Spy Theme

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A spy night? What’s all that about then? Well, one of the young people was off to Hong Kong for a month for a half mission, half holiday and said he wanted a youth work night on James Bond before he left.. confused? We were. And he didn’t turn up. He was in London.. Not having any worries about this, we went ahead with a spy theme night anyway..

Movie Clip

From ‘Stormbreaker’ (rated PG). Alex Rider finds himself as a spy for MI6, after his uncle (a secret MI6 agent unknown to Alex) is killed and he finds out his uncle had been secretly training him as a spy. It’s boys-own stuff, fun and harmless.

Chapter 3 (00:17:54) at Liverpool Street Station to 00:23:53 as Alex is about to re-enter the ‘photo booth’ and as Mr Blunt smiles at Alex.

Other clips could be used from other movies or within this movie too, but this is a great and ‘safe’ ‘Spy’ clip.

Content

1. Film some ‘spy type items’ in a garden or similar… they then have to guess what items are on the film when you play it back on a TV to the group… we used a mobile phone, a laptop, a briefcase, a toy gun, a CD etc.

2. Have a sketch on being a secret agent for God. Better still, get hold of a video of people smuggling Bibles into China or the Middle East for example… Contact Release International or get some of their videos – or get videos from the Chinese Church Support Ministry or another ministry you know of.

3. Read from Joshua 2 where Rahab helps out the spies. Then ask some questions…

What can we learn from this? Can you see how God uses people who we may not think of? Is it OK sometimes to lie in order to save other people’s lives? Rahab tied a scarlet cord in her window so that Joshua would protect her when he came back to the city. It’s interesting that the cord was red (scarlet). It symbolised the fact that we are protected by the blood of Jesus – because of what Jesus did on the cross, we can be protected in the present time and go to heaven if we believe in Jesus.

What else can you learn from Joshua 2. Give out some paper and get young people to write down and feedback some points.

4. Have a quiz on James Bond movies – we used some questions like:

  • How many James Bonds were there (6 proper Bonds in total, as of April 2019 – although if you included David Niven in an ‘unofficial’ comedy Bond version made in 1967, there are 7 Bonds,,,)
  • Who does all of James Bond’s gadgets (Q)
  • Name of the boss of Bond, famously played by Oscar-winning Dame Judy Dench (M)
  • Which Cornish tourist attraction featured in ‘Die Another Day’? (The Eden Project) etc.
  • For more trivia there’s Wiki or https://www.007.com

5. Maybe you can take the young people to see the latest James Bond film before the session! Or something similar (e.g. Mission Impossible type movies) or something more recent or appropriate

6. Get a guest speaker – we had someone recently who talked about church planting in India, Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere. It was amazing… great testimonies of people being raised from the dead, of God opening the heavens, of the Christians being protected by God… awesome.

Make sure the speaker is young-person friendly! (And bullet-proof… that’s a joke…)

7. Do some kind of game where a code has to be broken (code a Bible verse or a message using symbols or different letters of the alphabet). So devise a code something like this:

+ = letter A
$ = letter B
? = letter C
! = letter D

Then write out a phrase using the ‘code’ which the young people have to decipher (for example, $+! would spell ‘BAD’). Do a different message for each group, perhaps with a hidden reward revealed in the code!

8. Alternatively, devise a code which needs to be used to achieve something – like using only whistles to get someone blindfolded around a maze… Get the young people into teams. Each team has one person blindfolded to go round a maze which you construct which you’ll build yourself using tables, chairs, mats, tape, and stuff. The young people on each team who are not blindfolded can only communicate with the blindfolded individual by verbal sounds that are not words. They have to work the rest out themselves. To make it harder, more than one person from each team has to complete the course.

Health and safety is an issue especially in health & safety mad Britain (and places where liability can be an issue) – so be careful. Do warnings, follow the rules and do consent forms where needed and risk assessments where needed. Don’t know why this reminder is here but it is. Enjoy it.