UNKNOWN 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 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 Kyle. How's it going? Hey, hey. First tag, Brother Gabe. Yeah, I did it. Just a professional. My goodness. I didn't even have to read it. That's amazing. I'm trying to get ready for video. Again. I don't want to be holding my paper up, you know, in front of the camera. That would look silly for sure. All right. Hey, what are we talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about discipleship. Discipleship, which in the text you misunderstood and thought it was discipline.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

I was like, man, we've been talking about all the spanking we do to these kids. You can wear your big belt.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Yeah. So, you know, as Sunday school leaders, we have two primary missions and we've talked about this on the podcast. A church has two primary missions, evangelism and discipleship. And so these go hand in hand. We read Matthew 28, 19. And we have bus or van ministries. We go door knocking. We create kids events. We have, you know, VBS. I mean, we don't really do that here too much, but we try to evangelize and reach out to kids that don't go to church. And so the next step is to teach these kids about Jesus, how to live for him. And so if you've been in kids ministry for any length of time, you've had this terrible experience. There's a kid that you're working with. They're growing closer to God. I mean, that's not terrible, obviously, but they're ready to take the next step. And then suddenly they just disappear. appear on the face of the earth their family moves away and you can't get a hold of them their phone is you know disconnected whatever and so it's just like ah it's so close you know and so but we've all had that experience or probably many of us have had that experience but I think that there's also another side to this discipleship and it's it's not separate it's not like a different class necessarily or anything but it is it is a different side that should be considered there's our church kids. They do come every week, and they're most likely not going anywhere. They're stable. Their parents are making them come. Their parents are making them come, and they're probably going to be here at least until they're teenagers and hopefully beyond. And so my opinion is that we need to capitalize on this stability and turn our kids into disciples. So yes, we're looking at discipleship from the point of view, as we should, of evangelism, step one, discipleship, step two of this you know, journey. Right. But also there's the kids that I guess, I don't know, so to speak, like, like skip the evangelist step because their parents will make them come, you know, they already, they grew up in church and they're coming, but we still, that those are the ones actually that we need to capitalize on that discipleship.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

And I actually put a note down that at least when it comes to Sunday school, I think we can combine Matthew 20 and 19 and the great commission as it's called with Proverbs 22 and six, which says, Yeah, absolutely. or they'll grow up the way that they should and they'll live for God as they get older too.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Yeah, and there's some incredible stories about that where they have come back. Like, I remember this church, you know, or that kind of church. You know, I want to go to a church that believes in Acts 2.38. Yeah, we've

SPEAKER_01 4:01

seen kids that came, that used to go on the bus and they've come in years later in their late teenage years and at first we didn't recognize who they are and they've gone off, unfortunately, and gotten into lifestyles that they shouldn't have, but they came here because this is where they came on the us and they remembered things they learned here and the connections that they had and and to see that kind of stuff happen over the years and i've seen it maybe two three times i can remember but it's just amazing to think about the impact that we've had on them and you think to yourself sometimes all these kids don't care that much they're yeah there's a kid back and then back doing back flips on the pu or whatever you don't think he's really paying attention but then you see these stories that we've seen so many times where it's like oh yes we are really impacting them in a powerful way and that's it's really good to see that kind of stuff

SPEAKER_02 4:44

yeah and those so much of what we do and And it's, this is in, I mean, you can point at businesses, there's all kinds of things like this, but so much of what we do is unquantifiable. It's not something you can necessarily, we try to create scorecards as best we can. And those are like attendance numbers or how many got filled with the Holy Ghost? How many did we baptize? You know, there's different matrix that we can use. And I believe that some of those can be looked down on. I think it's good to have metrics, you know, that you can point at or, you know, targets. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Right. where they go or what kind of lifestyle they get into. And you have no idea what happened with that seed that you planted. And it would be nice if we could all see it when it actually started growing. But we don't always. Right. The importance, though, is that we are to plant the seed. It doesn't matter if we ever see it germinate. We still need to plant it.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Yeah. And this, you know, this is something I've talked about before. I even wrote an article for the WPF magazine about this. But one thing is, I don't want to get off topic, but one thing is Sunday school leaders, I guess this kind of doesn't to tie into what we're talking about is it's not always just about, you know, how many kids did we have in Sunday school? How many got the Holy Ghost? It's about, this is what we do. This is our lifestyle and this is what we do. And that's the accomplishment. That's the checkbox that we check off. It's like, did I do what I'm supposed to today? And

SPEAKER_01 7:10

I know too, having worked with adults and children, I think it's a little bit more devastating working with children because Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just something that you have to be ready for. And that's why it's so important that every week when we come in here, we come in here focused and with that idea in mind, like I want to reach kids today because that might be the last time you ever see them. You just never know. And you want to give them everything you can in that Sunday school. That's why I think it's so great that every week we do the same thing. I know it's kids that have been here all the time. We kind of sick of the plan of salvation, but I think it's so important that we do that because maybe that kid that's sitting in there, he's only in there one time. Yeah. And then he's gone. That might

SPEAKER_02 8:17

be the only time he's

SPEAKER_01 8:18

ever hears it. Right, right. And so just if anybody's out there that's planning on working in Sunday school or maybe they had this happen recently and they're frustrated, just know like, yes, they may have been pulled out, but you did everything you can do. And maybe when they get older, they'll come back and say, hey, I'm so thankful for what you taught me. Now that I'm old enough to come and make my own decisions, I wanted to come back here because of what you said. Yeah. Yeah, we

SPEAKER_02 8:43

do our part and then God can do his part. And he places them... He places those kids here and gives us the opportunity. So we need to maximize

SPEAKER_01 8:51

that. God is powerful. He's able to do powerful things. I just mentioned our service last night. My voice is a little bit raspy from last night. A powerful move of God in our service. And we actually had a gentleman who's been coming here for several weeks, attends my Bible study weekly, Brother Matthews, working with him. And he made the decision last night to be baptized. And his wife, it was the first time she ever stepped foot in our church. And she actually had had anxiety about coming. She wanted to come a few times here or there, but she just couldn't because she just has this issue. Yeah, I heard about that. And that was her first service last night and she chose to get baptized last night. That's so cool. And he came up to me afterwards and he shook my hand because I've been telling him I've been praying for him and stuff like that. He said, prayer works. And I said, that's right. It sure does. And that kind of stuff is, God can do amazing things. It's just amazing. And then

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Pastor asked, you know, does anybody else want to get baptized? And we had another young man get baptized. He's been coming to youth and stuff. So, yeah. That's so cool. All right. Well, some of the notes on our outline is it starts with me. And so we have to be in, you know, we have to be disciples, you know, to be able to create those disciples. And that's kind of where I was saying earlier is like, this is what we do. But also, like, I guess on a surface level, you know, there's sometimes we go out there with the memory verse and we're like myself included. We're stumbling over trying to, you know, trying to teach it to the kids and we don't know it. And really, we should know it. We really should. Yeah. We really should. And we've had instances, not to name any names, but we've had instances where we're doing a Bible story and somebody gets the Bible story confused. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Mixed up with another Bible story like,

SPEAKER_01 10:36

no, that's not, oops. Nothing worse than having one of the kids out in the crowd go, that's not what had happened. Yeah. You're like, oh, well, you know, we make mistakes sometimes, but I think, has it difficult as it is, you know, it really checks you in your spirit and say, you know what, I need to be a little bit more in the word and, and, uh, I need to be actually reading the Bible, not just, you know, um, reading the verses that we're going to do for Sunday school, but like expanding my mind and getting in the word every single day. I had a note here that, um, in order to disciple somebody, you have to be able to be discipled yourself too. Absolutely. And you have to be willing to take direction and guidance from a pastor. You can't expect kids up here to listen to, uh, us if we're not being uh capable of listening to somebody else so for your example yourself we're pretty close in age but you're in charge up here so when i come up here whatever brother gabe says that's what we're going to do right if i can't even be discipled by somebody how can i expect some other child to be discipled by myself yeah um there's a uh verse of scripture in matthew chapter 8 i'm talking about the centurion uh i'll just read it uh matthew chapter 8 verse number 8 the centurion answered and said lord i'm not worthy that thou should come under my roof but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed for I'm a man under authority having soldiers under me and I say to this man go and he goeth and to another come and he cometh and unto my servant do this and he doeth it so he's basically saying I'm a man that's in authority but I'm also under authority yeah and so if we want to have authority in our Sunday school we have to be willing to be under authority as well

SPEAKER_02 12:10

yeah

SPEAKER_01 12:10

oh that's good yeah absolutely

SPEAKER_02 12:12

and that's I think yeah in any kind of ministry or endeavor is we do have to have to be able to fall into that authority and here's what's funny is if you you know if you're around some of these great leaders great men of God and you're in any kind of I'm trying to think of a good example but I know I've seen it but you're in any kind of like group setting or something where somebody else is in charge they're the best followers yeah I mean they they'll do they do like everything just spot on they're following the advice they're following the leadership they're following the direction because they've been it's you know they've been on the other side of it right I know what a good leader wants you know and so to be able to be that good follower

SPEAKER_01 13:00

and you know the thing is is with people in general not just kids but if I'm going to follow somebody I'm only going to follow somebody that's willing to also be humble and be willing to be taught as well and not just some dictatorship like yeah standard my thumb kind of guy but some that it's also under authority themselves. And obviously the ultimate authority is God. Right. And if they're not even willing to take any kind of direction, it's like, you know, why would I want to take direction from you if you're not willing to take direction at all either? And so I think this is one, and I respect you in a lot of areas, but this is one area I respect you so greatly is that you're definitely under authority. If Pastor Burgess was to come up here anytime, any Sunday, he says, Gabe, take a hike, sit in church, and I'm going to take care of things up here. You would walk out without batting an eye. You wouldn't do anything. You wouldn't buck up against them at all. You would just do what you were told and walk downstairs and let him do what he wanted to do. Right. And that's something that I respect greatly. And I think that kids, when they see that kind of stuff, they respect that as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah. And kids are more perceptive than we give them credit for sometimes, you know, they see some of that and they might not understand everything, but they, they see it, you know, and it, it transfers.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

For sure. I, uh, my daughter, she's going to be three here in June and, um, you see this when she has her little dolls and she sits them on her little couch that she has, has, and she says, you're going to listen to me. Look at me in my eyes when I talk to you. And, uh, that kind of stuff just cracks me up. Cause you know, sometimes, you know, you get frustrated cause you think kids aren't listening to you, but, um, they really are. They're soaking all that stuff in. They just are listening in a different way than you might want them to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. So we have to be disciples. first, for sure, and set the example. So another thing is, you know, I have a few points here, and so learning about God's Word, and so we're talking about discipling, you know, kids, and how do we turn these kids into being disciples, essentially, or saints of God. And so I have changed my view a little bit from when I first started doing Sunday school, but so when you You know, there's some popular like Adventures in Odyssey or something, and those are great. And we, you know, we listen to those, but it's, and even some curriculum we've used, it's like, it's kind of like there's the lesson and topic and theme. And then the Bible story is kind of like fit in to the, and there's actually a, there's a word for this. I can't think of it right now, but there's a word for this type of teaching. But anyway, so. So the Bible story is kind of like a supplement. So we, even now we kind of do it the other way. I mean, to a certain degree, we have an outline for like a theme, you know, a 16 week theme or something where we, we have a topic that's drawing, you know, but are we heavily focused on Bible stories? And part of where that came from is I believe that a good, strong foundation of with Sunday school kids is them knowing like, you know, if they know the whole Bible, by the time they get into youth and they know all the Bible stories. Um, I mean, my son, my older son, Adrian listened to, uh, your story hour every night, you know, and he was in Sunday school and everything. So I remember, you know, I was, I'm youth leader. And back in the day I was youth leader. Um, but he was like too young to be in youth because our kids, so he's there. And when we did like sword drills or something or quizzes there, they would like the teenage And he's just like, we want Adrian, Adrian's not Archie, you know, he's this nine-year-old kid because he just, he knew it inside and out. And so anyway, so I feel like getting the Bible stories into kids is a key thing that I feel like maybe some kids ministries don't focus on. They treat it as a supplement. But I think if kids know the Bible stories, like have you ever maybe studied something Saturday night or Sunday morning even, whatever, and then the priest Right. Because you just studied that. Right. You just heard that story. Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah. And one thing that comes to mind is that saying that's been said many times is you need to let the main thing be the main thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

The Bible needs to be our focus. If you want kids to be in love with the word when they get older, if you want kids to understand the word, if you want them to put the word first like they're supposed to, you should put the word first in your Sunday school.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Yes,

SPEAKER_01 17:42

exactly. And I spoke to somebody recently at my work and She was venting some frustration. She's a, I don't want to name denominations necessarily, but I will because that's fine. But she's a Baptist and she's venting frustrations to me about her local church. And she feels like the local churches aren't really doing what they should have always done. They're kind of falling away from things. And one of the areas that she's very frustrated because she has little kids is that they don't have any children's programs at all. The kids sit in main church and they have like a Bible study, but they're groups that split out for everybody. They have like a little Sunday school type of thing in the beginning, but then main churches, you know, kids are just in there. They don't actually have any kind of children's programs whatsoever. They don't have any little kids stuff, older kids stuff. It's all just sitting in main church. And she's like, that's not the way it's supposed to be. She said, kids don't learn about the Bible the same way we as adults do. So when they're sitting in main church at five and six years old, they listen to some degree, but they're not able to understand it the same way. And so they need to be taught Yeah, exactly. And it sounds like, at least to me, that there's a lot of denominal churches and churches out there in the world that are starting to do that. And that's not the way it needs to be. We need to continue to do the things that have always worked and to teach these kids the way we've always taught them through Sunday school programs and the different things that we

SPEAKER_02 19:39

do. there and I don't know maybe I'll get shame on me but they're not they're not Bibles with just text they got pictures and he's got like what was that the action Bible or something you know it looks like a comic and stuff but the thing is is they he's just barely learning how to read right so he's learning from the action Bible right and there might be some people that look down on that or foo-foo that but the thing is he's learning about the Bible from that and then of course in our Sunday school this is kind of where I'm going with this is we have full costume actors do a lot of comedy and fun stuff you know but the kids are learning about the story and then a lot of times what I'll try to do if I'm narrating like in the Bible story wrap up you know because sometimes we get kind of crazy and so you know we'll what we do just recently not too long ago we did Daniel and the Lions and we had lions and everything then we had like a little cat when Daniel Daniel got thrown in. It was like a little cat, like meow. And so, you know, we do some stuff that's funny and it engages the kids that are paying attention. But then when I do the wrap up, I'll kind of like, you know, I'll try to bring it home. Like, can you imagine those, those people that tried to, you know, lie about Daniel, they got thrown in and their family. Can you imagine what if it was, you know, what if that was your family, you know, that, that kind of, you know, bring it home. So they, they think about it. Cause one thing I learned a long time ago, and this was with my kids and me doing Sunday school is I learned that, like we talk about kids are perceptive, they will sometimes grab a hold of something you say and it just sticks with them. Good or bad. And so it'll stick with them. So I think it's key to try to drive all

SPEAKER_01 21:32

those. They're really little sponges. I know everybody kind of is aware of this, but I think that maybe if you don't have children or maybe your children are kind of younger, they're not communicating quite yet, you don't fully understand this, or maybe you've It's been a while since you've had kids. So your kids are all older. You might kind of forget, but man, they're just like little sponges, like little parrots. I mean, they're going to repeat what they hear. Yes. They're not just coming up with this stuff out of nowhere. And so if we don't want the world to influence them with all these crazy things that are going on, there are this crazy speech that they have nowadays with all this new age talking and things. We want them to talk about the apostle Paul, not LeBron James, or we want them to talk about what John the Baptist did and not necessarily about what any of these other Oh, it's so cool. I hear, I

SPEAKER_02 22:18

just not, I don't know, a few weeks ago. So we, we have a little boy that's been at our house quite a bit. His mom's doing some medical stuff. And so, so my son and him are close to the same age. And I overheard him, my son telling him, and he grew up, he grew up at church as far as I know too, you know, he's been in church, but he's telling him this Bible story. I think it was, I think it might've been actually Daniel and Liza. And I'm not, I can't remember, but, but he's like telling him, you know, the Bible study, and then this happened, and he's just going, that's the coolest thing, you

SPEAKER_01 22:49

know? Yeah, to see that stuff is really cool, and I just spoke about my almost three-year-old. We know we do a weekly Bible study in my house, and she always gets, she's like, is tonight Bible study? Is Bible study day? Oh, that's cool. And the other day, she was, she has a little tiny Bible. I think it's just a New Testament, if I'm not mistaken, but she was sitting there, and she had a little doll set up, too, and I'm like, hey, what are you doing? She's like, I'm teaching them a Bible study. Oh, yes. And she's like, not even three years old, and so So again, like I said, we forget sometimes how much these kids are taking in what we say. Yeah. And that's an example right there of

SPEAKER_02 23:25

discipleship. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, three-year-olds and she's teaching a Bible study

SPEAKER_01 23:30

to her dolls. A hundred percent. You know, maybe you may have made mistakes in your past and you've done things that you shouldn't have done. And you're trying to keep these kids from making those same mistakes. I mean, that's what the Bible was written for. It's written for our admonition. And obviously we're up here also teaching these kids in a way to keep them out of maybe things that we've done, or we have life experience where we know, Hey, if you, if you do these things, it'll keep you out of these things. And so, um, it's, it's just so critical to get ahold of them as, as soon as we can and to make it important. It's not just some people will view Sunday schools like, you know, it's not that big of a deal. You know, it's like, what's the big deal going on? It's just kids. It's no big deal. These kids are our future. God's church will prevail, but we have a hand in it and how well it's prevailing. And if we want to really see it go where God intends it to go, we've got to teach these younger kids to keep it going. gotten for ourselves and to take into the future, we have to start when they're very young and to teach them. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 24:51

if they can learn some of these things we've learned being this age, you know, they can learn that at five, six, seven, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

You want to add, we touched about it a little bit about, you know, teaching Bible stories and we got, you had to know here about memorizing Bible verses and you're never too old to memorize Bible verses. I'm not super great at it. My kids are just killing it sometimes. I'm just like, man, because they're doing Bible quizzing. So it gives me a little bit of guilt in my heart. I'm like, man, my son knows probably 200 verses by heart right now. And so, but it's not necessarily like you're required to memorize all these different verses. Certainly that it's good. And somebody might say, well, there's just no way I could. Well, are you actually in the word every day? Yeah. And that, that will help you. I mean, you may not be able to recite specific. I can't tell you exactly what the reference is all the time, but I can tell you, I can recite verses all the time and it's because I'm in the word.

UNKNOWN 25:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Right. And that's, that's the thing too, is like, if you, if you have heard these verses over and over, and that's kind of the thing, like with our memory verses is we know that sometimes they're not going to literally memorize them. We want them to. Right. But if, if you have heard these for years over and over that, I mean, like my wife, she grew up in church and had memory verses. She knows verses and she knows a lot of verses and she knows them, like memorizes them and has the context and everything. I mean, the text, but even if you don't have it memorized to the degree of like a Bible quiz, but where you're talking and say, well, his word says, you know, his arm's not short or, you know, just these little almost sayings, but they're not sayings. They're the word of God. You know, they're the verses that bring us through. So another thing is developing a relationship with God. And so, you know, one thing that I've heard, I Right. of today. Today's topic is, you know, whatever it is. And we try to tie everything in there. So the other thing is that, and we could do better on this, but is if you could point everything to the altar call. So we try to just a kind of little side note here, because I had a discussion with some Sunday school people from some other churches, is not every Sunday school does altar service. And, you know, we're so used to doing that. It seems foreign, but I can understand it. But I would encourage every Sunday school to do some form of one thing that we called it in a curriculum that I'm working with is a response to lesson prayer. So if you got a small class, you got five kids, you know, altar service might sound too lofty, maybe. But if, you know, response to lesson prayer, a time of prayer, I would encourage everyone to have that be a pillar in

SPEAKER_01 28:12

their Sunday school. It's in my opinion. I don't think you should be doing, uh, at least the older Sunday school. Ours is, was it five to 11? Yeah. Five to 11. Um, you know, the older kids for sure. I think it has to be a part of it. I mean, it's critical for us as adults to be able to do it in, in, in the main part of service and, and how is somebody supposed to know otherwise they're taught. And so no better way to teach them when they were younger, as opposed to, it's no different than somebody coming in off the street. That's an adult. They have to be taught just the same as these kids do.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah. And they're new and they're The Bible actually refers to them as children. They're children in Christ. They don't have any awareness of what the word is yet. So if we're teaching these older adults that are new in church about what it means to go to the altar and what you're doing at the altar and things like that, why not teach the younger kids as well? Yeah, exactly. That way when they get to an age of accountability or whatever that might be, or they get, they become more sensitive in my opinion when they're praying at a younger age and the kids can get the Holy Ghost at a younger age and things like that. Yeah. I mean, it's such an important part. And I think this is something that's barely been in my mind a lot recently, whereas I think we almost take for granted how amazing it is the fact that we get to step into the holiest of holies, as I'll call it, to the altar, a place in the Old Testament that only the holiest man could actually step into once a year. Yeah, yeah. And that's something that we get access to all the time. I can go in right now to the church. I have a key. I can go in there right now. I can go to the altar. Right. And I love the altar. It's an amazing place to be able to go. It's to be able to hang out and watch other people have their life changed. And so this is something we want to also give to our children and to allow them to experience it because we all remember what it's like to be younger. And not

SPEAKER_02 29:57

just in big church. Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

In Sunday school. Because the one thing too is if you think about, they're a little bit more comfortable in Sunday school because they're around other kids their age, a little bit smaller of an atmosphere, not always big, scary adults that are around them. And sometimes when some of us adults are getting prayed through here. One of the brothers fell on a young man the other night when he was praying through and he's larger, we'll say. And the poor young guy was like, he was delirious. You could just tell he was pretty hurt. But when they're up here, they don't have to worry about any of that stuff. They're just around other peers their age and they're a little bit more comfortable and no better place for them to get a hold of God than up here. Which

SPEAKER_02 30:39

goes back to the point if you can have, you know, and if you don't have an altar service you know currently in your Sunday school and you say okay yeah I'd like to do that you know you could work up to it and do small like today we're going to do a little prayer and you know if you don't if you're a smaller Sunday school play some canned music you don't have to have live music or anything you know play something that's powerful and the thing is if you can get to where and I'm not saying that we have it every week we don't but if you can get to where the move of God is happening in your Sunday school and the more you can do that and gain momentum the more it's expected and the kids they fall right into it you know

SPEAKER_01 31:19

and if you're in the mindset maybe that you don't think it's necessary for kids to have an altar service I just want to remind you that you were young once and you went through stuff too and some of these kids aren't kids that are born and raised in church and their parents are always living right some of these kids are coming from abusive homes some of these kids literally got beat the night before or they witnessed their parents using drugs or they witnessed their parents using alcohol I mean they're going going through some stuff. They're also out in the elements of this world, which we know right now is chaotic and just crazy and trying to, I don't know if this is not a word, either adultify kids at a younger and younger age, make them grow up at a younger and younger age, making their own decisions at five and six years old. And so they have some stuff that they need to pray for. They have some burdens they're carrying around. And just because they're not an adult doesn't mean they don't need an altar to go to. And so what better place than children's church? Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 32:13

exactly. And And if we, you know, coming back to the discipling part, the idea, basically in all the, like, we call them segments, but all these segments that we do is we want them, how do I say, like to be prepped, I guess, in Sunday school. We're teaching them Bible stories so that they have a foundation. So when the preacher is preaching in big church, quote unquote, big church, they know the story. They've heard, oh, I've heard about Moses, you know, they know that story. And they make a connection because of that. Yeah, they make a connection. And so then as they get older, that next step of kind of more concept, like, I mean, we teach concepts in Sunday school too, but those concepts, they can formulate thought behind those concepts. And so the same thing with altar service, if we have powerful moves of God in Sunday school, we're discipling them, we're teaching them, hey, this is how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to always have this time with God. You're supposed to this is what you're supposed to do. And now when we go to big church, oh yeah, see, this is an extension. This is what we're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

And don't think that those kids in children's church that maybe are also going to go to the nighttime service can't bring that spirit with them into the nighttime service that they had in the morning service. And it can actually create an atmosphere in that service that allows for a move of God to happen. I mean, we see stories all throughout the Bible where kids were using, and I'm not saying that they obviously are going to take authority over adults or anything like that, but they can help foster that atmosphere of the Spirit and the service and it can lead to outpourings.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Well, and we've had kids, we have had kids get the Holy Ghost in, I'll just use the term again, big church, that I do honestly feel was a direct result from that morning Sunday school. And so we don't, I know some churches have Sunday school and then they go into a morning service. We have it simultaneous. But we've had kids get the Holy Ghost in Sunday night service and they didn't get it in Sunday morning morning Sunday school but we had a powerful altar service and then in Sunday night church they get the Holy Ghost and it's a direct result yeah absolutely we got to wrap up but let's let's just really quick this last note I had on here is teaching kids how to be a Christian and this is kind of talking about Christian character and stuff and so I just wanted to hit this really quick is there's a lot of Sunday schools that don't do themes and that's okay I think that it's not nearly as important as you know the altar service we're talking about but we do themes And we do typically with our themes, we'll do a continuous storyline. theme is so the theme part of this of the script is driving home the point even more and so we use those themes to you know help develop Christian character like and in lesson you can be like you remember how you know Captain Patch was saying this you know or whatever and so you can kind of hit it from all sides because some kids maybe they're not connecting with today's Bible story as good as they can but they love the sword fight you know and so you can tie it in

SPEAKER_01 35:42

right and with those theme skits We do sometimes too. You got to remember that some of these kids, they really don't know the Bible story to them. It's just like something you might've made up or whatever. So they're not necessarily connecting with that part. But when you do a theme skit that also ties into that same concept, they're like, Oh, I get what that means. I get their, their saying right there. They don't really know anything about Moses and part in the red sea or anything like that. But if you do some of these things like we do here, and I'm not trying to say we have, you know, or the authority on, on children's church, and how to do things. But there's a reason that a lot of churches that have success in children's church do it similar to how we do things where they have a Bible story, but they also have theme skits and things like that, because this is just another way to connect these points we're trying to connect the kids to.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Yeah. And that's why we do some of the silly stuff and the crazy stuff we do is, yeah, we're connecting with these kids. It's all part of our mission to disciple. All right. Well, just a quick recap is it starts with me. We have to be disciples first. It's got to start with me. With us, you know, and as much as we can. We don't just teach it, we live it. Right. And you have to explain it, you know. Yep. And then developing a relationship with God, always point to the altar service. 100%. And you should have an altar service in your Sunday school. And then themes are a powerful tool as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yeah, they should be utilized. If you're scared about jumping into that, just shoot Brother Gabe an email or something. He'll kind of help you out. He has a lot of good theme skits that he comes up with all of our Sunday school programs that we do here.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Yeah, that reminds me. Yeah, you can reach out. And if you have a topic you'd like us to... talk about or if you have any questions, we would, man, we would actually love to do that. I haven't really gotten much response on the email, but it's info at kidmenbackstage.com. Info at kidmenbackstage.com. But yeah, if you reach out to us, that'd be awesome. I'd love to

SPEAKER_01 38:02

do that. That'd be cool if we got like a Q&A kind of thing where people ask a bunch of questions and we were kind of able to answer and help any way we can. I mean, because ultimately for us here, we want to see the kingdom grow.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Not just our local church, which we do, but we want to see everybody's church have success, especially when it comes to children's

SPEAKER_02 38:20

church. Yeah, and that's what this podcast is all about. We can help other Sunday schools. All right, well, we're out of time, so that's a wrap. Awesome.