BETA24: Kids Church Online - Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children

All right, you got the Beta Show episode 24. You got Jeff here with the Church Digital powered by Stadia Church Planting. Uh, this I really enjoyed this conversation. So, um, yeah, I went back to my roots here a little bit. We did a deep dive with the team over at Christ Fellowship Miami.

See, the number one question that I get asked any given week that I don't have a solid answer for when I'm talking about digital or about digital-only churches: what do you do with the kids? Like, what do we do? We do kids church online. Is that good enough? How do we do small groups? How do we do biblical community? How do we do crafts? How do we do all this stuff that we do in the physical space? And what does it mean to do that online? And so I've never really had an answer to that. Even like micro locations, what are we supposed to do when the parents are watching the church online services at a micro location? What are we supposed to do with the kids? And so I've kind of, him and Todd over the past year, told some stories, gave some examples, but it's never really, honestly, it's just never been enough.

And that brings us back to Christ Fellowship Miami, the church where I did kids ministry online way back in like 2017, somewhere around there, maybe 2016 even, just trying to figure out how to do kids church online, digitally, digitally even. And so, hey, you know what? It didn't work at the time. YouTube for Kids did not exist, and maybe that would have been the game changer back then, just saying. But we couldn't do it, and so we ended up shutting down kids church.

Well, guess what? 2020 came around. There's a little thing called COVID, global pandemic, and all of a sudden, hey, let's do kids online again. They broke out the old playbook. Christ Fellowship Miami re-implemented it, made major modifications to it, and they've been having great success. And honestly, this is why I wanted to bring the group back together. I wanted to do the deep dive for Christ Fellowship Miami. Hey, you know, I know you were doing some stuff. We did a podcast even earlier in the pandemic, George. What CF Miami's strategy was towards kids online. But let's talk about what's next because even my kids, we don't even attend the church Christ Fellowship in Miami, and my son who's ten is fascinated. He's like, "Daddy, I want to watch what CF Miami is doing online." And so it's connecting at a level that maybe we're not even realizing.

And so for the conversation, we're bringing in Gabby Vargas and Melissa Nan from the CF Miami kids team, and of course Ray the Armist, co-host once again with the Church Digital podcast, myself Jeff with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning, in a conversation that I'm simply calling "Won't Someone Please Think of the Children."

Okay, everybody, here you go. Gabby, this is your first time on. We've had CF kids on before, but I don't think you were on this, right? So you're new. Melissa, you're new here. I mean, let's start off with Gabby a little bit. Uh, Gabby, talk just intro here. Tell us, you know, a little bit of your ministry story, what you do with CF kids, like how you got to where you are. Get maybe a minute or so.

Ooh, the journey, the journey. Well, I, um, it started at CF in 2012. So I've been doing kids ministry now for eight years. You literally went back a decade, really? Like to nine years? That's like your two-minute story is going over an entire decade. Okay, cool. Let's hear it. Go ahead. I'm sorry, it's quick. I have it. I have it quick.

Uh, so yeah, yeah, eight years. Um, did preschool for about a couple, maybe two or three of those years, because I'm that's me. That's the realm I live in. I love preschoolers. Um, and now, um, through that I was at Palmetto Bay campus, kind of leading the team there, and then now I'm at the Coral Gables campus leading the kids team and now doing Sea of Kids online. But yeah, I am a kids person. That is what I do: kids and volunteers.

So you've been doing kids ministry for, you know, 2012, eight, nine years, something like that. Melissa, we were talking off air, um, a little bit, you know, like you started as a volunteer. What's what's kind of that story and that path looked like for you?

Kids ministry, uh, kind of runs in my blood. My mom was a ministry, a kids ministry director growing up, so I was always that kid that was at church all the time, every day of the week. Um, so I grew up seeing that. Then I got plugged in to CF. I started off as a volunteer, and it just, um, it just grew from there. I wanted to become more and more involved. So from there I became a director, and um, when things started moving online, I got the opportunity to do some writing, and um, it's been this journey that I can only attribute to God. He just paved that way, and it's been incredible. But yeah, love kids ministry. I'm all in. Um, it's amazing.

So, and so like CF way back in the day, uh, 2016, had was working with kids online. We tried that as an experiment. I was digital pastor at the time, Ray. That we would call that CF 2.0, I think, that era, because there was actually an era before me, before I came back. And so that was 1.0, 2.0, you're 3.0, and so now 4.0 is what's coming up. Yeah, so we gotta give credit as the organization is growing and evolving digital. So back in the 2.0 era, we were doing kids. It didn't work. We, you know, the difficulties with the curriculum and some of that writing it, some of the time constraints, uh, really kind of hurt in that. And so we kind of abandoned this whole, uh, the digital idea of anything with digital kids. And so now we're excited to see where kids is coming back.

Okay, yeah. I took a global pandemic to do kids digitally, and there may be some pros and cons to that.

Yeah, I mean, people are dying, but we get to connect with kids in a unique way. I can talk.

So I would love to hear, um, like what was the journey? So like the global pandemic hit. Oh my gosh, what are we supposed to do now? Like, how did you get to the steps of understanding and re-embracing, maybe what were some of those early first steps of doing kids, what did that look like digitally?

We can't take credit for it. We are 2.0 because 1.0 was the writing extraordinaire, Ileana. So Ileana Silji and Stephanie Moreno kind of came together and said, "Okay, everybody's turning to the internet. We don't have face-to-face with kids anymore on the weekends. So how do we get them an experience in their homes, in their living rooms?" And so that heart for teaching kids about Jesus kind of just kept going. It didn't matter that there was a pandemic. We knew that we had to reach kids no matter where they were at and teach them in a way that we have always done in a really fun and engaging way. And so we basically, I say we, but it was really them, uh, just brought Way Station to kids' homes through these videos. And so it was just a green screen, I think at one point. Um, we're just like a solid black, you know, colorful wall with two hosts, and they just read a script and taught them about Jesus and played a fun, fun game, added some worship. So really what drove it was the same heart and desire that we had on the weekend, but just now we had to turn to social media, and it was really cool to see how Ileana and the team there really crafted that and took that bold step and said, "Okay, we're not sure what we're doing here, but let's just do something."

Yeah, it was definitely born out of necessity. It was like, "Oh my goodness, we're not gonna have church this weekend. What are we gonna do with the kids?" But man, let me tell you, they scrambled together really fast. And like Gabby said, they just stood in front of a colorful wall and they said, "Okay, this is what we were gonna say this weekend. Let's just say it straight into a camera." And that's basically the beginnings of it. Um, just adapting. This is what we were going to do on the weekend, so let's bring it to their living room. And it's definitely evolved since then, but that was, yeah, that was the beginnings of it.

So let's talk about that evolution a little bit because it's like, like all things, looking back I can see the natural progression, but when we were in the midst of it, I didn't see it as it was happening because there was yes, there was the weekend, but then there was also the things that you guys were doing during the week, like story time or, you know, some of the games that you guys were doing during the week.

Yeah, I mean, it was pretty cool, you know, and it didn't have as high engagement as the weekend did, but I'm watching as a parent, I'm like, "Oh wow, they're trying like a lot of great and different things." Can you guys walk through that?

Ah, you just took me back. I just had a flashback moment of how so a lot of the resources and attention went to the videos that Ileana was hosting with Michael for the weekend because that was our kids service. But all the things during the week was us again, that drive to just want to reach kids, and it didn't matter how. So we were using our phones on these makeshift tripod situations with Bibles stacked on desks, and you know, and we're like, "So what do we do?" And I would run over to the creative team and I would ask them. I would ask the videographers, "Like, where do I put lights?" And by lights I mean lamps, not anything fancy, but lamps without the shade. Uh, we actually have a picture of one of our girls holding those long lamp things that you put the shade on over, like almost like a boom stick, just to create some type of lighting over our two guys that were teaching fifth grade leadership.

So yeah, we were just, we at that, that's when Melissa and I got together because we started writing little hangout scripts that would be released on Wednesday as kind of like a midweek devotional, bedtime stories time for kids, and we would write a game, a little Bible story, and just make it fun and creative. But let me tell you, it was so makeshift. We were stacking books, holding lamps.

I feel like that's when, um, my journey actually started because it was one of those things. The kids are all shut down and on lockdown too, so what are they doing during the day? They're, you know, watching YouTube videos. So it was like, "Okay, we are going to capitalize on this. We are going to give them something that they can watch during the week, um, on their downtime." And so we started coming up with bedtime stories, and we would do a bedtime story where we would recap, you know, the lesson from the weekend. Um, we started doing hangout videos. We, I don't know, it was so silly, but they mailed me a boom stick or a boom mic and a ring light, and they said, "Okay, start doing some arts and crafts videos from your house." Okay, I've never done anything like this before, but sure, why not? Uh, so we were just, man, we were trying.

Was it, it was a season that was a season that we all learned that you, when you're recording a video, you don't look at the screen. You have to look at the camera right there. There's a difference. So that was, this is where we were at, people. This is where we were at. There was no teleprompter. It was just, "Okay, what am I supposed to talk about?" Whatever comes out of my mouth, that's what it is. It was fun.

I mean, don't worry, Jeff can probably attest to a bunch of churches that that was their Sunday service, you know, that was their experience on their Sunday service. So what you guys did with the hangouts during the week was fine, and it was so special to us every time that we finished that video, it was like we had created this experience. We were so proud of it.

Yeah, we were so proud of it as we should have been because it was everything was so new to us. We're kids people. We're not video people. What we do is kids. I know how to calm a crying baby. I know how to engage kids, but we're not video. And so to bring that to

Life, we were so proud. We were so excited that we could do it, and we would look at our videos and I would spend hours on iMovie trying to teach the rest of the team like, "You can do a picture-in-picture. Look what I just figured out, or Ken Burns, right?" It was, ah, it was really fun. It was a really, really fun time.

After two years of podcasts, I think that's the first time Ken Burns has made a reference on the show, so congratulations Ken Burns out there, major documentary creator. Thank you, sir, for your contribution towards Kids Church Online. That was beautiful right there.

Um, and so like, what was the reception? What was how was that? Were the kids receptive? Choices to parents? Like, what was some of the feedback you got? Because there was a philosophical shift here a little bit. You went from like the one hour on Sunday, okay, digitally now broadcasting one hour on Sunday, but now you're talking a lot more Monday through Friday hangout stuff, crafts. Like, this is more five, six, seven days a week. Like, so what was that received from the kids and the parents that you were working with?

Well, it was um, it was pretty exciting because um, the team, Ileana and Stephanie, they started to brainstorm ideas, ways that they could get the kids to engage more. And lo and behold, was born the virtual challenge card. We had been using a challenge card on Sundays on the weekend, um, and they just came up with the idea, "Well, what if we do a virtual challenge card where the kids earn sort of a reward if they tune in every weekend, if they learn their memory verse, if they participate in some sort of family mission or something that they can do even from home?"

And it was, let me tell you, it was so exciting because we were plugging this, pushing this virtual challenge card, and then when we actually had somebody submit their challenge card via email, oh my goodness, it was that's it. That changed everything. I feel like that was such a game changer because uh, Gabby and Michael, who were the CF Online hosts at this point, they went and delivered the prize to the child's home and it was recorded and then it was aired on an episode. And that was it. All the kids at that point were they wanted to be visited by their CF Kids Online stars. So uh, I feel like that was the catalyst that just sort of uh changed the engagement game because now they had something, you know, the kids were locked down, they were in their homes, they were starving for some interaction, and to be visited by these people that they're seeing on TV, I just, it was so special. Those videos were so special. It was incredible.

Yeah, that challenge card was a game changer for our family. Um, Gabby is my kids CF Kids director, and when she showed up to drop off that box for them, that was everything. It really was. It was such a powerful moment to see them kind of engage in that kind of way because, you know, before, like, they loved attending CF Kids, but I hadn't seen them engage with CF Kids in that kind of way of, "Daddy, we got to do our challenges. Daddy, we got to watch this week. Daddy, we've got to learn our memory verse." You know, because they got a memory verse, they go to Christian school, so they've already got a memory verse, but then they were like, "No, we gotta learn our floor or our CF memory verse too. We've gotta make sure we have that down, Daddy. We're gonna do the family mission." And so that got them very, very excited and engaged in just a brand new way that even as the online pastor, I was like, "Dang, it, can I make a challenge card for the grown-ups?" Because grown-ups aren't responding the same way, you know I'm saying. Grown-ups are more like, "Oh, we'll put on the servers for ten minutes and, you know, we'll see how it goes." But with CF Kids, it was just high engagement week to week. The kids just wanted more and more and more. And so that I felt was like a big game changer.

Um, there was also something special that I saw you guys do during the pandemic in which you would give shout-outs to kids.

Yeah, that was sweet.

Yeah, so what was that born out of?

Uh, again, the desire to let kids know that we see you, even though we're not in person, we see you. We're praying for you, and we're still your church. And we, the team's heart for these kids was just so great that we were trying everything and anything to reach them. So when we were like, "Let's give them a shout-out. Let's just say, 'Hey, we see you. Like, great job watching,'" um, or let it, we would engage the parents also. The parents would send in their shout-outs like, "Hey, just so proud of, you know, so-and-so for reading your Bible this week. Love, Mom." And so we would share that with them, and the kids would just like lose it, seeing their names up there. And then you would get texts from parents like, "Thank you so much." And it became like this hot list where parents were like, "Did you get my shout-out? I sent it in. Did you get it?" Um, but to circle back, I think part of that was we didn't realize that the need was there, that kids and families were waiting for this probably for longer than we thought. It took a pandemic, right? But um, they were just like, it was just there. And then when we launched it, people were like, "Finally." And when you realize that kids spend a lot of time on YouTube, and now they get to spend it on church YouTube.

So let's talk through um, now the evolution where you guys start writing and directing storylines that cross multiple weeks and really become very creative, very different. Uh, where did that come from? You started experimenting with different camera angles. You started experimenting with props. You guys started building like scripts and characters. Like, where did all this come from? Like, because it's become in my perspective like this production that is just magnificent and wonderful and almost like CF Kids Sesame Street to a degree, you know, and I'm saying so, uh, just without the muppets. And so talk us through that. Like, where did that come from? And uh, how did we get here?

Um, this that has been um, I think the fun part. Um, it almost feels like, yeah, we're writing a Christian sitcom to a certain degree. We have our character archetypes, and it's super fun. Um, but that was born truly from a desire to engage our older kids. It just seems like our fourth and fifth graders, they're the ones that always kind of fall off, you know? By the time that they reach fourth grade, it's like they're just disengaging. They're not as in it. And we wanted to reach that group. We wanted them to stay plugged in and connected. Um, so we thought, "Well, what better way? Let's create these quirky, over-the-top, but still, you know, real-life situations. Our characters are going to deal with the things that these kids deal with, but just on a more comical scale." Um, so that they can see, "You're not just reading about some man in the Bible that lived thousands of years ago. Now there's a point to it. He, that person dealt with his problems of his day in this way. Well, this is how we do it nowadays. This is how we apply that same biblical principle." But we just wanted it, we wanted it to feel more relatable. Like, "Look, these characters are facing this situation, and this is how they work it out um by applying the bottom line as we call it in CF Kids." And now the challenge is it feels like every month when we're doing this script writing, it's like, "Okay, now where do we go from here?" It just, it's taken on a life of its own. It has Disney Channel is our best friend and YouTube. So we definitely get a lot of inspiration from that, but also real, just real-life situations that just like Melissa said, like, it's real-life situations. They were like, "Yeah, that could happen to a kid during Christmas time. We were talking about being grateful, right? And so we were like, 'Okay, to a child who just got everything, um, you know, but they still want more.' So we had the set of all the boxes, and we're like, we had all these Amazon packages. But it was making the most of what you've been given. So okay, let's make the most of what we have been given." And so you see Michael and Gabby like jumping through boxes, and they're playing, you know, Mandalorian. Um, and so it's just real, real-life situations often do drive that script writing, and then we just let loose. Like, we're just like, "Take it. Let's see where it lands."

You're doing a Mandalorian spoof?

No, that was the thing we did. Tell them how detailed you got. Tell them how detailed you got with that.

That was our editor. That was incredible. That makes a difference, by the way. Videographer and editor make, cause me on iMovie? No way. I'm telling you, we would have still been doing some type of Ken Burns.

See, they added laser shots, dude. They had lasers flying. Uh, I think you guys had a Mandalorian helmet out of bubble guns. I made the Mandalorian helmet out of cardboard.

Yes. Our prop department is a must, which consists of Melissa and Isabel. So creative minds come together. They made a Mandalorian helmet out of cardboard. That's amazing. Just so cool. You can do anything with a YouTube video if you're trying to connect with the fourth and fifth graders.

You did. Um, we don't even attend Christ Fellowship. We attended other churches and kind of moved away, uh, but my son goes to school at one of the campuses, and evidently he saw, I don't remember the name of the um, uh, the series you were doing, but it was like one of the obstacle courses that was done recently, and he's like, "Dad, I want to watch that. That's going to be my church." And so we attended uh, CF Online Kids. You know, we started with uh, I guess it was kind of the uh, the like searching or the accounting thing that was over at the Doral campus that I've never been to. I was like, "Hey, that's a nice campus." Then we saw we shot over to the Redlands for the obstacle course where I'm watching you and Shannon, Gabby and Shannon running around tripping over each other on scooters, and uh, and it's and the cut scenes kind of like Office-esque a little bit where you're talking to the camera, dialoguing to what's happening. I'm like, "Man, they've really put some thought into this." But what happened as a result of it, my fourth grader bought in hook, line, and sinker. My sixth grader, who thinks that she's too good for the world, is into this thing hook, line, and sinker. And for me, it was like, "Hey, you got this. You got the boy. That's good. You got the girl. The girl doesn't like anything right now, uh, and so somehow you managed to get her as a result too." So that's where I was like, "Hey, they're doing something different here." But what I loved, it didn't feel a thing like what was a Sunday morning service would be like. I i think maybe there was a song, but it was like at the end, almost as like an afterthought, right? It was really, you're trying to teach this lesson. You're right, almost like Disney Channel or YouTube-esque. Like, that's really the core of what you were trying to do.

Well, like I said, I said YouTube and Disney Channel are our best friend. And why reinvent the wheel? They're doing it, and they're engaging kids already as it is. Well, then let's make it real in a godly way for kids that will, that it'll matter. Um, and so a lot of times we do get some of those quirky ideas um from that, and we, I don't know, we exactly that we feel like, "Why reinvent the wheel when it's already engaging them?" Let's just take some of those things and adapt it to the Bible stories, the bottom lines, and the kids watch. They get excited to see, you know, what kind of obstacle is coming up next. But um, yeah, there's I'm sure there's tons of general original ideas that we have, but a lot of it does come from inspiration from looking at what kids are already watching.

are already looking at so I'll ask. Um, I have a couple friends with sixth graders and seventh graders. I'm like, "Hey, let me watch TV with you," and they're like, "Hey, did you see this? This is hilarious," and I look at it. I'm like, "I don't think that's that funny," but you do.

So we are going to add some of that element into Sea of Kids Online because it's what you like. So our audience is them. So when we write and when we think through what we're doing, we're thinking of that fifth grade, fourth grade boy and girl. And the best part is that they're so bought in that when they see Michael or Gabby, like at the school, just in the hallways, they will ask them something referring to an episode. And it just catches them off guard. "Hey, how was that soccer match?" You know, from one of the episodes where Michael had this very important soccer game. "Hey, Michael, how was your soccer game? Did you guys win?" And it's almost like it takes him a minute. "Oh, uh, yeah, yeah, the game was great." They're so bought in, and it just, it's like it's inspiring. It's like, "Okay, we have to keep doing this." Um, so I love that we are able to just keep dreaming bigger and bigger. So that's very exciting.

You know, I'm thinking there may be like churches that are wanting to do this, or churches that are trying to think outside of the box. And so I'm asking for you, but I'm also thinking there may be some other churches that don't have the Christ Fellowship structure, budget size behind it. How much, um, how much of the idea generation comes from like your team? Is it completely independent? Do you ever work outside with other departments? You know, Ray assisting, you know, CF's got a creative communications type of department as well. Is there resourcing or idea generation or training from the outside in? Was it all kind of self-driven at this point? Even like, what does it look like?

Well, the internet is a very special and beautiful place because there's so many resources out there, and the pandemic really allowed for that to boom. So on YouTube, you will find so many different Bible story videos that churches who have great animation teams create. They are really good at creating animation Bible story videos. We are not. We know that that's not our niche, right? We create the hosting, the movie kind of esque, right? They have really great teams that create animation for Bible story videos, and they share them. And so we use those as resources to include into our Sea of Kids Online videos. And again, that's just not reinventing the wheel. It's there, it's good, and they want to share it. And so we will search those up, make sure that it's good to go, and we'll use those for our Sea of Kids Online episodes to include the Bible story videos.

The same with worship. There are some churches that have great dance teams and worship teams, and so they create these amazing videos and they want to share them. And so instead of us trying to create now animation Bible story videos and worship videos, we are partaking in this really cool capital C Church movement where we all get to share this amazing content to make a really great experience for kids. So resources such as worship songs, Bible videos, you can find them on YouTube or platforms like Worship House Kids. We really like them. Um, so there are plenty of different resources online that people are just really gifted in, and they want to share. So we add the twist of the character, plot, and action. Um, and we stick to that. And then we grab those resources from other churches that are willing to share and are really incredible at what they do.

I can tell you from my just my personal evolution in this online world, it's, you know, I've never gone to film school. I'm still learning. I feel like I know nothing about nothing. This is all very brand new. But it just, you know, if you have that desire, I would say to other churches who just have this desire to produce something for their kids online, um, you'd be amazed how much you can accomplish with just born of a desire to do this. Um, you very quickly learn, okay, so that's the importance of lighting and good audio and not having an echo. I mean, it just develops and it comes. But you know, I would say even if you don't, you know, to a smaller church, even if you don't have this big fancy creative team and all this equipment, hey, in the beginning we were recording from our phones with just somebody holding the phone or us propping it up on Bibles, and it just went from there. But the desire to bring something to the kids, that's what drove us. That's what made this whole thing go somewhere. And of course, you know, because that's where our heart was, I feel like that's, you know, why God blessed it and continues to bless it, because it's not for any other reason except to just teach these kids, reach them, and help them to grow in their walk.

So I've been to film school. Um, I have a degree from film school. You know what? You know what they tell you at film school? Uh, you don't learn how to do any of this stuff at film school. You learn it by doing it. Go get an internship. Go produce a film. Go do some videos. Go get out there and just be creative on your own. And so like, yeah, I mean, the film school, I can tell you plenty of stats, plenty of factoids about, you know, cinema and television. Hey, here's a fact. The TV show MASH, uh, Hawkeye Pierce, you know, back in like the seventies and eighties, uh, at the finale, they did two hours worth of episode for the finale, no commercials. Really was the first time that a TV show had ever gone two hours straight with no commercials. In fact, when that episode was over, so many people went to the bathroom at the exact same time in New York City that pipes burst in apartments and they had major flooding issues in the city of New York because nobody went to the bathroom during MASH. Honest to God, I, you did not wake up this morning for a children's podcast thinking you were going to talk about plumbing humor for MASH. So you're welcome for that.

How does this affect physical, like your physical services? Not the plumbing humor, let's get off that. But like, you're doing all this creative work. I'm watching this very eloquent story roll out over maybe fifteen, twenty minutes where you're doing this obstacle course and Gabby's having to put her attitude in check. Um, so like, there's elements here that's like, this is good. Does that get shown online as well as physical? Because the majority of your campuses are physical at this point now. Wherever we are, April, May 2021. So what carries over from digital to physical?

So that's actually super cool because, um, so when we met physically, before we shut down, we had what was called the Way Station, where it was a host would stand up there and sort of host the kids through the Bible lesson through slides and mini videos and worship videos. And when we reopened, what we decided was, "Why are we going to go back? Why are we going to take a step backward and bring on an awkward thirteen-year-old to just stand and read a cue card?" Which was unfortunately sometimes how the experience went. When we have the same lesson being taught through CF Kids Online, so it's actually been adapted into our weekend experience. So the kids will have their small group time with their small group leader, but then they will watch the CF Kids Online episode. So that's been really cool, and it's funny. It's one of those things that now we are constantly thinking about that. Okay, the kids online can play this game. The kids in the physical campus can play this game. Well, let's find something that they can both do. You can do this if you're home, and you can also do this if you're watching from the campus.

Give an example. Like, I'm even trying to, so you got fifty kids in a room and you got like a brother and a sister, or maybe it's just one kid and a parent. Like, what would that look like?

Yeah, well, one of the ones I'll share an example of what didn't work for that. So in Sea of Kids Online, the teams are unraveling streamer rolls onto their arms, and it's this competition, right? So we're like, you know, it's timed, and it's whoever gets to the end, and it's crazy, and there's streamer flying everywhere. And so when we were creating, we were like, "Easy, Disney Channel did the streamer thing on YouTube. We're gonna do it in Sea of Kids." So we were like, "Oh, um, let's, what, how can the kids at home do it?" Well, they can do it with toilet paper. And we're like, "Maybe not. Like, toilet paper was a sensitive subject in 2020. Let's just not." Um, and so we didn't, right? That situation didn't work.

Um, but there have been others where we did, like a penny stacking game, like coins. And so we gave the kids the option like, "Grab some cereal. Do you have some Fruit Loops or anything that you can stack at home and do it alongside with us?" Uh, one great example is that we played this game called the Mystery Box Challenge, and it was like a dessert. You opened it up. They had to close their eyes and feel around for what was in there. Well, we get this video later on of a family that recreated it. They made a cereal box, put treats inside of it, and they cut a hole open, and the kids were sticking their hands in it. And so it's things that they can do at home too if they'd like. For something as easy as stacking pennies and competing against Mom, Dad, or sister to see who can do it as you're watching the characters of Sea of Kids Online do it as well, or something as complex as creating your own mystery box challenge. And the kids, they want to experience that too. They want to do as much fun. I even heard of someone recreating a scooter obstacle course in their backyard with little scooters, and we were like, "Do not try that at home." Yeah, we should have put that. We should have put that warning, little disclaimer. Do not try that at home.

I will say this one thing that I would have never called at the beginning of the pandemic is our age-graded ministries transitioning to video teaching. When we went back live and in person, because even my wife, who was a volunteer in CF Kids for a long time pre-pandemic, said, "Man, since they brought online in there, the whole experience has improved." And that was her feedback on it, because Way Station at a campus is just very difficult to create. You don't have the same volunteers. You don't have the same resources. But with video teaching, all of a sudden you can, right?

Well, and what it did was that it standardized the experience at all of our campuses, right? So you may have a really great Way Station host, so Way Station meaning your large group time with your kids. You may have this really talented, you know, guy or gal at one of your campuses, but maybe at another campus you don't. You don't have that very dynamic at a service hour. And so what having online did was that it standardized that experience for all of our campuses so that kids all across Miami and even Latin America can now have a really awesome and fun experience no matter what campus they're in.

Oh, you just dropped an Easter egg in there. Talk about this because even Jeff didn't think about this. English and Spanish?

Yes, English and Spanish. Yes. That was, um, almost kind of like a non-issue from the start. We all, they always did Spanish and English. Yeah. So, um, we are really blessed to live in Miami, so a lot of our cast is bilingual. So that does help, but it comes with its challenges because we had to have someone translate the scripts. Melissa and I don't write in Spanish. We write in English. And so we had to have someone on our team that is able to translate and make it relevant because some jokes don't translate as well. They don't land.

In Spanish as they would in English, and so she has to be a little creative too to create some fun things. And then also knowing that there is some leeway for things to be different, right? It doesn't have to be exactly the same. So we were flexible with the experience being a little bit different for Spanish than it is for English, but still keeping our goals and our vision at the core. But yeah, our team will do one episode in English and then turn it back around and then start, oh yes, in Spanish. That was a big, um, man, I had to switch my brain over because I would make all these props and they would have all these different English words on them. And then it came time to record Spanish, it's like, so where are the Spanish props? And it was just like, give me a few minutes. It was, I had to retrain my brain. I was like, okay, we are doing this all out in two languages. I need to retrain my brain. And even now when we write scripts, sometimes, like, if we use certain videos, like certain video content, we always have to keep in mind, hey, can this be? Can we just do a voiceover? Can it? Can we find something that's similar in Spanish? So it's, um, yeah, it's a whole thing.

The best part of that is when we're like, okay, right, the videographer is like, three, two, one, action, and we just recorded English. And now we're doing Spanish. And one of us will take off running and we say, go, go, go, is English. So we have to do the whole thing again and you know, say it in Spanish. Or you're like in the middle of a sentence in Spanish and one word comes out in English and that's it. Reset the whole set and do it all over again.

So you know, I know a lot of the churches in the season, um, especially ones that are very heavy digital, uh, they've struggled to like engage with kids. Um, and have reverted. I don't want to make this sound like a bad thing. I think it's a good strategy, but it's, hey, let's really disciple the parents to disciple the kids, or let's equip the parents in the season. Um, that that can help be that voice and really empower the parents to become like that spiritual hero in the house. You guys have done an excellent job creating some of this content. What is that equipping the parents piece? What does that look like for you guys at CF?

So we do have a lot of um family resources. We have a whole webpage. Basically, anything that we teach the kids online or in campus, we always try to provide additional resources for the families, especially you know the ones that are just watching strictly online. If the kids in the campus are receiving a small group lesson and um an online lesson, we want the parents at home to have that ability as well. So we provide on the webpage that is literally it's slash parents. It's for parents. Uh, we provide um different content and resources for them to do with their kids at home. We send home a lot of, or we create digitally, um, a lot of different uh resources. For example, recently we did a, it was called snack break, and it was basically like a little recipe book that the parents could do with their child. And then as they're making the snack, they go over um like a little devotional and questions that they can ask their child to help to engage them and talk to them about what it is that they learned.

So we always try to provide some sort of resource so that the parents can know how to talk to their child or what to talk to them about um to kind of re-emphasize what it is that they've learned in CF kids online. And I would say you know also digitizing them now helps out so much more because pre-pandemic you can only get those resources on the weekend. Um, but now that they're on our church website, now that they're all available in PDF form, download, et cetera, um, it's easier for the parent to get to them because even speaking just as a campus pastor at the time, you know, I'm on stage or I'm dealing with stuff. I don't have time to like always get there right as they're closing. So to know that, oh, I can just go during the week and download it, that's that's a huge win. That really was a huge one. They'll get the flyer, the challenge card, or the resource, and then they'll lose it. And then they're like, mom, where is my snack book? Uh, uh, uh, I will download it.

Um, our social media team does a really great job too at engaging parents. So who's on YouTube kids? Who's on social media? Parents, right? And so we, that is two different audiences and trying to just address each of them. But our social media team does a really great job at pushing resources for parents through social media. Um, and so because we create CF kids online, our minds sometimes go to like creating a really fun social media experience on Instagram. But we had to shift that because the kids aren't on Instagram. So it was creating um giveaways for parents instead of for kids, right? So a mom basket or a movie night basket. But that really is credit to our social media team. Really, one of the greatest things to me that you guys figured out over the haul was also awareness because you guys were creating so much great content. And this is something that Stefan, I would always talk about in the back end. I would just tell her, Stephanie, you guys are doing great. She's like, well, how do we grow this? And I was like, people just need to be aware that you're making this content because we didn't have CF kids online pre-pandemic. And so it's like you guys were creating stuff. It's not that you guys weren't creating stuff. It's that parents weren't aware. What were some of the best ways that you helped make parents aware of, hey, we are creating great resources for you and for your family?

Yeah, so we really used a lot of what we already had in place. So our directors were already making phone calls and text messages to families to just catch up with them during the pandemic. So we just use that platform to let them know that, hey, we have a special experience for your kids online. And so in just in that text message, we would get parents saying, what? Really? Send that to me. So of course, we would send them the link to our social media pages. So we used the platforms that we already had, which was just texting and connecting to families during the week. But then again, like I said, our social media team does such an incredible job at creating a buzz, right? And so they, where's Bruce? This last season, it was where's Bruce? And it not only created a buzz with the kids, but parents were asking us like, where is Bruce? So much so that then the adults uh social media pages kind of caught on and then they were creating that buzz. And so people are now asking, what is this Bruce situation? Oh, it's CF kids online. So using those platforms of um social media and then also learning about algorithms, right? It takes that desire, like Melissa was saying, to want to learn. And so we had to learn that there are algorithms that we need to learn. So clicking, asking, even our parents, and creating volunteer teams that would, hey, we need you guys to engage with the episodes online and share, share, share. And so having their engagement also helped to spread the word online. So it wasn't just something that just us as a staff was doing, but now we are, we were allowing our volunteers to take a part of it, to get excited about it, and to share and really cast vision on the impact that they could have and how they could still volunteer even though they were home behind the screen. They could still volunteer by clicking, share, reposting, and sending it to family members. So that has been, not just that, just constantly talking about it. I wish that I would have, like, this, we had a campaign, but really it was just using what we had at our fingertips, making the most of it, and talking about it. And then also our church, our leadership team is amazing, and they believe in CF kids online. They support it. And so having their support is huge because they're number one fans of it. So they're talking about it in service. They're sharing it with families. So that it helps. It helps to have their support because it's not just CF kids pushing it. It's the whole church pushing it together.

On that support, honestly, makes the biggest difference in the world to know that you're not out there trying to do something on your own, but you've got resources, you've got patience, you've got time, you've got insight, you've got somebody in your corner fighting for you and encouraging you along that way. That's that's just beautiful.

Hey, so we're going to wrap up here. Uh, just as we're closing, I got one last question. Give some advice. We're going to put links in the show notes. You like, you'll be able to see examples of all this. Uh, we'll get Gabby and Melissa to send over like some of the some of the best episodes they've done. It'll be great. But um, would love, wouldn't love, this, the Mandalorian, definitely. Um, somebody wants to get started. Uh, somebody is not not doing this, or maybe they're doing the service and obviously you guys did a pivot in COVID to kind of get to where you are now. Give some advice. What advice would you give to a church that's wanting to do something similar to what you're doing? Needs to figure out how to take those steps. What would you tell them?

Um, don't be, don't be afraid to to just start it. Just just start it. Do it. Um, because the kids are, the kids need it. They want it. They're waiting to hear from you. Um, so just don't be afraid to just start even if it's on a blank wall and it's you and the camera stacked on some books and a lamp with no shade to start. Just, yeah, I I would add, I would, I completely agree with that. Um, it doesn't matter if we had very, very humble beginnings as well. So just, you know, pull out the phone if that's, you know, that's the recording device you have. Pull out your phone, stack it up on some books. Um, just, you know, just do something because at the end of the day, it's not our efforts. It, we can try and try and try and try, and if God doesn't bless it, then it's not gonna go anywhere. So but if our heart, you know, if their heart is to reach kids, then you know, God is going to bless that. He will bring growth. It will develop. It just will. So I would say, you know, take the curriculum, whatever lesson it is that they want to teach, um, just find a fun way to adapt it, you know, just keeping in mind, okay, you're talking to a camera, so you're gonna have to be extra, right? I would say put on the extra smile and the extra energy. And you know, it is going to take a little bit of that. I will give that advice that the camera sucks up your energy, so be extra. And just do it. Just go for it. I do have to say, kids, people everywhere, you already know how to engage kids. So just do it in front of a camera. Um, invest, invest in little equipment. Even if it's just a little, I don't even know what you call them, the the dead, the dead mouse, the scene. I'm a kid's person, not a Vader person. What are you doing? Dead mouse? You're encouraging uh EDM uh in kids ministries ministry? That's fine. The microphone with the fuzzy thing? Why am I not remembering the name right now? Oh gosh, like a boom mic? I know, I know you're talking about like it's a microphone, a dead cat, a dead cat, a dead cat. Yeah, that's what you guys call it. That's not like a technical name for it. No, no, no. Yeah, there's plenty of different models out there. You invest in a microphone. Invest in a microphone that has a fuzzy cover, that has a fuzzy cover. It doesn't have to be super expensive. Amazon has tons of things. You don't have to spend hundreds or even, no, you don't, you don't. Just invest in a microphone, some lighting. Your kids people everywhere, you already know how to engage kids.

You can do this. You can engage kids online and finally go to YouTube. There's so many churches willing and ready to share resources with you. Um, so you don't have to do it alone. I just want to take a moment here and publicly say that the Church Digital Podcast does not in any way endorse the killing of any person, any animal, whether cat or mouse. Tom and Jerry are friends and need to be part of our lives. However, we do endorse bangers in EDM. So we do endorse Dead Mouse, Marshmallow, you know, so that that's a thing.

Thank you for this. We need to hang out more. Like, I miss this group. All right, this is so good. Gabby, Melissa, thank you very much for jumping on the podcast and sharing some sites here. Uh, if check out the links in the show notes to get more information and to see some examples of some of the stuff they're doing. Um, you know, church, we talk a lot about iterating, experimenting, trying something different. Just do it. Get out there, kick the tires, try it with, uh, you know, your iPhone or your Android and the flashlight. Just start with that. Start with something and then build and go as necessary. And Gabby's right, it doesn't take major budget to be effective to create things in the world today. So love what love what this church is doing, love what CF's doing on a dime. And um, hopefully it's inspiring for you all out there. So for Ray, for Gabby, for Melissa, this is Jeff of the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning. Thanks for joining us today, and uh, we'll see you again next time here at the pod. You all have a good day.