Scripture Mad Libs Church Youth Activity

We recently had one of the best youth activities ever thanks to our young women’s class president Bea Fronk! Bea took charge of the activity and came up with a unique idea: Scripture Mad Libs—a fun twist on a classic game.

For those unfamiliar, Mad Libs is a word game where participants fill in blanks with random words (such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives) without knowing the full context. Once all the blanks are filled, the words are inserted into a prewritten story—often with hilarious results.

Bea took this concept and applied it to scripture stories, creating her own prompts that replaced key words with blanks for the youth to fill in. She did three stories from the Old Testament and one from the Book of Mormon.

She had us split the youth into four groups to complete their Scripture Mad Libs. After finishing, it was time for the fun part—acting it out! Each group used props to bring their version of the scripture stories to life. One member from each group served as the narrator, reading their final Mad Lib aloud while the rest of the group acted out the scene.

The youth loved it so much that I asked Bea if I could share it. We always like to assign goals to our activities, so this fits in well under Social and Spiritual. Working together was a great way for the youth to get to know one another better.

Scripture Mad Libs

Instructions:

• Split everyone into 4 groups, each will get a story.
• They will fill in character names, descriptive words, and choose props or costumes.
• Give the groups time to plan and practice separately.
• Once they are done, everyone will act out their story.
• The audience must guess which scripture story is being acted out/find the moral (tell them not to say their story name out loud! …its a secret).

These are written as stories, so one person in each group should narrate while the others act it out – they can have individual lines or just let the narrator do the talking. You can download the templates below.

Download Scripture Mad Libs

Scripture Mad Libs Original Stories

In case the groups need help, the original stories are included below.

1. David and Goliath

Once upon a time, there was a shepherd boy named David who lived in Israel and took care of his family’s sheep.

One day, his father Jesse told David to take some food to his brothers who were serving as soldiers in the army of Israel, in the fight against the Philistines.

When David arrived at the camp, he could hear one of the Philistine soldiers shouting insults at the Israelites. His name was Goliath and he was a giant of a man. He challenged the army of Israel to send a soldier to fight him one-on-one.

All the soldiers were terrified of Goliath, but young David was not afraid. The shepherd boy was in fact very brave, and he wanted to help his people. He asked permission from King Saul if he could go onto the battlefield and fight the giant himself.

King Saul eventually allowed David to fight Goliath, but he worried for his safety. This is because David refused the armor and weapons that the king had offered him. Instead, he preferred to fight Goliath with only a sling and five smooth stones.

When Goliath saw David approach him without a spear or shield, he laughed at the boy and threatened to feed him to the birds. David replied that he didn’t need such weapons, as he came to defeat the Philistine in the name of God.

Using his sling, David hurled a stone at Goliath’s forehead. The giant fell to the ground dead. Once they saw that their champion had been killed, the Philistines became scared and fled, while the Israelites chased them across the battlefield.

David soon became famous throughout Israel and was considered to be a hero. The shepherd boy was loved by all the Israelites, as he had saved them from the Philistines. One day, they made him king.

2. Moses and the Plagues

Moses obeyed God and went to Pharaoh with the message God gave Him, “Let the Israelites go.” But Pharaoh said no.

Moses went to the water of the river and touched it. Instantly, it turned to blood! No one could drink the water from the river. The Egyptians were very thirsty. But Pharaoh’s heart was hard, “I will not let your people go.”

One week later, God told Moses to go back to Pharaoh. Moses said to him, “God says let my people go, or your country will be covered in frogs!”

Pharaoh said, “No!”

The whole land was covered in frogs. Pharaoh called Moses, “I will let your people go if you get rid of the frogs.”

Moses did, but Pharaoh changed his mind.

God set more plagues to Egypt. Gnats, flies, sickness, dead animals, bad weather, locusts, and more. But Pharaoh would not let the people leave.

Finally, God sent the worst plague of all. Unless Pharaoh obeyed, the eldest son of every family would die. Only those who obeyed God and put blood on their doors’ posts would be saved.

Sadly, Pharaoh still refused to listen to God. The Egyptians were sad. Finally, Pharaoh called Moses and said, “Go. You are free. Leave us alone.”

3. Ammon

Ammon went to the land of Ishmael. As he entered it, the Lamanites tied him up and took him to their king, Lamoni. Ammon told King Lamoni that he wanted to live among the Lamanites. Lamoni was pleased and had his men untie Ammon.

After he said that he would be a servant to the king, Ammon was sent to help watch the king’s flocks.

One day, as Ammon and other servants took the flocks to the watering place, some Lamanite robbers scattered the animals in order to steal them. Ammon’s fellow servants were afraid. King Lamoni had killed his other servants who had lost animals to these robbers.

Ammon knew that this was his chance to use the Lord’s power to win the hearts of the Lamanites. Then they would listen to his teachings.

Ammon told the other servants that if they regathered the animals, the king would not kill them. Ammon and the other servants swiftly found and drove the animals back to the watering place.

When the Lamanite robbers came again, Ammon told the other servants to guard the flocks while he went to fight the robbers. The Lamanite robbers were not afraid of Ammon. They thought that it would be easy to kill him. The power of God was with Ammon. He slung stones at the robbers and killed some of them. This made the rest of them very angry.

When they tried to kill Ammon, he cut off the arm of everyone who raised a club to hit him. Frightened, the robbers ran away.

The other servants took the cut-off arms to King Lamoni and told him about Ammon’s great power and what he had done. Lamoni was astonished. He wanted to see Ammon, but he was afraid. He thought that Ammon was the Great Spirit. Alma later explained that the Great Spirit is God.

4. Pharaoh’s Dream

Joseph was stuck in prison for angering Potiphar’s wife, but he didn’t do anything wrong! Luckily, his good behavior let him lead other convicts such as his cellmates. His first cellmate was convicted for not being a good enough cupbearer for the Pharaoh, and the second for not baking well enough for the Pharaoh’s taste. The Pharaoh had jailed them all for no good reason!

One day, Joseph found out that both of his cellmates had strange dreams.

The cupbearer explained his strange dream first. In his dream, he saw three branches full of ripe, juicy grapes. In his hand, he held Pharaoh’s cup, and he filled the cup with juice from those delicious grapes. Then he put the cup in Pharaoh’s own hand.

With God’s help, Joseph gave the cupbearer the interpretation saying that in three days’ time he would be restored to his job as Pharaoh’s cupbearer. Joseph asked the cupbearer to remember him when he got out of prison so that he could help Joseph be released as well.

The baker then shared his dream with Joseph, explaining that in his dream he was carrying three baskets of bread for Pharaoh on his head. On his way to deliver the food, birds ate up the bread from the baskets. This time Joseph’s interpretation was not so nice. Joseph told the baker that in three days’ time Pharaoh would have the baker executed.

Just as Joseph had said, within three days both interpretations came true. The cupbearer was restored to his job and the baker was put to death. Unfortunately, the cupbearer forgot all about Joseph until two whole years later.