UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 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 Harder. How's it going? Good evening. How are you? Good. Good. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. Yes, sir. Backstage. What were we talking about today? We are talking about the buck

SPEAKER_00 0:49

stops here.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

The buck stops here. So Sunday school leaders must take responsibility. When someone is, quote, in charge of something and they don't feel responsible for the outcome, it will probably fail, most likely will fail. So President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk, kind of famous, that stated, the buck stops here. And this comes from the idea of passing the buck, you know, not admitting that it's up to me. So what a blessing we can be to our pastor if we take the attitude that the buck's I'm not going to abdicate responsibility or wait for the pastor to take care of it. I am going to make this ministry work under his direction, and he can know that it will happen. So that's kind of what we want to talk about today.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, and that's good preaching, too. Yeah, that'll

SPEAKER_03 1:31

preach. That's what they say,

SPEAKER_00 1:32

right? It'll preach. You know, I don't know where I heard this quote, but when you sent me the outline, it came right back to me. And it reads like this, Oh, yeah, I like

SPEAKER_03 1:44

that.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

And it says, a lot of times not in this church because we're you know we have a church full of workers um it kind of goes like this if it is to be let the pastor do it

SPEAKER_03 1:57

yeah yeah and that doesn't rhyme very good

SPEAKER_00 1:59

no it doesn't but uh you know i'm i'm reminded you know when when the buck stops here when the buck stops with me you know i'm reminded of a scripture uh hebrews 13 and 7 says remember them which have the rule over you who have spoken unto you Oh, yeah. And we have to get that attitude. If it is to be, it's up to me.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

It's up to me.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yes. Absolutely. And just be in part, you know, at the start of the year when we had our New Year's service.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

You know, I told Pastor, I said, you know, I just want to be a help to you, not a hindrance.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

And he said, you know, one of the greatest things about some of the people that we use in the church is if I give them an assignment, I don't have to worry about it. It's going to get taken care of from the start to the finish. And if we have that attitude with Sunday school, not just with outreach or food events or fundraisers, but he has to trust that we're going to take care of it. And when he gives us an assignment, we better consider the end of his conversation because it is profitable for us to do that. So if it is to be,

SPEAKER_03 3:39

it's up

SPEAKER_00 3:39

to

SPEAKER_03 3:39

me. It's up to me. That's good. And I think that, you know, so when we're leaders of the church in various facets, departments, whatever you want to call it, ministries, there's always that head, the pastor, and there might be even more, you know, tiers or whatever, you know, managers or whatever. And so it can be tempting, especially, you know, the church is a volunteer environment for the most part. And so it can be tempting to say, oh, man, that was a mess up. Hope somebody fixes it. Because by Right. our pastor delegates and is comfortable with that more than some he gives away a lot of leadership you know ability or you know you know he gives that away and he's not insecure about it right now on the same hand I mean he does all kinds of stuff so it's not like he's giving away responsibility you know yeah I mean he's doing everything and so but yeah I think that we Sunday School leaders, do you have to approach it like that? You know, it's up to me. I have to make it happen. So I got a few notes. So be clear on your pastor's vision. And I think that this is just kind of the start of it is, you know, it's better to be reined in than have to be prodded. You know, I would way rather on our staff have somebody like, okay, well, that's not quite going that far. I'm really reminiscent of Sunday school doctors. So our Sunday school doctors are pretty crazy. They're the ones that if you are ill, you don't want them to work on you. We got some pretty crazy Sunday school doctors, but at the same time, I would rather have that attitude, you know, of like, okay, whoa, whoa, you guys, let's slow down a little bit. Then they have to like, okay, let's do something. Get out there. Be excited a little bit, more, you know, or whatever. And so with that, I kind of lay in a foundation, I guess, because with that in mind, if you're going to be the one that's like, go get them and you have to be reined in a little bit, you need to know your pastor's vision first, you know, because if you're if you need to be reined in and you're going off

SPEAKER_00 6:36

the reservation. Right. It needs to line up with with what his vision is for whatever it is, whether it's outreach, building a church, Sunday school. Exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Yeah. And I will say without saying any names in the past we have had um at least a leader that just was going kind of off the deep end not i'm not when i say that i could they could be taken the wrong way they weren't it wasn't uh sinful or anything like that but it was kind of just a little bit crazy and like uh no that's not what we're trying to do right going rogue i guess yeah so i remember one time we were doing this is years ago and this person doesn't go here anymore so i can I feel like I can say this, but we were doing, uh, I think, I think it was our very first space theme or something. I'm not sure, but anyway, so we had this big showdown between, uh, actually both of them are not here anymore, unfortunately, but between two characters in Sunday school is a big showdown. Well, um, the one character, uh, one guy, he's like, it just made it up on the fly. He's like, we were doing a, I think a video or something challenge. And it was like, a boxing type you know idea and he was like I'm Kimbo Slice well unbeknownst to me this is I don't even know who he is so that shows how sheltered I am I guess but Kimbo Slice is some kind of boxer fighter or something celebrity of some kind so I was just like oh that's cool that's a cool name and so ever since so we ended up once I found out I was like what you know we changed it to Columbo Spice right So it was Columbo Spice. So ever since then, I've been guarded. When people come up with something, I'll be like, now wait, that's not a TV character or something, is it? I don't want to be off track here. But yeah, so know the direction that you need to go first. Know what your pastor's vision is. And with that, I guess, is his heartbeat. You know what I mean? It's not just what he lines out. It's not just like if he lines out the year or some goals or something. Not just that. It's just know your pastor. You know how like, you know how you can, somebody can say, oh, he said this or so-and-so said this. And you're like, no, I don't think. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I don't think so. Right. And that's how we need to be with our pastor is like, you know, when we're getting ready to do something like, oh, wait a minute. Is this in line with how, you know, he never said anything about this, but is this in line with, you know. So I think, and we can have, you can have personality Right. I mean, our pastor now, he has been in Sunday school and been pretty crazy before because he started this whole thing. But he's not the personality that's going to come up here and be as goofy as we are sometimes. Yeah. He's not going to be Sammy. Yeah. He's not going to be Sammy. Yeah. No. But, you know, on that note, and I'm getting off track, rabbit trails, but Brother Keech is not that guy either. You know, there's a lot of people in our Sunday school that are not. And people come up, they're like, whoa, they get kind of a... Culture shock or a shock, you know, the other side of somebody. So it's kind of fun. All right. So I have, it's my job to come up with solutions. And so that's something I feel like in Sunday school, right? Even on a micro level when it's just this Sunday, you know, like, well, you and I, I think we've talked about that in practice even before. It's like, okay, you're doing offering today and our scripts are pretty thin on some of the segments, you know, the most detailed. like in the Bible story and that kind of thing. And so it's like, okay, it's up to me to make this

SPEAKER_00 10:21

happen. Come up with something to make it creative and grabbing to the kids. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

And you've done something with Memoryverse. Well, it was more than just Memoryverse, but you've done something with Memoryverse before that was pretty creative. What's that guy? What's the Paisley guy?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Oh, Wilbur T. Paisley. Wilbur T. Paisley. From Buzzard Breath, Mississippi. Strictly made up. Strictly made up. I don't know if there is a Buzzard Breath, Mississippi. Yeah, Wilbur

SPEAKER_03 10:50

T. Paisley,

SPEAKER_00 11:05

evangelist. Yeah, like

SPEAKER_03 11:18

the street preacher kind

SPEAKER_00 11:19

of guy. Yeah, the street preacher, you know, his suit's too small, and the kids get a kick, and we haven't done him in a long time.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

Yeah, I remember coming in, I hadn't seen it, and you did it. I was just amazed. I

SPEAKER_00 11:32

was just like, wow. And, you know, a lot of energy, hopping around the stage. Yeah, ties all crooked. Yeah, you know, just a stereotypical, I'm trying to think of someone, I'm not going to say who's been here. Yeah, don't say any names. Like brother so-and-so. Yeah, right. But just, you know, high energy and it, yeah, it's jumping and kicking and, yeah. Do you

SPEAKER_03 11:57

still have, like, do you have the stuff

SPEAKER_00 11:59

you need? Yeah, I have the wig and I have an old suit, I'm sure now, that's too small. Okay, let's, why don't we just, let's

SPEAKER_03 12:06

put it on the ad name and somewhere for this Sunday. Okay, yeah, I'll have to find the wig or maybe we have it here. Yeah. Yeah, I think we, it's like the bald wig with the

SPEAKER_00 12:14

hair on the side. Yeah, I think we have one. Yeah, yeah,

SPEAKER_03 12:19

yeah. Okay, let's plan for it. have, I feel like I have been able to do over the past, you know, several years. So I've held a lot of roles, you know, in our church over the years and still do quite a few. But I remember being almost, and I don't, you know, we talk about the magic or the disaster. So this wasn't a disaster, but it was negative. I remember being kind of almost competitive in ministry thinking and I'm using the word ministry and I don't want people to take offense at that. It could be department, whatever, however you want to say it. But I remember being almost competitive, like, you know, okay, I'm the youth leader and that's the most important, you know, kind of having that feeling. And I think that that can be pretty common. And so one of the ways that we might would see that is in the Sunday school realm is Sunday school versus bus ministry. I think that that can be A conflict point, if you're not careful. I mean, we've we've loaned out swords to preachers here before, you know, for illustrations and and those kind of things. And so anyway, I just I feel like, you know, looking at at it like we're all under the same umbrella. We're all in this together. We're all on the same team. And so being able to look ahead at the church direction and the overall vision, the overall impact, even though, OK, here I am. doing Sunday school right here in my own little area, but I need to understand the bigger picture that this is part of the mission. Sunday school is just one avenue in this big mission.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

We fall under the five-fold ministry. Apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, teachers. We're evangelists and teachers in Sunday school. It takes every department, like you said, to make a church work. Every facet of that five-fold ministry. And Sunday school falls into that category. So it's everybody doing their part.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Yeah. Despite how goofy it might be sometimes. That's right. And there's a design behind that. I mean, you know, the Wilbur T. Paisley, you know, that's a hilarious character and it should always be. He should always be funny. But

SPEAKER_00 15:38

he preaches the word.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

But he preaches the word. Yeah. And there's a purpose behind it. Like, I remember when you did, when I've seen the first time you were doing Memoryverse. And the whole thing we talked, we've talked about it so many times on here, but we're trying to get kids attention. And so that's where the goofiness, you know, and the playing comes in. And so they love Wilbur T. Paisley. I mean, now it's been a while. So some of the kids don't know who he

SPEAKER_00 16:01

is. Some of the, I mean, the staff members that we have probably remember, but nobody.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Oh, brother Brent won't know. He won't know. He'll be like, but yeah. So, and like my son, my, my little son, uh, actually he's six. So, It'll be

SPEAKER_00 16:17

new for your other son might remember. Yeah,

SPEAKER_03 16:18

he probably does. Yeah. Yeah. So we're trying to grab kids attention. We're trying to do, and it's all for a purpose. It's not just, yeah, we have a good time and everything, but it's not just to be silly and goofy, you know, or, I mean, if it worked with adults, we'd probably do it there too. And then I guess this kind of goes at the whole thing that the, another bullet I had is managed the whole thing. And so look at your Sunday school as a whole and kind of what I mean Yeah, that would be, you know, or even that he's having to get somebody to do it. Right. stops here it's up to me to make this thing go forward like right now our backstage is kind of a mess for what I like it to be I did vacuum but you know we had our big event and we well there's another example and I would rather keep the doors locked we do keep the doors locked but for our event it made sense for the servers to be able to come back here and grab food and stuff so they did and broke a piece of trim off and left a big mess and everything but that's okay Okay. Because we're all part of this, you know, together, the same ministry. So trying to do all of that. Um, so I, I wanted to say something a little bit interesting. This is kind of nerdy, I guess, but I did look this up cause I was, I had this thought, the buck stops here, you know, or, or, you know, it's up to me. It's kind of the thought, but I, we need to have a cool title, right? So I looked that up and it's a story. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the buck stops here, uh, Obviously, it comes from, you know, passing the buck and passing the buck is a negative thing. It means like, no, I don't want to do it. You know, it's his fault, his problem or whatever. But where it comes from, I guess, is like poker or something. I don't know nothing about poker. I don't either. But what I looked up is they would use a buck knife to, I don't know, point or sort or something, but it would be whose deal it was in the game. And you could pass the buck knife to the next. And they would deal instead of you. So you're literally passing. Passing the buck. Yeah, passing the buck. So that's where it kind of comes from. And then, of course, Henry Truman was saying, look, it stops with me, which he was the president. So it kind of did. Although in this day and age, it seems like that is often, you know. It is pushed around a little bit. So, yeah. So I think that. Taking that attitude. Now, let's just take this a little further, like, or let's talk about it in the, I mentioned earlier, the micro sense, but like thinking of in Sunday school. So I've talked about this a little bit, and I think I want to kind of do it. So Brother Booker down in, Brother Philip Booker down in California, Rialto, there we go. Their staff, from what I understand, they basically, he writes the overall kind of script, kind of like I do, but he's looking Looking at it a little more like I think the whole year, you know, kind of a little more general. And then the staff actually comes up with each segment and they rotate it around or whatever. So I think, I mean, what do you think about that? I think I want to try that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah, that would, you know, help some folks be thought provoking. Yeah. You know, get their creative side. I mean, they may need some help because that's your game. Yeah. Being creative and stuff like that. And it'll bring some people out of their shells. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like, uh, either on or you're off. If you can't, can't cut the mustard, you know, maybe it's not for you. If that's the way we go. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I think that would be a good idea to get people to think, all right, how, how am I going to tell the story of baby Moses? Yeah, exactly. And what, what am I going to orchestrate or script, you know? So, so yeah, I, I think that'd be good. I mean, be helpful for all of us.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

Yeah. You were way back in the day. We had a brainstorm. So, I mean, this is back when Logan was in sun. this school, we, it was at your house. We met at your house and had like some dinner or something. We had a brainstorm session. And I think, I don't know if it was for an upcoming conference. I think it was for the, like the upcoming August or something. And so we went through and we were brainstorming and listing. I just, I kind of, I vaguely remember Logan was quite a bit younger and he was a little bit shy, but he had a couple of good ideas. You know, I was, I was forcing him to be a part. And so, but we, I remember we were talking about like well what I had suggested starting with some kind of like blocks some building blocks on what we can do so one of the things we used to do a lot of this we haven't done in a while but is storms and so we used to do storms really well like it was really cool and so I was like okay we do storms good another thing is rescues we always are rescuing somebody or getting rescued so I was like okay we need a we can do a rescue and then these were like our building blocks and then we kind of could build a story around a Around that. And so that was kind of a brainstorming session, which I want to do. I want to do one actually here really soon. It was it was it's always fun. I like doing the brainstorm sessions. We haven't done

SPEAKER_00 21:56

it

SPEAKER_03 21:56

in a

SPEAKER_00 21:56

while. And let me know. I'll burn some ribs.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. So storms. I was going to mention that really quick just as a resource, maybe. And it's not like we have a capitalization on this or anything or a monopoly on this. We used to do storms. We did it in one of our space themes, I remember. And what we did is we set up some fans strategically. And one thing, if you do this, if you have like we had greenery, like just some shrubbery, you know, craft shrubbery or whatever, is put that close to the fan so that you can see it because you can't see wind. And so feeling is not enough. So put that somewhere close. And then we got one of those. We had like a bounce house blower. And a carpet dryer blower, you know, to dry out carpet or something. And so we set those up and again, put shrubbery kind of by it. But then what we did is we hid staff. They were hidden behind these blowers and they had like a spray bottle of water, just water. Yeah. So they would, they would squirt that water in, in kind of in front of the blower and it would just, just little droplets, you know, it hit those kids that they'd be like, what? And then we did it. We did it. I think it was a space thing. We had these space suits that were, um, they were, they weren't as big as that one. You, you brought that. What was that? A hazmat suit, like a major hazmat suit with a face thing. Everything was like a full body suit. You had to zip it up. Somebody had to zip it up for you in the back, but it wasn't like that. It was like these gray ones are plastic, but they were complete onesies with a hoodie. So they had a hood and slippers and everything, but we put those on and then glasses. And so we had this storm happening, right? And the kids got at least water droplets a little bit and stuff. And then one of the guys comes, I was one of them. I remember we, it was two of us. We came in from the storm, you know, the quote storm. But right before we came in, we took one of those spray balls and just doused our face, you know, and had water dripping off

SPEAKER_01 24:07

of us. So we just came out of the storm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

It was pretty cool. Yeah. Um, yeah. So anyway, get back on track here really quick. Um, um, so to get back on track with the, it's up to me and, and, and that micro level is that these are some of the things that we do to make sure that we can get this lesson across, you know, is, um, and I think too, this, we do a lot of threes, you know, uh, pairs or threes. And so that can be another place where it's easy to pass the buck or not really do anything is it's like, Oh, there's two other people here. They can let them act it out, let them do it, you know? And so, um, now I think, you know, there, there can be a flip side where you hog the ball, so to speak, but I kind of, I would kind of rather that, you know, I'd rather have a ball hog and then like, Hey, can you pass it? Right. I'd rather that than have three people up there just staring

SPEAKER_00 25:05

at each other. Right. Exactly. Cause you can, you know, you can play off of somebody or you, you can, you can act off of somebody. You know, brother Keach is awesome about, stealing the scene but but you can not wrong maybe not stealing the scene but being the primary actor in the scene right and and you can draw from that and and and kind of just off the cuff because he's so good at it yeah he is yes it's it's okay if someone dominates the scene but but don't just be a bystander yeah you know participate

SPEAKER_03 25:37

what's funny about that is we do review we do Bible story review and so I don't even remember oh I think you was Joseph we were doing. And so he was, you know, we rotate these segments around. And so in our review, we do, um, what was the, uh, Bible story? What was the lesson? What was the memory verse? So those three things. So he had Bible story review and the main character was miles. He was Joseph. I think you were Pharaoh. So John, I mean, he played a few different roles, but one of his main roles was the, um, it was Ruben or Simeon. I think it was Ruben. One, one of the brothers, just, you know, just one of the brothers. Um, But so he comes out for Bible story review and he's like, I was like, Oh, do you remember what the Bible story was? He's like, Oh yeah, it was about me. I'm like, wait about you. He's like, yeah. I'm like, who are you? I'm Ruben. You know, it was about me. It was about, yeah. How we threw Joseph in the pit. And you know, so he still did the review, but it was about him, which is, that was good. All right. So what is a couple of other examples of, the buck stops here. I

SPEAKER_00 26:46

think, you know, just overall, just taking responsibility for what we do. I mean, it's a huge job. I mean, we teach salvation every Sunday. It might not be in the main body, but we do, you know, in prayer requests and the plan of salvation. We teach that every Sunday. And, you know, maybe it doesn't fit, but But the buck stops with us as Sunday school teachers, not just to...

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Well, it might be the only time that somebody hears that.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah. And so really, the buck stops with us, not tickling their ears, but we have to teach them something. Yeah. And that's all lining up with being clear on your pastor's vision. Don't just be up here being a babysitter for the parents. Yeah, exactly. And so it's important that the buck stops with me, and I want to be part of teaching them how to be... and how to get to heaven because that's our ultimate goal with a cool Bible story, but teaching them, you know, Acts 2.38. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:51

And that's so true is we have that responsibility. And it's not just, you know, with a kid that might be visiting, came on the bus or with somebody and they're visiting and we don't see them again, but it's also even our church kids, we have this responsibility because we're not just babysitting. I mean, they can be in the church or whatever, but we we have a responsibility to be teaching them. So, I mean, I love it. It's, it's like a, it's a good and bad, but I like it when I hear about parents that are like, wait, that's in the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah, exactly. You know, exactly. Or the, the kids come home and, uh, as I know, my granddaughter came home and said, I was on the distraction team today. And, you know, and I, you know, I, so I, you know, I kind of got, you know, we have a distraction team and extraction team, you know, so, uh, you know, and asked her, what the Bible story was about and she told me. And so, so that's when the kids go home, whether it's, you know, they're in church or outreach family, that's important because then the parents are like, wow, really?

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 28:56

exactly. Cause I did that and I'm, I'm in the church and my granddaughter has been coming here for seven years, you know? So, so it was exciting to me. She was just all about distracting and extracting. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

That's good. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's really good. I mean, that's, that's, It's all, it's up to us. It is. We have to do it. It's up to us. All right. Well, I think we are about out of, I think we've kind of ran this topic out for now.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

It's a good topic. It's something that we need to talk about, you know, probably more often than we do, but the buck stops with us. Yeah. Don't pass the buck. Don't pass the buck. It's your deal.

SPEAKER_03 29:36

All right. Well, that's a wrap.

UNKNOWN 29:41

All right.