Fun, though, (particularly laughter) unfolds the arms, relaxes the tensed muscles and helps a defensive posture melt away. This really is a physical issue—defensiveness is a mindset with an accompanying muscle tightening. Fun, when it’s only observed, can cause a mindset change that naturally results in forgetting to hold the muscles clenched.
Fun fosters community. One can have fun when alone, but the best fun is usually a shared experience. That sort of concurrent fun amplifies the fun for all involved and plants seeds of community.
When you boil it down, community begins and is sustained by shared experiences. Allow fun to be a regular aspect of communal life. A word of caution: Community-building fun must be inclusive; carefully guard against exclusive fun that leaves some out.
Fun creates memories. A major part of any community (and the identity formation that comes with it) is shared memories. Those communal remembrances are major fodder for sustained life together.
Of course, it’s great if some of those memories are of tender times, times of overcoming adversity or of an intense shared experience of God. Shared memories of fun can fill in the gaps to create a full portfolio of stories worth retelling, stories that say something about who we are together.
Fun decreases differences. I suppose this reality is complementary to the “fun fosters community” reality, but in our current context, youth culture has splintered into hundreds or thousands of cultures (new in the past 10 to 15 years). That means every youth ministry is multicultural (unless your youth group is three home-schoolers from the same family).
One of our greatest goals in youth ministry should be the creation of a new kingdom culture that supersedes the many cultures represented in the population of your middle school ministry. I’ve found three things that act as kerosene on the fire of decreasing cultural differences: serving together, worshipping together and having fun together. We tend to elevate the first two above the latter as they seem more spiritual, but remember: Fun is a God thing.
