By Rev. Doug Forbes

The Memory Mixer is a great way to learn each other’s names as well as an interesting fact about each member of your group.  It’s a lot of fun too!

Gather everyone into a circle and ask the first person to share their name and an interesting fact about themselves.  For instance they could say, “Hi, I’m Duncan and I love to ski.”  The next person needs to say the previous person’s name and repeat their interesting fact.  They then share their own information.  Each person, in turn, must repeat all the previous names and facts.  As the game moves on, your students need to remember more and more information.  If a person cannot remember all the information, the game starts over again with them.  When you have gone all the way around the circle everyone should be smiling and know everyone’s names in their group and an interesting fact about them.

For a Bible study, your students could use their Bibles and concordances to look up passages that include lists of names.  List all the references on the board and explain that people and their names are important to God, because they represent who we are.  God made us, and he loves us very much.

Read John 3:16 + 17 to your class to illustrate how much God loves us.  Have your class turn in their Bibles to I Corinthians 13 and ask for volunteers to each read a verse until the entire passage has been read.  Discuss the chapter together verse by verse, asking your students what it means to them.  Explain that I Corinthians 13 is the Love Chapter of the Bible and that it teaches us what real love is all about.  Re-read verse 13 and explain that faith, hope and love never ends, and God’s greatest gift to us is love.

Close in prayer thanking God for his great love, and encourage your students to respond to God’s love by asking him to forgive their sins, come into their hearts and make them members of his family.  Then, they can reflect God’s love in their lives by their kind and loving words and deeds.