C3: Future

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Ice breakers

- Do an impression of someone who predicts the future: a mad prophet, a funny chubby astrologer or a mysterious gypsy. You could carelessly and jokingly predict what will happen to the British Government or to certain well known personalities or other things in your school.

- You could act out "teenage angst". Moan about your grades, future, spots, parents and social life. If you are good at acting, and you take it seriously, this can be effective and touching.

- Bring an unusual looking household appliance into the programme. Pretend it is a prototype new machine and describe how ingenious it is. Be a TV presenter or a madcap zany professor (if you can get away with it).

- Hand out small bits of paper and instruct your audience as follows:

1. Draw a straight line.
2. Write the word "birth" at one end.
3. Write the word "death" at the other.
4. Draw an "x" at the place where you are now.

Try it yourself first. This simple exercise visually brings home your own mortality. Death is at the end and your future - that short line - is the only thing that separates you from it. Analysing the different ways people fill in and react to this could be interesting enough for a whole assembly or as an ice breaker to a longer programme.

Footprints

This short story is presented overleaf. Read it out and discuss whether people are, or feel, conscious of being helped in their lives. Is it just a cute story or does it have a message?

Momentous moments

This would make a great short play. Five people are needed. To relate better with the audience, each actor/actress could be a teenager at the different moments of history. They can discuss their lives in the context of the events going on around them. The last scene is present day. The actor/actress playing this scene must challenge and shock the audience into questioning their own futures. You could have all the previous characters in the background as ghosts or wise elders. Add or change the scenes if you like. The central idea is to compare the worries, hopes and dreams of your contemporaries in previous generations.

Free choice Discussion

Many people have their own explanation of the free choice vs. determinism paradox. Let people suggests their own solutions. Put in yours too. How well to these arguments really hold up? Try asking some of these questions:

- Which is more meaningful to our lives: discussing the paradox or trying to decide what to do with freewill if we have it?

- Do we like the idea of being bound by fate so that we are less responsible for our actions? Think about the phrases: "It's not my fault, it's my upbringing" and "They made me do it!"

- Why would God give us free will and not make create us as subservient robots?

Jewish optimism

Is half a glass of water half empty or half full? Are your audience pessimists or optimists. You could ask them to decide on a few questions to judge their outlooks.

Explain that Judaism isn't just optimistic about people, it is optimistic about the whole world. Creation itself was an act of optimism - why bother otherwise?

Bible lessons

- Discuss the meaning of "the image of God". Is the image physical, spiritual or psychological? Is free choice what we have in common with God?

- Nowadays, do we take Bible characters seriously? Do we learn from and relate to their lives? Does the fact that they all made mistakes help? Give some examples and discuss with your audience.

- Do we think millennially? Does the fact that the Bible begins with creation and has prophetic visions of "the end of days" make us look beyond our own short lives?

Boredom & Instant solutions

- Ask your audience to anonymously write down why they get bored and collect up the comments. Read a few out. Is there a common theme?

- Ask one or two people to list the electrical appliances they have in their homes or make a least yourself. It is not hard to reach fifty. How have these machines changed our lives? Do we have more time on our hands now? What do we do with it?

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