UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to another episode, the place where we talk about kids' ministry and take a peek behind the scenes. We try to share a little bit of what we've learned that works for us and some of our failures so you can avoid them. We release a new episode every Friday, and this is your Backstage Pass to see the magic or disaster that happens behind the scenes of our kids' ministry. I'm your host, Gabe Baker, and today I'm joined

SPEAKER_00 0:23

by Brother Myles. How's it going? It's going good. Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this ever since you mentioned it to me the other day, and really excited to do this today.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Yeah. Yeah, man, it's been too long since we've had it going to finally have you on here. So

SPEAKER_00 0:36

you wanted to

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introduce

SPEAKER_00 0:38

today's topic? Yeah, absolutely. So today's topic, we're going to be talking about taking the plunge, jumping both feet into children's ministry. Taking the

SPEAKER_02 0:45

plunge. All right. So I read something a long time ago. I used to read a lot about Navy SEALs. I just was interested in it. I actually worked for a Navy SEAL for a while. And I read something that says Navy SEALs don't dip their toe in the water. And it's kind of It's funny if you think about a Navy SEAL dipping their toe in the water at the pool or something to see how warm or whatever. So, you know, I don't know, have you ever gone swimming and you want to know how the water feels before you dive in, you know? Yeah, that can be a mistake. Yeah. Or maybe like, I've done this before, but maybe you're the one that slowly wades in an inch at a time, like, oh, it's so cold, you know? So when it comes to Sunday school, we like to encourage our staff to take the plunge, to, you know, jump in with both feet, like you said earlier, and And we want to be, quote, perfect as we can in our Sunday school. But it's a lot better for us to move forward and do the ministry that we're called to do, do the ministry that we're trying to get done, than it is for us to get everything just right and then fail due to just inaction.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

It's never perfect, right? Yeah. Somebody once told me you can always get your best. You want to do your best for Sunday school. half the times the kids aren't going to really notice that mistake like we do because we're the ones that know everything that's supposed to happen so right just do your best not to notice that and just keep moving forward because like I said like I said they oftentimes won't notice it they don't even yeah or what you can do oftentimes too like I do this several times and the kids seem to love it like if I make a mistake I try to make it goofy and funny and so that way like oh I meant to make that mistake it wasn't like really in actuality I totally just bombed it and I'm like how could I salvage it so I just try to make it funny And they love it. They

SPEAKER_02 2:33

absolutely love it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We need to come from the direction that we're going to push the limits, do you in more than what's expected, you know, in our role. And like what you just said is interesting because I just, so just had some, I run the youth too. And so just had somebody run it while I was gone. I went to a service and, and so I was just kind of going over some stuff with them before I left. And he was, say and he's like he's like yeah I think we got it I'm nervous but I think we got it and that was one of the things I said you said about a mistake I just said I said I said look if you mess up just admit it don't try to be like play it off or whatever you just just admit it and you'll be fine these are all the kids you know they know you you have you know relationship with them

SPEAKER_00 3:23

you're gonna be fine and what's really cool to me about mistakes is also it's a learning opportunity it's like okay I made a mistake here don't be my Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah, definitely. And, and, you know, we kind of our motto for like, I talked about our scripts that we don't, we don't do verbal. you know, we do, uh, it's kind of a rough outline and our motto in our practice is kind of what worked, what didn't work. So it's kind of built on that idea of what you just said in a micro level is we're like, it's not necessarily a mistake per se, but it's like, okay, that didn't work. Let's do something else. You know, that's not gonna. And then sometimes we go quote live and find out that didn't work too. And so, Often we'll have mistakes. And sometimes I'll look back and I'll be like, well, you know, like sometimes we go silly and it goes overboard. And I'm like, well, that was a little too much. Yeah. Poor brother Brennan has experienced that with our doctors.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Oh,

SPEAKER_00 4:47

boy. Doctors. Yeah. Doctors. Yeah. I got initiated a while back and that was interesting to say the least.

UNKNOWN 4:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So we got a little bit of a outline in our show notes. So what holds you back? So let's talk about that a little bit. What might hold somebody back?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Oh, that's a really good one. Obviously, the fear of not being good enough. That can always hold you back. But if you never try, you'll never know. And then you'll never have the ability to learn and to grow. The only thing worse than failing is you're so scared you're not willing to try.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah. And then you have already failed. Yeah, you You're not doing anything. You just failed. Yeah, the fear of I'm not good enough or what will people think? Will they laugh at me? And I taught something, I don't know, a while back at a children's ministry seminar. And I was kind of talking about this idea. And what I was saying is like, we can have all these thoughts. And I think this goes into when you go up on stage, even though it's kids, sometimes you get nervous or whatever. And so when you go up on stage, if you're thinking, Are they going to think I'm cool or are they going to think I'm dumb or whatever? But if you have a different mindset, if you think these kids need to be saved and I am the one that's put here today, it's my job to facilitate that for them to move towards salvation. It changes the mindset from now instead, it's not about me anymore. It's not about me on stage. Now it's like I'm on stage and It's about them. Can I convince them to pray on the altar? Can I entice them to have a relationship with God? So it totally changes the mindset from, you know, am I good enough or, you know, because now it's not about me anymore.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

I'm just doing my job. Absolutely. And kind of just to add to that, I know my little brother, it was because of somebody getting up on stage. It was actually in a Sunday school setting that my little brother actually received the Holy Ghost.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

It's awesome. And then I know while we had a, a bus kid a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was a little longer than ago. I mean, she'd been coming for a long time and she was finally recently received the Holy ghost. And it's just like, it's awesome. Like I haven't been here the whole time to see the, that whole journey and the fruit of that, but it's just, it kind of gave me a little bit more, ah, I want to go, I want to see God do more of that. I want to, I want to push a little bit harder. I want to do my very best to put that, um, instill the doctrine in them. Right. And then it was really cool. The other day I was, just around about the grocery store and we had a, I had a bus kid just came up and started talking to me and just talking to me about Sunday school and all that kind of things. I'm like, yes, we're doing what we're supposed to be. We're, we're, we're reaching into their worlds and we're making a positive impact. Yeah. That's, it was just, it makes me smile

SPEAKER_02 7:41

every time I

SPEAKER_00 7:41

think about

SPEAKER_02 7:41

it. Yeah. It's inspiring. Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. Yeah. So, so there's, those are some things that I think can hold people back from jumping in and being good enough and, and, or, talking about not being good enough and then I think the other thing too is there's some and I kind of am this way and I see it in my youngest kid especially I hate this is I'm tentative sometimes about like you know like group setting or something like that of being you know I now with my work I have kind of over the years have changed and I'm in a lot of leadership roles and so I'm I've overcome some of that but it's easy for me my personality i guess in a group setting for me to just step back and listen to everybody and not offer my you know two cents

SPEAKER_00 8:39

yeah i can that's i can completely understand it i can agree with it but i've also learned that if i don't offer my idea i can kind of like what we talked about a little bit earlier is if i can learn from i can add something that i know we're completely different thought of but if i just sit Yeah. I'm not adding to it.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

That's where I start thinking about brainstorming sessions and all of that. And I want to do that with our group. And one of the things I think, you know, we have to be mature enough that when we present an idea that nobody likes, it can sting. But we have to remember that when people attack an idea, they're not attacking us. They're not attacking our character. And really, ideas should be attacked. You know, we should... Present ideas. And, uh, that's what I, you know, this, I do want to do a podcast on brainstorming and we'll do that eventually, but that's kind of what brainstorming should be is, is present every, every possible idea, every feasible idea out there or, or unfeasible. And, uh, and then, and then you start attacking them to whittle them down and then, and it should just be a pool of ideas. It shouldn't be like, oh, well that's miles idea. Oh, that's miles idea too. Well, his last idea was done. Yeah. And so it should be, you know, and then when our idea doesn't get, you know, quote, picked, we shouldn't feel inferior or something. It's just, you know, the best idea wins. Yeah. And so that's, you know, we talk about ideas. I have mentioned this before. I say this a lot. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Yeah. And what I mean by that is, now, I love ideas. And so if somebody's hearing this and they have an idea and you want to tell me, I want it. Please tell me. In fact, you can email info, let's see, info at kidmenbackstage.com. So email us ideas. Even something to talk about, we would love to hear those. But where I say ideas are a dime a dozen is I've been around, let's just say like in a youth group, we've talked about like fundraiser ideas or even in kids, kids ministry we've talked about you know script ideas or decor ideas and those are great but sometimes people that's all they have

SPEAKER_00 11:35

yeah

SPEAKER_02 11:36

they only have an idea like it would be really cool if and I think I have a lot more respect for the one that can say hey this is cool let's do it and they put it together you know you know like a I'll give a couple examples. So one, we used to have a young person in our youth group. They're not around anymore, but they were in our youth group. And it seemed like they always had these ideas that might have been okay ideas, but when it came time to work on them, they were never around, it seemed like. And then sometimes, you know, it was almost as if they didn't think through, you know, could this be done or how could this be done? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

logistics of

SPEAKER_02 12:25

it. Yeah. And then what was worse to me, like, okay, I can put up with some of that because, you know, you want to just get ideas out there. What was worse than that is... when we did something and it was like, oh, you should have, oh, I just, that just, I hated that. Like, you should have done this or that. And I'm like, well, where were you? You know, when we were, we did this awesome thing, you know, we'll do like, we did a slide that went through a wall, you know?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Wow, that

SPEAKER_02 12:57

sounds fun. Yeah, it was a tunnel slide and you landed in the other room and then it's like, well, you should have made it like twist or something. It's like, shut up, man. Yeah. No, it's cool like it is. And then the other side of it. So I'll mention Brother Clancy. So we did space a couple of years ago and I had this idea of space, these doors. I wanted them to open. It's hard without visual here, but on a podcast. But I wanted them to open sideways like an elevator door and close in on each other. And then the shape of them I wanted to be, I don't know if you can picture like a puzzle piece, almost not to look like a puzzle, but I wanted to be futuristic, you know? And so, um, we were talking about it and he was like, oh yeah, we can do that. And so, uh, we cut them out. I kind of traced some of them and we cut them out. And then he went and found this, uh, electric window motor from a junkyard or something. Yeah. And set up a whole, all these cables and pulleys. I mean, I had minor, minor input, but he made it happen. It was awesome. It was basically these electric doors that we had a, we had a battery that we put them on. Then I had like one of those trickle chargers that I brought it down. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Plug that in. We put it on the, connected it to the posts of the trickle charger. And we had a switch in the hallway and a switch on the other side. And you flip the switch and it, The police would pull that thing open and it was just – it was so cool. It was at the end of a long tunnel, you know, with lights and all that. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Yeah, it was awesome. And so he like totally made it happen. But yeah, so he made it happen. The other thing though with ideas being a diamond dozen or actually with just ideas, presenting ideas is – for you to have good ideas with Sunday school, you have to think about it more than just on Sunday.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

And I, you know, of course I am kind of the quote unquote leader of Sunday school around here. So I'm always thinking about it, but I know that other people do. Cause I, I see it. Like sometimes you guys will come and with a crazy costume or you'll come with like,

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Oh, I was thinking we should do this. And it definitely shows forth as far as what I remember when myself being a Sunday school kid, I could, I could tell those, those Sunday school teachers that really like, you could tell they put a lot of time and energy and really thought behind it. And I just remember there's this one and it just still stands out because they just, the way they did it, it was, it was Samson and Delia. And they, they actually like, they, of course the man had like a wig on and stuff. And then she took, they brought the beard trimmer or like the shaver and stuff. And they like, they cut a little piece off and it was a little piece like, Oh, And then I just remember it just stood so much out in my mind because you could tell that one, they put a lot of time and energy into the logistics of it. And then you can tell that they practice too. And to me, it stands out and it's going to make such an impact on kids because I'm in my late 20s and I was probably like 11 years old when that happened. Oh, wow. Yeah, and you still remember. I still remember and I still think about it to this day. Yeah. Oh, that's good. So when we do put like you were talking about when we do put that time and energy, it's going to make a lasting impact upon these kids and it's for the better. That's ultimately our goal is obviously for the better to impact them in the best way possible. Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah. Oh yeah. And that's good. I mean, I talk about, you know, that sometimes we don't know the impact we're making and that's an example right there. I mean, you were 11 years old and you still remember. I still remember. That made an impact on you. That goes back to that teacher wasn't worried about impact. Am I good enough? Are they going to laugh at me? They were just doing their job. You know, they were doing the ministry. It wasn't about them. It was about affecting someone like you. It was about affecting the kids in a positive way. Yeah. So, um, kind of this, this next section on our notes here is, um, going beyond. And so I, I kind of have a few bullets here, but one, one is, and we're going to do a training. I've been teasing it. Uh, we're going to be doing a training next year, um, the beginning of the year. So I'm hoping January, February, sometime in there, we're going to start a, it'll be short, but a training for our staff. And we'll probably do some of that on the podcast. But right now we recruit. So we recruit people and then we kind of throw them in, you know, they, they do, they, it's like, you know, we're talking about taking the plunge. We throw them in, like, can you swim? Yeah. And so, So that's kind of what we did with

SPEAKER_00 18:00

you. Yeah, it is. And it's also like, It's so awesome. It gives you that full taste. I don't know. I want to use the word chaos, but it's not chaos. To somebody that's new, it feels like, what am I doing? What's going on? You're trying to wrap your mind around it, but it's that amazing challenge and it's challenging you to grow. I love, but I hate the challenges. It was that challenging to grow and to step up and stuff. I don't know what it was, but there was a couple... It was probably about a few months ago. For some reason, I'm like, I was just like, I walked away because I felt like I kind of failed Sunday school, but I kind of reevaluated what was going on. I know I'm kind of reaching back again to some of our other topics, but I kind of reevaluated and I'm like, okay, this is what I did right. This is what I did wrong. And then I'm like, okay, God, would you help me with this? Started praying about it. I mean, I know it sounds simple, but like I prayed, I'm like, God, I want your help with this because I want to, I want to be a better Sunday school teacher.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, that's good. That's really good. That's So we put people into a role of, and when I say role, that's kind of broad. I mean, we have a lot of roles, I guess, but like when I think of it, like, so we have segments and pretty much everybody will do segments. Now we do have some people that are heavier on one thing than the other thing. Like, and then there's specific roles. Okay. So here's an example is my daughter runs the back stage and the costumes and that's that's her role but she also does other things like one of the things she does she leads the the kids singing group in Sunday school and so she'll often be in charge of the praise portion of Sunday school and she's all always out there for that and then she'll do other things that are you know kind of behind the scenes whatever my son Adrian he runs Q lab the all the sound effects sound And so, and he has done other things too. Of course he plays music and he's done some acting. He hasn't in a while, but, but his main role is, is the, you know, AV. So those are a little bit more specific, but then there's what I consider like, I remember I made a spreadsheet one time to try to, when I was trying to staff something and it's like primary actor or, or a teacher. And this is somebody that they can, well, I guess there's two different things. There's teacher that can talk to the kids. And what I mean by that is sometimes there's an actor that's good at acting and they can be in character and they can do a good job, but they're really scared to talk to the kids, you know, directly to the kids because it's a totally different thing. I never thought about that until you said that right now.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Especially like young people that are in Sunday school that are like staff. I think that sometimes because they're closer to peers you know it's a little bit closer they don't mind putting on a costume and acting as a character on stage in front of and they might get a little nervous at that but to talk to the kids in a teacher role or something is a whole nother animal you know that's a completely different thing so I said all of that to say this that when you have a role that you're quote assigned or that you know you're supposed to be doing this role is make sure that you understand that role completely there's a young man that in our youth group that had him do we've worked together on events and so he used to be in Sunday school a long time ago but he's always I like his questions because he's always asking to be very clear and sometimes I'm in a hurry and he makes me you know stop and like okay so what you wait you want this how you know yeah and so he's trying He's trying to be very clear on what his role is or what he's supposed to be doing. where it's like, this is your job, and they are not really doing their job all that well, not because they're not talented or whatever, but because they're focused on other jobs. And they're like, oh, you know, hey, and they're pointing stuff out, and I try to be nice, but I'm kind of wanting to say, look, just do your job first,

SPEAKER_00 22:56

and then you can point stuff out. It's kind of like that scripture that comes to my mind about you got a beam in your eye, you got a big giant piece Yeah. Well, and that's

SPEAKER_02 23:16

exactly it is, is we could have somebody. And in fact, I, I don't want to, I want to be vague because, um, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but we have had somebody in Sunday school. This has been a while back and they had a job, a pretty specific job. job that they needed to do. And they were doing exactly what I talked about. They were pointing out other things and they were even pointing out kids that were misbehaving. But yet, when it was time for them to do their job, which was pretty critical on timing, they were failing several, several times throughout. And so, that kind of just takes away their credibility, you know, for the other things, is when they have that beam in their eye, they have this big gap or big deficiency in what they're doing, the credibility for them to offer input on other roles is gone. So going back, first step is understand your role and know it. But that doesn't mean, what's the phrase, the old saying, stay in your lane? That's not what I mean by that. What I mean is know your role so you can do that role really well and then be willing to step beyond that, you know, to do, do other things. I'll use you as an example. So you, you have a, you have your lead character in our current theme. You're the William. Yeah. And I was just telling, I think I said it on the podcast. I was saying that you're the most unique William we've had. So we've done, we've done this storyline twice before, years ago. And then, and then back in 2018, I think. And, um, the people that played William before, uh, were kind of similar to each other and you're unique. Like you're the whole accent you

SPEAKER_00 25:14

have. It's awesome. Do you want to know something very funny about that? Yeah. I was like, I was like, man, I'm going to make this kind of stand out. And then it came time and I'm like, then that, that, that rough, horrible Irish Scottish accent comes out and it just, I'm like, okay, well I guess I got to roll with this now. You stuck with it for like 50, 15 weeks. Yeah. I didn't really think it through, but like, it's been like super fun for the kids too. Like they, like some of the kids, like even like our regular Sunday school kids, they come up and like, They try to imitate it a

SPEAKER_02 25:52

little

SPEAKER_00 25:57

bit too. that I possibly can at that. I want to be flexible because I, you know, I, especially on my more so on the work side that it's always hard working with that person. That's not very flexible, but so it's always been my goal is I want to be that flexible person. I want to be the most easy person to work with just the, where can I help and do this and that. And that's often valuable.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Often on Sunday mornings, like, cause we have to switch back and forth from pirates and Navy, you know, I'll be running behind or something. And I'll ask for, you know, Hey, we need to switch this over. It's like right after practice and you, you jump right in there.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

And yeah. Cause I know like, yeah, you could do this, but like, there's a lot of stuff that really needs your attention. Yeah. And that like, I can't do that. I can't, I can't, I have no clue how to write a script. I have no clue how to do all the casting schedule and everything, but like, I know how to put up some flags or rope or whatever it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

So, yeah. And that's, that's the thing about being willing to, and you're not the only one. I mean, you know, Or the key, she would jump right in and all kinds of people jump right in. And many of them have practice that they have to go to after our practice. So they can't. And I know that they would, but yeah, I mean, just being willing to jump in. I mean, there's people that, I don't know that we really have a lot of this in our church, but I know that there are people that, you know, feel like that's beneath them or something, you know, like, well, I'm, my job is an actor.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

And it's like, well, we're all trying to do everything. Yeah, you have maybe, you know, your specialty as an actor, but, you know, we all have all

SPEAKER_00 27:51

these other jobs. It's kind of like, we're all called to be servants. That's ultimately, it doesn't matter what our title is. We're ultimately here to, in this purpose of Sunday school, we're ultimately here to serve the kids. And I see it as however I can do that in the best way possible to make things flow the easiest and be the best. Oh, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

Now, I got to mention something that was funny. funny is we go back to your accent early on because you're also we don't always do this but we also have a

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Bible story series

SPEAKER_02 28:24

and so you also play the part of Joseph and I remember it was early on and you came out and you were Joseph but you were doing

SPEAKER_00 28:32

the Irish accent I guess like I said it was just something that horribly just it just came to me naturally so I just kept flowing with it

SPEAKER_02 28:42

I remember Brother Brennan was It's like on stage, he's like, wait, aren't you Joseph? I was like, oh, Opiep, I am. Yeah, that was funny. It was. And those are the quote unquote mistakes we make and we just roll with it. The kids love it anyway. We use comedy quite a bit. But the other thing, so kind of on a wrap up here, is to be willing to stretch yourself to be willing like you were just talking about it is just be willing to grow and I got this I stole this from John Maxwell but I taught a lesson using some of what he had talked about but he talks about stretching and if you think about a rubber band yeah a rubber band when it's not stretched is basically useless it's designed to stretch and wrap around objects and or whatever Hair, I don't know, whatever. And so that's what it's made for is it's made to stretch and we are made to stretch. And so if we're not stretching beyond our comfort zone, if we're not pushing ourselves, then we're not doing what God designed us to do.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah. Personally, in my life, it's when I've been stretched the most that I've seen the most incredible amounts of growth. So like we've talked about taking the plunge, like jump into Sunday School Ministry 101 and 50% and give it everything you got. And you'll look back three months, six months, a year, and you'll be like, wow, I've grown so much or our Sunday school has improved so much.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

That

SPEAKER_00 30:24

challenge, it makes us better and it causes us to get stronger and better in so many different aspects of our life, not just Sunday school, but obviously we're talking about Sunday school here in this aspect. You'll be like, oh man, we've done this and this has worked. And we've grown and like our Sunday school has got this many people or we've had this many receive the Holy Ghost this year. And then it just. Well, yeah. And when

SPEAKER_02 30:50

you stretch that, like you're, that's the most vulnerable time. Yeah. Right. And you think of a man that's the most vulnerable when you stretch, but you also, that's your greatest accomplishments. And that's when you look back, when you look back at the peaks of, you know, on a macro level, if you're looking back at your life and you're looking back at peaks, those are the times you stretched. Yeah. One incredible theme we did, we've done some pretty cool ones, but one incredible theme we did was our survival quest, our first time, where we had, we're upstairs, we're upstairs in a metal, a pre-engineered metal building. It was unfinished at the time, but we were upstairs and we built a creek, essentially. Wow. Yeah, and so it had real water in it. We had pumps in it to make it running and In fact, there was a corner of it because it kind of it wasn't a perfect circle by design. You know, it was more of a landscape look, but it was really large. I mean, from there was an island in the middle and it was probably 20, roughly 20 by 20. So it was going around pretty, pretty good. But anyway, so there was a corner of it where the water was going fast enough that it was whitewater. Wow. Yeah. And so it was the pumps were really running. Anyway, so that was a really cool theme and we were stretching but we went through I talked about it on another podcast but we went through I don't know three or four iterations of that I mean it leaked had to fix something it leaked again had to at one point it had leaked and had to pull everything out and dry it out and vacuum and I mean one time I was here till three o'clock in the morning trying to fix stuff because Sunday was the next day and then had to do Sunday school on top of that you know be here at 830 And so now we look back at that and we laugh too, you know, about the leaks and stuff, but we look back at that and we have pictures and it was just, it was awesome. But we were, we were stretching and we were vulnerable at the time. But if you can back up at the macro level and see like, okay, this is, this is cool. You know, we're making a difference. Let's just do a kind of a quick recap. So you have a responsibility to minister and you know, we're not saying that people are pretty All right. Well, that's a wrap. Sweet. Thank you.