Working with Children (Part 2)

Now, of course, what we read in these last two verses of Psalm 126 is true in, of course, any gospel work. And it's true with the whole of the Assembly if there's an exercise. Now, let me just say this frankly and honestly before we read this.

We have to confess with a sense of regret how little of this depth of burden we know on an intent and consistent basis. But here's what it says, Psalm 126 and 5, So whether it is a man that preaches the gospel at a given time, or whether it's somebody that sits down and shares the word of God in a Sunday school individual class setting, or whether it's the children's work and the individual speaker that will stand and address the whole audience at that given time, nevertheless, the first expectation in the mind of God in preparing the speaker is a burden higher. And then carrying the seed, the word of God.

That's what we're there for, is to communicate the word of God. Now, I know I've got it written in my outline here somewhere. I want to do a presentation, so I'm not going to run down there yet.

You've got any term then at some point in the work. Are we doing a series? Is it going to be a week series like you've already done with Brian? Or is it something we're going to establish as a weekly effort that's going to be ongoing for a school season or whatever duration you want? And so the speaker, in preparation then, is going to want to tailor the message as to the approach that you're taking. If it's going to be a one-week series, you want to come up with a theme of some sort, or you want to do a progressive development, building blocks of the truth of God through the week, whatever your message is, but there's the week-long effort or two-week-long effort.

There's nothing wrong with having two weeks of children's meetings. If you've got a group that you know you can bring in regularly, there's nothing wrong with doing two weeks. But you've got to have an approach that's going to keep their attention through the two weeks.

If you're doing a weekly meeting, this is something Brian and I were talking about. And please, hear me, what I'm saying. I've had individuals say, well, if you're teaching a Sunday school class on a weekly basis, you want to make sure you get all the bases covered every time you're nearing the end of that class.

By that, you know, from Genesis to Revelation, and that's of course an exaggeration. But we are teaching, as Deuteronomy 31 said, the Word of God to establish and build into their hearts the fear of the Lord so that there are things then, if you don't have a prepared ground, we know that in Gospel work, don't we? Sometimes it takes weeks of preaching before souls are ready to hear the good news of salvation. So it's not that I'm saying don't tell them the whole Gospel story if you're just doing a weekly meeting.

You may have a broader subject as you go through that one class, but you still have got to develop truth with them. Build the truth so that there is a foundation that is prepared to one day then take hold of the Gospel with conviction of sin and trust Christ. We can't necessarily think we're going to go through, you know, five steps to salvation kind of thing every Sunday.

Well, you know we don't promote that. Sin is prayer and all that kind of nonsense. But don't feel like you're shortchanging the kids.

If it's a weekly effort and you're not getting the full Gospel story to them each time. Build truth into them that that is the basis for the Gospel when the Spirit of God leads them. The moment to be dependent on the Spirit of God for a timely word.

And so what you're saying it's probably a better plan to when you're preparing whatever you want to speak on to find a point, a point you want to drive home. And then make sure you come back to that point. And as I said one night there about Lee Iacocca when he says make sure you make the main point the main point.

And so keep coming back to that point because, you know, you try to get across six, seven points and they're going to remember nothing. Words you beat into them, not beat into them, but express to them lovingly one point over and over and over again. Hopefully half that point will get through because you'd be surprised.

Especially children that aren't brought up in under the word of God. You know sometimes I've come from week to week I could speak the same thing every week and it still hasn't got through yet. So you cannot be, you know, you cannot be shy of doing something so basic.

Well that's what they need. They need the basic truths of the word of God. I think we need to understand too, I think we do, that anybody, I don't care whether you're a child or an adult, they must first understand the holy righteous character of God before they're ever going to get saved.

And so there's nothing wrong with teaching children who God is, what his character is. Bring in the Old Testament scriptures like we've done. Even in creation it's something that's sadly lacking today as far as evolution is concerned.

It brings out the holy character of God and his power. Once children begin to understand the character of God, then we move into the character of man, what man is before God. Preparing now to the time when they can then take it.

It doesn't mean that during bringing out that before then we don't bring in nuggets of the gospel. We need to make sure they understand the character of God first. Brian has far more children's series than I have had over the years.

But I have three primary children's series that I have used. Creation, 10 Commandments, and Who is Jesus? Because I believe that's true. If we're getting new kids through our doors, and you say, well, my current kids are doing well.

Well, good, good. But I know there's a lot of kids that don't. And that's what I like to see is kids that are coming from homes that you can, as Brian says, feed it into them.

Plant into their minds and into their souls the creation facts. And the righteousness of God, 10 Commandments is a good basis for that. But Who in the world is Jesus? That's basically the way they've been talking lately.

So those kind of things. So let me say this. If you're going to do Sunday school with multiple classes, it's a tremendous idea to get some sense of a curriculum.

And those little ones, what are you basically teaching those little ones? What are you teaching these ones that are, you know, getting into adolescent age? How are you teaching the teenagers in a Sunday school class? You know, there's got to be truth being applied and built on foundationally and progressively when you work in those settings. How do you evaluate kind of where the kids are at, like what they understand, so that you kind of know where to start your lesson? By teaching them. The best way to learn is to teach, they say.

And that's for the teacher himself. But this is what's fresh in my mind, so please pardon the personal references. But these families that we've just met this past fall and this winter that my wife Nancy and I was working with in her Sunday school class.

Nancy said, I wouldn't know where these kids were at if I didn't start teaching them something. And she says, then when I start getting the duh responses and the questions that are coming out of it, she says, I know where I'm going to go next week. Because of the fact that what she is trying to teach them is either registering or it's total blank.

So it's not an easy question to answer, Jeremy. But you start teaching something and you see what the results are, what the response is. And then you know where to either back up to or where to progress to the next time around.

What are you brothers' thoughts or experiences concerning having at night when the children are born, in some manner, that was they've been taught for the benefit of their parents? So like what we call traditionally a Sunday school treat and things of that sort? Yeah. The idea that we should probably bring the truth to the parents. Well, that's going to lead us into the next section, John.

Presentation. So if you can, I was going to say a little breath, but I think I went a little breath that long. But I think we're going to come to that kind of a thing in presentation.

All right? All right. Just one more thing on preparation. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Go ahead.

Preparation. Going past just preparing for children's meetings. As a young Christian, this was the first gospel work I ever did.

Children's work. You know, it was children to be worked with and your father-in-law would blame him. You know, come and help.

Well, you know, it is that beginning of that work, not only prepared, you know, to work with children, but it prepares young people, whether brothers or sisters for, you know, life in the assembly later on. How to preach the gospel. Young people.

I mean, that's where you learn how to preach the gospel. That's where you learn how to, you know, make points that will, I can't even say, points that will, you know, intelligently present the message to the children. It helps with the gospel meeting.

The care for those children. It instills a love not only for children, but later in the assembly, a love for those that are in the assembly. And for sisters, you know, in the work that they do.

And, you know, although they might not be able to get up there and actually speak the message, so often the reality is that the sisters have done 80% of the work as far as our children's meetings are concerned. And so just getting involved in that type of work, not only is it beneficial to those children, but listen, it is beneficial to the assembly as a whole because it instructs and it teaches and it prepares young people as they become adults in the assembly for assembly life and for the good of the assembly as well. You mentioned about the sisters there, Rodney.

It's good to remind ourselves that within the realm of the class, there is the role and the opportunity of the service of a sister. It's always the preparation that she herself must make in preparing the messages for the most dear ones that she gets to speak to each week. And the influence that they have, you know, is really, often times they can have even more influence than we can as brother.

And the children seem to be more in affection or something. I mean, Megan was in Ireland for several months and she was in the little class there. She became really attached to the teachers, you know, the two girls, the mother and daughter.

And it's just that she can see the interest that they have in anything that was important to her and she wanted to share it with them. You know, that was just her natural thing. So there's a sphere in which that sister has a realm of influence.

Not only with the assembly children, the children of believers, but the believers in the community. And in that case, and we have cases here too, that they have a realm of raising the mothers of those children. Often times they'll even break away the families.

So, encouragement for sisters there too. So that takes, we'll come up to that again. I don't see that we are in potential to wrap up, but that is very true.

I mean, that's naturally the bent of the female. I mean, that's the way the Lord has wired it. Ladies, women, young women, to relate to children.

That's just part of their makeup. I suppose the old guys, you know, learn, but be that as it may. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 to a rather unusual verse that I've appreciated Brian's input here.

Coming out of the presentation, how do we present the work, the messages, what's involved with it? We understand what Paul's saying in the context here. Of course it's in the, it's the contrast he's making in the context between formative gifts and then the progressive gifts that went beyond the formative, the New Testament period. But he said this, when I was a child, 1 Corinthians 13, 11.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. Stop there, period. That's rather true.

And that's what we've got to remember when we're working with children. We're not putting old heads on young shoulders. We're speaking to children.

So he's saying all of this verse tells us that you're going to get up there and talk like an idiot. Well, sometimes I wonder if I have. But be that as it may, you want to communicate to young minds.

Now, we're going to put this here. To quote the other Mr. Crawford, not the one that's at the top here. In the parameters being set for presenting the truth.

Yes, you want to be a friend of the children. Friendly, but firm. Kids will learn.

They'll recognize it. They know you care for them, but you know you expect things from them. So speaking to children in a manner that relates to the way they think.

I'll tell you what, I'm having difficulty right now trying to figure out how children or teenagers think right now. And I raised two of them. But it's not just teenagers.

It's teenagers in this present era. Because they have changed tremendously. Even in the last 30 years, teenagers.

I'm having a great deal of difficulty realizing where their heads are at. Not just as a teenager, but how they think in this present world. So you've got to get a feel for it.

Speaking to children because they think like children. Teaching them the truth of God. Where you want to penetrate the mind with the word at a level that they can understand.

What did I put there? Yes, a quote from Mr. Norman Crawford. Preach to reach each. I remember Norman saying that many years ago and it's just stuck with me.

Of course he was talking about gospel preaching as exemplified whether in the experience of the Lord Jesus. He wrote from Nicodemus to the Samaritan woman in two chapters. And his message was totally different.

I mean just in that example. Paul in Athens, the way he preached to the people in Athens was totally different. When he preached to an audience that was made up predominantly of a Jewish background.

So you preach to reach the audience that's in front of you. So under parameters, I put rules of engagement. That's what they talk about in short time right now when we're in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our soldiers feel like they have their hands tied with the rules of engagement. Well, what we're talking about here is setting guidelines for the kids. This is what I expect out of you and this is how I'll treat you.

So yeah, you're friendly with them but you're firm with them. Particularly when it comes to questions and answers when you're teaching a lesson. I think I mentioned it here that one Sunday I spoke to the kids.

What do I expect of them? I expect them to have their mouth shut and their hand up. Or else I'm not going to ask them to answer the question. So just those kind of things.

Establish them, be consistent. One of my biggest problems is being consistent. Because once the kids realize you're breaking your own rules, man is it ever tough to reign things in after that.

But you set some guidelines. As one that loves them. But you have certain guidelines that have got to be met.

And sometimes that's hard to do. It takes a while to set those. Well, it's easy to set the rules but to get the rules to be obeyed you've got to, as Stu said, you have to be consistent.

And the rules that you make, you've got to return to them. And when someone's breaking them, you've got to speak to them. I remember a series we had over in Sherman.

First set of children's I had there. Stu said, well, we'll be lucky if we get, I think he said 35 by Wednesday. Well, by Wednesday we had 105.

And that little hall in Sherman was just packed. It was packed. It was a few rowdies.

But as the week went on, the Friday night there was a lady showed up in the back and she was very, I thought, kind of stern and very austere. And she stood in the back and she was watching all that was going on and 105 kids crammed in. I mean, when it was time to sing, we were having fun.

When it was time for the quiz, there was fun in the guidelines of the rules. But when it came time to speak, we were sitting up. They knew that by then.

Well, this lady, she was welcome. I didn't know who she was. She kind of was annoying me because she looked so stern.

I didn't know what she was or who she was. Well, afterwards I found out she was the principal, the principal of the school. Yeah, from the elementary school.

Principal from the elementary school. And afterwards we didn't know what she was going to say. And the words that she did say, she said, how on earth do you get them to sit up so early? She says, there's some in that group there.

She says, we couldn't make them sit up if we tried at school. And she says, here, they're all sitting up and listening. And so it wasn't the eloquence of the speaker, but it was the having made the rules.

And as Stu is going to show here in our outline, not just the rules, but there were those that were amongst the kids that were enforcing the rules. It wasn't just on the board there and hoping that they were going to read it, but there was enforcement of those rules as well. So if you're going to make the rules, you've got to have people that are going to enforce those.

Let me just say this. That hasn't happened since then. That is the 105.

We still have children's meetings periodically. We never saw those numbers again. We didn't.

I think that happened three years in a row, roughly, those kind of numbers. We went through that cycle. You say, well, what triggered it? It was the kids whose parents were in the assembly or their grandparents were in the assembly, and they had the reach into their classes at school.

That was what it was. It was a timely, it was a season of life for the families relative to the assembly. We haven't seen those numbers since those early years.

That was back in the late 90s at that time. Be that as it may, you don't stop. So parameters, assessment, interactions.

In relation to the enforcing, in a practical round, do you suggest that we sit in among the children, the adults, others, sitting in the back, sit in among the children, show an interest in them, and then try and maintain that order? Now, what about the enforcement of the rules as far as, what do we do if there are children who consistently want to break the rules? Apparently, no matter how many times you remind or seek to enforce, what are the consequences? How do we best do that? We don't want to lose the children by being so austere, and yet the balance is we want them to come, but we're not doing them any favors by not showing that God expects this, God expects what we do. How do we do that? We do have that section. Oh, I'm sorry.

I think we've got to wait. So parameters, again, Mark 10, 16, the Lord Jesus showed his love to the children. Again, how many times do we say it to ourselves and to others? It's got to mean that you really do care for them.

I don't. You folks here now are doing a tremendous job of that. The next point props what he can use to demonstrate the message in children's work.

Mark 9, verse 36. The Lord Jesus, he took a child and set a child in the midst of them, the disciples. I'm just lifting this as an example.

A child was involved, and he was showing his affection for the child, but the child was the prop for a lesson. The Lord Jesus did that. We're not adapting our own approach by doing this, using something to illustrate the lesson he used the child.

When he told the seed sower story, I don't know for a fact, but I would be surprised if there was a man over in a field not too far away, and he was actually doing that at the moment. And if not, it was something they commonly recognized, though. So the illustration of sowing seed was something true from their life, from their experience.

So using illustrations, the Lord Jesus did it. We're not adapting something that's, you know, unbiblical. He sets the pattern, the example for it.

So what he did, there are various forms of media. And I just put in my notes, from printed to projected. We have now come to the day where you can project the same thing that we painted on paper.

So I'm going to say this kindly, but I'm going to say it frankly. That chart that's hanging on the wall there, God has widely used it. I would have been interested to be able to look back and see the first reaction when that chart was put up in a meeting.

I don't know. I wasn't there. But I have to wonder if there were some folks, Wow, that's not a Bible.

You know, like, we only use the Bible here or something of that. I'm being facetious. That is a name.

Whether we're going to project it or we're going to print it, it's just a means of getting an illustration of the same content, the same substance in front of people. So having said that, the whole message can't be lost, as it were, just in an illustration. It takes the Spirit of God using this speaker at the time to have a word in Caesar.

And that's where illustrations, whether they're printed or projected at times, have their limitation. Because if you're just going to rely on your illustration, then the Spirit of God has his hands tied. You've got to be ready to say something that the Holy Spirit impresses on your mind at a given time.

You might be a child that's sitting there that needs to hear something that's not right there. And whatever you're projected or printed illustration is giving you the basis to work on. So prompts have their place, but they also have a limitation.

So the prompt shouldn't be the message, but the message should use the prompt to illustrate. Yeah, very good. What about doing the verse, as we call it? Who's going to do the verse? In children's language, what do you mean you do the verse? Well, who's going to teach the verse? Well, I'll say this much.

The verse isn't the lesson. I don't know how many times I've been frustrated. When you're going to run up, don't go here.

He's going to teach the verse before you do the lesson. By the time I got up there, he'd done the whole lesson, going over the verse. You know, when it's your turn to teach a verse to the children, all you're doing is you're using some kind of technique to get them to memorize the verse, but you're not telling them all about what the verse means, so they'll forget about the speaker afterwards.

Is that a pet peeve? Maybe it is. But verse is a verse. Lesson is the lesson.

So rather than suffer the exhortation. And even when it comes to the verse, now I know kids that are brought up in the Sunday school who have parents at home that will sit down and teach them the verse, you can give them a longer verse, but when you have children that are coming in and you know they're on their own, it would be far more profitable to take a part of a verse and be able to impress that on their mind and expect them to remember 30 words that they won't remember, but if you can get 5 or 10 words that will stick with them, I think that's far better. So there's no problem with just taking a part of a verse and teaching it to them.

It doesn't break any rules, doing that. Oh, the senders would be a good example. We have to follow a part of a verse, but we can certainly have our children learn, but if we want them to work with younger ones, they can certainly learn a part.

Some of the sisters will remember with humor in our series way back, that the children came in, they were quite young, and evidently one girl was trying to teach the other girl this very short verse, so she came in and said, this all has skin. So she tried her best, got a part of the verse, just corrected it out, and she's still on the way to break all the sins. I wish over the years that I had written down all some of the craziest things kids have said.

I mean, I just love it. Because that's that innocence, that you know they're listening. They've come up with something, they didn't put it here, right? But at least they're listening.

The word of God is perfect and powerful, and it starts with a 92-inch sword. Yeah. 2-inch sword.

2-inch sword. There is no fear of God between us. Well, that's true.

And 400 wives and 700 porcupines. 300 wives, 700 porcupines. So the problem is, you know, we have to understand that these kids, we live in a very visual age.

I mean, if they're not watching it on their smartphones or their iPods, you know, there's always something going. So there's nothing wrong with a prop, something to get their attention. But again, the prop is not the message.

It's just that that is going to illustrate what they're trying to get across. It will engage their thinking and serve as the basis for you then to communicate in a timely way. As the spirit of God has enabled me.

Involving the kids too, of course, as props. Now this will come back in some measure to what a Brother John was inquiring about. You know, using the child to demonstrate some aspect of a lesson.

And this is one of the things that you engage Rastas with. Because sometimes, and I'm not running ahead of the problem, but sometimes the Rasta just needs some extra attention. You know, is he hyper? Is he, you know, attention deficit problem? Might be.

But to engage them into some aspect of your lesson will help settle the disturbance too. But I don't want to run ahead too much and steal time from the problems. I do want to touch something here though about presentation of the lesson.

The man that has the responsibility. Do we find the occasion in the example of the Lord Jesus and the Apostles of using characterization? Now, it's nice to have a preacher, a teacher who's engaging. You know, he keeps people's attention.

That's necessary. But the idea of getting a number of people together and doing a dramatized presentation of the lesson, where do we get the example for that? I am going to be very pointed on this, but kindly say, the Lord Jesus had 12 disciples and some of them were pretty demonstrative people. You know, you get the likes of Peter and those individuals, the Sons of Thunder and them.

Never once do we find an occasion where he used the disciples to dramatize his lesson. Christ demonstrated his lesson with a prop, with some illustration from life, but he never dramatized it. So, I want to encourage the unbelievers relative to that approach.

Now, having said that, dramas, to my mind, prove to be entertaining rather than communicating the truth of God. They have a Bible story to it, but they're more entertaining, I believe, than they are communicating the truth. And it often develops when it's adapted to extreme uses of it in a big way, and it becomes the focus of the means of communicating to an audience, even with adults at a future time.

So, I would discourage adapting it, but primarily based on this, the Lord with twelve disciples didn't use it. Those twelve disciples, the apostles, after his, in his post-resurrection era, we have no indication that they used it. Just on the biblical example, I would, personally, I don't want to use it.

I don't see a biblical basis for it. I don't think you went out on one, but I think you're absolutely accurate on that. Yeah.

I saw a man one time dramatizing a very magnolian, hunkered down behind a pulpit, screaming with a very distorted face. Oh, I thought it was very sad. Yeah.

That's sad. I can't imagine what I would be attracting to children. Yeah.

So, by demonstration and dramatization, we've got two different things that we're using as a way of communicating the word of God. It isn't by reading, as Brian said, I have to do a lot of talking. Appreciate the input.

How's our time going? 23 minutes. I promised you to get going. That's it.

Okay. Point C, prompts. Now, I mean, that's very simple to think that.

Like I said, I believe kids need to be behaving themselves. The speaker's got to engage them. They've got to be listening or else they will get distracted and they will start carrying on.

But I love to engage candies, particularly the wrapped candies, individual candies, as if they, you know, ask a question and I say, it's not a question of getting the right answer. I mean, I think we have enough brains to know when a kid's just being a, you know, smart-eyed and just saying something stupid. I won't reward that.

But if they're trying to give an honest answer, whether it's the right one or not, give them the candy, pencil or whatever it is, you know, trinkets or something like that. Whatever you think is suitable for the audience. So for prompts, engage them that way.

Sometimes you want something written on the board. You're using a whiteboard with your dry erasers. Ask them if the older kids didn't know how to write.

Ask them to write it on the board, the answer. Just get them, you know, engaged with what's going on so they will stop and listen. And then, of course, question and answer.

What game do you play with them, Brian? Question and answers? Q&A? Mm-hmm. What game do you use up here? Well, I usually use what they're doing here. Oh, yeah.

Except I don't have the fancy... So, a match-up game? A match-up game, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, thank you. Boys against girls, do we gender-dispate? All the time.

Yeah. Yeah. It makes it more... More competitive.

More involved that way, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was engaging with gold coins, and now he's engaged with a game number for five bucks on the board.

Really? Yeah. Wow. Well, it all depends on your audience.

I mean, you... Sometimes you have to go in there and, you know, the kids are just so well-behaved, you don't have to have anything like that. But other times, just to keep their attention, you've got sometimes to be a little bit more... Generous? ...resourceful. Yeah. So that's... I mean, anybody, any other input there relative to prompts? I mean... I think it's worth saying, brother, let's do it, it should be wise.

Wise? Wise, yeah. I was an Irish accent there, so I wasn't sure what you meant there. The prize should be so generous.

Yeah. You know, put it in place, you know, and... Sometimes I... I'm without telling you, I like to come down at the end of the lesson and there's been one word, the word that relates to the one point that we were trying to establish in the lesson, and ask the kid, what was the key word of this lesson? And then I find out if I did my job or not, but if somebody comes up with it, that's when I do drop the, you know, the bigger coin or the more money than that, and everybody else goes, hmm, hmm, hmm, well, hey, don't announce it, just do something spontaneously and then they'll come back the next day, oh, really listen, you know, they want to get the key word kind of thing, so you do things of that nature. And the ultimate end of the prompts is to keep them listening, keep them paying attention to what is going on so that they never know maybe what's going to happen, so they have to pay attention all the time.

Yeah. And the speciality is that, right now, the nice thing about it was when you give it the pencils or the coins or whatever it was, you made a point about getting through every single person that was there, so that they all understood what they were doing. Yes, good.

And that's nice for them. Yeah, yeah. Question and answer at the end.

Often, you know, when we do the children's meeting, have somebody do quiz questions at the end. So somebody's got to be sitting back there taking notes because there's got to be something they heard. No asking questions that you think the lesson was about, but the guy didn't say it because it's not fair to the kids.

But at the same time, try and form, you know, tailor the questions to emphasize what the lesson's about. And I've put my notes here. It's not just a question of detail retrieval.

You know, what color of hat was the man wearing in the lesson or something like that. Something in the questions is to emphasize the, focus the point of the story in the lesson. Yeah, hopefully the person writing the questions has been able to discern the point the speaker has been making.

And so then, the purpose of the question is to reinforce that point. That's why I know some people like to have the quiz the next night before the person speaks so that people can, they remember what took place the night before. The problem with that is sometimes people come that weren't there the night before.

So they're out of the loop. Whereas if you have it afterwards, which is my preference, it is for the purpose of reinforcing the point. Making sure that the main point was the main point.

And that's why I like questions after the lesson. Yeah, at the end of the... Yeah, because everybody that's there heard it. At least, they were there.

Okay. Let's go to Proverbs chapter 11. Just to read the verse that we've got here.

Relative to prizes. Do we have a basis for giving away prizes? Or are we just being generous? Well, hopefully we're being generous. Now, I maybe, I don't think I'm grasping at a straw here.

Because I think the principle permeates the Word of God. Reward for righteous behavior. But in Proverbs 11, verse 18, the second half of the verse, it says, But to him that sows righteousness shall be a sure reward.

So we're just lifting out a statement from the Proverbs here. The child that is behaving himself, they're rewarding him for it. So I don't think we're out of place by using a prize incentive in the classes.

You use the prompts for the question and answer while the lesson's going on. Well, what about then, excuse me, an accumulated performance with a prize night at the end of the week or a prize night after three months of weekly sessions or whatever. Have a points system.

Hopefully, you know, this isn't anything new, but I just wrote down here what I often use for points. First up, attendance. Second, same in the verse.

Homework. Brian was the one that introduced this to me. I never gave the kids homework.

I hated it when I was in school. I would have to give somebody homework at children's meetings. They'll learn to hate children's meetings.

But that year that he came over to Sherman, he wanted me to give homework to the kids, and I just about choked. But we did. And it was just something else to acknowledge the next night.

When they came back, they had their homework done. And of course, he geared the homework. We had two or three different levels of homework that we used, Brian there.

Did you use it this week? No. No? Okay. We're just glad the children came.

So, points for homework. Bring your Bible. Get points.

You want to make sure the kids are bringing the Bible. Bring a friend to get points. Bring an adult.

Bring a teacher or a fireman or a policeman. You know, really light the kids up. Go after somebody that you've never seen in the gospel.

Like Brian said, when the principal in school came in, all the kids went to their principal and said, hey, you come. They got 50 extra points or something like that. And Brian was, you know, who's that person? Well, too bad for Brian.

You know, but you've got the points. And so you just, you know, create some extra incentive. Those kind of things, accumulate it and have a reward plan.

Now what you're going to get for prizes, the local assembly has got to settle among themselves what they think is appropriate. I've seen some pretty extravagant things sometimes. I know in Sherman we're pretty generous, I think, in some ways.

But again, we try to make sure everybody gets something, you know. But it's happening. It's not how much you spend either, Stu.

We had a dear sister make a text for the prize night here. Yeah. And it's amazing, it was amazing the excitement on the children to take a text home you wouldn't have thought.

No. Couldn't. Now let's keep in mind that this word of God is still preaching if it hangs on that wall in their home.

Yeah. Excellent. Back to bringing out children, many years ago, someone got Really? Very good.

And again, it depends on the kids. Like sometimes you can have, I've seen, you know, very extravagant point systems where they make team points all week and then at the end of the week. Or other times a prize each night, you know.

And today kids seem to be more into the instant gratification rather than the wait for the end of the week. So you have to know your audience. That's the biggest thing.

Know who you're working with and govern yourself accordingly. Because, you know, those texts are beautiful and those kids, you know, they appreciate that. But you get into some other situations where, you know, they've given them texts ten years in a row.

And so, you know, the kids don't want them in their walls in their room to hang on. So, you know, there has to be an intelligence even when it comes to. But it is nice whatever the prize is.

In some way, I know it's expensive to get stuff with verses on it. I mean, that seems to be the most expensive thing there is to buy. But it is nice that, you know, somehow, get the word of God associated with it to get that into the house for further preaching.

Silent. You just have to know somebody knows how to make it. Well, that's it.

That's it. And I don't know what your basis is for giving kids Bibles. I do like to use it as an incentive in some places.

As soon as a kid shows up and they don't have a Bible, give them a Bible. No problem. But I like using a one, two, three night.

You know, come three nights, you get a free Bible kind of thing. But every time there is an effort going on, surely you want to have that involved. Get a case of Bibles handy and make sure the kids are taking a Bible home so that they can bring it back the next night if there is an ongoing thing and get points for it.

But at least they will have a Bible in their hands to read if they ever have such a mind to do so. Twelve minutes. Poor Stephen's gone and we're just getting into problems.

Not that he's a problem. But Romans 12, 20. I'm going to read this if you want to turn to it, fine.

Romans 12 and 20. Again, it's a principle that's true in Christian testimony at large. But it says, Therefore, if I an enemy hunger, feed him, and he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt keep holes of fire in his head.

You know. Until we get a hold of an idea of what that means you can think, wow, that's pretty fierce. Holes of fire, give him a guilty conscience or something like that.

But it's the idea of loving them even when they're the opposition. And so you get a child within the group that just seems to be at odds all the time. And Stephen's asking, somewhere you've got to draw a line.

But still, before you reach that line, you want them to know that you still care for them. So you go to great lengths to still pour out those expressions of affection and appreciation for them as an individual. So you're feeding them a great deal.

Especially teenage boys. The old proverb, the quickest way to a man's heart is through his mouth or whatever, through his belly. But be that as it may, you know, teenage boys, I hope Dope didn't do too bad the other evening too.

So, food is a tremendous reward to youngsters. But, Brian, what other ways do you handle problems in the audience? Well, I think what the youths have had to do, we've done it a lot in the southern town, in this town, in Mattawa, we've had to do right where there's that one person that is the, you know, the instigator and that no matter what you do, no matter what you try, it's still happening and for the sake that everyone else is there, you've just got to come and point us a cave if you want to, you know. Take them home and then the next week when they show up, no, you know, you give a night off and then, but they do find they miss it or they come back and they are better behaved.

So, you've got to sometimes do the tough love. I mean, the love just isn't okay, you know, you're trying, no, I mean, because, yeah, you love that one soul but here are these other 18 or whatever that are not getting nothing because this one's cutting up so, you've got to, if you make rules, you've got to stick to it. There's got to be consequences because if not, they'll just walk all over you.

On the other hand, I use the expression sprinkle the salt. That's going back to what Ted Steven was talking about, the adults not sitting in the back row all lined up with a bunch of, well, I don't know, I'm going to just stop there. The adult believers need to disperse themselves amongst the kids.

That's why I say sprinkle the salt, the influence of restraint, of preservation, of law and order. You know, it might mean a touch on the shoulder if somebody, too, seats over and a row ahead of you or something like that but, you've got to sit amongst the kids. The believers move around adults and that way you're interacting with the kids, too.

They're getting to know you. They know you care for them. They know you're fair.

They know you've set some firm guidelines. Sprinkle the salt. That's preservation.

Preservation of order. Not gray hair. Well, brother, you qualify for it.

No, it's, yeah, it's the, it's the metaphorical thing, not the physical thing. Peer pressure. You get some kids and it's just not cool to answer questions.

It's not cool to sing. Well, so be it, as long as they're not being a problem to others. If they're going to sit there and, you know, play the, well, if they're not creating a disruption, otherwise, to me, just let them.

Let them be. If you ask them a question they don't answer, let them be because his ears are open. he may think he's acting like he's not listening, but there's things registering, so I don't worry about those kids too much as long as they're not being the, as Brian said, like the class clown that we've got here and they're just disturbing everybody else.

And another thing, too, is splitting up the troublemakers. They all seem to congregate together. Yes.

I'm not just talking about this is the experience for peers. Yeah. Sometimes it only takes one that likes to get his friend going and we'll shift him around, shift him around a bit that often and cure it without having to get the other one to get it again.

Two more points. Persistence and potential. And we have that reference.

There's a verse that's quoted in, again, as you see, it's relevant to children's work as it is to the assembly's testimony of art and the individual believer, Galatians 6. And 9, let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. Now, we've already, I mean, this isn't contradicting what we have said that you don't necessarily see the distinct results of a kid being saved, you know, within the season of an effort or within a few years of the effort, but we are showing, we're showing the word of God, we're showing, we're demonstrating that the love of Christ in the individuals and the Lord has said, my work shall not return on the before. So, we're working for the long term, not just for the immediate.

A young lady had stopped by the old hall here a few months ago. She was 23 years old. Her brother and her mother were in the meeting on Sunday night.

She'd come out to children's meeting when she was just a young teenager. She'd come in and she says, this place brings back such memories. And she began to sing the chorus that she sang 12 years ago.

So, those things are indelibly placed upon the hearts of those children. She still remembers the song. Very good.

That's encouraging, isn't it? Fortunately, we couldn't get her to stay with us. Yeah. So, what do we do to keep them coming? You know, we've talked about the prize incentives and things like that, but especially Sunday school work, it doesn't end when your class ends.

The necessity of visiting the child's home and showing interest to them outside of the class, that's genuine Sunday school teachers' influence going beyond the walls of the gospel hall. You may have a, and again, I'm talking recent personal example, but Nancy just had all the girls in her house to do baked cookies for breakfast on Valentine's Day. You know, you do things like that.

Boys, you have a games night, you know, whether it's your home, you're at a gym, and again, I personally don't like to see it happen real regularly because the novelty of it wears off and its influence to create some kind of reward is lost. But do things with them outside of Sunday school as well. And in the day in which we live, I know one place that they have a gospel hall Facebook page almost, and if some of the kids don't show up, you know, they contact them, they keep in contact, but we missed it, you know, hey, we missed you, and it just gives them a sense of, you know, we missed you, and we missed and we missed you, and we you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we and we you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we you, and we you, and we missed you, and we you, and we you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we and we missed you, and we you, and we missed you, and we you, and we missed you, and we missed you, and we their kids to bring them to Sunday school.

And at the end, as the visitation went on, we know the rest of the story. But that kind of thing grew out of a, you know, Sunday school contact. Well, there's a lot to discourage in the work, but it's a work that we would certainly encourage in it because there's such potential there, as our last point was there.

Not only for those lives to be touched, but what it will spread out from those lives as the, you know, the vines go over the walls into those families. And ultimately, you know, it could be to the benefit of the assembly. I know our time is gone, but there was a lady that showed up in Orillia last year, last year, at the beginning of the year, and she had been in the Sunday school 40 years before.

And she came back, and as a result of that meeting, came back over the course of that year, I had a series there with Gary Sharp, and before we got there, 10 people professed to be saved as a result of that one lady. And it was the Sunday school that she had been loved in, the Sunday school that she had been taught in, that drew her back to that place, and she got all these other people coming back to her. So there's that potential, but ultimately, you know, it is for the glory of God.

And that's the big thing. All these things are nice to see, but we are glorifying God as we do this, and his son as we proclaim his name to our lost, sinful world.