Investing your time pursing the word of God with other believers is an important rhythm of the Christian life. It is also important to spend time in fellowship getting closer with your small group. A game is a great way to bond, enjoy healthy competition, and laugh. The challenge is finding a game in this crazy world that is fun, challenging for adults, and still promotes shares your values.
Finding myself in that same boat, I have put in some time to assemble a list of games that are ideal to play at a small group gathering.
List of Bible Study Games for Adults
1. Escape Room
When you are looking for a game or activity to do with your Bible study group an escape room offers a unique experience. While most escape rooms are not Christian themed they are family friendly and give you some control over the challenge you choose.
You can definitely take your study group to an actual escape room but did you know that you can offer an escape room experience at home? There are a number of escape room board games. These games are creative and there are several types with different themes and difficulty levels.
Here are some favorites:
EXIT: The Lord of the Rings Escape Room Game
The Starline Express – Escape Room Game
These are great but maybe you are looking for something with a Biblical theme? How about making your own escape room! It might seem complicated, but all you need to do is set up a series of riddles and challenges that point the players to the next clue/challenge. You can make these as challenging as you think your group can handle.
2. Bible Scavenger Hunt
A great way to help get people more familiar with the different books of the Bible and their content is a Bible scavenger hunt.
The concept is simple. Everyone needs a Bible or their trusty Bible App (but using the search feature is cheating). The game planner throws out a request like “Find a verse in the Old Testament that includes the word Olive”.
Everyone searches their Bible and raises their hand when they find one. The first person to raise their hand is given the chance to read the verse. If it indeed has the requested word, phrase, or idea. They won that round.
You can also offer multiple requests at once and participants then raise their hand when they find all the verses they need.
This game can be fun, challenging, and spiritually valuable.
3. The Game of Bible Things
This is a twist on a the popular Game of Things. Basically, players write down a response to a prompt, such as “Things you shouldn’t say to Job” or “Games the Disciples would be good at”. They submit their responses anonymously then they are read aloud by the leader.
The players vote on what they think was the funniest or best response. You can also have everyone tries to guess who wrote each response.
This takes some prep work on behalf of the group leader or whom ever is organizing the game. The key is to pick creative prompts to get people to loosen up and have fun with their responses.
4. Bible Feud
Don’t worry, we aren’t talking about a feud over different translations of scripture. We are talking about a Biblical version of the classic game: Family Feud.
If you are not familiar, this is a game where two teams (traditional members of the same household, but this does not need to be the case) compete by providing the top answers to different survey questions. Doing your own surveys can be time consuming but don’t worry many people have done the work for you and you can find them online:
5. Does It Real Say That?
We all know that there are some confusing passages in the Bible, especially when taken out of context. Does It Really Say That is a game where you present the players with a Bible verse and they have to tell you what book of the Bible it is from. You can assign points for the correct book, correct chapter, and even for the correct verse.
This does take a bit of work, as you need to search for some passages that are not as well known and might seem a bit odd when out of context. It is a great way to challenge the Bible scholar in your group as well as provide some teaching on some of the less well known books of the Bible.
6. Would you rather
In this biblical version of a common party game, players are presented with two options. They have to choose which situation or person they would rather be. The situations come straight out of the Bible.
For example would you rather “be stranded on Malta be imprisoned with a Roman soldier.” Another option “Be swallowed by a giant fish or be in a lions den overnight”.
This game provides entertainment and a good jumping off point for discussions. One drawback is I can’t really figure out a way to keep score!?
7. Who’s Most Likely Too – Kinda Clean Family Edition
How well do you know your small group? Who’s Most Likely Too is a straight forward card game that will have you laughing out loud.
Each card contains a sentence with a descriptive prompt such as “Loose the phone” or “do anything fo $5” or “wake up with a burrito in bed”. The group must vote on who among them is most likely to do this thing and that person is given the card. The first person to 7 cards loses.
This game has some wild and creative prompts that will have you rolling. The game is mostly clean, but you can run through the cards and remove any you might think unsavory. The best part is that the concept of the game is so simple that you can add in some of your own prompts that might include aspects of Christian life or serving at Church.
8. Blank Slate
In the style of the famous Match Game, this game rewards those who are thinking on the same wavelength. Blank Slate is similar to other word matching games, but the twist is you score when you only match with one other person instead of matching as many as possible. This brings in more strategy to the game and a need to know your fellow players.
Game play is simple, so you can get up and playing quite quickly. It works good for groups of 4 or more. To play simply draw a card and everyone secretly writes down a word to fill in the blank. Then everyone reveals their answer and points are awarded based on the results.
This is another game where you can use the cards provided or create some of your own that are more Biblical related. The added strategy of trying to match just one person really makes this a great game for adults. You can check out the full game on Amazon.
9. Better Me Self Improvement Game
It can’t be all fun and games, after all the goal of a Christian is becoming more like Jesus. Better Me is a game that is focused on self improvement. While it is not specifically a Christian game, it can be adapted and used for Bible study groups.
The game has a point scoring system and a winner, but the idea is about growth. It’s designed to foster communication, connection, and understanding among players, making it a great tool for bible studies or small groups.
For Christian, the game can be adapted to include elements of faith:
- Incorporate Bible verses into the game. For instance, when a player draws a card, part of the answer could be finding a verse from the Bible to support they answer. This could spark discussions about how the verse applies to their lives.
- Any advice or guidance that is offered by the game is pretty general, but like anything in life, use scripture to find wisdom on how to handle different situations or scenarios. For example, if a game card is asking about success or relationships, look at what the Bible has to say about those topics.
Finding ways to encourage one another and provide accountability in love can be challenging. This game is one way to promote those aspects of faith in a fun way.
Final Thought
Laughter and fun is important to bonding and growth within a study group. Games are a great way to develop the closeness that is important for members of the Christian faith to develop and serve one another. Proverbs 27:17: As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
