A couple weeks back the BASIC crew had the opportunity to go to SUNY Albany for a campus blitz. It was an awesome time of being on the campus, starting many great conversations, and ministering to students. When we held our blitz meeting we had over 90 students show up and 11 commit their lives to Christ that night! One of things we did throughout our couple days was a simple event called beta pong.
The Albany group had done this last spring and had great success, but this was the first time I got to see it myself. I was surprised and excited about just how much attention and buzz this rather easy idea generated. It’s a spin on the classic drinking game beer pong, which is why college students associate with it so quickly.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- beta fish (they bought 50)
- a package or two of fish food
- a table
- package of ping pong balls
- plastic cups filled with water (if you want to be true to beer pong go with red Solo cups)
- computer speakers or other sound equipment to play music
- at least 3 people to administer the game
How to play:
We set up three cups in a straight line filled with water and had students stand about 6-7 feet away. Before people play they sign up on an email list so we can let them know about other events. If they were really hesitant about that we just let them play because we didn’t want anyone to feel like we were just trying to sell them something.
Students then got 3 chances to land a ping pong ball in one of the cups. If they got it in they were able to pick out one of the beta fish to keep. Each container with a fish had about 8-10 pellets of fish food taped on the lid to get them started in taking care of their new pet. If they didn’t make it in the cup in 3 tries they were given the chance to earn a bonus shot by answering one question. Almost everyone who missed was willing to answer a question to get that bonus shot.
They would step aside and answer a question about faith and God such as, “What do you think about life after death?” or “Gandhi once said ‘I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.’ What do you think about Christians?” These were great ways to engage people in conversation without feeling overly pushy. I would usually end our conversation by saying something like, “At BASIC we like to talk about this kind of stuff, but we have a lot of fun too. It was nice meeting you. Step up and take your bonus shot.”
We made sure that everyone got an invite card to our meeting that night before we left and we sent out an email reminding them about the meeting later that day. The upbeat music kept the atmosphere fun and everyone would cheer for people when they won a fish. We decided to remove two of the cups near the end to make the event last a little longer, but in all it took about 3 hours to give away 50 fish. If anyone asked how to take care of the fish we told them they could get a little bit bigger bowl and fish food at the Dollar Store or Wal Mart.
Probably one of the most important things we accomplished was showing everyone that Christians like to have fun. Sure, it wasn’t a drinking game, but just hearing we were playing beta pong made people laugh even if they didn’t play. Every time there was a class break we were sure to have a line of people waiting to play and people were regularly bringing their friends over to get involved.
If you have any more questions about running this event you can email me at chris@thebasicsite.org.