UNKNOWN 0:00

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to another episode, the place where we talk about kids' ministry and take a peek behind the scenes. We try to share a little bit of what we've learned that works for us and some of our failures so you can avoid them. We release a new episode every Friday, and this is your Backstage Pass to see the magic or disaster that happens behind the scenes of our kids' ministry. I'm your host, Gabe Baker, and today I'm joined by the legendary Boggs brothers. How's it going? It's going good. I've never been called that before. I've got Brother Aaron Boggs and Brother Joey Boggs. How's it going? Man, this is a, we were in pre-show already going off the rails, so this is going to be an interesting podcast. That's what happens when you wait till after church. Yeah. We've had a Holy Ghost blog, now we're having fun. Oh man, here we go. All right. Well, Brother Aaron, what are we talking about today? Today we're going to talk about boring is illegal. Boring is illegal. So I read somewhere that the best way to, excuse me, the best way to start a story is as late as you possibly can without completely losing your audience. So like a video or something, you want to start it as late as you can. So you want your audience to kind of struggle just a little bit to play catch up. If you over-explain the story, your audience gets bored. So, Sunday school should never be boring. This applies to how long a story is drawn out as well. So, while there is a balance to all of this, obviously, you don't want to just completely lose the kids. I think that most Sunday school teachers, they tend to lean toward the long explanation, right? Sure. Explaining and explaining and explaining. Yeah. So, we try to keep the pace moving in our Sunday school fast. And so, this makes it more interesting for the staff, too. Mm-hmm. Because if the staff are bored, and that's not totally why we do it, but if the staff are bored, the kids will see it and they become restless. Yes. So we try to keep it moving fast and have enough variety that we don't get stuck in a rut. Yeah. I remember one thing you expressed in one of the pre-Sunday school meetings that we always have was, if the kids are acting out, it's our fault. It's our fault. That's right. Because we're not engaging them enough. Yeah. And I mentioned this, I think, with Steve on a podcast last week. week he we were talking about that and I said something Tyler Hodge has a really good quote about about basically it's it's he said if the kids are bored something like that it's your fault sorry not sorry that's funny but it is totally our fault but the beauty of it is that means that we can do something about it

SPEAKER_01 2:47

right

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you know it's not just the kids right if it was all if it was all because of the kids then you know we wouldn't have a lot of options. I guess it was a full moon. So yeah, we have to keep it not boring. And so why shouldn't Sunday school be boring? Well, I mean, ultimately the kids aren't going to come if it's boring, right? Right. And even staff. I mean, how are you going to pull somebody in for a staff member to replace the guy going out if it's not exciting? Right. Yeah. Well, and then the last... I think in the last two weeks, I've had three people ask to join Sunday school. There you go. Awesome. It's because they know it's exciting. I always enjoyed Sunday morning, even though we did have to get up a little early and come to church early and all of that. But I knew that I was going to have fun. Knew it was going to be exciting. Knew no matter what we did, it was going to be a blast. Yeah, exactly. I kind of feel like I have more fun than the kids. Yeah, that's very true. I think we do a lot of times. Sometimes we do. Especially the jokes we make. we tell like it's over the kids heads and they're just looking at us and the staff in the back are like rolling on the floor yeah so I've mentioned this a couple times since but just for your benefit brother Joey so a while back we were doing what was it Shadrach Meshach and Abednego and so they come out of the furnace you know and Aaron said something about something about going with man that fire was hot it was like totally Tony Robbins, something about Tony Robbins and walking on fire. Oh my goodness. A bunch of our staff were rolling, but like some of the younger staff didn't even get it. You know, my son was born a baby and he didn't even need it. Who's Tony Robbins? Oh, that's funny. But yeah, it was, it was pretty hilarious. But the other thing, so, you know, we talk about engagement a lot with the kids, but the other thing about being bored is it not only will they not want to come, but it's harder to engage kids in prayer and worship. The important stuff Right. Yeah. to buy in all the way through to the altar call. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're always pointing towards that altar call. Yeah. Yeah, and so I put a note in here about fast-paced Sunday school, and this kind of ties in with what we're saying, but, you know, the world is fast-paced.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Everything, you know, and we're not trying to match the world, and I've heard some people say we're not trying to compete with the world. I think we kind of are trying to compete to a certain degree, and I'm not against people that say that there's reasons whatever but I think the fast paced part of it is because our world is so fast paced yeah they've been conditioned to have short attention spans and we have to compete with that attention span yeah exactly yeah like I've read in you know doing video editing and stuff so the average movie I think is an hour and a half long so that's 90 minutes and some of them are longer too hours three hours whatever but an average movie is 90 minutes the average shot time in those movies is three seconds yeah wow so if you think about that like we don't watch movies in television but you think about how quick those shots are moving yeah and you don't even notice you know it's just moving like have you ever seen a TV playing through a window like the blinds are down and you see the lights just flashing like crazy yeah that's how many cut or scenes are in that you know every three seconds they're grabbing you again yeah different perspective and you know we're doing we're going to do a test video here we don't know if we're going to air this or not but much to brother air's dismay but but that's what we're going to try to do in this you know we got a few cameras up we're going to try to cut and you know keep it interesting yeah now fast pace is always better you never want to just I remember I remember Sunday school when I was a kid it was like the little felt felt jesus felt jesus and flannel flannel graph yeah there we go and sister jackie yeah that and coloring coloring papers and just eating cookies eating cookies and hearing stories out the bible which were good but man i remember um elder baker uh gabe's dad when he had sunday school man if you messed around in his class you were i mean it was front row buddy oh yeah march you in and sit you down i remember one one sunday morning it was just, he probably thought he was doing awesome, but it was just droning on and on. Surely not. One young guy, his name was Josh, one of our friends was eating, was chewing on a piece of plastic from like a candy bar. He was a rapper. And he choked on the wrapper. He inhaled it and had like this Hershey's candy bar wrapper stuck in his throat. And I guess, I don't know if there had been some cutting around and cutting off, but But he's like, you up now to the front row. And he's like choking on this candy bar wrapper turned purple. Man. So what happened? Did he like get it out or something? I think your mom like performed the Heimlich or something.

UNKNOWN 8:37

Probably.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

He got it out and he still had to go to the front row. After all that, he still had to go to the front row. Near-death experience. That's what we grew up with. I'm so thankful that these kids and I've got a six-year-old that she can be engaged because she's high, high, high energy. Oh yeah. And that wouldn't work for her. I remember not long after that we had the Sunday school building and we actually had rooms. Oh yeah. So I remember we had the dividers up in the old kitchen with the blue. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Flooring. We had to scrape black marks up every Saturday night, me and Joey. But we had the Sunday school building and rooms and I can't remember who I, I wound up teaching there for a little bit, but I was a kid in Brother Pierce's class one time and then I can't remember who else, but we actually had like a little chairs with a little desk on it like a school chair with a desk on it like a classroom setting for us that was like we were first class man it was a huge upgrade but even then looking back

SPEAKER_01 9:35

it was like oh man

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isn't it funny like you know my kids I remember you know now they're staff but when they were in Sunday school we would go like you know to visit family or something and they would go to their Sunday school and they were just like shocked like what is this so boring Yeah. And then there came a time where they were like, they didn't want to go. Is there

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going to be a test at the end of this?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

They didn't even want to go. But a funny story about your daughter, Joey. Oh, no. I love these stories. Last year, I was at Kingdom Kids Conference in Tennessee. And so it was Friday night. We did all this, you know, we have the castle up and we did all this acting. I was one of the bad nights. And then at the end, I get salvation. You know, I repent. But Friday night, I was doing the lesson and altar call so there's I don't know I think it's like 300 kids in there or something and I'm up front got the mic and everything and I'm talking and I'm like I'm in the middle of getting ready to do altar call and this little girl comes running up front in front of 300 kids and just latches onto me oh my word brother Joey's daughter yeah she's like there's someone I recognize she knew me so she was yeah it was it was pretty funny I I just hugged her back like, okay, here we go. Oh my word. Well, there was a story. She was, I think we were at Brother Urshan's and she was in Sunday school and I heard through the grapevine that she like, she was like telling kids they need to go pray. Like you need to go pray right now and like go get the Holy Ghost. And then she, but she wanted to stay in the back and do like twirls in the back. But she was telling them they need to go pray. Did she get that from you or from your wife? From my wife, for sure. Now, wait a minute. Last time you were on, you said there's two, three sides to every story. Yes. She's not here to corroborate her side. So we'll just stick with that. No, that's funny. So in, in also in the fast paced Sunday school, uh, I put a note here, but always, this is like a rule for any kind of, uh, stage or anything is always leave them wanting more. Right. Right. You want to, you want to quit too early where they're like, Oh, it's over already. Versus like when, when is this going to get over with? Are we done yet? Which, unfortunately, we have had that question before, but not very often. Well, I'll tell you when that happens is we're good on the fly, thank God, because we've had it to where I don't think it was like an overestimation of our time limits on our plan for the day because you're good at that, but we've had it to where pastor's preaching long, somebody's preaching long, altar call's going, and we don't want to break heads in, so we're like, what do we do? Oh, just a couple weeks ago, we had a, it was the same thing, Normally we'd go up and Anisha would do a praise song. This is called our filler. Yeah, filler stuff. Go do a really active praise song and get the kids going still. Well, you said to get something ready to the backstage crew and we were out there finishing snack or something and all of a sudden John, do you remember this? John and Brennan come running out and John has like a wolf's head on and Brennan's dressed up like a knight and they started sword fighting. And this is right about the time parents come up. Guests were in the house and they're coming to get their kids and Brennan's up there sword fighting a wolf man and they're falling over. It was just incredible. I remember I was like, oh great, they got something. Then I see parents coming in and I'm like, oh no. At no point. They're going to be like, what is this? What Bible story is that? Yeah, they beat the snot out of each other and Sunday school dismissed. At no point. That's awesome. I remember it was John and I and Aaron at times too where we would peek out and we were done doing all of our fast changes and it was you know brother Gabe doing something and you could see the kids getting antsy or we were just getting bored in the back looking at the costumes like okay grab a clown costume and we just throw stuff on and we would just run through the middle of the kids and run out the back door brother Gabe would be like okay I don't know what that was about but just kind of wake up the kids totally random spontaneous things like that just two clowns running through were like beating each other with like rubber mallets or something. It was just a blast. Yeah. I haven't thought of that in a long time. Yeah. And that's, yeah, we, I remember we used to like, that's unscripted, but we used to script stuff like that. Yeah. Interruptions. Exactly. Whereas random, just grab their attention again. Well, we kind of have already talked about this in the next little bit, but the level of interest from the staff is translated to the kids. And so like, so when staff, so now our staff, like the majority of our staff doesn't have any clue what Sunday school used to be like. No. And so it's funny because Brother Keech is in here quite often and he's, you know, the old school Sunday school. And so when somebody is like, they have like, they got to do a segment, like they're doing offering. And then there's prayer requests after that. And then they got to do, you know, memory verse. They're like, oh man, so I'm going to have to hurry. We're like, what? Yeah, you got three minutes. That's an eternity. Like 15 seconds. We used to do back to back. Yeah. Everything. It was like, you know, yeah. And what's crazy is I have talked to some people like from other Sunday schools and we have a large staff for the amount of kids, but yet we're moving so fast and I think that what some people don't understand and we're doing one room Sunday school kind of idea you know it's ages 5 through 11 so so that's the other thing but what we're doing is full on acting full costume changes yeah and it's so it's moving pretty fast even with all the stuff that we have and there's a lot of acting happening and you know it's not just we're not talking head teaching a lesson no hardly at all almost ever and you almost have half have to delve into your split personalities because sometimes you would go from being you know a clown or a goofy character um and and have to like run behind the curtain drop that costume and be in a white dress shirt and have to have the kids pray yeah and you just have to like totally switch still got your hairs all messed up which is hard with accents oh yes a couple weeks ago brother miles uh he was doing a bible character and he slipped into his william from the pirates this guy accent his Scottish accent and we all were looking at him and he realized what he did. He was like Daniel or somebody in the Bible and he's doing that. Daniel from Scotland. And he's like, oops, he couldn't change it, you know, it was too late, he couldn't change it. That's so funny. And I remember Matthew talking about that too. He was like doing an English accent or something and he's like, it's so easy to slip into and then I forget. Well, every Bible story you hear back in the day was like they were all British actors or something so we just think they talked like that. in the Bible yeah it was so much fun I remember this is a little slightly off topic but with like characters like that it was exciting to me always getting a new character and always like oh yeah delving into the personality of that character right like you mean like more like a theme character not just a random clown or something yeah and just like that part was exciting and if you can get somebody in your local Sunday school or local children's church and to buy into a character that is so much fun you can like develop and even I know we went we got to the spot to the place where like people in our Sunday school staff members were going out and spending hundreds of dollars almost on costumage for their character yeah they do and like our gladiator uniforms and things like that that we did that was cool and it was man it just that brings excitement to you as a staff person then it transfers obviously to the children yeah because it looks you know, your outfit looks cool and the character. Were you the character? Were you in the gladiators? Were you Malik? I was Malik. Yeah. Yeah. So there's an example right there. Malik was kind of the loser in between, in the middle. And then at the very end, he went up against, what was, uh, uh, started with a V. What was brother Santino's character? Uh, He's awesome. He's a big guy and he's never been in Sunday school, or at least not here. That was a blast. And he was kind of nervous. He's like, do I have lions inside? I was like, not really. Varus, I think. Varus, yeah. I wasn't here for this. Oh, really? I don't remember this. So it was a gladiator theme and we had a Roman Coliseum in here and it was, the walls of the Coliseum were, I think they were 14 feet tall and I did what's called forced perspective I read about this in Disneyland like design but it's where basically you had the like the arch type doors and then you had arch windows above that and they were a little bit smaller and then windows above that they were even smaller so it's called so it makes it look yeah taller and then we took so we framed it and it was like a half circle yep and then we me and my son Adrian did most of that and he was I don't know he was pretty young at the time like seven eight we did paper yeah we took paper crumpled it up and then kind of laid it out and stapled it and then did you do a spray adhesive and sand yeah so what I did is we would crumple that paper up just brown construction paper so this is something somebody could use and it was kind of messy we had an unfinished building at the time but we crumpled that up and then we would lay it out flat and then we would spray oh I made a template of these big bricks like cinder block size bricks and So I made a template of that. So just the grout lines. And I laid that template down. Then we'd spray, lightly spray a spray adhesive. And then we had a bucket of dirt and a bucket of sand. And we'd sprinkle it on there. And then some brown and black spray paint for speckles too, right? Yeah, we did that after it was up. But then we would let that dry for a few minutes. And then we would carefully roll it up and shake it off in the garbage. Because it was really messy. It was real dirt, real sand. Then we would staple that up. And then we'd highlight Yeah, that was... That theme was fun. The space theme was fun. Dilbert. Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite characters of all time. That was our first space theme down when we used to set up every week. Yeah, every week in the old kitchen. We had praise tubes. Yeah. Praise tubes. We use those to this day. It was pool noodles. Pool noodles cut in half. And we'd beat the snot out of each other with them. We're like, this is worship to the Lord. Well, so we did... The whole... Where it came from, praise tubes, was... we were teaching something about praise is our weapon. Yeah. We were teaching on that. And so then we got these poodles, we got this idea. And so we let the kids beat the snot out of each other with their praise tubes. Yeah. And that stuck. And so years later now, we still have, we have a bin right here in backstage full of praise tubes. Every battle we have, it's that or paper. We were trained. I think we were training and we were having the kids just like five seconds, beat the snot out of each other. Yeah. And that's where it started. And that was with Dilbert. Yeah. It was Dilbert. Cause I remember you were, Dilbert and you fought against kids and they beat you up and stuff because you were clumsy and all that and then there was a big showdown at the end that was also the one where we do you remember do you remember where we had like somebody I think it was Brennan actually but somebody got on somebody's shoulders and then they put one costume like it wasn't a costume but it was like a blanket or something on it so they had four arms oh no yeah it was a space alien and And then they captured somebody. Tickle torture. Yes. We were trying to balance so the kids wouldn't be scared, you know? Yeah. And so there's a big ugly monster, but then it was like, let's torture him. And it was tickle. And so he's like, ah! So here's the flip side of that. So we tickle torture to make the kids not scared, but then the doctors like waterboard people. Waterboard other staff. These kids are going to grow up so confused. So the kids love the doctors, though. Oh, yeah. But the staff fear the doctors. Yes. We need to talk about the doctors for a minute. Yeah. When you hear the siren. So yes, the doctors, the doctors. So here we are. I, you know, I mentioned this earlier and I was going to say more about this, but I'm here with a legendary Boggs brothers is what I said. And so the thing is, is you guys kind of are legendary in some ways with Sunday school because you guys were the original doctors. And Joey, you were like the original out of all of us where we switched to to the one room Sunday school and pastor before pastor was the pastor. Yeah. Yeah. Switched it over. And then, um, I can't remember you joined pretty soon after. Yeah. And, and then I kind of took it over, but, um, so yeah, you guys were, do you guys remember how that even came about the doctors? I think it was more just a slapstick comedy kind of thing that came out. Yeah. Somebody needed help and we're like, Oh, we could be like doctors or nurses and like revive them. Yeah. Yeah. And then we were like, you know, how much more funny it would be is like, we don't know what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. And just like fall on top of them and like try to pick them up and like trip on the stretcher and all of that. Make it worse. Which is totally how the doctors are known now. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. They always come out. The siren starts. Yeah. The siren starts and it's like some silly music like do, do, do, do, do, you know? Yeah. And then, and they usually try to grab the wrong person first. Yes. That's a very random kill. So like usually I like call the doctors for you know poor Brennan he's been the victim of the doctors the most but I'll be calling the doctors for Brennan's character Sammy or something and they'll come out and grab me first I'm like no no I'm over there yeah so and then you have to like you have to run the guy down like usually the staffers are like no no no because you gotta chase the guy that's supposed to be hurt and you're like get back here slam him on the ground I don't know why water always gets brought in it just looks so much waterboarding people I mean like oh brother Keith Oh, man. Do you remember when Pastor Burgess came back? Yes. And waterboarded you, right? Yeah, about to kill me. The Breath of Life. It was the lesson. Oh, that was in Brother Keech. It was the Breath of Life. That was the one, because you wrote the song. Yeah, the rap. You wrote the song the night before. He's like, write a song. And you're like, so we're all in his office. And we're like working on scripts. So Aaron's over in the corner trying to write a song. Yeah. Like humming, rapping. But that was where we waterboarded. the key because the corner was of the carpet I remember was wet so and then we we did so this was pastor's idea it was awesome yeah we did where he he thought his arm was a chainsaw and we had chainsaw sound effects yes John it's amazing what that wig in fact I'm going through physical therapy therapy for ankle injury and Apparently, I got one of the ladies that used to work with Brother Keech when he tore his ACL or MCL or meniscus, whatever it was. And I'm like, if you only knew how he would switch just wearing a wig. I'm like, if you gave him a wig, you would totally see a different John Keech. Become Captain John. Yeah, most people don't have any idea how some of our Sunday school people act in Sunday school. They'd be shocked. The other side. I just remember, man, the doctors was just so, it was so much fun. And you'd wind up hurting somebody more than you would help them. Yeah. Yeah. Big old huge syringes. We actually, I think, got some like oversized doctor things at one point. Yeah. It was funny. Always pulling stuff out of people. And then poor Miles, he got initiated not long after he started Sunday school. Yeah. And he was soaked. We crumbled crackers for whatever reason. Tried to force crackers in his mouth. Oh, really? Oh, no. Yeah. So his whole, all those crackers are sticking to his face. It's all over him. Oh, man. It was a disaster. Yeah. And that's the thing now is that's, you know, your new financial staff is like, have you been initiated yet? Like, what do you mean? The doctors. It's like the hazing. You got to go through the doctor experience. That's right. Yeah. And I remember one of the, I thought this was how it started, but maybe not. We've done this a few times now, but I remember one of the things was heart surgery, you know, to put the word of God in their heart, you know, and pulling all the bad stuff, take all the bad stuff out. And that can be a hilarious skit. I oh yeah you know where you pull out you're pulling stuff out like if you do it right you set up a table with a blanket you know in front of so you can be pulling stuff out from underneath the table it looks like you're pulling it out of their heart and like what's this you know video games these are bad video games you know and then stuff the word of God and we we usually will grab biggest Bible we can find shove it and just rip the buttons open just shove it down in their shirt And then, you know, man, we've told this story before, but do you remember, Joey, when we had, I think it was that exact skit, actually, and Aaron was on the table and he fell asleep? I was the patient. He was the patient that time. Do you remember that? And we all snuck out. And we even took down Sunday school. Yeah. He was sleeping. It was on a tall table. Yeah, that was every week when we had to take down. And you were sleeping, so we quietly took down Sunday school. And that's like a good 30 minutes, probably. At least. At least. And then we snuck out. And then you eventually, I suppose, woke up. My wife found me. She came looking for me. We were very recently married and I was still in Sunday school and church was out. So I think what happened was it was a doctor thing and then church was over and people were coming. So we had to end quickly. So I just kind of stayed there and then wound up just passing out. Well, we had to get up pretty early for Sunday school. That's right. We

SPEAKER_01 27:57

did. Oh,

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man. Yeah. So, you know, I talk about the level of interest from the staff is translated and that's the energy I think that part of that fast moving like back to back stuff and switching costumes and grabbing props and you know that that energy like we've talked about before earlier and I about this is our big phone booth you know Superman changes in a phone booth this is our big huge phone booth you come backstage just like we talked about the wig and you change and it's like you know it's hard in practice and we try to do it but it's hard to practice to really you know be that character then when you get in here you switch that costume it's like you're Superman yeah here we go you know okay so the another note I have here is stay unpredictable so switch up the order of the script yeah the clowns running through the room just running through the middle of the kids yeah because even if it's exciting and you are too predictable then right it can know it's coming yeah it can kind of almost become boring you know because yeah too predictable yeah we've we've interrupted so many times like that and it actually I think I think that's what caused us to start planning those interruptions. It's like, hey, this kind of works. Like even though it kind of trips you up on your lesson or whatever, it just, it gives a little spark to it. And like we even worked into, I remember like in our scripting, we would have, you know, the kids would come in and there'd be two clowns in here like just tossing a ball over the kids and like back and forth and all of a sudden they would just switch. Just for like the dynamic opening or whatever. Yeah, dynamic opening. And so like that all started with the staff me and brother Keith and me and Aaron be like let's just throw some costumes on just go run through there and just be crazy yeah I remember one time we had a guy that came and brother Harian was in revival with us oh wow and jumped up and started spouting I think Islamic stuff yeah and threatening and all this stuff well the guys in the church handled it yeah well then you know the cops show up and so some of us staff members were like in clown costumes holding plastic swords and we're like standing out the watching this guy get arrested. And those cops are probably like, okay, are those the perpetrators or is this the guy? Do we have the right guy? We're supposed to arrest you. They're like, the doctor's grabbing the wrong guy. As soon as the cop looks, we'd run back inside real quick. What is going on in Sunday school? Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, we have some crazy stuff in Sunday school. Well, you know, and the interruptions, even to this day, I tell our staff, like the segments, how I want the segment, it doesn't always work, but how I want the segments is for it to be an interruption by design I want to crash in yeah so if you have if you're doing memory verse and the next thing is praise I want as soon as they're getting to the end of memory verse and we have a timer backstage I want the praise to crash in and interrupt and like oh okay we got to get out of here you know and that's because then it keeps you want the kids to like be getting whiplash spinning their head so much you know trying to figure out what's happening yeah now one thing that does is it it does scare some kids so today abrupt it was so funny today there's this young boy that he's been in Sunday school about a year now but he still he gets scared pretty easy so a couple weeks ago Brennan was doing the fire thing he does spits fire and so he got really scared and he ran brother said he ran to the back bench and he turned around he's facing the back wall and he just sat there facing the back wall but he put himself in time out

SPEAKER_01 31:34

yeah That's

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funny.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

He's

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traumatized, but he's not there. So the same little boy, he doesn't talk, at least not to me very much, but the same little boy comes up to me on Wednesday night, just this past Wednesday night and asks us if he can be in singing group. We have a group of kids that do singing up front on stage. And I was like, wow. I was like, okay, well, let me talk to Anisha. She runs it. And so, well, today, We were doing this thing, it was a battle of AI, and so the spies had to go over, so we turned the lights off. Because, you know, they're going to sneak over there. When we turn the lights off, we're in between themes right now, so we don't have, the windows aren't all blacked out or anything, so it's light, you know. But we turned the lights off, and I saw him, I was in the sound booth, I saw him turn around, and he kind of is looking at me, he's just looking at the back, but his face was like, he was scared, and so I smiled at him. at him and then he smiled he grinned real big and he was fine oh that's funny oh here's here's a memory a memory of sunday school just popped up do you remember doing the joseph we always called it the joseph joseph yes so where that the joseph i think it was it was the skit of joseph we did it in in youth group we just did like a fast-paced like one hour skit but we've done it sunday school too but i think it was you and another i think it was derrick mm-hmm when he used to be back in Sunday school and it was the oldest brother that gets put in to jail for like one day or two days or something like that Simeon and so he's only in jail for like I don't know a couple days it's a quick turnaround you know they go back and get grain and get money and he comes out and he's got like a white hair and a white beard he didn't have a beard before but a big old white beard to his belly button or something it's like it's been forever it's like it's been three days bro yeah just stuff like that it's like whoa and the same thing when joseph shows his brothers who he is yeah he's got a beard and he pulls it down hey guys like he

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had this guy's no idea

SPEAKER_00 33:53

well we would do stuff like that too not just to be funny with the kids but to like shock each other yes just to like just to mess with the staff yeah to stumble the staff yeah whoa yeah here's what i mean yeah brother keach is good for that he's like, he'll be like, I'm going to do this, but don't tell him. I love it. Hey, I just had another memory fairly recently. So Brennan was still learning to do his fire thing. Oh, okay. And he was bringing, I can't remember what story it was. You probably remember brother Arter was a king. Like he always is because he's so kingly. He was a king

SPEAKER_01 34:23

and

SPEAKER_00 34:24

he was, Brennan was going to bring the cup to him. And Brennan told him back here, we didn't have time to explain, but Brennan told brother Arter, do not drink this. Like do not drink this. Well, it was the... Because it's lighter fluid. Yeah, it's lighter fluid, like butane or whatever it is. Some kind of lighter fluid, yeah. And it's not super smelly until it gets lit. And so he brings them the... Oh, it's like it was one of the servants. Because he was the cup bearer. He was the cup bearer. It was Joseph, yeah. It was Joseph. He was the cup bearer. So he brought it to him, and

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Brother Ardor

SPEAKER_00 34:51

just took a big old swig of this. He was like, I'm going to man up. Brother Ardor's just like, I'm going to man up. I'll drink it. It's probably gross, but I'm going to drink it. Did he about throw up? He didn't know it was lighter fluid. No clue. And took a big swig of it, and he's like... and then he keeps going and he comes backstage and he had to spit stuff out and burnt him like his chin and his neck were all burnt it was Sunday night he was still there yeah oh man and then so Brennan because he was the butler so he he took it and drank it yeah because he's supposed to test it or whatever and then he spit the fire out but poor brother that was a bad mistake it's a bad day oh my goodness so yeah my last note we already covered this but every once in a while throw in something random and exciting we definitely definitely have done that yeah we've definitely done that do you do you find that people are adopting our mantles well I know Aaron still still in Sunday school but are you finding their staff people that will do those crazy things I know John still Brennan is good at that yeah Brennan and of course Brennan has been in pretty long time but I remember he was a kid in Sunday school too I remember that but he was

SPEAKER_01 36:03

good at that too his shamrock When she, I

SPEAKER_00 36:05

mean, before she had a kid, she was good. Yeah, we gotta get her back in. She was so good. Her and Brooke both. But Brant, who is newer, and we had a podcast a while back, and I said, we gotta stop saying you're new, because he's been in three or something years now. Feels like forever. But he's really good. Fantastic. He's really good on the fly, too. Yes. He's just, he's funny. Like, today, I was going to somewhere with my daughter and we she turned on an Odyssey and I don't even remember which one it was is I can't remember but Harlow Doyle wasn't it oh yes

SPEAKER_01 36:43

yeah

SPEAKER_00 36:44

he's so funny you know and I was like I could totally picture Brent doing this yes that's awesome that's true because all the little like slapstick humor makes no sense yeah yeah it's yeah he's good all right well let's do a recap we're way over time so why My Sunday school shouldn't be boring. Kids won't come and kids won't engage if they're bored. Not at all. So you got to keep it interesting. Keep staff engaged too. Yeah. Fast paced Sunday school helps to keep staff engaged. The world we live in is fast paced. Always leave them wanting more. The level of interest from the staff is translated over to the kids. They feel our energy. And so if we lack that energy, and that's a big thing I talk about a lot is energy. Come on, full on energy. Yes. You can elevate a kid. It's kind of like, you know, here we are, sunny morning, kind of tired, whatever. You can elevate their energy by, you know. Well, even your set can provide that energy, too. We talk about the wow factor, a river or a fountain or anything like that helps with energy. Yeah, where they walk in like, wow. Or even if they've seen it before, where they're like, oh, yeah, this is a Sunday school. This is a cool place. Yeah. And then stay unproductable. You know, keep it moving. Use ad lib. You know, one of the things I taught at the seminar a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago is I was talking about ad lib and I said, not everybody can ad

SPEAKER_01 38:11

lib.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

But the thing is, is the more prepared you are, the more you can ad lib. And so the more you practice it, the more you can. I mean, I remember back at heart of Christmas, I used to be backstage. I didn't, I wasn't on stage. People can't believe that now because you and I, Joey, we're on stage the whole, the whole thing. And then, of course, you're on stage a lot. But when we first started, I was running it from the back. Wow. That seems weird. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. All right. Well, we are out of time. We should do this one again before Joey has to take off. Because this is fun. Yeah. Maybe we'll even get one more mic in here and get somebody else. Geek Billy Keech in here. Yeah. Oh, that would be insane. You'd really go off the rails. We'll have to do like an hour podcast. Probably. The extended cut. Yeah. Alright, well, that's a wrap.