  | This last Atomic Friday we turned half of our fellowship hall into a crawl-through maze. I've been wanting to do this for a long time, but thought I'd be getting in over my head...like usual. This month, however, I said "Let's go for it." The theme of the sermon for the night was "The Will of The Lord Be Done," so it seemed fitting considering the fact that making life's choices can often be like a maze (I didn't end up bringing out the "maze" theme much, but we did record the sermon). |
Building the maze was surprisingly simple once the idea and the layout was in my head. You can see in the pictures the basics of how the maze was constructed. We used about eight tables (legs opened and tables turned on their side) and forty or so chairs.
We had rolls of paper that had been sitting around for awhile and needed to be used, so we used that paper to create the walls for the inside of the maze. The paper we used, because it was old, was very brittle, but it served it's purpose and had no affect on the stability of the structure. Except for the occasional rip or hole in the paper, it worked fine. Packing tape worked well for sticking the paper to the tables and chairs. The tape stayed, and it was easy to remove when cleaning up.
The top of the maze was the hardest part. For this, we used several partial rolls of paper that we also had laying around the church. I'll spare you the details on how we actually pieced the ugly, multi-colored thing together, but it would probably be best to tape lines of paper together (outside if possible), roll the whole thing up after making it the right size, and then bring it in and roll it over the top of the maze; taping it to the outer tables of the maze.
On the inside, words were taped to the walls. Following the maze, you had three basic paths. One path said "The will of Satan," another, "The will of man," and the correct path gave part of the memory verse for the month, "The will of the Lord be done."
The only picture I have at the moment is this brief video clip that was posted to Instagram. I'll try to post some more pictures later.
Overall, it was an enjoyable activity for the teens, but of course we had to make it more challenging.
First, we had our group divided into two teams. Taking turns, they had to go one at a time through the maze. By memory, they were to attempt to draw out the maze, dead ends and all (including the sentences on the walls). The first team to present an accurate map of the maze was the winning team (this took several times through the maze and lots of corrections).
After the activity was over, the guys (of course) decided they needed to have timed races. So anyone who wanted to was given a chance to be timed as they crawled through the maze. Warning: this will likely mess up the walls in your maze, and most definitely it will cause some carpet burns on some knees!
We had rolls of paper that had been sitting around for awhile and needed to be used, so we used that paper to create the walls for the inside of the maze. The paper we used, because it was old, was very brittle, but it served it's purpose and had no affect on the stability of the structure. Except for the occasional rip or hole in the paper, it worked fine. Packing tape worked well for sticking the paper to the tables and chairs. The tape stayed, and it was easy to remove when cleaning up.
The top of the maze was the hardest part. For this, we used several partial rolls of paper that we also had laying around the church. I'll spare you the details on how we actually pieced the ugly, multi-colored thing together, but it would probably be best to tape lines of paper together (outside if possible), roll the whole thing up after making it the right size, and then bring it in and roll it over the top of the maze; taping it to the outer tables of the maze.
On the inside, words were taped to the walls. Following the maze, you had three basic paths. One path said "The will of Satan," another, "The will of man," and the correct path gave part of the memory verse for the month, "The will of the Lord be done."
The only picture I have at the moment is this brief video clip that was posted to Instagram. I'll try to post some more pictures later.
Overall, it was an enjoyable activity for the teens, but of course we had to make it more challenging.
First, we had our group divided into two teams. Taking turns, they had to go one at a time through the maze. By memory, they were to attempt to draw out the maze, dead ends and all (including the sentences on the walls). The first team to present an accurate map of the maze was the winning team (this took several times through the maze and lots of corrections).
After the activity was over, the guys (of course) decided they needed to have timed races. So anyone who wanted to was given a chance to be timed as they crawled through the maze. Warning: this will likely mess up the walls in your maze, and most definitely it will cause some carpet burns on some knees!
| vid_37890718_122733[1].mp4 |
