SCL

I love lock-ins. Yes, I am insane. I’m trying to get our youth pastor to do one, but he would rather commit suicide. I totally agree with him. I love lock-ins.

How about a lock-in with a strip search? Because all the teen girls’ valuable cosmetics and about $12.50 in cash were stolen.

Yeah, that’s how we rolled.

We had an all-night lock-in with my high school youth group. A kid totaled his car on the way home when he fell asleep at the wheel. Ouch.

O sweet dear Baby J…

After some of our youth lock-ins, it’s amazing we all didn’t get grounded for life.
Only by the grace of God did most of us turn out responsible, socially-respectable adults. I think.

Licking gummy worms and throwing them on all of the tall windows in the building.

That seemed to be the activity of choice for the kids at my church.

Be kind to your custodian.

Boycott lock-ins.

First lock in at the new church two broken nursery windows during sardines. Thankfully one of the chaperones is an insurance agent who knows a glass guy who does free work for churches.Fixed by Sunday, no bill.Elders happy- well alright with everything if it doesn’t happen agian We love our annual lock-in
Owlfest oooh!

Ah, lock-ins.

Easily one of my favorite things out there.

I think the last time we had one, we ended up with a broken light, a whole in a wall, and half of the kids (guys and girls) sleeping in the sanctuary together after falling asleep watching a movie.

I also remember my youth pastor really hoping the senior pastor didn’t find out about that last one.

I recall a junior high lock-in I went to as one of the most exciting and memorable times of my cloistered life. It was awesome, especially the Sardines. I don’t think there was permanent damage, either!

Our church has many lock-ins, that’s out “thing”. We do one every year to make the new comers feel welcome. Our last girls lock-in we had a lady come by, and we did art. But the time before that we had our gym open, and we played dodgeball for 4 hours (that’s our other “thing”), we also had our sanctuary open with the screen on and we had plenty of movies playing throughout the night. We had video games in our youth room and all of the sunday school rooms were open to anyone who wanted to sleep. It was a great time and every year we have a couple drivers and we always drive to my youth pastors house and play a prank on him. Every year they get better and better, it’s great!

I had my first french kiss during a church lockin Yeah

hahahaha! I love lock-ins. They’re even more fun as a youth counselor than they were as a youth!

As a youth leader who lives for pranks, Im both curious and in need for new ideas.

our teens managed to put Ben-Gay on all the toilet seats:( during our last youth retreat – funny but painful

so this time weould love to get them back just not as bad or maybe jtqlq

Erin G,
You are totally right. Lock-ins are more fun as a counselor. If you want to go on the big inflatable slide, you get to, because you are in charge. I love the big inflatable slide.

Hahahaha. I LOVE lock-ins. The first one I went to was this year. We played sardines and there were 4 of us jammed in this tiny closet. I think our air supply would have ran out before they found us… we must have been in there for at LEAST an hour before the others gave up. Good times, good times.

our most recent lock in resulted in a whole in the roof. oops. and before that, we (coughIcough) pulled a cabinet off the wall. oops.

As part of the high school worship band at my church, our band leader decided we would lock ourselves in to the youth room and practice all through the night for a retreat coming up (that we were painfully unprepared for).

Bless his heart, he let the whole band sleep in the same room when we took a break for a nap.

And yes, I was dating the guitar player at the time.

And yes, we spooned.

How that never made it to the “authorities”, I’ll never know. But we never did an all-night practice again.

I love all the accounts of damages. Our youth leaders were smart: our lock-ins were always at the Y or the skating rink (which, by the way, was something Christians in my neck of the woods LOVED). Of course, when they were at the Y the pool was always closed…

I love that they're called lock-ins instead of sleepovers or whatever.
Probably because a seventh grade boy would rather die than go to anything called a sleepover.

Lock-ins are hell for the chaperones; for several reasons. The kids are predisposed to expect entitlement and NO discipline. In other words, the word "No" is unheard of. They trash the place without one drop of consideration for those that have to clean up after them. Then they whine and complain and summon melodramatics. RRaaauughh never again!!! I dunno. Maybe I just hate kids.

The last lock-in our youth group ever did was at a laser tag place. One of the girls got knocked up that night. Whoopsie! That was the last overnight youth activity for many much years.

phew!! when we plan lock ins we make sure to have one night for the girls, and a separate one for the boys. actually, now that i think about it, they boys have never had one. we did have the youth pastor (a male) invite 3 of his friends to be our security team, but we banished them to the office and snuck them some snacks. they were prohibited to come into the areas where we were (the girls were in pajamas and we couldn't control what they would wear, even if we asked them to come decent as some boys would be there) and the "security squadron" was simply there just in case anything scary went down.

http://www.belovedbelove.wordpress.com

Lock-ins were fantastic! I went to one at my best friend's church when Napoleon Dynamite was the super big thing and my best friend and I quoted the whole thing We also proceeded to talk like Kip for the nest 48 hours straight.
Good times, good times.

We have girls' weekends (where my hubby leaves and the girls come over and then we go shopping the next day) and guys' weekends (where hubby takes the guys out camping). No lock-ins. #1 I don't want to stay up with crazy youth. #2 I know what happens when youth play "Sardines" in the dark at church.

I absolutely LOVED lock-ins growing up. Some of my favorite youth-group memories are the lock-ins that we had. I will say this, we had a heck of a lot of chaperons, that is for sure.

My yout director is awsome, exept for his "no purple" rule, where guys are blue, and girls are red… that's just gay…

Fact – I'm going through the Archives and reading old SCL posts because I love it. No judgement there. Second Fact – I agree, lock-ins are a really bad idea in theory, you know, the whole, no body can watch 40 middle schoolers in a gym that has side rooms at all times. But, I did receive Christ at a lock-in after a really cheesy video about some people being in a car wreck and only one of them getting to Heaven… Such a cheesy video. But, it was then that I realized I wouldn't be going there because I didn't know Jesus.

So lock-ins have their good sides too.

HAHAHA!
Lock-ins = torture for the leaders, awesomeness for the kids.

i have never been to a lock-in probably because my mom did go to lock-ins and she has told me what happens there so i probably never will

definitely went to lock-ins for the boys. yep.

I went to my first lock-in a while back. I was sure it would be Hell. However, the group of teens that were there (nearly 200) shocked me. All night, we were shoved in one room. Plenty of fun stuff. But no sex, no drugs… nothing bad happened. I love my church.

My old church does a lock in for High School and Middle School once a year, then they wake up in the morning and do a huge yard sale to raise money for camp. I had fun.

I was working with the youth at my new church when they did a lock in. They watched movies and when the rest of the leaders decided that they wanted to go to sleep, some of us as leaders, put our stuff in a line in between the boys and girls- this was the group that volunteered to stay awake to babysit the 14-17 year olds who were throwing gummy worms at each other…and us!

I don't know what kind of lock ins you people went to, but we cleaned at my church. I've been to three and we cleaned the auditorium once, and redid the youth room/basement twice. There was no purpling, no theft, and we got to rip stuff off the ceiling.

We had a few people who actually tried to go off in another room and try and sleep. Big mistake. BIG mistake!

That sounds like fun. I want to be invited. I"m 43 though so am i too old.

this is really true. when i was younger at lock-ins, when the adults fell asleep me and some other teenagers would smoke and play dirty truth or dare. and i mean dirty. very dirty.

I HATE Lock-ins. When my parents worked with our youth group they forced me to go to every single stinking one we had. One time, we had a lock-in at Malibu Grand Prix; that was the most miserable experience of my life. I also hated Disciple Now weekends. I need my space and my sleep in order to be functional and I do not like sharing a bathroom with 19 people.