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 Keech. How's it going, Brother Keech? Oh, pretty good. Well, you want to tell the audience today's topic?

SPEAKER_02 0:29

No. No, I don't want to. It's just like I mean that's you got to be kind of contrary to be an antagonist

SPEAKER_00 0:36

yes yeah that's good

SPEAKER_02 0:38

and so you know no I don't want to tell you we're going to talk about the antagonist today

SPEAKER_00 0:42

the antagonist yeah so we use stories in our Sunday school a lot that's we kind of that's like our base model I guess so we have themes our themes typically have an ongoing storyline so like we're in a pirate and navy theme right now yeah ongoing story so we roughly run run those themes roughly 16 weeks and then through the theme we have several characters that are quote staples in the story or the foundation for which the story is built on and so every story i mean all through the history of time all of them yeah they need a protagonist and that's the leading character and then the story would be pretty boring if there was no opposition so that every story needs to have an antagonist

SPEAKER_02 1:25

yeah a good guy and a bad guy

SPEAKER_00 1:26

a good guy and a bad guy it's yeah it's it's the as old as time and so today that's we're going to discuss some of our iconic characters and then also the role of the antagonist in Sunday School since you happen to be here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Well, I mean, everybody has a calling. I guess I'm called to be a bad guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

I mean,

SPEAKER_02 1:47

I've played all of them almost. I mean, even when Dallas Clay, I was a bad guy during that, you know. I don't remember his name, but there's been too many.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah. Well, we'll try to remember. We'll try to go through some of those just for fun. I think it'll be It would be fun to

SPEAKER_02 2:03

kind of bring something. I mean, do you want to do Captain first or do you want to do actual antagonist first?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Whichever way you want to go. I

SPEAKER_02 2:13

mean, because I didn't start out playing antagonist.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

That's true. Yeah. So one of our iconic characters is Captain John. If I remember right, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that Captain John was when we did Sunday School for the first time upstairs. No. In the middle building. Was it before that? No, it

SPEAKER_02 2:30

was before that. So he wasn't even a real character. character he's just so uh the balloons we landed in a military base okay and uh i just that's the first time i did it and then it's like he kind of just came back yeah he came back fills and oh we need to fill some time at the end of sunday school because they're in there praying and whatever and so then yeah i mean

SPEAKER_00 2:52

so to explain to people a little bit now i mean captain john like you said i think it was just kind of a character all of a sudden came out i mean because if we would have created that character we're probably we wouldn't have said John because that's your name. Yeah, we wouldn't have used my name. And so it was just kind of, you probably came out as we do a lot of ad lib in our Sunday school. It was even worse back then. I mean, it was all ad lib. Yeah. Like you said, we brought that character back and it developed. And so now Captain John, well, we haven't had Captain John in a while and we'll talk about that. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 3:22

his costume kind of doesn't fit anymore.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Uh-oh. So Captain John is, he's a really good-hearted, good-natured military, some kind of military special forces guy from somewhere he's he's really upbeat he's he's funny and he's fun and then clueless he's kind of clueless so like a couple of the traits we gave him is that he gets lost but he doesn't know he gets lost he's never lost yeah he

SPEAKER_02 3:48

would say he's never lost

SPEAKER_00 3:49

he's never lost but and so when we got to the place where even the kids when we were like captain john would come he rescues us all the time so captain john would come rescue us and be like i'll lead the way and even the kids would be like no not captain

SPEAKER_02 4:02

john yeah they They don't want me leading. I mean, but he flies too. He thinks he can fly.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yes. That was so funny how that worked out. Yeah. So for a long time you were, as Captain John, you were saying you could fly.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Yeah. I would come flying in from off stage and crash on the floor. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

And then one time, it seemed like one time you had like a little kid's Superman cape. Probably. I

SPEAKER_02 4:27

mean,

SPEAKER_00 4:27

I think you did. We're going

SPEAKER_02 4:30

back before this building was built.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah. Well, that's the part that's cool is when it was getting built. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

So he had a boom truck. They were setting up the steel.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah. And so we had, just to back up a little bit, we got the building and I believe Elder Burgess, he's passed away, our pastor's father, but he was gone, I think. And we were trying to finish it before he got back. So we were working on Sunday on it.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yeah. So they, one of the guys works for a contractor who had access to a boom truck and they had it down here and he was running it. And I go out Hey, can we, can we use the boom truck for a little bit during Sunday school? And he's like, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to fly. And, uh, as brother daily, who unfortunately he's passed away as well. Oh yeah. Um, so the, the church building has windows and had windows in it kind of a pastor's offices now. Yeah. And, uh, uh, porch that covered porch stuck out there.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And that was where our Sunday school was.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

So the kids could look out the windows and see out. I don't remember all the, how we staged it and how we organize it, but brother daily, like swung me. just below the eaves of that porch on that hook and I had a you know a safety harness on I mean it's completely completely not legal

SPEAKER_00 5:41

and

SPEAKER_02 5:43

so he swung me back and forth three or four times and the kids I mean they had to have thought I was actually out there flying you couldn't see the truck you

SPEAKER_00 5:50

couldn't see the hook the whole build up of weeks and we didn't plan it this way but the weeks of you saying you could fly because it was just one of those traits that we gave you and then here you were

SPEAKER_02 6:00

flying It was fun. I mean, but it's like, I mean, there's a certain amount of massive sketchiness to that.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, we, we definitely believe in planning things and doing plans, but sometimes it's, it's just right now you come up with some pretty cool stuff right now.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think captain John kind of was one of those things too. And he just happened to come

SPEAKER_00 6:23

up. Yeah. And then we, we kept him in. And so when I was thinking of, and you're right, he was there in the balloons and even before in a, in our original, very, Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah, something like that. And so. So we get captured and then Captain John comes and we had a rope and you swung in. The building was unfinished. We had open ceilings. Oh, this is when I swung

SPEAKER_02 7:10

in.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

You swung in on the rope and it was kind of a dramatic entrance. And then I believe this was the first slide that I ever built in Sunday school. And we climbed out and went down the slide. And oh man, that slide. It was, yeah, the one we have now is great. I mean, you know, it's fast, but that one was, it was too steep. It went straight. And I didn't know how to do a landings. And so it went straight down. And so what we ended up doing. Oh, man. What we ended up doing is we put pillows, a pile of pillows at the bottom of this slide. And we had Sister Shamra down at the bottom of the slide getting kids

SPEAKER_02 7:46

out of the way. I don't remember any of this stuff. I have such a poor memory for stuff like that. Some things I can remember vividly. Other things I have no recollection of any

SPEAKER_00 7:57

of that. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. So you were Captain John came and rescued us. And I don't remember. either but I think I'm pretty sure we got lost on the way out you

SPEAKER_02 8:05

know oh well I mean if he rescued you then you got lost

SPEAKER_00 8:09

because well what was what was funny is when we did our spy theme most recently which has been five years ago or something yeah when we did that you were you had a I don't want to get off track but you were an evil character and then everybody had a good character and a bad character alter ego yeah and your alter ego for the good side was Nathan the navigator Nathan navigator. What a nerd. Yeah, a nerd, and he actually could find his way. Yeah, he was fully a nerd. Yeah, it was hilarious, though, because you had previously been Captain John. Yeah. So, yeah, so those are characters that, or that's a character that transcends themes, and I want to bring him back, so we've talked a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

I've got to

SPEAKER_00 8:53

get a new wig, because I

SPEAKER_02 8:55

don't know where that one's at.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

I think I just saw it, actually, the other day. I was digging through some totes, trying to find some pirate stuff. I think I I was looking at it. I was like, wait, I think this is Kevin John. So another character, speaking of the original spy theme, was Ruthless.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Ruthless, yeah. But Ruthless, I mean, she was played by multiple girls.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

That's what made it so good.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

To throw the kids off.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah. So we had, it was Ruth, first name Ruth, last name Les, so Ruth Les. Yeah. And very, very, I don't even know anything about this character, but very, very loosely based off of Carmen Sandiego.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Yeah, yeah. So I remember- When I was in school, I mean, I'm older, so there was a computer game where in the world's Carmen Sandiego and you had to follow the clues and she was a notorious thief.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Didn't she steal like landmarks and stuff like that? Yeah, all

SPEAKER_02 9:46

kinds of stuff and you had to figure it out. Anyway, so yeah. So Ruthless, I think her very first time in, she wears the giant hat like Carmen Sandiego and a giant trench coat. But all black instead of red. Yeah, all black. Giant trench coat, dark sunglasses and And so I don't remember which girl did it, but one of the girls dressed up in this garb and runs through and steals the Bible and takes off.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah. I think we should still not give it away because we're going to bring her back.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Oh, we're not going to tell. Well, I mean, all those kids that, I mean, they figured it out eventually.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Sister Rochelle, Sister Rochelle, which she's back in Sunday school now, but she was the very first Ruthless.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Yeah. But the kids started thinking they knew who it was. And so we had somebody else dressed up in a costume with Sister Rochelle in Sunday school.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Sister Rochelle chased Ruthless. As a staff person.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

So it's like, obviously not, not Rochelle.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

So we had one little girl, she's now a teenager. I think she's 17 or something. And she was having nightmares. Now this is not our goal at all in Sunday school, but she was, her mom telling me she was having nightmares. And I think about Ruthless. And I think it was because it was that mystery, you know, they didn't know who it was. Yeah. So,

SPEAKER_02 10:58

you know, you know, the antagonist. Yeah. just by their nature. I mean, I've, I've scared lots and lots of children. Like,

SPEAKER_00 11:06

yeah. Back when we did Bible smugglers, I remember this will be embarrassing for him, but we're going to say it anyway. I remember Adrian, he was very little. That's, that's my son. And he's now, uh, what is it? Six, 16. But he, uh, we were all running back to get, you know, back to headquarters or whatever it was. And the Bible smuggler or the, the, uh, Bible police or whatever we called them, the bad guys, the bad guys were over there. and they had these blue masks and somehow he got separated from the group. It wasn't even by design and he ran into you. He screamed. He was like six years old. He screamed. He was terrified.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

He was always cool because, you know, like Captain John, he wouldn't wear shoes either. Oh, yeah. And Adrian was the only one that I ever knew that actually noticed. Like one time, I remember you telling me, hey, Captain John had shoes on today.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He always noticed those little details. So, yeah. he's very similar. He'll catch little things and he'll ask me questions like, what was happening there?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

But yeah, I mean, I don't know that we ever did actually catch Ruthless. We may have gotten the Bible back, but I think she's just gone off in the ether world like Captain

SPEAKER_00 12:47

John. Yeah, the idea was that we would never catch her. So I remember, so my daughter runs backstage now. She's 19, just turned 19. She probably wants to be Ruthless. Yeah, she would make a good Ruthless. Yeah, she would. But I remember she was telling me this I don't know a few months ago she told me this she remembers still back when we were in the fellowship hall we caught Ruthless and we put her in quote unquote jail this little jail we had made you know that was when we set up every week and took down every week but we had planned it and there's a window and she crawls out the window unbeknownst to everybody yes and so she's you know we put her in jail we're like yes we're celebrating because we finally caught Ruthless and then for some reason we got to go check on her Probably to taunt her. Yeah. And then we come over there and she's gone. Disappeared. And so Anisha said that that was like when she got scared. It was like, wait a minute, what happened to Ruthless? Poor

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Ruthless.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Well, then what was really cool. So it did cycle through. We had, it was mostly Rochelle and Ashley and Echo, I think.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah. Cause they're all similar in height.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so they played Ruthless a few times. And then there was a few others. I remember Autumn doing it once. Yeah, Autumn, Nicole, I think even did it once. Shamrock probably did it. Yeah, so there was a few different ones. Oh, yeah, Shamrock did it, I think, a few times. But then, and so this is, we're talking about iconic characters that transcend themes. So she was in the spy theme, and then she was in various other themes. Oh, when we were doing the construction on the building, it was spy theme still, but we had our agents and Brother Joey was, I think he was QRS or maybe that was Aaron, I can't remember, but Brother Joey got kidnapped by Ruthless and so we came out to the building. Do you remember this? We came out to the metal building. Is this when he

SPEAKER_02 14:44

was hanging?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yes. And he was hanging on a, like it was, what is it, a chain fall or something? Yeah, we had a chain fall hung up in a barn

SPEAKER_02 14:51

harness and he was just wrapped up in ropes and hanging from that thing. I

SPEAKER_00 14:56

have a picture of it somewhere. Oh man, I should pull that up. Oh yeah, I remember that now. That's hilarious. Yeah, so the kid's all come out we come out to the building under construction and there he is hanging and so yeah that was that was scary too we really don't try to do scary Sunday school but that was for some of the kids I can't

SPEAKER_02 15:14

remember times we had like fog machines and black lights oh yeah strobe lights going and yeah and I'm supposed to rescue the kids and I show up and they're screaming in fear oops

SPEAKER_00 15:29

yeah that's like you know we talk about That was a long, long time ago. The magic or the disaster, that's the disaster side. Yeah, you

SPEAKER_02 15:35

gotta make sure your target audience isn't gonna get terrified of what's going on. I mean, but I mean, some of the Bible stories, I mean, they're not.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Some of those are terrifying. They're

SPEAKER_02 15:47

terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Can you imagine? Yeah, in fact, we have to gloss over some of those details because some of the Bible stories are rated R, I think.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 15:57

they're

SPEAKER_02 15:58

rated scary.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah. So then, Ruth, We actually had her be more of a, like when we did that the first time, she kind of like just appeared and disappeared. We always had her, you

SPEAKER_02 16:11

know. When she grabbed the Bible, it was like the end of, it was the end of a normal Sunday school and all of a sudden this black clad cake figure busted in and grabbed the Bible and off they went. And it was like, what now?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah. And we always, well, after the first few times, we started planning it really carefully so that the kids couldn't actually catch her. So we, We planned her entrance and exits.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

We're between the kids and them.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

That's another thing

SPEAKER_02 16:37

when you're the antagonist. I mean, the kids want to get you when you show up. I

SPEAKER_00 16:41

mean,

SPEAKER_02 16:42

you're a pirate with a patch on your eye, so your death perception's all messed up anyway. And they're trying to trip you and they hit you and it's like, you don't, yeah, it's, the kids get very attached both ways to characters. It's like, hey, it's Captain John and they love him and they want to give him a hug and They just can't get enough of them. And then there's Festus or Scar, and they just want to hit you in the way a little kid's elevation is. It's not good. I've been tripped. I'm carrying a real metal sword, and I get a kid that wants to trip me. You can't see them because you've got an eye patch over one eye, and they're on your right eye is covered, and they're on your right side, and they stick their foot out. You got...

SPEAKER_00 17:31

you got no chance oh man all right so now we have alluded to these characters that i'm about to mention so many times on the podcast and i keep on putting it out i'm like yeah we're gonna do a podcast about them but you have most of the time i mean maybe a couple times you haven't but most of the time you're one of the doctors

SPEAKER_02 17:51

yeah but i wasn't one of the original ones

SPEAKER_00 17:53

oh were you not aaron and joey yeah okay

SPEAKER_02 17:56

but then aaron and i took it to like another level it was yeah yeah um the most The one I remember as first, this probably wasn't the first time, but a million years ago, Elder was still around. We did a Sunday school in the

SPEAKER_00 18:11

church. Oh, in the sanctuary. In the

SPEAKER_02 18:13

sanctuary. And your brother was doing all his dialysis and stuff. And you had these boxes. You had billions of boxes, it seemed like.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Oh, yes. Yeah. All the same. All symmetrical. All

SPEAKER_02 18:24

the same. And they built the wall right in front of where the pulpit would be in the old sanctuary when it was still facing the freeway.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

And

SPEAKER_02 18:32

soundtrack sirens screaming, blaring, and Aaron and I ran up the middle of the aisle and just

SPEAKER_00 18:39

blow that wall apart. Oh, yes. I remember that.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

That was, but I mean, Captain John has experienced the doctors too. I mean, so it's like the breath of life.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Oh, yes. The

SPEAKER_02 18:52

pastor was in Sunday school. I

SPEAKER_00 18:55

talked about that when we almost drowned for the kitchen, the carpet, the wet carpet was there for like weeks. It was still wet. It was bad.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

I mean, you guys dumped, I mean, buckets of water in my face repeatedly and picked, I mean, I can remember pastor having a hold of my, caught my shirt and just picking me up off the floor and dropping me, trying to get me to come back to life. It was

SPEAKER_00 19:20

violent. We basically waterboarded you is what I said. So, yeah. So that's the initiation for Sunday school. But yeah, the doctors are iconic characters that we bring those back. Basically every theme.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Every theme, at least once. And it's usually when there's a new staff member that's a fairly prominent character.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah, to initiate them.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Yeah. And some, I mean, it's been taken way too far in the past and people are terrified of them now. I mean, it's, the kids love them, but I mean, there's some people that like use mustard for some sort of saving solution on people.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah. So we don't do that anymore. And I think that that has probably received the doctors the most is brother Brennan. Poor brother

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Brennan. Brennan's been... I mean, and he's just... I think he has PTSD from when Derek just... Yeah. Ketchup and mustard. And I mean, this is horrible stuff. I mean, ruined his clothes and everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah. Yeah, it was bad. But he's a pretty good sport. Yeah, he

SPEAKER_02 20:28

takes it

SPEAKER_00 20:28

well. I mean... Because he's often... What happens is he's off in the dunce. He plays a great dunce. Yeah. Naturally talented at it. Yeah. We love Brent. I love Brent. So he gets, you know, the doctor's quote unquote treatment. He gets attacked, I mean, treated by the

SPEAKER_02 20:46

doctors. Syringes full of water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And so, yeah, I guess really quick to explain to our audience that doesn't, that's not familiar with our Sunday school. So our doctors, it's always two and, or I guess. almost always too and then they're they're funny they're just hilarious and they typically come out so that they'll grab random props based on whatever they're trying to do yeah just anything now we do have scrubs they wear scrubs and they usually have some goofy wigs and then they have there's a few things that we have like we have a super huge saran and oversized plastic scissors yeah thermometer those kind of things but they'll come out and you know we'll be like oh do we need to call the doctors. And of course, you know, they come out, sirens, sound effects.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

A lot of times people say, oh, no, no, no, I'm fine now. I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. No, no, no, I'm fine. My headache's gone. I'm cured. And they don't, the doctors are the cure without even being there.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

So they come out and they usually grab the wrong person first. And so, and then they'll start treating the right person. And we've done, I mean, we've even done it where it's part of the storyline, like, you know, heart surgery, hide the word of God in your heart. Gotta get the word out. Yeah, so we've done that, but a lot of times it's just, it's a comic relief. Sometimes it's just, we had somebody, they were lovesick one time, you know, and so it makes a, it's a transition, but it's funny, you know, with the doctors and so. Okay, so when we have characters in our themes, we have the antagonist, the protagonist, and a dance usually character usually on both sides and then like a female hero or heroine. And that, like with our themes, Bible stories have so many guys. Yeah, they're just full of guys. Yeah, and so our themes give us an opportunity to have, you know, to highlight a female character sometimes. But, and there's many, many other characters that we will have, but it's kind of like every story kind of, not necessarily needs, but in our Sunday school, like if I'm building a story from scratch or whatever, these are kind of the things I look for was like who's gonna be our hero who's gonna be our you know antagonist our antagonist our bad guy yeah and then we need a dunce character so like we could talk about the theme we have right now our hero is William yeah and so brother Miles is playing that character this time and so our hero got kidnapped you know by the pirates and then our antagonist which this is kind of interesting so our antagonist is you're playing the antagonist which is first mate Scar first

SPEAKER_02 23:30

mate Scar.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

But Captain Patch is the leader of the pirates. Yeah. But he actually, well, I can't give it away, but he's not quite as bad as Scar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

He's an old softy.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah. So in fact, we just had. We just threw him in jail. We just kidnapped him last week. Yeah. Threw him in the brig. Now that was really funny because I was one of the evil pirates and I went up on the upper deck while you were, you and the other pirates were talking to him. Yeah, that was all

SPEAKER_02 23:57

ad lib too. I saw you going up there. Apparently he didn't. Apparently he did not see. And I'm like, I'm waiting.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

So I went up there. At first when I went up there, it was because I can't remember who, but somebody was on the other side. They were up top. So I thought, oh, this will be a cool sword fight. Well, then they went back down. And so I went up there and I was just kind of, and then I was like, oh, I'll come down the other side. And so I came down the other side behind

SPEAKER_02 24:20

him. Yeah, so I knew you'd gone up there. I saw you going up there. I don't remember seeing anybody else up there. And then I'm like, you know, Patch and I are just having this dialogue about I'm taking over. over the ship. We're not being much pirates anymore. And then you're behind him. I'm like, well, we can make this work. I mean, surely he knows you're back there too.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

And he turned around and he was surprised. He was like, oh, I guess I'm going to the rig.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, I had this little teensy sword. It was kind of funny. But yeah, so anyway, he's a bad guy, but you're the ultimate antagonist. And so as we're seeing, you're taking over the ship, which is really bad for William because, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yeah, he's not going to swab the deck anymore. He's going to have to do

SPEAKER_00 25:02

some pirate stuff. Right. And Captain Patch, he's bad, but he's built a rapport.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

He kind of let William not have to be a pirate, but be on a pirate ship.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, and I think Captain Patch is starting to be affected by William's attitude and everything, and his good attitude is a good example. And then we have Scab, who's Brennan's character.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Yeah, he's the dunce.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, and he's the dunce on the evil side, and so So he follows Scar around trying to be cool.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

He tries to be Scar, but he doesn't, he's got both eyes still.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yeah, and so what I had written for the character, I think, is like, he tries to be Scar, but not admittedly so. Like he, you know, he would not admit that, but that's basically what he's trying to do. He's

SPEAKER_02 25:47

trying to be cool, but he thinks cool is Scar. Yeah. Which Scar's obviously, I mean, he's not, he's just a bad boy.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Yeah, so that's, and then on the Navy side, we have the captain, which is me, with my crazy suit. But really, I think the main characters are like Betty, which Ariella plays. And so Betty was friends with William. So she's, the whole time that William's gone, she's very concerned. And she often helps us lead into the Bible story because she's like, well, why aren't we going to find William? Like, well, we got to do this or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Yeah. So I, in the past when we've done the Navy and the pirates, we had a smaller staff. And so you had to play a Navy character and a pirate character. Right. You used to be master chief. Yeah. So now we have, more staff available to us. And so it's nice to, nice not to have to be, you can sit in service some Sundays, but I really haven't been in, but like one Navy theme, the whole.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah, I thought it was interesting because Miles is William, but I thought it was interesting because Brother Brent, he's playing Master Chief this time around. And so just so people understand, we run about 10 staff on a Sunday, but our staff pool is, is about 30. And so we're rotating through those unless you're, if you're a character that's needed, then you're going to be in. And so like,

SPEAKER_02 27:08

William's been like in every one.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

William's been, well, if it's Navy, then sometimes he gets to take a break. The, the, the reason that he's been in though is, and this was kind of an oversight on my part, but we're also doing an ongoing series of Joseph at the same time. And he happens to be Joseph. So he's been basically in almost every week, but yeah. So like Brent, uh, Brother Brent is on the Navy side. And I was telling him about Miles. I was like, yeah, Miles is the most unique William we've had because of his accent and stuff that he does. Yeah. Because we've done this theme twice before. And Brother Brent was like, oh, I don't think I've heard it. And I thought about it. I was like, oh, yeah, because you're on the Navy side. And he did just fill in on the pirate side just the other day. But all right. So let's talk about being the bad guy. And so I was trying to list, and I know this is not all of them so if you have any I just kind of was listing some of them and I what I have here on the show notes is Mr. King Festus Scar who we just talked about and Dallas Clay which you did not play but so those are a few kind of just that stood out to me right away bad guys

SPEAKER_02 28:17

yeah I those are I mean but you mean even the Bible stories have bad guys in them right Pharaoh and oh yeah Herod and so you have you have to play those characters I mean those people I mean how do you make a kid relate to somebody that wants to kill Jesus yeah really right I mean that's just a horrible person to be

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I'll tell you this too what I have done now not always because okay let me let me preface this this way the kids know who Brother Keech is right and so when you come out as Captain John or Scar or whatever they know that you're Brother Keech now when we do something where it has to flip in the same Sunday where you're a good guy and a bad guy I'll tell like I've had to do it, like where I'm a bad guy and then I got to teach the lesson. So I'm like, they still know it's me, but I'm trying to suspend reality. And so I'm like, give me a beard, give me dark glasses, give me a wig so that I can look totally different. So that now when I'm teaching a lesson, it's not like, wait, you were, you know, scratched. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

Anisha doesn't even put a full costume in my cabinet anymore. She just puts like- The basics. The clothing and then she lets me, you

SPEAKER_00 29:28

know- Kind of rummage through the- Accessorize it out, you know,

SPEAKER_02 29:32

glasses or a wig or a hat or mustache and a sword or whatever, whatever character I think needs. I don't care what I necessarily have on for a garment for some of those Bible characters. I don't want to look like Scar when I'm supposed to be Herod.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Yeah. Well, what I was going to say about that too is that often I will, and this is why you're the bad guy so much probably, but often what I will do is I will try to make like, okay, here's Here's an example. Brother Miles plays William, our protagonist. He's our good guy in the theme story. And he's playing Joseph in the Bible story. So there's like this continuity. And then if we have, like, you're playing, you know, some evil Mr. King or whatever, and then we have a Bible story about, and Herod's in it, it's good to have you play Herod because you're already the bad guy, even though it's not the same bad guy. Now, it doesn't always work like that. And if... If somebody is limited on staff, they definitely, it can't work like that. But if you have the opportunity to do that, I don't know. I just, I think it helps to have that good with good and the bad with bad. It

SPEAKER_02 30:42

probably does. I mean, I mean, if you don't have, I mean, some of the best times, I mean, I hate to say sometimes I have a good time in Sunday school and some of the best times are when I'm like two thirds of the characters in a Sunday school when I've got, it's like a revolving door. costume change

SPEAKER_00 31:01

and it's yeah that's

SPEAKER_02 31:02

a lot of fun that's some of the best

SPEAKER_00 31:04

we'll get ready for it because in our I've been thinking about that and in our next transition I might actually cut our staff down like when there's back-to-back characters we that's that used to be the normal and now it's like oh I gotta change that fast you know so I I kind of want to get our you know we're gonna be doing a training here next the beginning of next year and I want to get our staff kind of used to some of that again. So being the bad guy, the other thing with the bad guy that I wanted to mention is that we've talked about this, I don't know if you remember, we've talked about this a long time ago, but that we have to be careful that the bad guy isn't the cool one so much that the kids want to be. And that's hard because you want to play your character the best you can.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Well, it helps that he always ends up losing It might take 15 or 16 weeks.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah, and that in itself is a good example. He loses out in the

SPEAKER_02 32:06

end. You might hide things for a while, but eventually you're going to get found out.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Yeah, and that is true. So let's just kind of go over some of our bad guys. We just talked about Scar, and then we just did a theme, Survival Quest, not too long ago, and Festus was the bad guy.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, he was like Sheriff of Nottingham.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yeah, loosely based— In fact, the storyline is loosely based off of Robin Hood. So the king goes away, and Festus is left in charge, and he basically, and Radigan is the protagonist in that story, and Radigan was too young or whatever to go to battle. He really wanted to go to battle with King Marcus, and he had to stay behind. And so he's setting the good example, gets thrown out.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Gets thrown out, and Festus raises the taxes, makes the people work and feed him and party. All he does is want to party, have a good time. Every chance you see him, he's eating and partying and making the kids slave away. And

SPEAKER_00 33:09

then so Radigan is kind of like the quote Robin Hood character. He's out in the woods and he starts training the people out there. Well, I think the

SPEAKER_02 33:20

main reason that Radigan started doing that is because he had a crush on the heroine who Festus decides since he was- Yeah, Princess Allura. Yeah, the king's daughter. daughter, he was going to marry her so he could be the next king.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

They were out in the forest and they had started, you know, making these traps and stuff like that for the bad guys, Festus, when they come out. And then what happens is Princess Allura, how they meet is Princess Allura is running away from the palace from Festus' bad guys and all that and falls into one of Radigan's traps and then they meet. And then, of course, we had, when we did the original, I remember brother, uh, Joey for the Joey Boggs. He's evangelist now, but he was Billy, which was a dunce. Billy was a dunce. Joey plays the best dunce. Yeah. Joey was the greatest dunce. Yeah. He's awesome. Uh, and so he was Billy and the final showdown, how it happens is he's eating this candy or whatever, and he's leaving these rappers, a trail of rappers that fesses tracks to the

SPEAKER_01 34:24

hideout.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Yeah. And then, and then of course, Billy is, is mad in love with Princess Allura as well and but Radigan and Allura you know they fall in love or whatever but it's a little bit more discreet Billy's just over the top yeah he's just

SPEAKER_02 34:43

drooling and

SPEAKER_00 34:44

yeah yeah so it ends up Yeah, going bad. You can't

SPEAKER_02 34:49

talk when she walks into the scene.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's hilarious. And then we had, so Mr. King. So Mr. King was part of our spy theme.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Yeah. He, I mean, when we did that one, we went over the top with photography.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Yeah. Oh, we have a picture. We have a banner right here backstage. We have a banner on the wall. But

SPEAKER_02 35:08

I mean, there was other pictures. I mean. Oh, yeah. It was cool. We had real weapons for props and photography.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

So going back to Ruthless. Yeah. This was really cool. We had done a bunch of photos of each character. So this is a spy theme that we did a few years ago, about five or six years ago. Well, it probably says on there. Okay, yeah, 2016. But we did all these photos up here in the building. We had this cool backdrop. And for Ruthless, we were just talking about, which was all kinds of characters, Sister Burgess, our pastor's wife, who is not in Sunday school at all. Not in Sunday school at all, never. But she posed as Ruthless. with the whole costume on and everything. And this was on the website for a while and people still couldn't guess like who it was. I think a lot of people might not even know about that. They might not know that she was actually in it. It was kind of cool. All right. Well, we are out of time. So let's do a quick recap. So basically when building a story from scratch, it's good to include those foundational characters. And for us, that's the antagonist, the protagonist, The dunce, usually for both sides. Not always, but some kind of dunce character. Kids love the dunce character. And then it's a great opportunity to bring out a female heroine. I mean, there is some in the Bible, but it's just a great opportunity to bring out a female character and let her kind of be the main, one of the main characters. And then iconic characters. So, of course, we talked about ours. We have Captain John, Ruthless, Doctors. I don't know. There's probably some others. Stevie. Stevie. Yep. Stevie's a dunce that that goes on and on yeah and so but I there's iconic characters as far as like a takeaway basically if if you have a character that holds attention enough or makes enough impact on the kids why not capitalize on that you

SPEAKER_02 37:03

know I can remember kids asking hey where's Captain John when's he coming back I mean it hasn't happened in a while because he's been gone so long none of the kids

SPEAKER_00 37:11

a lot of kids don't know

SPEAKER_02 37:12

none of the kids in Sunday school have ever seen Captain John now I mean it's been that long

SPEAKER_00 37:15

yeah well we're gonna be bringing him back Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 37:18

that'll be good.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

And then we kind of just talked about it, but the bad guy, just being careful how the bad guy is portrayed in Sunday school. And then, you know, getting all in. I mean, that's kind of what you do is you get all into

SPEAKER_02 37:31

it. I mean, and at the end, you know, I mean, usually there's this glorious fight scene. You know, Brennan and I had some really cool semi-scripted fight scenes. You can't just cave in and lose. I mean,

SPEAKER_00 37:44

it's not sure. Right, or yeah, to make it good. You got to

SPEAKER_02 37:46

make it direct. it out and to where you're both just spent.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

I think that at the, yeah, the survival quest one was one of the most iconic.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yeah. When I picked him up, when he had me in a headlock and I picked him up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

That was pretty good. That was good.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

Um, yeah, I, I think that, you know, anybody can play the bad guy, but I mean, you have to, you almost have to want to be the bad guy. Cause if you don't really, if you don't, I mean, you have to want to be in Sunday school and if you can't, everybody can't be the good guy.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Yeah. Well, and I do think that there's certain personalities that would have a harder time being bad guy. You know, like there's just some people that are, they're just so nice.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Oh

SPEAKER_00 38:29

yeah. Um, and like Shamra,

SPEAKER_02 38:31

well, maybe not, maybe Shamra is a bad

SPEAKER_00 38:33

example. Oh, we got to have her on. She's, she's, she's, uh, she's another legend. Yeah. So, you know,

SPEAKER_02 38:42

I, I wanted to talk about, um, Edmund cause he was, He was a bad guy, but he was a good guy. Oh, yeah. So when we did Narnia, I mean, I played Edmund.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

We should do a whole podcast on Narnia. That would be enough. Get a

SPEAKER_02 38:59

couple more mics in here.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yeah, that would be fun. All right, well, we are out of time, so I think that's a wrap.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

Yep. All right. All right, thanks for coming.

UNKNOWN 39:11

Yeah, no problem.