UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

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 by Brother Brennan. How's it going?

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Hey, it's going all right. How about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yeah, good. I'm glad you're here, man.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Yeah. Been trying to get you in here. Yeah. I don't know if I'm as thrilled as you, but I'm nervous, that's for sure. Well, do you want to tell the audience what today's topic is? Yeah, today's topic is Sunday School Building Blocks.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Sunday School Building Blocks. So there's a lot of different ways to do Sunday School, and there's probably some wrong ways to do it, but I don't think that there's any single right way. We have a certain style, way we run our Sunday School here, and we've experimented with a few other ideas and way back in the day we did some different things but what we do now is what seems to be working for us pretty good so with that on this podcast we don't proclaim to have it all figured out or be the quote best we'll leave that slot for somebody else but that being said maybe we can offer some insight into what we do and you know even offer some ideas based on the experiences we've had

SPEAKER_03 1:27

yeah you know going to what we haven't done best I actually can't think of too many things maybe it's because i've been so focused on just just doing my part and just being an actor but i can't think of things that we've done tragically wrong uh so i don't know what can you think of maybe you can remind me of some things

SPEAKER_00 1:46

yeah um so okay this is not the best example but way back i remember when we were doing a we were doing like a youth class or something i think it was 11 through 14 we decided to try to start doing some of that this is before I actually was in that A2C is what it's called. I looked back and then I was like, that was awful. The kids were probably so bored.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

I actually, I liked Access to Christ, but I was older. So that was, I think that was the 11 to 14, I think. And I don't know if we mentioned, I know I mentioned it to you. I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast last time I was here. That's why that building over there is black.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Oh, yeah. Because it was painted all black. Yeah, me and

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Connor Stewart got the vote for painting it black. Oh, wow. It's kind of funny to think about. That's crazy. Man, that was a long time ago. That was. That was 10, 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

All right. Well, let's talk about just to kind of kick this off. And we, I hope we don't bore anybody. We've talked about, we talked about this a lot on our podcast, but it's, you know, it's what we do and what we're passionate about. But let's give a brief overview of kind of our Sunday school. So in our Sunday school, we run strong on themes and stories. And so like right now we're in our pirate theme. We're almost done. done actually yeah how many weeks do we have that now like three uh yeah i think something now when this podcast gets released it might be less than that okay yeah but yeah so um not very very long left on that but um so with with our themes and our stories our our themes have an ongoing or our theme theme when we talk about theme we're talking about usually more like the decor and the costumes and the whole idea you know that we're the time Timeline. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, the history and everything. And then the story is inside of that theme. And so like our pirate story right now with William getting kidnapped and all of that. And so we'll have an ongoing story for the typically about 16 weeks. And so that's 16 weeks. The story is developing, you know, through that

SPEAKER_03 4:27

time. Which are some pretty cool stories that you've written. I think you've written all of them, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Yeah. Yes. Our survival quest was very loosely based on Robin Hood. Our space one, the storyline is not as strong, which I'm going to remedy that because we're going to probably make these scripts available here soon. But yeah, we've had a few in the pirate story, which we've done before. I wrote that.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

You know what's funny? You mentioned the space one not being so strong. That's like my most memorable one. I think because I think maybe it had to do with the acting or something we did because brother keach was like in the computer room and he had a webcam

SPEAKER_00 5:08

oh you're talking you're talking about way back way back space

SPEAKER_03 5:10

the the

SPEAKER_00 5:11

first

SPEAKER_03 5:11

one oh yeah i forgot actually that we just did one for a survival quest

SPEAKER_00 5:15

but we did a space yeah we did space a couple years ago

SPEAKER_03 5:19

yeah okay okay yeah wow my time is getting getting old yeah i'm gonna turn into pastor burgess last year we turned out to be 20 years ago

SPEAKER_00 5:28

yeah my kids get on me all the time because i say the other day and And it was like,

SPEAKER_03 5:32

you know, three or four months ago. But yeah, the space thing, yeah, is Brother Keech in the back doing with the webcam and we had a... Oh, yes. Brother Adams made that switch, that switchboard.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Oh, that lit up and stuff. That lit up. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

And, you know, you had all those outlets and the lava lamps and stuff plugged in.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Oh, I remember that. You go through and you

SPEAKER_03 5:53

hit all the switches and the lava lamps would start lighting up. Yeah, it looked really cool. The lightning ball thing would light up.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Oh, the one, yeah, where you could put your finger Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Maybe it wasn't the story that attracted me to that.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Maybe it's just all the cool gadgets. Uh, these wiffle ball thing, you know, like those little, they're like the size of a golf ball, but they have the holes in them. Okay. They're like a little wiffle ball. We had taken something like that and cut it in half and they had those over their eyes. Oh, you know what? It looked really creepy.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

I think I might've hoped. Uh, I think I might've been on, uh, Derek's shoulder with a, uh, with those on and a long, like black robe or something to hide Derek. So it looked like forearm. Oh, yes. Really tall. And so.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah. And we, I remember we captured somebody and they, they got tickle tortured.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Yeah. Because we didn't want to be too creepy. I feel like that was Aaron that got tickle tortured. I can't remember though. Cause I, I don't think I was in Sunday school at the time. Like

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I was. Oh, you were a kid, but you got to be a part or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Yeah. I was a kid, but I got to be a part, but I wasn't in Sunday school. So I was like probably 12. Okay. Over 13, somewhere around there.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

But yeah, I remember that pretty vividly.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah. Okay. So we do the themes and we do the stories. And then, of course, there's Bible stories. And with our Bible stories, so I guess we do lesson outlines. So usually what I do, I didn't always do this, but now what I do, I usually start with that. Or I might have a general theme in mind, like, okay, hey, we're going to do space. And then how could this apply? But I'll usually start with a lesson outline for the whole 16 weeks. And so often what that looks like, and this is something that maybe would help somebody if they're trying to build a lesson outline, lesson pack. We'll do, okay, first of all, we'll do 16 weeks is typically what we do because we try to do three a year and then we have transitions. So we usually do 16 weeks, but then a quarter is 13 weeks. And so that's another thing we've done is a quarter. And then I don't know where this really comes from, but another one we've done, and I've seen it in different lesson packets, I think financial piece and different ones is a nine week theme. And so those are some different ideas. But for us, 16 weeks So with the 16 weeks, what I'll do is I'll take a lesson, like an overarching lesson idea, and then I'll break it into, let's see, I think it's four. Yeah, three sections of four. So that's 12 weeks. And then that last section of four, 13, 14, 15, 16 is kind of a review. So it lets us review everything. And so like if it's, you know, might be relationship with God, and then like it could be, you know, pack one, year special. God cares about you. Pack two, who is God? We'll talk about like oneness of God or whatever. And then pack three, I don't know, praise and worship. Those are just some examples. I have some on my computer, but I'm not going to pull them out. So that's kind of what that lesson outline looks like. And then we'll take Bible stories that typically how we'll do it is we'll take the Bible stories that can apply within that lesson.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

Correlate with each lesson.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah. And I know there's another look too. Another look is taking a Bible story and then what do we what kind of lessons do we get out of that Bible story anyway so that's kind of how we do our 16 weeks lesson then we'll get Bible stories sometimes like right now we'll do an ongoing Bible story you know with with a theme too

SPEAKER_03 9:47

which I actually really like those ones

SPEAKER_01 9:49

yeah they continue on yeah

SPEAKER_03 9:51

because I don't know there's just something about it like the kids remember what happened last week and so they're I feel like they're a little more involved

SPEAKER_01 10:00

yeah

SPEAKER_03 10:01

because they're like okay, so this happened last week. What's going to happen now? Cause they're kind of still waiting to see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah. And a lot of times like our church kids know the Bible story, but they still want to see like, how are they going to do that? You know,

SPEAKER_03 10:13

which actually Brett and I were talking about this in Sunday school last week or the week before we were talking about being up there, like say Daniel and the lion stem and Daniel gets thrown in at the end, you know, and then have, you know, actors as lions and then pounce on Daniel and, eat daniel and then you know have the kids will be like wait that's not what happens and then they actually could be like oh oh really

SPEAKER_00 10:41

yeah we don't eat daniel

SPEAKER_02 10:43

no you don't eat daniel

SPEAKER_00 10:45

i heard something i think it's adventures in odyssey that's like that and it oh it was hilarious it's like joseph and we're doing joseph right now and it's the whole brothers come you know and he's revealing who he is and he and then he just like it was like what if he didn't forgive the brothers And he does this like rap song or something about, you know, how they treated him bad and everything. It's just hilarious. And I don't know if it's the same, if it's the same one or not in the Adventures in Odyssey, but it's like they have this thing like, and then the whole world exploded.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

I would throw the kids for a loop.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah, it would definitely. All right. So anyway, with our overview of Sunday School, and then of course we have our care our costumes, our sound effects, everything we do on stage and all of that. So to put this in context, when we start talking about these building blocks and we're already like well into our podcast here, but to put this in context, that's where we're coming from is we, the foundation or how we do Sunday school for the most part, there is one other thing we do, but for the most part is we have a theme that has an ongoing story and we have Bible stories within that and a lesson out of that. So we have a direction that we're going and then, you know, we have full on characters, characters that have maybe even a tiny bit of backstory and then full costumes. We use, you know, a stage and our state. It's like kind of we call it interactive theater. So it's kind of a that's the idea behind how we do Sunday school. And then we have sound effects and tracks that play pretty much 100 percent throughout the class.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Which is tremendous. Yeah. Without the sound effects and music. It would be extremely difficult, I think, to, I don't know, to be swapping like how we do memory verse and then we swap transition. Transition, yeah. You know, transitions. It gives a totally different feeling. Yeah, because, you know, the music changes because you're like, oh, what's next?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Yeah. Instead of. So somebody mentioned to me, we had mentioned tracks before and they said, hey, you should say where to get those. So that was good feedback. So I use, it's a paid service. I use Epidemic Sound and there's many paid services but there is some free ones um i believe sound planet is one there was an old one that i have used before i think it's called free play so you just have to be careful especially if you're going to put them online anywhere youtube or anything like that because you might get a copyright strike but um but with epidemic sound or any of those paid services those those are licensed those ones you'll be able to use and then we play them through a software called q lab um So QLab is, it's a Mac only. And so that's one downside, but it is a very good software. It's used in Broadway productions and we use it for some big events that we do, but we use it in Sunday school. So anyway, so that's just a side note on tracks and sound effects that we do. There's our sponsorship of the day. Yeah, there we go. Our unpaid ad. Okay. So let's talk about the structure. So first of all, like with the lesson, when we, and, And you guys might not always, I mean, we've done some collaborative work where you do, but you guys might not always see the lesson as far as on a macro level, like, you know, the whole thing that I talked about with the 16 weeks, right? But you see the lesson for the day. In our script, we usually have like a little synopsis of what's today, like I'm looking, we're backstage right now, I'm looking at the script. So we have our synopsis shows lesson, Bible story, memory verse, theme, and then it goes into the script. But that's the little synopsis and so like last week let's see lesson shows we are not of this world and then as Christians we have a higher calling so it's just two lines and that's the lesson and so that's that's our overall focus right and so that's how we tie it all together and so like you guys will come out and do offering or something and it ties into that lesson

SPEAKER_03 14:53

yeah there's you know there's offering has their own little lesson and then memory verse when they do memory verse they have you know it correlates with with the lesson and then the Bible story correlates, you know, each, each thing correlates and they all tie into that one topic, which each week they all tie into a bigger topic.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's kind of our structure and how we go about, you know, if you're, if, and I'm hoping to help somebody in, you know, that's trying to maybe do this for their Sunday school, or even if you already have Sunday school going and you're just trying to look for some ideas, this is how, you know, And it, you know, we're not saying this is the best way. This is just how we do it is we have that overarching topic and I'll go back, you know, relationship with God or whatever. And then we were just breaking it down all the way down to today. What's today's script, you know, about, and then bringing down even further, each segment ties into that somehow. And then we have our ongoing theme stories, ongoing Bible stories. So let's just, hopefully this isn't changing my sound too much, but I'm going to take advantage of a script hanging on the back wall here that you can read and I I can't. You can't. Yeah, you can't see that.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

I can read the big words mutiny.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

That's as far as it goes. I'll just do a very fast run through of our script. So we have the synopsis, like I said, and then we have preliminaries. So preliminaries is our greeting, you know, our welcome outside. And then they're doing attendance and all of that thing. And so then we have dynamic opening. So dynamic opening is when the kids are coming in to be seated, there's something happening. It might be a sword fight. It might be just whatever. So it's dynamic opening. whatever it is it's dynamic it's dynamic yeah that's why it's named that for sure and then welcome so that's like the official welcome to Sunday School so some kind of staff comes out often it's me but not always and so it might be one it might be a team they come out do welcome and go over the rules we have four rules that we do listen watch don't talk yeah so four rules obey all staff rule number two is listen watch and don't talk rule number three is get involved rule number four is don't talk Don't exit without staff permission.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

We actually have a fifth rule there, too, is don't ask to use the restroom during lesson or prayer.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and so we often, we call it a bonus rule. We have two bonus rules, that one that you just said, and then we have have fun, you know, is our final one. And I think we got that. Brother Booker, they do, I don't know if they still do it, but I think they used to have, they do it different now, actually. They do something really cool. It's called SOAP, and they kind of go through, it's like respect. Anyway, so, but they use, to do I think it was nine and they had nine ways to have fun and it was their rules so I thought that was kind of cool that is pretty cool and then so plan of salvation now now these segments those first few preliminary preliminaries dynamic opening and welcome are all almost always you know in that order the rest of these segments we we move them around every single week so we have the same building blocks but we move them around every single week but I'm going to go through this was last week's so after welcome we have plan of salvation which we do every week and then we have offering and then we have memory verse team comes out and does memory verse then we had praise and so praise is usually an upbeat action song that is sung and sometimes the kids lead that we have a kids group and then prayer requests and then it says mutiny and so mutiny this is part of the theme story and so the theme story happens and then followed by the bible story and we're doing ongoing series of Joseph, and so this is part of that series. And so the narrator that was me kind of reviews and goes into, brings everybody up to speed on where we're at today. And then the actors come in, they take over. So Bible story, and then we have lesson. And the lesson, to clarify, lessons can be done in a lot of different ways, but typically with this way, when it's a Bible story going into the lesson, it's usually just talking head. It's not like an object lesson or anything like that, because we just did the Bible story acting. I would like to do more object lessons. But anyway, so we have lesson, then turn it over usually to a different person for altar call. Then we have altar service, and then that was followed by snack, and then we had review, and then we had exit. And our review is, we basically have staff come in and interrupt the facilitator, which is usually me. I talk about, oh, what was today's Bible story? And then some character or something from the Bible story comes in, interrupts, and then the lesson and the memory verse. So the Those are the three things that we review. And then exit. So, okay, that was a lot, but that's the script. Every week, just about. Okay, so that's what we typically do is, again, we change those segments. We change the order of them. But that's what our script looks like pretty much every week. So let's talk about the other way we've done it in transitions before is group rotations. Do you remember those?

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Oh, yeah. Yeah, group rotations.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

And that starts. We started, I don't

SPEAKER_03 20:07

know, we did it somewhere,

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I think it was downstairs.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Yeah, so each person, you know, we kind of go into each corner, I guess you could say, and we have about 10 kids each. And so say if I'm ahead of the Bible story, because we'll have one corner's Bible story, one corner's lesson, the other corner's memory verse, and then I can't think of, maybe it's not offering, it's, do you know what to

SPEAKER_00 20:52

say? Yeah, I think it kind of varies. We try to cover some of the segments that we do in the script that I just read, but yeah, a Like one group will cover, we don't cover as many things. So like they'll do a mini Bible story. Like say if we have five groups or something, then each group is specializing, I guess, in one thing. We usually have snack too. But often what we'll do is we'll have, last time we did it, I think we did, we did the rotation. Everybody went through group one time and it's pretty short. It's like three minutes or something. And so they rotate. And so three times five, that's 15 minutes. And so then they all come to the middle and do it. song and then we go back to new groups or whatever. And then we're doing another round of segments. Yeah. Which is

SPEAKER_03 21:37

different.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah. Different things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

But yeah. Whenever, you know, I've done all of them, I'm sure. But the one that sticks out, the one that I like to do the most is Bible storytelling, you know, because, you know, you get to tell the story to the kids and you get to act it out, maybe grab a kid and, you know, you're telling your, it's not like how we typically do something in school. It's more or less how I've seen other people do Sunday school, I guess, where they're just in front of the kids kind of dramatically telling the story and grabbing

SPEAKER_00 22:07

a kid. Yeah, because there's no stage. Yeah, there's no stage. You're just in a small group setting, 10, 15 kids per group, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of fun. I mean, you can still have your costume or your little props to help tell the story or an object lesson to help tell the story, which I don't know if we do too many object lessons. I've been wanting to get more into it, but I been uh slacking

SPEAKER_01 22:32

yeah

SPEAKER_00 22:33

same here i definitely want to you know i mean they're they're awesome and brother booker who is incredible their their team does object lessons you know a lot like how we do stories a lot they do you know which man i love seeing their object lessons yeah they're so good now it's kind of funny my son uh ashton he's six and when we did that i don't know if he was six yet it might have been five but when we did that he's new to you know big sunday school you know our ages are five through eleven and uh it was the first time you know for him seeing that and he i ask him all the time on sunday like hey how did you like sunday school today well he did not like he did not like that because he was so disappointed that we didn't have you know some kind of ship or some kind of big you know thing to come on and everything it was funny he was just you know kids are honest he did not like it this is lame

SPEAKER_03 23:26

dad i want to be in a ship

SPEAKER_00 23:29

yeah so but i would think like within That group rotation style, one thing about that, you know, it's kind of easier in one way. The other thing is I think that it's a little taste of, I don't know if, say, old school Sunday school. Maybe not old school. Maybe a better way to say it would be like a smaller Sunday school. And so if you have, you know, we will often have like two teachers in the group. And so if you have two teachers in the group and you have, you know, 15 kids and then you're doing the Bible story or you're doing offerings lesson or you're doing the memory verse, then it's kind of like that's your Sunday school for today. Yeah, your little, you have that little group. And I don't say that demeaning at all. I just, you know, we have a bigger group than that usually. And so, but that's the small, smaller setting. And so it has some different demands. And so, like you said, when you do a Bible story, you're grabbing kids to help, which is cool in a way, you know, whereas we do use kids a lot in our other stories, but it's not so much as an on-stage thing, you know? Yeah, it's a little different. Yeah, a little bit different style. Then what I wrote down just really quick, the conference style. So the conference style, basically what I mean, we kind of do the same, but it's a tiny bit different. So we have a conference in August, a youth conference, and we have Sunday school, you know, our children's church on Thursday night and Friday night. And so the dynamics are different in a couple ways. One, we're planning for like three hours of Sunday school, basically. It's a long time. It's a long time. a long time and so we are and we're gonna we got to keep everybody entertained so it's not like we lengthen the segments you know our our average segment is two to four minutes other than like bible story is usually 10 or something

SPEAKER_03 25:12

and then the puppet show is usually just a little bit longer yeah usually yeah because we you know do a puppet show for the youth service sunday school

SPEAKER_00 25:21

yeah so yeah the puppet show might yeah it might be like 10 minutes too and that's something i actually i actually want to start that up again i want to do more puppets in our regular regular Sunday school, we don't do puppets hardly at all.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

And puppets are fun. At least the little announcer guy. I love doing the little announcer dude. You know, he's got his mic.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Oh yeah. Bob Booth in the booth or whatever we did. We did a Odyssey one, one time. I remember that.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Bob Field in the field.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

That was funny. Four different Bobs.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Yeah. I love that Odyssey. Bob is real light. Uh, yeah. So anyway, we, so that's something I do want to bring back, but we do, so we do puppets in the conference. Uh, We do a big meal. So we, what we've started doing the last couple of years is we actually transfer them downstairs and do the meal down there, which is a lot better, less messy. And we can always have, we can have all the tables set up. So that's a lot better.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

And then when we do, so let's just kind of run through roughly from memory, cause we don't have that script in front of us, but we do a check-in and that's usually a half an hour before service starts. And then when they check in, they're downstairs and there's activities down there. Usually craft is what we've been doing.

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Yeah. I haven't been too involved in that. But yeah, I've seen crafts and the kids, man, they love the crafts though. Yeah. Because at the end of every Sunday school, they're always like,

SPEAKER_02 26:39

where's my craft at?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Where's my paper? Because we had to leave it downstairs. Yeah. What did we do? Let's see. This last one was pirates, right? And so we did, oh, I think we did a treasure map or something. There's a

SPEAKER_03 26:48

treasure map. I know there's a paper hat.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Oh, yeah. Treasure map one night and the sailor hats the other night. Okay. Or vice versa. Yeah. Okay. That's what it was. So they do the craft and that's basically just to keep them occupied because they can't come up until 730. And so then at 730, we do, we usually kind of, you know, we should do it every week, but we try to go all out on our dynamic opening. So we try to have a pretty, a pretty happening, you know, dynamic opening when they come in. So it's just like, wow. And then we do a lot of our segments like we typically do. But one thing that's really cool is the past, I think three years now is we've had brother Phil Booker come and help us out. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So that's where we get to do a lot of the object lessons. Cause he, he, brings a suitcase full of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

He does all those cool object lessons and, and man, him doing his singing and stuff is super awesome. Oh yeah. He's so good. He's so into it. It's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

He's awesome. Yeah. And what's great too, is I can just, uh, well, all of our staff, we can delegate stuff to you, but it's, it's cool that he's not even from here, you know, and I can be like, Hey, can you go out and do something? And he's always like, I can do as little or as much as you need. I got enough. And he'll tell me, like, I have enough stuff with me to go X amount of time. You know, I can go 45 minutes or whatever. And we don't ever do that to him, you know. But he'll go out there and, I mean, he'll take, you know, 10, 15 minutes and keep the kids' attention. It's great.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

You know, something that's funny is his first year here, we were, you know, there's stuff going on in his Bible story. And I'm trying to remember the Bible story. But Brother Arter was the king. And they were going to sacrifice a child. So he grabbed his granddaughter. And, you know, there's like sacrifice. Sacrificing to Molech, I think is

SPEAKER_01 28:31

what it

SPEAKER_03 28:32

was. And so, you know, I'm in the back, I'm backstage doing something. I was grabbing a drink. I can't remember, but I wasn't, I wasn't in this part of the Bible story. Well, I go out and all I hear is, you know, there's this huge chant,

SPEAKER_02 28:44

sacrifice her, sacrifice

SPEAKER_03 28:47

her. All the kids are chanting to sacrifice Brother Arter's granddaughter. And I'm like, oh, and I was like, oh no, Brother Booker is going to think we're crazy. He's going to be hearing this and being like, what? is what are these people doing

SPEAKER_00 29:03

yeah and that was uh you know i had known him at that point uh brother booker and i had been friends for a little while not real long we we didn't know each other super well but none of our staff knew knew brother booker at that point but yeah he's he's he's pretty crazy sometimes too. So we love brother Booker. Uh, yeah, that was Josiah. That's what that story was. I remember. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, um, there's some other things. So the group, the group rotation, I meant to mention this. We have never really done a VBS. You and I talked about this last time. Oh yeah. That's right. I know what that was, but I mean, I kind of know what VBS is vacation Bible school and, and how it runs now. But the group rotation that we do is, I guess you could say a similar kind of on a micro micro level to that.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

Yeah, it's like a micro of the VBS, whereas VBS is a micro to what we do.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Yeah, yeah. And so, but VBS does a lot of the rotation type things. And so what I think of, like I've done in youth where we have game areas or stations and so there's simultaneous things happen and you rotate through. So you go to A, B, C, D, E or whatever. And so that's kind of the group rotation idea. But what makes it kind of crazy and I think almost fun is we're all in the same large room just in different corners or, you know, sections. And so like the Bible story, people over there in prayer requests are getting distracted by the Bible story, you know, and they're like, oh, we're going to be in that group in a couple of locations.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Trying

SPEAKER_00 30:32

to

SPEAKER_03 30:32

get them to pray and they're looking over there, peeking. Oh, I want to be Daniel.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah. But then I guess there's, I was going to say, is there some other ways that we've heard of, you know, doing Sunday school or even some ideas that maybe we don't do? You know, we talked about way back, the AE2C, that was a totally different, it was a different age group too, but it was a totally different feeling.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Yeah. You know, all I can think of, I've only been to our Sunday schools that I can remember. So I don't even know of other ways other than what we do actually.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:05

So, you know, like we mentioned, I'd never heard of VBS before we did our podcast. And so, yeah, I think I'm pretty lost

SPEAKER_00 31:13

on this one. So I know of a few ways just because I've been exposed to it over the past couple years. So there's many Sunday schools, Apostolic Sunday schools, that still do the separate classrooms. And it's just a totally different style. It's not better or worse. It's just a different style, different way of doing it. We used to do that a long, long time ago. Now, we like the dynamic of what we do. It's fun, and we like to do it. But I just heard on Brother Booker's podcast, a gentleman, Brother James, Brother, please forgive me if I messed up your name, but he is awesome. He just did a, so if you check it out on Apostolic Children's Ministry Podcast, and it's back a few episodes, but it's an interview that Brother Booker did with James Peltier. The one thing that they do, they do some really cool stuff, but one of the things they do is they, if I understood it right, they come together as, I believe it's all of them in one group, and I don't know what the ages are exactly, but they all come together And then they split off and go to their classrooms. So they kind of get the best of both worlds. They get the large dynamic and the energy that you feel from a large group. And then you get the intimacy of being one-on-one, well, not one-on-one, but, you know, a teacher with just a few students and able to be right there, you know, hands-on.

SPEAKER_03 32:41

Which is really good, too, because, I mean, you know, if you have three kids in front of you, it's a lot easier to keep them focused on you. Whereas if you have 50 kids, because the kids in the back left are going to be talking, kids in the front right are going to be talking. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, with one-on-one or, you know, like you mentioned, it's not exactly one-on-one, but it's a lot easier to hold three or five kids attention when you're right in front of them. You know, they're not going to just all of a sudden ignore you and just start talking. Well, maybe some will, but generally, generally. Yeah, you got

SPEAKER_00 33:15

their attention and you can give them kind of more undivided attention, more focused attention. So yeah. And one way that I guess I forgot to mention this, and I think we might bring some of this back and I think I want to, if we do, I want to be really intentional with it, but we have done usually in snack time, we've done groups or small groups. And so we'll, we'll split into groups just to, we're all in the same room. We'll just move our benches around and we have, you know, three to five groups and basically it's just snack time. It's about four minutes long and staff that are designated with a group and they're the idea is they're doing some review but they're just they're sitting with the kids and just connecting

SPEAKER_03 33:55

yeah interacting with them yeah you know talking to them getting to know them yeah like you said just connecting with them

SPEAKER_00 34:00

and I think that's

SPEAKER_03 34:01

really good

SPEAKER_00 34:02

yeah we haven't done in a while but we need to bring that back

SPEAKER_03 34:05

I mean there's some like I think there's like one or two kids that I don't even know their names and so which is you know that's not good

SPEAKER_00 34:12

yeah yeah we need to I don't know what the threshold is we're running I don't know I think we're running around 60-ish kids.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

Quite a bit of bus kids, too, and it's kind of tough to remember their names. What caught me off guard is I was doing prayer requests, and I was going through, and I was naming each kid, you know, I'm going to do some fake names here, you know, Andrew, what's your prayer request? And, you know, I go through, and then it's like, oh, I don't want to know this child's name. Like, it's terrible. It's bad. And so, you know, I asked them their name, of course, but, you know, I felt like I should have already known. I don't even know if that might have been their first time, but it's still it feels bad when you don't know a kid's name

SPEAKER_00 34:50

yeah and when you do know a kid's name that that's I mean our regular kids we should know and I you know I probably don't even know all of our church kids names unfortunately but but when you do know somebody's name you're like hey Andrew you know then yeah it's people love to hear their name adults too you

SPEAKER_03 35:08

know yeah it's I feel like you're wanted I guess

SPEAKER_00 35:11

I don't know it feels like hey hey guy

SPEAKER_03 35:13

hey there buddy

SPEAKER_00 35:17

all right well let's see just do a quick recap, kind of the recap of what we do here in our Sunday school is we have a lesson pack, usually about 16 weeks, and then we have a theme, and we do a storyline within that theme the last 16 weeks, and then we do Bible stories within that, and that might be a series or it might just be like we did kind of a series, but it's separate Bible stories. We did the parables. It was for a transition, but it was kind of a mini theme. And then we have, with our Sunday school style and setting, it's like an interactive theater so we have we have a whole backstage full of costumes and we use sound effects and all of that the other thing with the recap is even if you don't do it like we do it and and there's most don't and so then that's fine and that's good but Sunday school should have some kind of structure there should be some kind of you know we're calling this building blocks you should have some kind of building blocks if you're experimenting fine we experiment still to this day and so if you're experimenting fine but take note and what what worked what didn't work and And, you know, start building a structure. What was a disaster and what wasn't? Yeah, exactly. What was magic and what was a disaster? And then once you find out what works for you, then build that and build it into a curriculum. You know, years ago we used a curriculum called Kids Power Hour by, I think it's by Pentecostal Publishing House or something. And it's good, very good material. Now we, what we do now is actually kind of similar, I guess, to the idea behind that. But we write our own and do our own Power Hour. All right. Well, I think that's about it. I think that's a wrap. All right. Awesome.