UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

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 Arter. How's it going? Good. Going good. Yeah. We're going to talk about stage fright. Stage fright. Yeah, this is a good one. So public speaking is... Still considered to be one of the greatest fears. And I meant to look up some statistics before this. I just didn't have time. But it's one of the greatest fears. So many people say they would never speak in front of an audience. And then I found just I mean, even from my own personal experience and from bringing so many people into Sunday school that even speaking in front of and to kids can be frightening. I have been, quote, performing on stage in various capacities for so many years. Several years now, but I still get nervous sometimes. So today we want to talk about this phenomenon called stage fright and maybe some ways to deal with it. Yeah, so, you know, one of the things

SPEAKER_02 1:36

for me is sometimes we have parents come up, you know, new kids to Sunday school and the parents come up and then it's all, now I'm not just performing for kids, I'm, you know, performing a story for the parents too. And we want to do our best, but, you know, I've been doing this for a little while too and sometimes I still get a little bit of stage fright especially when the parents or maybe pastor comes

SPEAKER_00 1:58

up yeah yeah it's kind of funny like you know we do a practice on Sunday mornings and so I'll be up front talking or whatever to everybody and totally comfortable the pastor drops in I'm like try to just you know act like he's not even there right it's kind of hard it's hard it is so yeah so I just I have a few small But I wanted to maybe just mention a few times, you know, a few examples of some of that stage fright, you know, that we've maybe experienced or whatever. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 2:35

I think for me, like I said, when parents come up and when pastor drops in, when we have an evangelist, he'll come up and check out what we do. But I think that's the hardest thing for me is making sure that... Especially if a new parent's up, you know, that we're performing, we're telling the story and maintaining control of the kids at the same time, you know, while we're acting. So it can get a little nerve wracking. Yeah. Because we want to do our, you know, put our best foot forward. And, you know, we want to leave the parents with a wow. You know, that was cool. And hopefully they don't see us sweating up there, you know, making

SPEAKER_00 3:19

sure we're doing it right. Yeah. Well, and that's a good thing that you brought up. about you know putting our best foot forward like when and also about keeping the kids in control is I know that sometimes you know and we kind of have a loose rule that somebody on stage shouldn't have to address behavior you know kids behavior because that should be we have a role called facilitators and they should be handling that right but sometimes we do and so and I don't know a lot of us you know we know the kids we know the parents or whatever so maybe we would do it anyway but one kind of rule of thumb is we should act like the child's parents are there yeah how would we how would we perform and act to towards those kids if the parents were sitting in the room because I think that sometimes we can be you know we have some of our staff works in the school some of our staff babysits some of these kids so they're around them all the time and so but then there's other staff that you know are not around them as much don't have as much of a relationship but they can get on to them and they maybe wouldn't do it quite so I don't know harshly if the parents were there and so that's a good rule of thumb I think is you know how would you act if the parents were here and if pastor was sitting there you know sure so I know I was you know we just did our big event a few weeks ago Heart of Christmas And a large outreach event for us. And I remember we've been doing it for several years, but I remember one year and we've had mistakes, you know, basically every year. Not every year has the audience known about it. Right, right. But we do. off of each other with this skit and somehow one of us forgot a line so the other one forgot the line subsequent line you know because they played off each other so right there on stage we were like deer in the headlights staring at each other three seconds is an eternity on stage in front of an audience of you know a few hundred people and so I remember this has been a long time ago but I was like I believe we forgot gotten our lines. I think I remember that. Yeah. And it got a huge laugh and, and for several years, people just, they loved that, you know, that, that line. But, um, I remember, I mean, heart pounding and just like, Oh no, what in the world, what do we do? You know? Right. And so, um, yeah, I, and the other thing I thought about this, um, and I've had times where I, I blew it, you know, too, just because I was so nervous or whatever and forgotten lines and often was able to cover it up. Sure. You know, in fact, last year, Brother Joey is in our performance as well. Brother Joey and I are kind of the kind of lead characters. And so we were watching video for review. And last year, our main like sketch that we do towards the end. I almost completely blew a line. Now, nobody would have known in the audience, but I almost cut out a big chunk of the skit because I just, you know, went to the certain part. And so we recovered. He recovered it mainly. But we recovered and were able to do the right lines and finish up the sketch. And it was really good. But nobody, like you said, nobody in the audience even knew. Yeah. Nobody knew that that happened. But we did. When, like in, when we reviewed it, what's funny is this year we did the same sketch and this year I had like, uh, I guess stage fright, but I, I had, I was like gun shy. Sure. Of going to, well, I was gun shy of going to this certain line. Cause I had jumped ahead to that line. So every time I got to that in practice, I was like, now is this, am I supposed to say it right here? And we'd look at the video again. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You are supposed to say it. Cause I was so scared of doing that again, you I was afraid of jumping ahead. So another time, I remember that I was working in construction and I was... I was filling in for a safety role. And so our, our main safety guy, or this is what happened. I wasn't filling in. I, our main safety guy was a no-show and we had a big, you know, powwow on the project and probably 50 people are going to be there at this Monday morning coordination and safety meeting. Well, the superintendent who was, or he was a project manager, I think, and he was, he was kind of new to the company, but he was like scrambling, like, Oh, what are we going to do? Well, I, I remember telling pastor this story just from work around. He's very spontaneous. And so working around here, I'm pretty used to working under the gun and last minute. So I just pulled up something and I created a whole safety meeting right there in, you know, 10 minutes or less. So he, it was really good for me because it, you know, brought some attention and everything But he was just really impressed. So he had that and walked out there. We were all out there. Well, it was pretty incredible. He started to read it and he was like, good morning, everybody. Today is whatever. And then he basically choked. He handed me the safety meeting and walked off. Oh, boy. It was crazy. I'd never seen anything like it. I mean, this is a professional environment. Oh, there you go. Yeah. That to me is like the, probably the worst in stage fright is where you just, you know, we might choke, like you might lose a line or whatever and just like, oh man, what do I do? But, and we're going to talk a little bit about overcoming some of this, but you have to recover somehow. Sure. Even if you acknowledge it. And like I said, when I said, I believe we forgot our lines and I did it, we were in English accent. So I did it in the English accent and everything. And so when I did that, Not ideal, obviously, but the audience loved it and they loved us for it because they could relate. Sure. And so if we, you know, ran off the stage, it would be like, what in the world? Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Right. But again, we're, you know, are the group that we work with and fellowship with, uh, you know, the actors and the musicians are so good at just impromptu. Yes. You know, uh, You know, even in Sunday school, you know, if I forget a particular part of the story, and I know we're not supposed to mention names here, but Brother John Keech is one of the best at just acting and lines off the cuff. And it's easy to follow him when he does that.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yeah, he'll ask leading

SPEAKER_02 11:20

questions. That's one of the things that we help each other overcome, you know, our stage fright because, you know, Brother Keech is just good at that.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

And it's easy to follow him and recover when, you know, even just for a split second, he takes over the scene and allows the other actors to recover. Right. So everybody compliments each other very well.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, and that's a good example, Brother Keech. Um, you know, people wouldn't know, but he has stage fright. Not, I mean, being Sunday school too much, but he, he gets stage fright, but he just handles it like, you know, like a professional, you know, he's does good. Yeah. Um, so some of the symptoms that I've experienced or, or heard about, I guess some of them that I've experienced is, you know, getting kind of just like sweaty right before, you know, it's like my,

SPEAKER_02 12:20

my upper lip gets sweaty. Oh yeah. Like even before coming here, I'm like, Oh Oh, man. Stage fright. No one's even seeing us. They're just hearing us. Oh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah. So this year, and I hate to keep on referencing Heart of Christmas, especially for those that maybe don't celebrate Christmas, but it's an event we just did a few weeks ago. And so it's easy with this topic. But we were doing this event and my character is an older Englishman. and I have a coat on and I wear gloves and I kind of have to wear the gloves the whole time because part of the what makes it funny like when especially when I'm trying to wrap a present and then a top hat and I got a scarf on so that's pretty warm already and so I always you know I'm so busy leading up to the event just crazy busy I mean I had a full week of not going to bed before two you know and so I I'm too busy to kind of really be nervous. But then right before the performance, you know, I am changed. I get in my costume. I usually have a little bit of time by myself, you know, as I'm trying to get dressed and everything. I get nervous. Sure. Every year. Well, this year we had this nasty bug going around. And, of course, we have this, we call it the curse of Hawk because it's Heart of Christmas, so HOC. And the curse of Hawk, it seems like always there's sickness. It's that time of year. I guess, you know, but this year there was a nasty bug going around and it was like a 24 hour flu and it didn't last long. Everybody that got it, but it hit with a vengeance, like, I mean, throwing up and everything. So naturally I think most people, but naturally I, when I get nervous, my stomach is a little bit, just a little queasy, not terrible, but a little queasy. Well, it was worse because I am so scared of this bug hitting me. Yeah. You know, it hadn't got me yet. And Brother Joey had got it a few days earlier, you know, and we're spending all kinds of time together trying to practice. So I was just, every time I kind of, my nervous stomach, I was like, oh, I hope this isn't that book. Because I can't run off stage and go throw up, you know. I mean, I was just like, I could power through sickness, but that's, you know. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. So I remember just, I was nervous as typical, but that stomach was, it was double nervous because I was nervous. that I got I

SPEAKER_01 14:55

was

SPEAKER_00 14:56

getting sick right but thankfully I I made it through and I did I did finally get it I think it was the the following Wednesday I actually came to church late I text pastor a meme of somebody throwing up I got it yeah and it didn't lie I had less than 24 hours thankfully yeah but yeah so that was a compounded nervousness oh

SPEAKER_02 15:23

sure you know and and And for me, since we're kind of talking about Heart of Christmas and it being our huge outreach for us, it's Sunday school for adults, right? You know, we get them. We do the performances. But one of the things that I am just terrified of is in my part for There's a Light. Oh, man. If the screen doesn't work and everything's on timing. And I'm not a musician, so I don't know the counts and the timing. So I rely on that thing. Oh, yeah. It's scary to me that that thing's not going to work.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

And it's done that to us in the past. Well,

SPEAKER_00 16:01

so I think this was the first year where we had zero issues with it. Zero issues, yeah. I think every year we've had. So I was just, hallelujah. I'm glad that it worked. Yeah. So to explain to people just so they can know, we use ProPresenter. And so there's a screen on, you know, the audience is seeing during this song called There is a Light. And there's speaking parts that you rather ordered us. And so we have a screen, you know, like a stage screen or they call it a confidence monitor. Sometimes that's for the actors, you know, that can see that screen and its face. It's behind the audience. We're kind of in the middle of our sanctuary. And so, yeah, that has we used an iPad before. We didn't have we had that screen last year. We still had issues with it. And then in the past, We've used iPad with the same program and just, we've had issues every, every single year we've had issues. But this year it was good. But this year was good. Yeah. Finally. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about a few ways that we can overcome stage fright. And so I have a note on here. Be prepared. Know your lines, know your part, et cetera. I think, you know, you said something earlier about Brother Keech. We can mention names, just kids' names is what I try to avoid, other than Oakley, because she's sitting right here. She might have to be a guest here. We might have to get ready for some interview questions. Write them on your notepad there. So, Brother Keech is great, like you said, at AdLib and Improv, and so many of our staff are. And the way that we, I've mentioned this before, but the way that we script Sunday School is based kind of on improv, but we practice and the idea, and we don't always do this, but the idea is to do the improv in practice and then keep what works and throw out what didn't work. And so that's kind of the idea behind our script. So even with improv, there's preparation, right? And it goes a little bit deeper, I think, long term. Right. Because there's improv like, you know, we're going to have Sunday school today. And so let's let's improv these lines in practice. And then like, OK, we're kind of ready. This is going to work. But then there's improv where, OK, I've been doing this for so long that I can do improv, you know. And knowing your content. Yeah. Yeah. And that is I. I'm glad you brought that up because that is key, is if we know, if we understand, you know, we just, Brother Aaron and I just talked about like kind of vision and goals. If we know the goal for the Sunday, if we know the overall mission of what we're trying to do that Sunday, and in general context of Sunday school, but if we know the topic of then we can make it work. Like, you know, even if we forgot a specific line, it's like, oops, man, we should have got that. But at least we can get this, you know, you know, the segment offering or whatever, we can get it done in the context of our topic, you know. So then the other thing is, and like in a more major event like Heart of Christmas or maybe a special, you know, you do have specific lines, then at the very least, know your lines. Practice your lines. I just mentioned this also, but I'll mention it again just because I think it's kind of cool. I read this not too long ago about Broadway performers, that if you have less than 10 minutes on stage, the rule of thumb is 120 practices. Wow. And then if you're over that 10 minutes, the rule of thumb is an hour for every minute of stage time, an hour of practice.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Seems like that's what we did for Art of Christmas, but I know it wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Gotta be there again tonight.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 20:25

yeah. Yeah, and so obviously we're not doing that for Sunday school. And I know that with schedules and stuff, I know some Sunday schools are not able to practice even. Now, I am a wrong advocate for a practice of some kind and you know I'm not saying that if you don't that you're just a loser at all but we you know we would have a hard time I think and we've done it actually we have done it without practice but and we're not it's not like because we practice we're the best or something but it does does help us stay on point sure you know helps us be going in the right direction And so for overcoming stage fright, I think that builds confidence. You know, when you know, you know your stuff inside and out. Right. That makes a huge difference. I've had to speak in certain like class environments, like teaching, you know, the seminar. Shout out to Brother Booker and the seminar in Redlands. It's going to be April, the end of April. So check that out. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'll see. SCC. So it's Southern California Commission. If you Google that, you'll probably find it. Or episodicsundayschool.com. He probably has it on there. But I know that we, some of our staff will probably be going to that. I will be going for sure to that. But anyway, so I've had to speak in different environments like that. Not a bunch, but a little bit. And the last time prepared, hard. Yes. The more, way more nervous. Yep. You know, and So I do think that being prepared is a key thing. And even with work, you know, work meetings, I tell people, that's what I do for a living. I go to meetings. Yeah, exactly. And so, but I will come to a meeting sometimes not prepared. Often I, you know, can't prepare because I just am in so many. But if I'm running it, I better be prepared. Sure. If I'm not prepared and I'm running the meeting, that's just, oh, that's awful. Right,

SPEAKER_02 22:46

right. I mean, if anything, you want to be over-prepared, you know, prepare for the questions that they might ask or,

SPEAKER_00 22:55

you know, whatever. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of things that I remember – you know, when you say the questions they might ask. I think that there's a lot of preparation, like with professionals. I think there's a lot of preparation like that nobody ever, ever sees. Because it's only a few times. It's kind of like emergencies, right? Where if you're a fireman or a police officer, whatever, there's all kinds of things that you prepare for that in some ways, hopefully, you never, ever have to do. You know, like a police officer is trained on, you know, how to fire his weapon and what to aim for and everything. And hopefully... They don't have to use that. He never has to use it. But there's preparation and it's ongoing preparation, you know. And that's one, you know, we're going to be doing some training here real soon. In fact, we're going to talk about this on the podcast. But... That's one of the things like with this topic of stage fright and overcoming it is I would like to create a few avenues of how to get out of when you're stuck. You know, what are a few methods that you can use of kind of your get out of jail free card? You know, like, okay, oh man, I blew it and create a practice mechanism where it's like, okay, I blew it, but oh, this is what I do. How do we recover? Yeah. This is how I can recover when I blow it. Okay. So another note that I have is be real. And so this kind of goes back to like what I said about, well, I believe we forgot our lines is, you know, acknowledge your blunders. If you can't cover it up or the audience is not going to know, then just acknowledge it. Right. They'll, they'll love you for it. So with going back to our Christmas, we had an issue with our, our lighting, the computer that was running our lighting software it crashed in fact it was kind of funny but not funny but the it might have been the day of no I think it was I think it was the day before I can't remember if it was the day of or the day before or the performances at night and so but we had experienced the crash during you know running through some of it and we're like oh man this is bad and Pastor Burgess comes up and we're working, you know, feverishly on all kinds of things. There's, I don't know, five or so of us there. And Pastor Burgess comes up and he's like, he's talking to me and he's like, so in the event that this computer crashes and Logan, his son is sitting at the lighting computer doing some work and he's like, it just crashed. Literally, he comes up, Pastor comes up in the event that this crashes in the performance and Logan's like, it just crashed. Again. Mm-hmm. So kind of like what I was just talking about with if we can have mechanisms to get out of, you know, if we choke or something like that. Well, what we did is we decided we had a method of how to get out of this. What if this crashes? What do we do? And so there was a few things we like we labeled the breakers that had some of the main bar lights on them. So we know like if we could add a reset for those. And then we um, We know if the computer crashed and it wasn't an electricity failure, the lights would stay doing whatever they were doing, which could be okay if they're just on. But we have some of the songs and stuff, the lights are going nuts. And so if that's still happening and there's just some acting going on, then that's where we would need to flip the breakers off and then go to some house lights. We have some house lights that are kind of up front. So that was kind of a contingency and then worst case what we had is if we couldn't cover it up because it took about i think we figured it would take about three or four minutes to boot reboot the computer reconnect the midi just get everything all back up and in order and um so if we couldn't cover it up where the audience wouldn't know then joey and i as the englishman as the englishman would come out and acknowledge it and make it funny yeah in fact we even planned for We got some wires or cords or something, and Joey put them in his pocket of his coat. And the idea was- Just in case. Yeah. The idea was he would come out on stage, pull those cords out. I'm like, I was just cutting these cords. I didn't know. And we would make it funny. And it was going to be ad lib, but we did come up with just a general direction of what we would say, because he's kind of the, I guess, loosely a dunce character in Sunday school terms. And so- But yeah, he would come out like, I was just trying to cut these cords. And I would be like, Charles, what did you do? And we would just, you know, thankfully, we didn't have to use that. But we had a contingency in place, you know, to be able to come out of that. So, the other thing is about like, you know, acknowledging that or whatever. If you have, if you can build a rapport with the audience. And so, Brother Brent is really good at that, I feel like. in Sunday school. He builds a rapport with the kids. They just love him. There's different things like the way that they like him is different. They love Sammy. Sammy is our gun security that Brennan plays. They love him, but it's like he's really goofy and silly. Brother Brent, they like him, but yet they'll listen to him. He's still got an authority there. I think that's really good. Then If you have that rapport with the audience, then when you mess up, they're, they really are laughing with you. There's a little bit of forgiveness there too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They're laughing with you. They're not laughing at you. You know, whereas if it's like, if you are Mr. Serious guy and everything, and then you mess up, then they're laughing at you. You know, it's like, aha, you messed up. You thought you were so cool. All right. Well, just to recap a little bit, um, So... stage fright public speaking is one of the top fears yes I guess in the US I don't know if it's around the world or not but you know it's one of the top fears public speaking and with that you know I don't want to get off track too much here but with that I think we psych ourselves out sometimes you know we can get just really nervous for our part and it's unnecessary you know and the thing is like I think it's Seth Godin talks about the lizard brain. And I don't know if he might be atheist. I'm not sure. But he talks about our brain, like protecting ourselves. And so what happens is we get scared or whatever. So we close up. We try to protect ourselves. And he talks about thinking it through, like what is the worst that can happen? And so if you really think about that, and I know like if I were to talk to my teenage kids, you know, about this, they might would have a different view. But when I think of what's the worst that could happen, I'm like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. They might wouldn't. Yeah, it is a big deal. But but what I say, what's the worst that can happen is what is the worst that can happen? You mess up and the audience laughs at you. Right. And, you know, I hate to break it to people, but they're not thinking about you that much. They forgot about it by the next day, probably, you know, you're not that much in their mind. And so, um, so they're till they remember it next year, the next year. Yeah. Until the next year. Uh, so overcoming straight fright is be prepared. Yes. That's a big thing is know your lines. If you don't have lines or if you like us and work on, on ad lib, then know your part, know your part. know the direction that you're going, know what you're doing. And like you said, you know, if we know the overall topic, then that can get us out of a lot of jams. It's

SPEAKER_02 31:50

easier to get out of that jam. Yeah, yeah,

SPEAKER_00 31:53

yep. And then build rapport with your audience. And, of course, we want to do that anyway. We want to have a relationship with these kids. And

SPEAKER_02 32:01

their parents. And their parents. You know, because one of the greatest things for me is when I see one of the Sunday school kids outside, like at the store Or, oh, that's Captain Patch, you know. Yeah, yeah. And it builds a relationship with the kids. And then that's an end for the, you know, hey, you know, Mom, this is Captain Patch. He's a pirate. Yeah. So it helps with the relationship with the parents, too.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah. You know, we do fireworks sales. And sometimes, actually, pretty much every year, somebody from Sunday school comes in there and they'll recognize me or somebody, you know, there. Sure. Oh, Hey. And with family, you know, that's our reward. Yeah. That's kind of neat. All right. Well, I think that's a wrap.