The Secret Church || A Story of a Stupid Youth Group Game

Holden don't you ever get tired of Superhero shit?

I've heard of churches having "secret services," in solidary with persecuted Christians. So that a youth group did it didn't sound bad, or even that odd. At first. Then you went into the group being split in two. And then, the one side having to roleplay the persecuting force. And then, that it was actually a competitive game. And then, that the "playfield" was the entire town. And then, that the one side carried nerf guns at night while playing. Yeeeeeah. The idea starts sounding uncomfortable just after the first one or two additions to the general theme, but I have to admit, I'd probably have been into it (too far into it) as a youth.

Definitely the most intense church youth group game of all time. Craziest thing I have done in a church youth or college group was go to a haunted house for Halloween.

Is the meta-narrative around the game cringe? Kinda, yes, but the way I played it, it was basically just cops and robbers meets capture the flag in all but name. We definitely didn't do the whole "try to hold a church service" part, though, so I guess my school and church didn't try to attach inherently religious elements to the game apart from the name. I played that game at camp as a kid and at lock-ins at my church/school, and it was dope. I got pretty good at it too as my stealthy abilities to move quickly and quietly through the shadows grew with age. My camp groups went hardcore to the point we probably didn't go a single game without drenching sweat. We never used nerf guns, though, because that would be kinda nuts to run around at night with fake guns haha. That's probably why we changed it to two-touch football rules. Good times.

Is that a modded GTA thumbnail?

Hey, Holden! Instead of a massive "Clone Wars" episode dump, I'd prefer you unveil them by arc so we can interact with you as you go. Too much and it becomes white noise. If you have a single episode paired with an arc, that's ok, too. Please don't upload an avalanche of content.

Comment number 5 of me trying to get you to watch Agents of SHIELD. It gets really good after season one, just make it past season 1 and you’ll love it.

@holdenhardman i need the details on the light display in the background!

Imagine growing up in the "land of the free" and being taught from birth that there is an invisible being in space who created everything and he instructed a man to write all this down in a book so people on this planet could worship him for all that he done. Imagine not being given a choice at an older age to make your own decisions on life because you had to go to a place each week where people who are equally brainwashed from birth go to, to have more of the readings pounded into your head by another random man to say it is all real and accurate. I do love America and how free it is to free thought and speech lol. Quite glad the UK isn't as aggressive with this shit lol.

The crazy ass church that I was born into still does this shit

It always amazes me how groups of people get together and affirm "oh ya, this sounds like a great idea!" 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

"Uhhh hey we are just from the locoal church.... we'd like to talk to you about your life... *slowly stowes nerf gun* please dont kill us. I know what this looks like." I can see this so easily man... XD its like from our little shell "oh heck yea that sounds like a lot of fun!". Now standing in someones yard with close to a gun pointed at you.... "i should have seen this comming"

This sounds kinda fun and kinda messed up at the same time😂

I'm doing this concept one day

That honestly kind of sounds like fun though even though it was stupid.

My friend watches Harry potter

Christian GTA

Man I’d have so much fun playing this with my youth group

This sounds like fun

We had a game like that in highschool in my area called Fugitive but it wasn't religion based i believe it was like, MySpace based

As a youth pastor i think I would lose my job for doing something like this

As you told me before, the only truth in the Bible is Jesus. Everything else is songs, poems and simple peoples stories to justify how difficult life was 3000 years ago. How many generations before the Jesus part becomes fable too? What I see is a flat earth, the Bible says the same. All I hear is what I see doesn’t represent reality and the Bible is wrong. Why would anyone want to live in a world where what we see isn’t real and the Bible isn’t true? God and “outer space” cannot co-exist. A person can only believe one or the other. Ball earth is a false idol and cannot be proven by any measurement done from the ground.

Me and a friend would hide out in the woods with Paintball Guns waiting to shoot people who would Teepee our house on Halloween. The good ole days!

Being a religious Jew, I think I’d have a lot of people worried about me if I divided up my synagogue into “secret police” and “secret Jews” 😅

What? 😂

Keeping doing more story times I find them enjoyable! As a christian myself & at my church we only had classes of different ages. The oldest is teen class 5A but it's no longer around bc no one else was attending. That happened after me & my friends enter college. The last good memory I have is watching this mini movie about how would your life be without Christ

That's an awesome idea. What a way to humble yourself to the things we take for granted.

How are you even supposed to find them without GPS?

And the church thought it was a good idea? SMH y'all were lucky the cops didn't get called

My church had a game called infiltration. It was a huge church and there was Monopoly money spread out everywhere in the church. You were divided into teams and had to secure the money and take it back to the “bank” for your team. There were guards walking around with flashlights and if you got caught you went to jail and lost alll the money that was on you. To escape jail, you had to memorize 3 verses and tell them to someone 😂😂

My grandson sings "No, No, Don't touch me there! That is my NoNo Square!"

And yet christians love to say that they are so persecuted in the US. When churches can’t hide their finances behind 501 c tax exemption let me know.

Holden did you accept LED Live's invite to go on their show? They commented on your Soul video

My fun church story from when I was a teen. It's Friday the 13th pre 1997 my buddy and I were 14 or 15 at this point, we decided to watch Friday the 13th at 930pm then go out side, I lived next to a creepy wooded area, we thought walking in creepy woods immediately after the movie would be fun. We get out side at the edge of the woods at 11pm ish now, and a car speeding down our road slams on his breaks skids to a stop 10 ft from us, 4 people jump out and run at us, my buddy runs deeper into the woods, just like the movie fool, I stand still, the first guy runs right at me touchs my shoulder and says tag got ya. They catch my buddy up a tree, everyone returns to the curb to chat. It was at this point we learned that a church youth group was playing car tag and they thought we were players. Car tag is: a group of people start at 1 location and must get to the next location on foot, while a second group hunts them in their cars. If tagged you get in the car and carry on to hunt for more runners. Best night ever. Ended with us hanging out the rest of night at the final location, where they had snacks and a game of flag football.

Not a church thing, but my friends in 5th grade or so made a neighborhood night-time tag (pretty sure we called it Manhunt). It was these 4 or 5 dead-end streets that a good amount of the kids actually lived on. 1 end of the streets was where the ocean is, and the other side was a fairly busy main road. A lot of the houses were set up to have sneaky passages to get through, so that was the preferred method of travel... But stupid us, we played with springloaded airsoft pistols that *absolutely* looked like the real deal in the dead of night. Idk how we didn't get in trouble for that, running on the main sidewalk with guns out as cars are doing 35-40mph passed us. I only played once thankfully, but it really was fun.

When you were doing this did it ever come to your mind that the cops could be called

Where is clone wars? Is it safe? Is it alright?

You know when I was 8 we played a game called Muslim Catcher its like Islamaphobic Tag. Fun times😃

Religious people weird me out.

Will you guys react to episode 6 and 7 of Wandavision today?

Realised I have the same headset as Gus.

Dude. Come on. Where is this next clone wars video. You are coming up on 3 weeks between the videos. If you aren’t consistent with this show you want finish it that the reality. I can tell you’d push it off cos you might not like the first 10-15 episodes or maybe more

I’m glad I have a good Christian youtuber to watch

My youth group had things similar to this, usually at lock-ins, it was always at the church though because we were all in middle and high school, so nothing like that could even happen.

The American Christian church loves to fetishize persecution lol. I remember as a teen often thinking about what I'd do if someone had a gun to my head, trying to make me renounce my faith. Looking back, that's pretty messed up lol. I'm all for believing what you believe, but good grief, I was NOT ASHAMED (Newsboys) and a JESUS FREAK (dc Talk. Still one of my all time favorite albums!)

I've just been bingeing all of your old videos from before your my friend watches popularity explosion and I've been particularly enjoying your various Christianity focused videos, so it's a nice surprise to see another one pop up now. Glad to see that reaction/discussion videos haven't become the only thing you'll make moving forward (as I've seen with a lot of reaction channels I've seen. Go to their oldest videos and they're all about things they're passionate about, then suddenly one reaction video takes off so that's all they do). I'm an atheist myself, have been since I was old enough to question whether Santa was real or not, and I'm in love with the way you, and others like you, practice and think about Christianity. To me, you're the real Christian, because you understand the teachings are the important part, and not the specifics about various things that were written by flawed men in a flawed time. Sure, there are some things that you believe come directly from God, but anything even remotely up for debate you think about with your own brain instead of blindly believing. You don't push people, you discuss and actually listen. If all Christians (and other people of other faiths) thought more like you I don't think there would be a single person in the world who would have a problem with any religion. Thank you for "fighting" the good "fight". (Thankfully most christians that I've interacted with in my own life are more similar to you than to hardcore fundamentalists)

Wow Holden is more left leaning, well you could have fooled me but I will watch any one left and right I watch Lily Orchard for crying out loud! Any way great video Holden keep up the good work.

Worship bands.... Holden will you share your music with us?

In the late 80s, some friends of mine were part of another church, Baptist but I was Methodist, and they would go on and on about this game... we were in high school, maybe. I attended a gathering with them and we played that game. Same concept but it was only on the church's campus. It was just a glorified hide-n-seek game in the dark...

Man I wish my church did something like this. Your church sounds awesome for allowing that! 🤣

Wish this was My GF watches but hey this was interesting

Love me some Holden story time videos!

Wish my youth group played games like that 😂

I move These types of videos

Where’s clone wars

Nice

The return of Gus!!!

As a Christian teen in the 90s, I 100% would have loved playing this!

Me at my youth group trying to memorize verses, and y'all are over here playing cops and robbers: church edition

Love your vids keep up the good work.

Breh

First

As a fellow Christian who supports LBTQ+ do you?

Hi

1

Ahoy

ooh story time

yo