Last night during youth group, we played a new version of Mafia as never played before! The passage we were studying was from Luke 4 – Jesus’ temptation, healing the sick, and casting demons. Susan came up with the idea of playing Mafia, but rather than having killers and police, we had demons and prophets! The kids had never played Mafia before so it was no different to them. They had a blast playing the game! They were so close to becoming all demon-possessed but at the very end, they finally were able to identify the demons and cast them away.
Those of you who don’t know how to play, basically everybody sits in a circle representing a small village. By random luck of draw, two are chosen to be demons and two are prophets, their identities unknown to everyone. The narrator tells everybody to close their eyes (night time) and announces that the demons are prowling in the midst and are about to possess an innocent person. The two demons then open their eyes and together decide on who to possess. Then eyes closed, the narrator announces that God is about to speak to the prophets in their dreams. The two prophets open their eyes and point to a person in the circle. The narrator nods or shakes the head, revealing whether that person is a demon or not. Morning comes, everybody opens their eyes and to their lament, one of them has been demon-possessed and is no longer able to talk. The rest of the people need to identify the two demons in their midst. Through talking, discussion, pointing of fingers, and accusations, they need to decide which one of them they want to perform exorcism. The prophets may or may not know who the real demons are, depending on the message they heard last night. They need to convince the people to excorcize the right person without revealing their identities as prophets, lest they become the next demon-possessed victim. Once they agree on a person to perform exorcism, the narrator announces whether they successfully excorcized a demon or casted away an innocent person. (Note: Once possessed or casted away, they are no longer able to talk or contribute to the discussion) Night comes and the demons once again prowl in the midst and possess another innocent person. God speaks to the prophets once again. The next morning, the people discover that another one of them has been possessed. The game repeats until the villagers (or what is left of) identify and excorcize the demons before the entire village becomes demon-possessed.
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