Paintballing for Jesus

So Katherine’s now in our church’s Youth Group (Middle School division), rather than doing the Sunday School thing. They do all sorts of stuff — get together for meetings, serve at soup kitchens, help some of the church activities like the October pumpkin sales, etc.

This weekend, they went out to a paintball course.  And, of course, being the good, devout, supportive father and parishioner that I am, I felt obliged to go along.

Yeah, we had fun.  The Dynamic Paintball field is out in West Kansas (i.e., out in the flatlands to the east of the Denver area), out Jewell Ave. several miles past E470 (“If the road turns to dirt, you’ve gone too far,” the site directions say), and 30 dollars got us each rental on a paintball gun, 500 rounds, goggles/facemask, and an ammo carrier.

Over the course of the afternoon (we got there about 1, left about 3:30), we managed to play three rounds.  There were seventeen of us from the church, including both the youth and some adults, um, “chaparones.” That was a bit under half of the folks out at the field, so we played group games.

The first was a “Defend the Alamo” — a large defensive works in one corner of the field (which was about 100×100 yards).  Half the group is attackers, the other half defenders.  The defenders have the advantage of the defensive walls and barriers, but while the attackers, when hit, have to go back to their home base before resuming the field, if a defender is hit … they have to go to the attacker base and then become a new attacker.

This makes for a nice death spiral, in gaming terms, where the bigger the attacking force gets, the smaller the defending force gets, making the attacking force even bigger, until the parapets are charged and it’s all over very quickly.

The second two games we played (there were breaks between for water, snacks, reloading, and getting the air canister recharged) were Capture the Flag — two teams on opposite corners, a flag in the middle that has to be obtained and brought back to your side.  That ends up using the full field, and lots of sniping and enfilading and flanking and so forth.

On the second round of these, Kay volunteered to obtain the flag (well, in the second round we were doing “capture the ingots on the bridge at the center, one at a time”).  Each side had a clear plexiglass shield that someone could use to approach the flags, mostly (but not completely) protected, and pretty much dead meat unless their side lays down a good covering fire.

She didn’t get to the flag, but I was impressed by her willingness to give it a try.

Lots of fun, lots of sweat, lots of smiles.

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So what does this have to do with church?

I mean, isn’t it a bit weird to be running around on a paintball course, shooting each other, for a church group?

Well, if all they did was paintballing, then, sure.  But they do a lot else.  And even this activity, besides being just a hella fun, there are some cool things that this sort of activity can promote:

• Fellowship – friendship, shared relationships and experience, relating to others)
• Teamwork – I saw kids coming up with plans about what groups should do on the battlefield. They learned about working together to a common purpose … protecting each other … taking chances … cooperating.

And, of course, though it’s a “battlefield,” it’s not about actually hurting one another, or even hurting “the other side.”  After each game, everyone was all about how the others did, any “injuries” sustained, etc.  There was joy over success, but it was positive, about achievements, not about smacking down the other team.

And, aside from the occasional welt from a paintball smack-dab against too-thin fabric, nobody was hurt.

Would Jesus have gone paintballing with the Disciples?  I dunno.  But it would have been amusing to see …

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My first two rounds, I shot very carefully, very discreetly.  Round 1, I went through about a third of the ammo I was carring (just what was in the magazine).  Second round, I barely dipped into one tube or backup ammo.

Third round, kind of going for broke and being up and center, I burned through a lot of ammo.  Not sure if I hit anyone, but I kept a lot of heads down.

And it was fun, and fun to get to know some of the kids better.

I was hit, officially (actual broken paintball, quarter-sized hit, on my or my gun) many times (the face mask definitely came in handy once, though as it’s gridded I was able to learn just what paintball paint tastes like. (Not terribly good.)

The most notorious hit I took was a classical noob mistake.  I felt something that I thought might be a hit, something hitting my gun or fragments of a paintball or something and I stopped, looked down where I thought I’d been hit. “Have I been hit?” I thought. At which point a paintball smacked me in the belly.

Ow.

Left a bit of a welt through my not-thick-enough shirt, too.  Lesson learned.

Good time.