KidMin Backstage

Coming up! This one gets pretty crazy with Aaron & John!

Today I'm joined by Bro. Steve Arter.

Winners and losers have the same goal, but they don’t have the same outcome. Some people come to play a game and they’re not fully invested; they half-heartedly go through the motions. Then there’s the ones that show up and they have their special gym shoes, they’re stretching and warming up before the game. And when the game start, they’re all in-you can see it in their face. 
In the workplace, everyone has a personal life, but, for the most part, you have to leave it at the door. In Sunday school, we might not always feel quote, inspired or energized – especially because it’s morning after all, but we need to put on our gameface when we go live. 
Today we want to talk about giving your all on game day-Sunday. 

Some of the things we try to cover:

• Discipline Over Feelings
• Our One Chance
• Motivation is a Byproduct of Doing
• Don't Lower Your Standards for Kids

I'm joined by my daughter, Aneisha and Pastor's daughter, Shaylee.

In our Sunday school we have been blessed to have a whole backstage area. 
In the past we had a mobile Sunday school where we had to set up every Saturday night and then take down every Sunday after Sunday school. Then we had more of a permanent space up here where we are now before the building was finished for a few years. 
Now the building is finished and we have a backstage with men’s & women’s lockers, a wardrobe room, and even a snack area. 

Today we want to talk about some of the things that no one ever sees-the stuff that happens backstage.

A few things we "try" to cover...

• What the Costume Manager does.
• The Backstage Scramble.
• Random Props & Costumes.

Just a little preview...

Sunday school leaders must take responsibility. When someone is quote, in charge, of something and they don’t feel responsible for the outcome, it will most likely fail. 

President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that stated, “The Buck Stops Here”. This comes from the idea of passing the buck, not admitting that it’s up to me. What a blessing we can be to our Pastor if we take the attitude that the buck stops with me. I’m not going to abdicate responsibility or wait for the Pastor to take care of it. I am going to make this ministry work under his direction and he can know that it will happen.

A few of the things we try to cover:

Be clear on your Pastor's vision
It's MY job to come up with solutions
Manage the WHOLE thing

It's an idea session!

In our Sunday school we almost always have a theme. 
Now some people use the word theme, and they are referring to lesson content-we call that a topic. To clarify; theme for us means a type of environment. An army theme for example would have some kind of barracks or headquarters, maybe a forest and army costumes & props. 
So, along with our themes we typically have a storyline. We’ve talked about story on here before and we will again, but we want to come up with some ideas for a new theme. 
Hopefully you, our listeners, find this enjoyable and get some value out listening to a raw idea session. 

Some of the things we try to cover:
General theme idea
Rough story outline for our upcoming theme
Various characters that could be part of the theme

Just a quick clip of this Friday's upcoming episode!

We should always be looking to better ourselves and to make our team better. 
Every year I go to the Children’s Ministry Conference in Redlands, CA and I bring some of our team. This is an awesome 2-day conference, and the teachers are great. 

We’ve been talking about starting an in-house training and the time is upon us. I have a general outlook and even some specific topics that I want our staff to be trained in, but I don’t want to be living in a vacuum. So today we’re going to discuss some ideas for training topics. 

A few things we try to cover:

• Why do we need training?
• Training Topics brainstorm
  • Facilitating (crowd control
  • Acting
  • Action Songs
  • Teaching
  • A/V (audio/visual)
  • Puppets
  • Outreach
  • Bus Ministry
  • Scripting
  • Infrastructure (building sets, decor, cleanup etc.)
• Scheduling

Sorry Brennen!

Just a quick bonus post with some clips from the Training Ideas episode.

COMING OUT THIS FRIDAY!