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Welcome to another episode This is the place where we talk about kids ministry and take a peek behind the scenes. I'm Gabriel Baker, and this is where we try to share a little bit of what we've learned that works for us and even those failures that didn't work so well. So hopefully you can avoid them. We release a new episode every Friday, and we will attempt to show the magic or disaster that happens behind the scenes of our Sunday school each week. I'm your host, Gabe Baker, and today we have myself and brother Steve Arter. All right. Good evening, brother Gabe. Hey, how's it going? Good. It's going good tonight. You want to tell our audience our topic for today? Yeah. So our topic is about sustainment and the sustainability of our Sunday school. And so I guess the title would be Keeping the Wheels Turning, moving forward. Keeping the wheels turning. We got to have something creative, right? Yes. So, yeah. And so, like Brother Lars said, that's our topic is talking about sustainability and we're not talking about going green. We do sometimes with camo paint maybe, but yeah. So, we're just basically talking about how do you keep your Sunday school going? How do you keep it consistent? How do you keep it at the level that it needs to be week after week? Week in and week out, right. And then how do you look at the future? And so, that's just kind what we want to talk about today. So we're going to dive in and hopefully provide some kind of value to somebody out there. Sure. Somebody will get some. Yeah. So I, um, we were, we were just kind of discussing, we, we don't really have much of an outline today. Um, I double booked myself and didn't really make an outline, but we were talking about, um, some ideas and brother, you mentioned being consistent in format. I think that's really good. Yeah. Um, you know, making sure that it doesn't have to be the same every week, but the same content, you know that we that we have uh our segments segments right you know we have the the opening is pretty much the same and and and the kids are expecting things to be kind of organized you know right and and how we do that and that that we're making uh meeting their expectations as far as we make sure that we have uh we talk about the plan of salvation every time every every single week and uh and and prayer requests just like we do in the big church yeah you know we give them an opportunity, and they're expecting that. And I think that's really important. No matter what your format of Sunday school is, is that you remain consistent so that kids can expect, okay, this is what's going to happen. This is how it's going to go. And it can change a little bit, but as long as we have those core things, I think the kids really like that. And if we miss something, they're the ones that are going to let us know. Yeah. Well, and it's funny that you say that. So we don't... We do the segments and we shift the order of them to keep them on their toes, I guess you could say, to keep it a little bit interesting. But we did altar service a lot earlier than normal last week. We did, and that threw me off. Yeah, so it was really early, and I had one of the kids was like, Already? Yeah. He was really disappointed. Sure. That we were doing altar service that early. But yeah, I think that when these kids know, I think prayer request is a good one. Yes. If they know that sometime during Sunday school, we're doing prayer requests and man, my mom is sick. Yep. And I can't wait for prayer requests because I'm going to I'm going to request prayer. Oh, yeah. You know, and when I was out with my shoulder thing, you know, really, it touched my heart because 50% of the kids were like, well, I'm going to pray for you, brother, harder to get better. Yeah. You know, so it really means something to them. It brings it home. Yeah. It really means something to them. Yeah, that's good. You know, something I just thought of when I was talking about the prayer requests is I heard a story about And man, I do this all the time. I think of something and I don't have it written down. I think of it on the fly. So, I heard the story and I'm going to probably butcher it, but it'll help our concept. So, there was a basketball player. I think it was Kobe Bryant. I'm not sure. But here's how the story, as I remember it, goes. And I'm sorry if I'm butchering this really bad. Somebody knows the story really well. But basically, he... was sick or maybe even injured, but he was playing anyway. He was playing through something that he was dealing with. And I think it was his wife or somebody asked him, I think it was his wife, asked him, why do you do that? Why do you play through that? Why don't you just take a break? Take a break. Or sit on the bench a little bit more or something. And as the story goes, he made the comment, he said, there might be a fan that has saved up all year to come and watch me play. And, you know, you can look at that one way. I'm not a big basketball fan, so I'm not a huge Kobe fan or anything. My son and I argue about LeBron versus Jordan all the time. But I'm not a big fan, so I don't know. I know he was in the top there somewhere. But that might look arrogant, but I thought, wow.

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Wow.

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He was thinking of that fan that saved up all year, and if he's sitting on the bench, what a disappointment. Right. And if we could have that mindset in our – we're talking about sustainability, but kind of hand-in-hand with that is consistency. Sure. If we can think – You know, maybe there's a kid. You know, we don't charge for Sunday school here yet. No, I'm just kidding. We do take offering, though. Yeah, we do take offering. But maybe, you know, what if somebody, you know, has told their friend about Sunday school? Yeah. And they're like, oh, it's so exciting. There was this sword fight the pirates had. And maybe he's been telling them for weeks. And finally, they get to come. Or they finally, they want to come, whatever. And they show up and we fail to be consistent. We fail. And yeah, because we don't feel good. Right. Or we were, you know, late. And so we just decide, ah, not today. We're just kind of going to run through this. Yeah. That hits home. Yeah. It does hit home. And I feel like we are pretty consistent. We can always do better. Sure. But way, way better in so many areas. I think that, Pretty much any time a kid comes to Sunday school, if it's new, they're pleasantly surprised. Even some of the kids that come every week, they're expecting us to, I don't want to say perform, but to be in our characters. We're having a bad day, but putting that aside and say, all right, man, I'm going to be Pharaoh this week. I got to be Pharaoh. I got to be in character. Yeah. You know, and they're expecting that. So that's also part of the consistency and sustainability. Exactly. When we're having a bad day, it's like, you know, like when you go to work, leave your personal stuff at the door. Exactly. You come into your work. We do the same thing, have to do the same thing here. Get into our character because at the end of the day, you know, we're teaching our kids the plan of salvation. At the end of the day, that's what we're teaching them. We have the highest responsibility. Yes, we do. We do. Yeah. And we have a lot of fun and we're goofy and everything. But if we remember why, why do we, you know, we're upstairs. Why do we come up here? Why do we come up? Brother Philip Booker, a good friend of mine, ours, a good friend of ours, he calls this the upper room. Right. Well, that's good. That's awesome. So, we come to the upper room and we got to be consistent. So, then I guess, you know, we do got to a couple of bullet points here. Personally, in your walk with God, this is another area that I guess maybe it's a given, but I think we should talk about it. This does come over into Sunday school as well. Sure. Is you can't just, you know, our Sunday school format The way we do it, we have ages 5 through 11, and we have one classroom setting. Classroom is not really the word. It's more of a theater-type setting, I suppose. Yeah, it's not huge, but we have a pirate ship and stuff right now. So we have a good time when we come here, and we get into character. We have costumes, cool costumes. We go all out, you know, our staff. buys costumes, and we have the script and got a storyline, and we have a lot of comedy that happens. It's fun. It's really fun. We have a backstage. We're blessed to have our backstage. We have snack in here for the staff. We got a little mini fridge. I mean, it's kind of luxurious. We didn't always have that. So I said all of that to say that we can't lose sight of why we come up here. Right. You're absolutely right. And so it's not just about day of. Let's go back to the basketball example. It wasn't just about that day of. There's a lot of training that goes into that. Training and practice that goes into it. Mindset. Mindset. And so I think that for us, while we're not preachers, the thing is, is we... We need to have that consistent walk with God. You're absolutely right. During the week. Absolutely. Not just on Sunday. We got to be consistent. And I would even venture to say, you know, most of us wear a lot of hats around here. We're not just Sunday school people. We do other things in the church. But to be thinking about Sunday school, at least a little bit during the week. Oh, yeah. You know, the kids. Oh, yeah. When... in prayer time you know remembering the kids as many names as you can remember you know you know you don't might not remember them all but hey god that one kid in the red sweatshirt yeah exactly the one who was acting up last week don't don't smother him god but just help him yeah and then um yeah and then even just being mindful of you know the lesson and everything and having you know, God behind. Right. All the fun and cut up that we do, having God behind it and God in it. So training the next generation. And I liked what you said. Why don't you read that? Yeah. Building our bench. Building a bench. You know, and what means the most to me is some of the kids, they get up to 11 years old and they go, well, I'm going to be in youth next year. And man, this is really for kids. And, you know, it's important for us to get them involved, even though they're in their 11th year. Yeah. You know, like being a senior in high school, right? I'm going to move on. But get them involved and give them something like an altar of remembrance, if you will. Yeah. You know, so that when they graduate to the youth, you know, how many times, you know, we talked about it earlier that, you know, they graduate to the youth and it's like, man, can I come back and help in Sunday school? Yeah. You know, so it grips their heart, you know, and it's... You know, we're talking about sustainment. That's being sustained even after they're in Sunday school. Yes. So it's important for us to build our bench while they're in Sunday school so that they leave and they're in the youth. And then they get to thinking, man, that was so much fun. I want to help. They can turn around and give back. So that's our job as Sunday school teachers and actors and facilitators is to make sure they're not losing sight of how important children's church is. Right. Yeah, exactly. And building our bench while they're in Sunday school. While they're here. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, I get people all the time that do ask me that are pretty young, and I'm like, well, let's wait. Yeah. But I get people that ask me, and I have one young man that has asked me, and I said, don't stop. I said, just keep asking me. I get busy and do stuff, but I just, not yet. But keep asking me. Sure. And so he does. He keeps asking me every month or so. He'll hey, you know. And so I told him a little while back. So we're going to be I don't know when, but we're going to be starting a training, a Sunday school training. And so I told him about it and I said, I said, that'll be your pathway in. We're going to start this Sunday school training. We're going to do it for some of the people, especially the newer people that are already in and then those probably that want to that have been in forever. But I said, that'll be your pathway in. And then you can come in. He's fairly young. I can't remember how old, but he wants to be back. And I think he'll do good. Good. But here's another example is we had a young lady and, you know, we don't, do a lot of names on here. I'm going to call her name. So Skylyn. Yeah, I was thinking the same person. So Skylyn wanted to be in Sunday school and same thing. She kept asking. I had her mom ask for, you know, texting me. And I was like, yeah, probably, you know, probably. And she's good with kids. She's been around kids and stuff. She's pretty young. I don't know how old she is, but she, there was a tipping point. And I think I have the picture somewhere on my phone, but it was in the altar service. one night and there was a bunch of kids praying and she was over there praying with them, like praying, you know, trying to pray them through and maybe they did. I can't remember, but she was praying with those kids. Yeah. And I, I text pastor and I had already, he was already aware of it. And so I asked him and I text him that picture and then I text her mom. I believe I text her mom, but I know I text Pastor and I said, this made my decision. Yeah, that's the time. Right here. And so now she is a part of Sunday School. She does great. Yeah, good job. Yeah, she's very good. And that's sustainability. I don't know how long she's been in. It's been over a year, I think, because she went to the Sunday School seminar down in Redlands with us the first time. um time we went with a big group and so she went and got it yeah yeah so she and she's gonna she's gonna do great she's also great job skyline yeah awesome you know going back to the the format so i wrote a note in here standardize and here's what i mean i there's two sides there's a yin and yang right to this so i think that standardizing if you think of mcdonald's McDonald's is basically ran by a bunch of teenagers, you know, I mean, or can be, right? And it, you know, it's not perfect, but they run, you know, billions of restaurants with teenagers. Yes. Essentially, you know, and they have standardized it. And I remember I read about them doing a, I don't want to, this is not about McDonald's, but I just want to use this as an example. When they moved to, to california they had these dreams of being actors or directors or something in the film business well when they started you know when they pivoted or however you want to say it that's a popular word they pivoted to the restaurant business when they were trying to figure out how to standardize and how to make things quick they actually went out on like a tennis court or something i saw pictures of this and on with chalk or something like that they drew the restaurant to dimensions. And they had a guy up on a, one of the brothers was up on a ladder with a bullhorn and they had their crew, their cooking crew or whatever you want to call them. And they were in the quote unquote restaurant on this chalk marks. And they were practicing the line. and they were like you know how you I they had it like you're wrapping burgers you turn this way and they crashed into somebody oh well that's not gonna work yeah and they worked through it and they standardized the process oh yeah it was inspiring for sure this is awesome I was like wow and now they are the primo example that everyone uses for any kind of fast food now The flip side, this is the yin and yang. I can't remember which one's which, but this is the yin and yang, all right? So the flip side of this is when something can be standardized to the point that anybody can do it, where you can write it down. Seth Godin says something about this. He's a marketing author. But when it can be standardized to such a point that it can be written down, it's... You don't have the edge anymore. Kind of in the business world is what he's talking about. You don't have the edge anymore and you need to go to the next step or whatever. And so it's not special anymore. So that's the kind of the yin and yang. But I think with our formatting and how we do things, especially behind the scenes, backstage, costumes, we have lockers and those kinds of things, standardizing it and standardizing this is part of the reason i want to do training is it's not just about you know training people to the next level but it's standardizing our operation so that when we do have the people like skylan come in instead of her getting a turn to take a sip from a water hose a fire hose she's getting a bullet pointed yes this is how we do this yeah these are our procedures there's obviously there's outliers right but these are our procedures And so I think that that helps in sustaining what we do. Oh, sure. Being consistent in what we do. Being consistent in what we do. I just thought, so this is like totally off track, but we did space theme a couple of years ago and we were wrapping that up. And so we do ages five through 11. So we have a cycle that we can do where we don't repeat a theme. So we were putting stuff in totes. My daughter was putting... putting all the space stuff away, shoes, space suits. We had these suits that were from basically head to toe, you know, glasses, all this stuff, the shoes that light up. And so put all that stuff in there. And then I said, put on a time capsule. She put some tape and wrote time capsule. And it says, do not open till 2027. Right. But I remember you were there. I remember because we were cleaning up. Yes. And you said something like, oh, I won't be here or something. Yeah. And so I hope that you will. Yeah, it's when I open the time capsule. But when we open the time capsule... hopefully we'll have standardized practices in place. So if Skylyn is the one opening that and she's got a crew under her. She'll know. They know. Yeah. Oh, okay, here's what they had and here's how we do it and let's go. Yeah. I need to put the script in there too. That would be kind of cool. Yeah. Put the whole 16-week script in there. Every bit of it. That'd be nice. Be a real-time capsule then. Yeah. But that's all part of sustainment is planning for the future. and building the bench. So when I'm gone, someone else can know how to be Pharaoh. Yeah, exactly. And then when you move on, someone will be able to step up and, man, I can do this. I watched him and he showed me. So that's what we are as leaders in the church, whether it's children's church or... know the sound booth or you know it's it's everything bringing people up to know what to do you know after we're gone exactly right and you know one thing that uh lately actually over the past several months i have taken myself out of the script a lot and you guys run it all the time without me here if i'm gone so it's not about that i know we're capable yeah exactly totally capable but what that has done is i i feel like what it has done is it has allowed more experience for some people sure where i would have done that but now they're doing especially some of the things that i commonly do i commonly do lesson i often do um the bible story intro like a little synopsis before we start the actors coming to interrupt me And so, um, used to be, and now this is hardly ever, but used to be, I was the main one that did praise when we came out. So just for our audience, we typically, we do a lot of team, um, there are a lot of teams of three. Praise is usually more, it's like everybody all hands on deck, but we usually do like, we come in and interrupt something and we got some, you know, rowdy music playing for the entrance and we all burst in and then we have a a lead that is like okay everybody on your feet or whatever and then we start the song whether it's to a track or whether it's live music or whatever we we're doing so it used to be that i always was the praise lead and i kind of was a cheerleader you know getting everybody going now i hardly ever do that right and it's funny because we have people do it that don't sing at all right and uh This reminded me, this has been several weeks ago. We had somebody doing the praise lead that does not sing. But they had their mic and they left it on, you know, and they were singing with the song. I was in the sound booth. I leaned over. I told Adrian, I said, hey, mute their mic. That's great. That's great. But they were giving it their all. So they were, they were going into it. That's getting into the character. You know, I'm, I'm praise. I'm the praise leader today. I'm not going to act like it. So, um, we're getting close to the end of our time, but one thing with, with this podcast, you know, I always talk about trying to add value. This is, that's what this is really is what it's about. It's, um, trying to, you know, I said with, I think it was brother Aaron. I said, um, We wanted to create a podcast that we would want to listen to. Yeah. And I listen to some podcasts I love, and there's some that I don't like. And one of my favorites is Brother Phil Booker's Apostolic Sunday School. Well, ApostolicSundaySchool.com is his website. I'm sure you can find the podcast there. Apostolic Children's Ministry, I think is the name of the podcast. And so one thing that he does most of the time is they review what they did. previous sunday and for me that's like my favorite part most of the time because i love seeing and i get ideas too i love seeing how the inner workings you know and so when uh from some pressure from him when uh we decided to start this podcast that was kind of my idea is To help people, but in what way? And that's the way is not that we are experts or anything, but in the way that I wish I could listen to a podcast, like Brother Booker's and there's others, but where we can provide value by giving a peek behind the scenes of it. here's what we do yeah so with that with the sustainability we've talked about a lot of um concepts and and mindset and idea and i guess just to kind of round this out with some concrete things um we we have a certain way that we do sunday school and so you know not all these examples fit for everybody and i understand that but maybe you can have some takeaways but i think that those older ones like you mentioned earlier that are getting ready to go out is don't um write them off or that sounds really rude don't don't just think okay well they're graduating and they're going to be gone instead look at them like your recruitment pool yeah and say okay so they're about to graduate oh boy we're running out of time you know sure now's the time to you know start planting this seed, you know, hey, you need to give back. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's one of the little more tangible things that's a little less conceptual that you can do to create sustainability. And then going back to the standardizing and the consistent format, I understand there might be some people that listen that are still trying to figure out what is our standard, what is our format. And it's okay to change it. We've changed it over the years. Not a lot, but we have changed it some. In fact, I'll tell you, when we first started this style, it was a major change for us. We used to do more, well, more what I call traditional Sunday school, but I don't know. That almost sounds like I'm looking down on it. I'm not. But we used to have separate classrooms, separate age groups, and I don't know, several classes. pastor, it was before he was pastor, I believe, he took it upon himself to change the format of our Sunday school. So we do still have some separate classes, but we basically, right now we have five through 11, ages five through 11. I don't know what it started out as. It might not have been exactly that. But we switched to that one room Sunday school format, and it's been many, many years ago. Yeah, like... 20 years or something, I don't know, a long time ago. And then, you know, I wear a lot of hats here. And so he basically eventually said, okay, go do Sunday school. Yes, sir. And so got into it. And then we have a lot of staff, you included, that have been here forever doing Sunday school. So that turned our Sunday school on its ear. That was a new standard for us. Sure. And so, and we were always trying, we want to always try to push students the envelope and do new and cool stuff. But there's value in looking at, okay, let's be consistent in these things. It's kind of like, you know, the rule, the thing about rules, like you have to know why they're there before you start breaking them. You know what I mean? And you can break some rules, but you got to know why first. Sure. You just come out of the gates breaking rules. Yeah, don't break the rules right out of the gate. And so I think that's, you know, if you're getting your footing in Sunday school, that's the key is let's get the basics and standardize, you know. your segments, if you will, or how you're going to, your format, what you're going to do. Do you have an hour and how are you going to split that hour up? Standardize that. And then you can kind of understand where you're going and say, okay, I want to change it a little bit. Right. But then that gives you something. If you're recruiting staff or if you're trying to look at that next generation, it gives you something to pass on. on instead of just this intangible uh idea you know and you know uh at the end of the day they may they may have some new ideas right you know and that that's something that that we as old-timers i guess if you will yeah need to also entertain is that uh you know this it has to be fluid yes you know we've got to teach the same thing Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out, but that doesn't mean we have to stick to that. Yeah, the way we present it. Right. So we get some new people that come in after us, and a newer generation may have some different ideas, and we need to listen to that. Yeah, exactly. I'm glad you brought that up because I guess we could kind of stuff this into the can of sustainability, but I value that, what you just said. I think that sometimes, I've been so guilty of this, we can have a group of people and we're recruiting and we have somebody that's different. They have a different outlook. Maybe they're from a different country. upbringing, age, culture. And sometimes we can write them off and be like, oh, well, they don't really understand like we do. Yeah, they'll come around our way. They'll come around our way, yeah. But rather instead, like you just mentioned, we should value when we sit down and I think, not that it's like crazy different, but like Brother Brent said, And he's not like younger, really. I mean, I don't know how old he is, but he's not a young person. He's married and got kids. But he's newer to our Sunday school, a couple of years now. And he wasn't part of our group, but he's got amazing ideas. And he's fantastic in Sunday school. And I think that's an example. I mean, I don't think anybody wanted to write him off, but it's just an example of if somebody comes in and maybe they're a little more assertive or something and they're ready to make things happen. And it's not exactly how we would make things happen. We should value that. At least look at it and say, oh, okay. Oh, I didn't think of it that way. You know? Right. Yeah. Can't just be chiseled in stone. Yeah, exactly. Our gospel's chiseled in stone. Yeah. The way we present it has to be a little more... A little bit more fluid. Yeah. Yeah. With new ideas of like... you know, oh, we should do, okay, I'll just use an example. I want to do this more. We should do puppet shows. I want to do more puppet shows. We used to do them a lot more than we do. I want to do them, not every Sunday, but I want to do them more regularly. And so one of the things that I have thought about is, okay, I want to do puppet shows, but I was thinking, okay, if I want to do puppet shows, instead of just doing one in a couple of weeks, I'm like, how can I sustain that? How can we start doing it? and and it be sustainable and so there's some people i met at the kingdom kids conference in summit at the summit conference uh in pigeon forge tennessee the breedings brother and sister breed and shout out to them but they um they've been in sunday school for a while and i think that they got started doing puppets in fact he said uh something like he went and bought uh a puppet set up for like $500. And his wife was like, well, you better use this thing. And so they did, they started doing videos. So I need to reach out to them. But I wanna make it, we have some bins of puppets from when we used to do it. So that's just an example. I don't wanna just do a flash in the pan, like, oh, let's do a puppet show. I wanna sustain it and let's do puppet show, even if it's 12 times a year, let's do a consistent puppet show and make it good. The kids can look forward to it. Oh, man, the puppet show last month was awesome. Oh, man, we might have to do a podcast on puppet shows now. All right, well, I think that's it, folks. If you stayed with us this long, I hope that you got some value out of this and it wasn't too boring or too conceptual, but I think there's some value in it. Yeah, I think so. So that's a wrap. All right.