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• 0:12 — Zach Hartman: Who He Is

  • Founder of ActuallyFun and youth director at a church of about 500 members
  • 6 years as a youth ministry leader, 15 combined years in the field
  • Grew his group from an average of 8 students to 20 in three years
  • Spent the past year learning to rely on strong adult leaders to share the load

  0:31 — Opening Framing: What Most Leaders Get Wrong

  • Most leaders struggle in one of two ways: meetings are all lesson (hard to keep attention) or all games (hard to build anything meaningful)
  • The fix isn’t a better balance — it’s using games to teach the lesson
  • Experiential learning is the most effective way to make teaching stick
  • Games bring students in; the lesson keeps them coming back

  1:22 — What Role Should Games Play?

  • Games reveal who someone really is — they build bridges, create shared experience, and help people let their guard down
  • Games are what convince new students to walk in the first place; no one wants to show up somewhere just to be talked at for an hour
  • Just playing games isn’t enough — the next generation is hungry for depth and meaningful relationships that games alone can’t provide
  • At least one game per meeting should tie directly into the lesson: the student’s experience in the game should mirror the principle being taught
  • Example: Pan Bang — players scrambling to form groups and pushing others out mirrors how the world says to look out for yourself. After the game, you can ask “What did it feel like to be excluded?” and lead directly into a conversation about your group choosing to include rather than eliminate
  • The game makes the message stick — students may forget the exact words of a lesson, but they won’t forget what they felt during the game

  4:52 — Start With the Lesson, Then Pick the Game

  • Start with the lesson first, then find the game that reflects and mirrors it — not the other way around
  • Forcing a lesson out of whatever game sounds fun is less natural and less effective
  • Starting with the lesson tells you where the conversation is going — you can even tweak the game’s rules to steer students toward the exact experience you want
  • This principle extends to every element: movie clips, activities, videos — all of it should serve the lesson
  • Practical framework: decide on three main bullet points for the lesson first, then ask “what situation can I put my group in that gets them thinking about those things?”

  6:22 — Atomic Habit: Plan Your Whole Year in Advance

  • Planning the full youth group year before the first meeting dramatically improved both the quality and ease of every individual meeting
  • Not word-for-word plans — just the topic, three main takeaways, and the relevant game for each week
  • Eliminated the mid-year problem of realizing you already covered a topic, or scrambling for something to say before Easter
  • Created one cohesive theme across the entire year rather than a disconnected string of weekly topics
  • Much more work up front, significantly less work every single week throughout the year

  7:52 — Planning for the Unexpected

  • A mentor’s principle: you need a plan, but in ministry you have to hold it loosely
  • Things come up: holidays, national events, local situations, and sometimes something happening specifically within your own group
  • Three bullet points per meeting is the right level of commitment — enough framework to adjust easily, not so much effort that you can’t pivot when you need to
  • This is exactly why the three-bullet-point approach works: you can plug in something new without rebuilding the whole meeting

  9:25 — Bible Verse: Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

  • Zach’s personal youth group chose Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 as their theme verse for the year
  • “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” — the third strand is Christ at the center of the relationships
  • Youth group isn’t just a place to be silly or get a snack; the real value is Christ-centered community
  • When two people are both growing toward God, they grow closer to each other — the God Triangle
  • That three-strand cord (you, your group, and God woven together) is what allows students to grow in faith and thrive

  11:18 — ActuallyFun Shout-Out

  • Game Index: 100+ free game tutorials at actuallyfun.com, sortable by player count, age range, space, and more
  • Game-Driven Lessons: curriculum that pairs a game with a lesson and includes all the guiding questions a leader needs
  • Cross Reference: click any verse in the Bible and see curated YouTube videos, movie clips, songs, and articles for teaching that scripture
  • Everything is at actuallyfun.com