UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 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 Joey Boggs. How's it going? It's going well. I'm glad we finally got this scheduled. We've been talking about it for a while. We've been talking about it for a while. You've been gone and back and gone. So here we go.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yes, I'm in and out like the tide of the ocean. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

So what's our topic today?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Our topic today, I think, is a great, great topic that can help in every area of Sunday School ministry, and that is collaboration.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Collaboration. So there's all these things, two heads are better than one. No such thing as a stupid question. Brainstorm the problem to find a solution. So these are all things we've heard. Maybe we've been a part of it. And for the most part, this is true. When you involve others, you get more perspective, you get more ideas, et cetera. And then there's different levels of collaboration from like, hey, what do you think about this idea or this joke or whatever, something on the fly maybe, to like, hey, let's work on this big project and create something together. And so we want to talk about that today, just how to use collaboration as an effective tool in Sunday school.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah. The old adage is there's two sides to every story. Well, there's actually three. So there's his side or her side or his side and his side or her side and her side. And then there's the truth. So there's three sides to every story. So I think when it comes to Sunday school and other areas, there's three areas. There's my opinion, your opinion, and something that works the best. That's the best. Yes, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, for sure. Like, you know, one thing, so I'm working on a project, and we'll maybe reference this a little bit, but it's some curriculum. And one of the things that we have touted is almost like our slogan is the best idea wins.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

And so, you know, don't give up. Don't get offended.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Just remember, best idea

SPEAKER_01 2:54

wins. Yeah. We have a brainstorm crazy idea, but then it, it, it works. It doesn't work out. It was maybe originally thought of, but it, you know, spawns other germinates into something greater. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think, um, you know, like when I, I've said this often when brainstorming or something for like a set or whatever, you've probably heard me say this is I'm like, what if we had a budget of a million dollars? Oh man. And it's to open up people's mind, you know? like the possibilities because then when they start saying oh you know well let's build a roller coaster upstairs well we can't do that but it gives me an idea like well we can build a playground right you know and so yeah it's definitely helps but okay so before we get too far into this we've had a lot of guests I think almost everybody on here maybe not everybody but most people have been repeat guests and so this is your first time on but you're a special guest you guest of honor oh man so brother Joey Boggs and so you're an evangelist now and that's why it's been so hard to schedule this because you're out in the field and we don't get to see you very often but you've been hanging out here for a little bit locally and then what probably a lot of people don't know and it's kind of funny because we have brother Brian Critcher on and he's evangelist as well and we got this poster of him right here backstage from years ago in a spy thing was it I think it's 2007 16. Look at that guy. Yeah. What a stud. And so he said that we had, I think it was our forward conference. So he had the doors open to the backstage here and people were like stepping back. People that knew him as an evangelist, you know, that's how they knew him. They saw the picture. So it was kind of embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

That's neat. I remember that theme. That was a

SPEAKER_01 4:48

fun thing. That was a fun thing. You had a couple of characters in that.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah. Several

SPEAKER_01 4:51

characters. My caller ID for you is from that theme.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Okay. And your caller, Dave, on my phone is from some other Christmas programs we've done. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

So, but anyway, so yeah, so you're an evangelist now, but what people don't know is that you, or a lot of people might not know, is that you were like Sunday school extraordinaire.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Oh man, I was just to help. Right hand guy, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

But you actually started before I came into it. So we started with Kids Power Hour.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Remember that?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, we did, I believe one or two scenes before Brother Gabe stepped in. And we were just, man, we were just trying to get our feet wet and see if we could do something different than just coloring pictures and handing out snacks. So a guy from my church, from our church and myself just kind of jumped in. We had no idea what we were doing, but we sure had some fun with it and probably didn't do it to its full potential. And that's when Brother Gabe stepped in and man, we just took off with it.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Yeah. Well, yeah. And we started right Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty awesome. Yeah. That kids power hour for us was a great launching point, but, um, and it gave us ideas for potential

SPEAKER_00 6:13

of where

SPEAKER_01 6:16

we

SPEAKER_00 6:18

could get in. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

booklets and we've done a couple of them. We did the treasure one and we did a parachute

SPEAKER_00 7:02

one. Yes. Hot air balloon.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Hot air balloons. That's what it was. Oh, man. Hot air balloons. And that's the one where we started making our own because that one is 13 weeks and we went like 40.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

We're like, we got to keep going with this. We already built the set.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah. And that was also when we set up every Saturday night. And tore down. Every Sunday. Oh, yeah. I remember those days. Man. And then we had... we did like we created our own but then we went back and we did I think it was called search and rescue because I remember we set up in like this little tiny kitchen I mean that kitchen how big was that kitchen you think like a 15 by 15 or something

SPEAKER_00 7:38

maybe 15 by 20 yeah 25 something like that it was tiny

SPEAKER_01 7:42

that was our headquarters

SPEAKER_00 7:43

and we had an island in the middle yeah

SPEAKER_01 7:45

there was a big island in the way but we had props on the island we had kids I mean we had kids sitting on the floor we had them stacked double deep Yeah. Wow. That's crazy to think about. What a throwback. Yeah. So, anyway, so you've been there and then, you know, of course, all through we did so many themes and you were a major part of it. And we, I talked to Brother Keech. So, Brother Keech and your brother, Aaron Boggs, are most often the doctors now.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Oh, man. But the

SPEAKER_01 8:18

original was you and Aaron. Yeah. You were the original doctor.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

That would grip my heart. Yeah. Anytime I was a character and would hear Brother Gabe say, I think he needs a doctor. I mean, the endless possibilities of what they were going to do as torture to me was endless. And I mean, you're in front of children. You can't really fight back or yell and scream and get mad. You just got to take it with a big old smile on your face. I've had water thrown in my face. I've been borderline electrocuted. Just a lot of things probably that we can't mention for legal purposes. Yeah. Liability. We got to keep that

SPEAKER_01 8:58

under wraps.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Brother Keech one time did play doctor. We had our setup in a back room that also doubled as a storage room. Oh, yeah. And we had props and different costumes hanging up and boxes. So I was doing one of those famous fast changes. Yeah. Have about three minutes to switch characters and run right back out. And as I was running out, I stepped on a screw. Oh, no. And it went right into the pad. out of my foot. Oh, really? Yeah. And I put my foot up. I said, brother, keep pulling out, pull it out. And he pulled and pulled and would not come out. And so. Oh my goodness. I hoped, I hoped that someone was stalling. And so he grabbed and he had to literally untwist it out of the bottom of my foot. And so the next scene, the next scene, I felt my, my shoe filling up with blood and it was pretty exciting. Wow. The kids, I don't think ever knew, but. Well, that's, we should have capitalized. Yeah, absolutely. Could Oh, man.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

I didn't know about that. That's

SPEAKER_00 9:59

crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Wow. The things that happened

SPEAKER_00 10:02

behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We did a podcast with Anish and Shaylee once, the stuff that happens backstage.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah. They were children back then when we were- They were in Sunday school. Yeah. They were

SPEAKER_01 10:15

in Sunday school. That's crazy, man. Well, and so we're going to get to it in a little bit, but we were just talking before the show and you You were saying that you started preaching out in our Western theme.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah. And I believe in 2016, um, I started having pretty repetitive weeks, um, stacking on each other every Sunday. I was, I was out, I believe it was a two month stint and we knew that at least a couple of weeks was coming. And so I, I think behind the scenes, we made the executive decision to, um, try to get someone else to fulfill the role. And we went from, I believe. Cause you were a main

SPEAKER_01 10:53

character.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah. I believe I was the sheriff and we switched that to a marshal. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I remember going out strong. We put a trap

SPEAKER_01 11:02

door. We had to kill you off or something.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah. So the bad guy had me up in the second story of our upstairs building here and they put some mattresses and stuff down and he kicked me right off that second story. I remember that still. Yeah. It knocked the wind out of me. Yeah. This is not

SPEAKER_01 11:24

an endorsement. No,

SPEAKER_00 11:25

no, no, no. But we had to do something to keep the script alive and kind of silently move me out.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Was the saying the show must go

SPEAKER_00 11:35

on? Yes. Or break a

SPEAKER_01 11:37

leg.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

I don't know which. We were trying to institute. We were trying to

SPEAKER_01 11:39

fulfill both. Yes. Yeah. And so now, so man, that's a long time, 2016. And so now you're evangelizing full time, been through several trailers and trucks and added kids. along the way still one wife

SPEAKER_00 11:57

right yeah still one wife same wife okay when when we got married i there was no trade-in policy so

SPEAKER_01 12:03

okay

SPEAKER_00 12:05

yeah we've uh we've been through i'll tell you what if if uh if you can make it in a trailer with well now three children um i've got a 11 day old 11 day old yeah that's that got in the way of one of our

SPEAKER_01 12:20

podcasts

SPEAKER_00 12:21

yes it did uh and but but with two children before that and traveling full time in a trailer, um, about 340 square feet of room. Uh, if you can make it through that being married, you can make it through anything.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah. Well, I remember, uh, a couple of weeks ago or something, we were talking about doing a podcast and you, uh, I can't remember. It was funny how you worded it. You texted me and said something like, well, I got to remodel the trailer and something. I was like, that just sounds funny. Yeah. In there with a saw and boards and hammers and nails.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah. Had to build a bunk bed because we've added another child. So we're squeezing in all the room we can.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Oh, man. Goodness. All right. Well, man. So, yeah, you're evangelizing and out. And of course, your wife just had the baby and you guys are here and you're getting to hang around for a little bit. So we're going to probably hopefully do this again before we take off.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Yeah. And hopefully we'll have some stories where I could sneak in on a Sunday morning.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yes. We got to do it. cameo appearance.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

And maybe do a doctor scene. I would love to

SPEAKER_01 13:27

torture somebody. That would be good. Yes. We'll have to plan for that for sure. Maybe we won't tell all the staff either. That would be excellent. All right. Well, I got a couple notes here. So talking about collaboration. So teamwork makes the dream work. I know it's an old little saying, but so I know not every Sunday school has a team. A lot of Sunday schools are just a duo or something. But we have the advantage of we have a team Yeah, it was constant. almost every Sunday. And then there's some people that are in, you know, every couple months or something. So, but anyway, with that team, we have the advantage of, of, you know, kind of that teamwork based dream work. We have the advantage of, of, uh, bouncing ideas off each other and then even live in Sunday school with a team. And I know not everybody, again, I know not everybody can have a team, but we have the advantage of being able to play off of each other, you know?

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah. And what's neat with that, um, if you do have a pre Sunday school meeting, um, Um, this dates back and I'm sure you still do it. Um, I've been gone full time now for six years, about a year and a half before that. I really wasn't too involved in Sunday school. I'd pop in every once in a while when I could. Yeah. But, um, that's the flexibility of having that pre Sunday school meeting and running through the script, um, to where you can make a decision, you know, if, if you need to, I guess what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to collaborate and switch up the script. Right. Oh

SPEAKER_01 15:22

yeah. We, yeah. And we have done that. Like we operate, we've always operated, you know, a lot of ad lib, but to do that pre ad lib helps a lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah. Just to know what the direction is and what to say. I mean, I remember times we would be in that pre service or pre Sunday school meeting and I would have no idea what I was going to say, but we'd walk through the scene about three or four times and I could, by the time Sunday school came, I knew exactly what I was going to say and could probably say it three or four times in a row without ever having to think about it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

And we'll, what we'll do. So we used to practice at eight, you know, which we had about an hour. So now it's eight 30. So we have a half an hour. Um, but we'll do at the very least, cause we don't, that doesn't give us time to do the whole script, but we'll block, uh, stuff and blocking is a stage term. Like for, we'll walk through it and say like, where are you going to stand? Where are you going to, okay, where's the sword fight going to happen? Where's the army going to come in? You know, and, and even like, we're going to grab these kids. and where are they going to go and so we kind of at least we know the the general area of where people are going to be and and because like even just this past Sunday we were blocking it and there was a couple things that came up and it was like oh no I think you should stand over here because so is there's things that get lost in translation sometimes you know so it was like it made it clear like oh oh that's what you meant is over here you know and so yeah that definitely helps do you remember We used to, so like I said, we used to practice at eight and then me, you and another guy, we would meet at 7.30 in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Oh yeah, I do remember that.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

And we would basically brainstorm ideas for the next week.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yep. And then there were several times that we would stay after Sunday school and we would do a post Sunday school meeting.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Yeah. We would kind of recap Sunday school and prep for the next week.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yep. I remember those days. It cut in as a young guy, not married, cut into my sleep at times. Social

SPEAKER_01 17:27

time.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And you haven't had a break, I'm sure, since the inception.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

I haven't been in Sunday morning service in ages.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

It's a sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

And that's when sometimes some of the best preaching is, you know, Sunday morning. But it's good. I mean, we're doing, we have a mission, you know, and we're doing. Absolutely. And so, yeah, having the team, it helps spread the load and it gives kind of an advantage, you know. So, let's talk about, I wrote to know collaborative script writing just because I want to talk mainly just about the stories. Remember when you and I wrote the Western theme?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

I believe it was 16 weeks that we scheduled out, maybe 15.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

I think it was a 16-week theme because that's what we typically will do, a 16-week or a 13.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

And we took eight weeks a piece.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Yeah. And for a whole Saturday. And it wasn't necessarily in any kind of order. We just kind of, I think, right? Didn't we just kind of randomly grab some of the pieces? Yeah. Yeah. And so we We kind of had a general idea, like we were going to do the Bible side of it was going to be the disciples were cowboys. Right. And then, but we wanted, we're heavy on story is how we run our Sunday school is we have a theme. Theme is like a storyline from beginning to end of the whole, it's continuous.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

And so that's what we wanted to develop is that whole storyline.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

I even remember helping to write the CIA scripting. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. I don't know how involved that was. I believe that was a group setting, but coming back to the Western, man, that was, it was a lot of fun. Yeah. And

SPEAKER_01 19:31

we banged out most of it. I mean, you know, there was some editing to do and everything, but as far as the content, we basically banged out 16 weeks in one long day.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Right. It was, it was, it was about eight to

SPEAKER_01 19:42

10 hours. Yeah. So we met in the morning. You, I think you borrowed your wife's mag book or something. I

SPEAKER_00 19:49

had to take the teal cover off of the side. Oh, that's right. I remember that. It looked like a weirdo.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

And you took it off. And so we met up and went to Starbucks here in town and we got a coffee and just, we started writing and I don't know, we banged, maybe we banged out one week each there or maybe a couple, I don't know. And we wrote right next to each other and we were doing our own thing, but yet we would, we would like, Hey, what about, what about this? I'm trying to think of.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah. Bounce ideas off each other for sure. And then I remember having to like, okay, I'm on week three. What did you end on in week two?

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Yes. Just so we have a flow. So we could keep it flowing. Yeah. And then we took a break and went, I think we drove to Olympia. We did. Yeah. So we took a break. And so Olympia is about 30 minutes away. And so we had a drive and we, I think we just talked about whatever. It wasn't even the script. Yeah. We unplugged for a minute. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah. One of my favorite memories of that whole deal was right after we got to Olympia, we We went to Falls Terrace Park. Oh, that's right. And we sat right next to the waterfalls. Yeah. On, I believe. It was a beautiful sunny day. Park bench. Yeah. And just wrote Sunday school scripts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

It was so much fun. Yeah, that was cool. It was a neat atmosphere. The waterfalls right there next to us. And we're just, yeah, in the sunshine right in the way. Yeah. Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah. And so we basically took the whole day and we took the breaks. We went, got something to eat. I think we ended up at another Starbucks. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

If you guys don't know this, Gabe really

SPEAKER_01 21:26

likes Starbucks. Yeah. I'm a Starbucks fan. I don't drink it nearly as much as I used to now, but if I'm going to get coffee, that's where I'm going to go. It's consistent. Yeah. But yeah, so we, and then by the time we got back in it, like I said, it was a long day, but we had a whole 16 week story

SPEAKER_00 21:45

theme. Yeah. I believe we definitely did the outline. I believe we even set exactly what we were doing for each Sunday. I mean, I I think it was pretty much a full script.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 21:55

it was a

SPEAKER_01 21:55

full script. We just, you know, I did formatting and editing just for printing, you know, and send it to everybody. But yeah, that was pretty cool. It was very neat. I mean, if, you know, and I don't know if we could always do that, but I mean, you think about it, one Saturday, you know, yeah, taking a whole Saturday, that's a big chunk, I know. But if you think about the investment and the return on investment, I mean, that's 16 weeks of material.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah. You can get done in an eight hour, 10 hour swap of time.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah. And so then the other one we did, what? Was that the CIA one with the group? That's ringing a bell. I believe it was with the group. I think it was. Yeah. So we did, in fact, it was because that worked so well. That's why. That's where the idea came from. And so we did a, we basically, there was a couple in our church. They weren't even in Sunday school. Well, the lady was some.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah. She came in and out.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah. But- They hosted it at their house and we got like a fiesta platter from the local Mexican restaurant or whatever to snack on. And then there was like 10 of us, right? Something

SPEAKER_00 23:05

like that. Yeah, about 10 to 12. Yeah, somewhere in

SPEAKER_01 23:07

there. Yeah. And so we did the same concept, but it was a much shorter span of time. It was like three hours one evening.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

And I think we wound up with a positive with that is that I think we wound up with so many different outlooks on the scripting that maybe you and I didn't have just doing one-on-one. We had my opinion, your opinion. Really, we bounced off each other and that worked great. But we got the investment of other people's opinions. And then I believe you and I sat down with those scripts at a later date. Yeah, I think so. And worked through those

SPEAKER_01 23:42

together. Massaged it to make it flow.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

And some of those ideas were like, oh my goodness, we never would have thought of doing that. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 23:49

exactly. You get a lot more variety.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

And part of that, we did have to do what works, what doesn't work. Brother Gabe and I have done a lot of acting and different things. Sunday school really was the germination for all of this, but we've done a lot of events and things like that where we've acted. And one of the principles we found in doing that is we have the what works, what didn't work in our practicing for our script. So that transferred over And I'm sure

SPEAKER_01 24:25

even today you use that. Whatever, you know. And so, yeah, it's kind of a what worked, what didn't work that you can use in the practice. And then it makes your quote unquote ad lib actually work, you know. Yeah. And it makes it flow and work a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Do you remember the, I believe we called it survival quest? Yeah. We just redid that.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Did you really? About a year ago.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Wow. We

SPEAKER_01 25:17

just redid survival quest.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

I want to say that was the first one that really kicked everything off where it kind of. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That

SPEAKER_01 25:32

was really

SPEAKER_00 25:43

good. And helped for two weeks before that, actually, is I helped build the set and got men in the church involved. A lot of fun. It was like being back home. And then for two weeks, I was with them two to four weeks. I'm trying to remember here. I was with them in Sunday school, helping to direct and helping to do some behind the scenes stuff. And then I took that same survival quest and we did in the South. We were at a church and the pastor said, look, I want to have like a children's revival. Oh, yeah. This is a pretty cool story. We took that survival quest 16 weeks and we shrunk it down into a three night series. Okay. I

SPEAKER_01 26:33

remember that because you called me about this.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I was sweating bullets. I was like, Gabe, I need help. That was super cool though. And we set up an entire Sunday school in their sanctuary.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

And we performed that. There was 113 bus children from the projects that they bussed in. And man, it was crazy. It was wild. We had, we always talk about, I'm sure you've talked about this on the podcast, is the wow factor. And so we built a three tier pond that was like a waterfall through, it

SPEAKER_01 27:05

was different style kiddie pools. Yeah. I remember seeing the pictures you sent me. What's

SPEAKER_00 27:09

incredible about that is at the end of that, so we did three weeks of the survival quest and then I took the conversion of Paul to Saul and did more serious the next week.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

And there was a man that was a lawyer, has his name on billboards. down where this church is at.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

And the family had been trying to win him and his wife for years. And at the end of that Sunday night, Sunday school, and we did it. It was very serious, very dramatic music, lighting, smoke, fog, everything. Yeah, yeah. At the end of that, he said, I want to be baptized. And the lawyer stepped into the children's baptismal, the three-tiered pond. Oh, that's so cool. With dry ice in it. Oh, wow. And the pastor and I, the pastor baptized us. And him and I both jumped in the water because he started speaking in tongues.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Because I remember you said you ruined your shoes.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

I ruined my dress shoes, had water all the way up to my knees. And then the wife, his wife was a very devout Catholic, never wanted to be any part of church. Well, she came to this production.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Oh,

SPEAKER_00 28:11

man. And when I stepped out and took my shoes and poured the water back in the pond, and I looked up and she's standing there with her hands in the air speaking in tongues.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Oh, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

There's incredible things that can happen with productions like that. Oh

SPEAKER_01 28:23

yeah. Yeah. That's, oh man, that is so awesome. That's so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the things, uh, brother Phillip Booker that we both know, we're both good friends with. Yeah. He, uh, he says this all the time. It's like sometimes in, in a children's church environment where parents are there, it's like, it's like you sneak up on them because they're, they're just like, oh, we're here for kids church. And then all of a sudden they, they're feeling the presence of God, you know? Yep. And it touches them. So yeah, it can be really powerful, really powerful. Yeah, I can. And that kind of leads us to the kind of last little note here I had is about collaborating outside of your Sunday school.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

And of course, this, you know, goes without saying, but I am going to say it is with your pastor's blessing, you know, and every church is different on how their ministries are formatted. So, you know, always within your pastor's vision. But, you know, you can get ideas. I happen to be a youth leader also. Yeah. But you can get ideas from your youth. If you have, you know, a men's ministry, women's ministry, whatever, you know, just, just involving, it doesn't even have to be a quote unquote ministry, but just involving other people, you know, that, that like you said about when we met with the 10 to 12 people, they had all these perspectives and we were like, oh, we would have never thought of that. Well, sometimes like we've, we've done our set and I'll have a, I usually design them, you know, and I'll have a certain thing, but sometimes we'll get, we have a lot of construction workers in our church. And so I'll get some help. You know, they'll come up and sometimes they'll have ideas. I'm like, oh, yeah, I didn't think of that. That would be cool. Let's do a climbing wall right there. Yeah, that's good. You

SPEAKER_00 30:01

know, I think it's neat and valuable. I mean, if you're part of a church to just obviously go outside, like you were talking, going outside and bouncing off other ministries and other other young men and women that are maybe in the same same field. But even within the church, we have taken Sunday school at times and done it in youth and watch just like, oh, my God. my goodness, I never thought they would be good at acting or good at doing these things, but we see a star be born almost, and we pull them in.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yeah, that's a funny bit that you mentioned, because I just, over the past few weeks, I've had three youth ask me to be in Sunday school. Oh, it's so neat. Yeah, so that's really cool. And then the other thing, and then this goes really heavily with your pastor's direction, but is collaborating, if you can, collaborating outside of your church with other Sunday school leaders we have in just a couple weeks here we're doing a or I'll be at a conference a children's ministry conference in Redlands down in California and so that's you know things like that are really good to meet other children's ministry leaders and get all kinds of ideas and you know if you can collaborate with your pastor's blessing with other people man it has opened my horizons for sure you know

SPEAKER_00 31:21

yeah it just keeps you on the cutting edge Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

great Sunday school and what we do I think is awesome but we can always and we do always learn more and you know and so you you find out like methods of what people do to get people get kids to engage and they're you know like man we got kids getting the Holy Ghost you know all the time and it's like well how you know or man we have our bus ministry is thriving well how you know so yeah just you know being able to reach out outside of your own Yeah. Spread your wings. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, to recap here, we're running out of time. So I have on our first notice to intro Joey, which we did, but I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad we finally got to do this. You're kind of a Sunday school legend. Even, I mean, here's the thing is we were, it's so funny. I mentioned this a few weeks ago when I introduced you to the pulpit. when the pastor was gone, that some of the people here don't know you. You've been gone that long.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

And there's a lot of people here. I don't know. Yeah. We've been

SPEAKER_01 33:00

growing. Yeah. And so, um, so, but like in our Sunday school, uh, we will often reference brother Joey, you know, like, well, brother Joey did this, you know? Oh man. And so, so it's kind of neat. That was a guinea pig. Full circle. Yeah. Yeah. We've both been in that for sure. Yeah. But teamwork makes the dream work. So, you know, if you, as much as you can have a team and I know that staff looks different for every church but it is advantageous to have a team and so it doesn't necessarily mean the team has to be you know out of the sanctuary on Sunday morning your team could be a team of people that are just helping you with ideas and stuff throughout the week and they're still you know they're not in the Sunday school live but you can just kind of help spread the load and get ideas and that kind of thing you know yeah and then collaborative script writing just the stories you know I mean man if you could that's another thing with teaming up and I know not everybody writes their own scripts but it was it was such a cool experience

SPEAKER_00 34:01

you know I mean and it could challenge you to let's just get together on Saturday and let's try let's see what happens exactly

SPEAKER_01 34:07

yeah see if we can do it and and the other thing you can do if if you're not ready to launch you know into that is we've done this before too is like a bite size is is a brainstorm ideas yeah and so one of the things like I remember one time we met I think it was Brother Steve's house, Brother Steve Arter's house. Yeah. And we met and we just kind of said, okay, what are some things? Like we were like, okay, storms. We do storms really good.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Yes. And we were

SPEAKER_01 34:33

just like thinking of elements. I think it was for an August service. We're like, what could we do? Okay, we could do a storm. We could do a rescue because we always do rescues. And so we just came up with these elements and it wasn't even, we weren't script writing per se, but it was kind of give us some building blocks.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah. Gave us some meat that we could use at some point. Build around. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

And then collaborating outside of your Sunday school. You know, Sunday school ministry is not an island. So, you know, reach out to other ministries. And with your pastor's blessing, reach out to other people. We're all in this together. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, let's do this again. But I think that's a wrap. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me on. Yeah.