185: Finally, A Children’s Curriculum Made For Two Or More (Literally) | with Ali Thompson

What if your small church could run a meaningful, Jesus-centered children’s ministry—even with just a few kids and a couple of volunteers? 

In this episode, I’m talking with Group Publishing about their brand-new Sunday School curriculum, Two or More, designed specifically for smaller churches and mixed-age groups. 

If you've been trying to “make it work” with curriculum that doesn’t fit your context… this one's for you.

In this episode, you'll hear:

1. Why Two or More was created with small churches in mind
2. How it works for all ages in the same room
3. What makes this curriculum different from others on the market
4. How it supports volunteers who wear all the hats
5. How to know if it’s the right fit for your church

Find Two Or More Curriculum here: www.smallchurchministry.com/group

Connect with Ali Thompson:
athompson@group.com

Join our free Facebook Community: www.facebook.com/groups/smallchurchministry


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Transcript

Laurie Graham: 0:01

Hey, welcome to the small church ministry podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host. Laurie Graham, let's dive in. You. Laurie, hey, hey, welcome to the small church ministry podcast. My name is Laurie, and super excited today to introduce a guest who's going to talk a little bit about children's ministry with us. But before I do that, I actually came back to re record the intro, because the first 5678, minutes of what we're talking about is just the unique ministry opportunities and how special small churches are. So if you were, like, popping into this episode and you're like, Oh, it's on kids ministry, I don't do that. I'm not going to listen. I just want to invite you to at least stay for the first 567, minutes of this episode, because Allie has some really cool stuff to share that I think we all need to listen to. All right, sit back and we'll dive into the real intro and podcast. Hey, hey, welcome back to the small church ministry Podcast. I'm so excited today we are just going to dive right in. I'm going to introduce you to a new friend of mine, and we are going to talk specifically about two or more curriculum, a brand new curriculum coming out, specifically designed and developed, not only with small churches in mind, but with input from people in small churches. So Allie Thompson is here, Allie, before we jump into all that meat, right? Because we're so excited to talk about the curriculum today together. Could you introduce yourself that whatever seems important, whatever's fun. Let people know about

Ali Thompson: 1:43

you. Sure. I am Allie Thompson. I'm an editor at group publishing, and I live in Maine and love it there, and love to serve kids in my church and build relationships with them. So I'm really excited to get to share with you guys today what we're doing and hopefully inspire you.

Laurie Graham: 2:05

And you have been following us for a while. I know some people have kind of met you at our online conferences. You've been around there. You listen to the podcast. You want to tell everybody what you do when you're listening to the

Ali Thompson: 2:15

podcast. Yeah, I like to listen to the podcast while I'm mowing my lawn. I stick my earbuds in under my sound canceling muff thingies for the lawnmower, and I just hit play. And it's a great time to catch up on podcasts.

Laurie Graham: 2:32

It's so awesome. And I know, Allie, you have been in a variety of church sizes. You've been mid sized churches, small churches, one, one really, really tiny church in college that I want to hear your experience on in that but as as you look at like small church, mid sized church, and I know you're like me, like God works everywhere. God works in bigger churches. God works in smaller churches. But there's something really unique about smaller spaces. Do you want to share a little bit of just your your experience and what draws you to smaller spaces and how that's looked in your life at times. Yeah,

Ali Thompson: 3:06

so in college, I was in a church that was I went there the first week they started. It was a brand new church plant, so it was very small. I mean, maybe like 20 people, and we met in a barn, somebody like that they knew had a barn on their property that they weren't using. So we met in this barn. There were hay bales and there was a tree growing through the floor, and the pastor's name was scooter, which was super fun, and it was just like such a great community. And I loved being part of a community where everybody knew everybody. So I loved that I was initially drawn to them at it was a Christian college that I went to, and they had a church fair where all the different churches from the area could come and kind of promote themselves. And there were a lot of big churches with gimmicks with, you know, candy and donuts and frisbees and what whatnot. And I did happily eat all of the donuts and candy, but I was like, I don't want something gimmicky. I, you know, as this 18 year old, fresh into college kid. I was like, I want to go deep into the Bible. And then I see this table with nothing at all on it, and there's just, there's just a sign that says, we teach the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and I was like, That's it. That's where I wanna go. So I just, I feel like small church ministries have something unique to offer, and it's not the gimmicks and it's not the candy and donuts necessarily. You don't have to have a big budget to draw people in. It's the authenticity and it's the depth and the relationship. So for me, that that was definitely an important part of my faith journey.

Laurie Graham: 4:47

Okay, I love that you shared the context of that story. Because when people hear, Oh, I was in a church, it was their first week, and we were in a barn, the first thing in my mind is, oh, you're like in rural Iowa, and there's nothing else around. Around, and I know that was not your story. There were a lot of churches to pick from. You were very close in a lot of places, with a lot of other just a lot of other options. And here you are at 18, picking the church without the gimmicks. And for everybody listening right now, whether you are on the treadmill mowing your lawn or driving somewhere in the car, sometimes we think, what are the big churches doing? How do we imitate them? And honestly, it can backfire. I've shared stories about my own, you know, kids in their 20s, how they're choosing churches, and it is not by the flashy stuff. And I think it's so great to like, embrace our own identity, our own DNA, where God put us who we're with, and hear the story of Allie, who, at 18, chose the table with nothing at it but a sign. Ate the donuts from the

Ali Thompson: 5:46

other church. But I was happy to eat the donut. But I feel like with church, church sizes and church cultures like it's kind of a broader version of like the body of Christ, right? And if every church is the same. That's not, that's not representing the body of Christ well. But if, yeah, you know, there are people who are going to be drawn to the mega church, who are never going to go to a small church, but there are also the people who are like that mega church is overwhelming. And so if you're trying to be like that mega church, you're missing that person who doesn't want the mega church. So I think the variety is so important to draw all people in to the body of

Laurie Graham: 6:26

Christ. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So interesting. So I'm just a funny tidbit. Before we keep moving, I am probably going to go back and re record the intro of this podcast and just leave this in right now, because now I'm like, I said, we're talking about curriculum. And we just talked for five minutes about just basic, awesome, small church greatness, right? So I don't want, I want, I want everybody here this one. So okay, so let's keep diving in, um, before we talk about the specific two or more curriculum that I really want smaller churches to know about. Can you talk about your current Sunday morning? You said you volunteer in a in a kids ministry right now. How many kids do you have? What does that look like? Is it? You know, because small churches are face a lot of challenges that other size churches don't face. But there are some things that are just like it's it varies even by church size. Some smaller churches, half their people are kids, and some mid sized churches, they've only got very few kids, and so I think some of the challenges kind of overlap. But can you just talk about specifically like your Sunday school? What does it look like for you on a Sunday morning?

Ali Thompson: 7:33

Yeah, I feel like my church has to deal with being both a small church and a big church. When it comes to children's ministry, we have two services and radically different numbers in the of kids in each service. So I specifically chose, I wanted to volunteer in the first service where there are very few kids, because I really wanted to be able to build relationships with kids and not just be doing crowd management, you know, I wanted to know the kids. And so I, you know, to me, that's a huge value of having that smaller number of kids.

Laurie Graham: 8:06

Yeah, yeah. So 10 kids, what ages?

Ali Thompson: 8:10

So it's, it's, can turn through sixth grade. Okay, it, you know, I mean, as with any church like the who comes each time varies. Why? Yeah, yeah, but yeah, we have fun and it's mixed age

Laurie Graham: 8:25

and yeah. So you are currently teaching a mixed age class of 10 kids from K through six, so right in the pocket of tons of people who are listening right now. Yeah. So let's talk about why two or more develop was developed. You I have followed group forever. I was a baby youth director when I was, you know, I mean, I was helping in youth group before I even graduated from college, but I went straight into, like, youth ministry, children's ministry. I have loved groups products from the beginning, but they never had this one. Why did you all start even thinking about having a curriculum called two or more.

Ali Thompson: 9:36

So we we were wanting to do something new, and we wanted to see like, where is there an underserved part of the church or an under resourced part of the church? And we discovered in some research that about two thirds of churches in the US are small churches. They have a weekly attendance of under 200 and so first of all, I just want to say, if you feel like you're in this alone, and nobody gets you like there's so many churches like that are small churches and that have the same joys and opportunities and struggles that you are facing. So you are not alone in this, but so we were like, two thirds of churches are small churches, but the majority of curriculum options out there are geared for mid size and large churches. And so there's this whole segment of the market, huge segment of churches that don't have a resource that's meant for them. And. And I was thinking this morning about this, what I was gonna say, and I really, I have the perfect analogy for this. So when I was in college, my roommate was very, very tiny. She was 411 she was 100 pounds on a good day. She was just tiny. And I remember her saying one time, sometimes I have to shop in the kids section because the size zero is kind of big. And once I got past the like, envy that she was feeling that the size zero is big, I was like, Man, that that stinks, because she's getting clothes that are not designed for her, yes, or she's getting clothes that are too big for her, that are designed for people her age, but they're too big, and she's having to, like, bunch them up or belt them, and they, they don't fit her right, and she doesn't have anything that's made for her and that she's not having to cinch in and make it fit when it doesn't fit. And so I feel like that's what the small church has been doing, is they, they're like, the size zero is too big. So yeah, we were like, We want to stop you from having to cobble together things or adapt curriculum that really isn't written for you and make all these changes. We found like, there's this huge hunger that small churches have to play games, but all the games that

Laurie Graham: 11:49

are require more than two people

Ali Thompson: 11:53

from teams and and so automatically, they're like, Well, I can't form teams. I have two people. And so we were like, we can make games that one or two kids can play. Like, we can do this and give small churches something that's specifically geared for them. So that was why we decided to do two or more?

Laurie Graham: 12:14

Yeah, I love it so much. So what makes it so different from the other ones on the market? Like, we can talk a lot about how we have to adjust things, and one of the big things you just made, you know, you just made a point on, is that the games like breaking people into small groups, and we're like, Wait, we already are a small group, you know, kind of a thing. What else makes it different from other curriculums on the market.

Ali Thompson: 12:33

So it's very strategic about multi age groups. We know that when you don't have a lot of kids in your church, you're having to obviously combine ages. And so it's very strategic for that. It's geared for ages three to 12, all in one room, if you do split out your preschoolers? We know some small churches have it with separate class for preschool. We do have a preschool option as well, but if you have just all of your kids together, you can get that and it'll be geared for them. And then it really I mean, we everything we create in two or more. We are working through the filter of, can this work with just two kids and and then can it be scaled up? Because we know sometimes, you know, you have two kids, and the next week you might have 15 kids, and your attendance can fluctuate a lot. So we want to make sure it can be, it can be skilled scaled up, but it's definitely more geared for, you know, 10 and under, on a regular basis, for kids. So just filtering it through all of the unique needs and opportunities that small churches have,

Laurie Graham: 13:44

yeah, well, I love that you just mentioned that, like, who knows on a given day who you have? Because in a larger church, I've worked in larger church settings with children's ministry, you always have 2030, kids, if that's your number, right. And so five could be gone, but you still got your 20 kids, like you still have that number in smaller churches. If a family is out of town, you lost half your class, or sometimes your whole class, or you've gone from six to one. And so I think the fluctuation in numbers is something that is very, very unique in smaller churches. The other thing I loved about two or more, I got a sneak preview, and it was so cool just to be part of, like giving some feedback. And I think it looks so incredibly volunteer friendly, like I have looked at curriculum before where and you see teachers like they're reading it, because it's, there's so much content to put out, and it's cumbersome and it's not even visually friendly. What can you talk about, like, how this really helps volunteers, especially the ones who are wearing all the hats and the ones who are getting called in at the last minute. How was that part of the designing of two or more

Ali Thompson: 14:46

too? Yeah. So we really thought about, like, we wanted to highlight the unique opportunities that small churches have that big churches can't necessarily pull off. And one of the biggest ones is the relational opportunities. So even, like you mentioned, the the design of it was intentionally like we have tons of line breaks and bullets, so it's super easy to glance down and see where you left off, and then look back, because that eye contact with the kids. We don't want to just staring at a book and reading. You know that you might be able to get away with that if you have 3040, kids, that's super awkward if you just have a few kids. So we want to really, like, enable that relational aspect. It's also a spine. Role bound, which that came out of, I was teaching a small group with adults, and I was trying to hold the book, and it was just, yeah, found a book and flopping shut or fallen off my lap, because it was, you know, I was near the beginning. It was heavier at the end, you know, yeah, just, it was very difficult to like, manage the book in my hands, and we were like, we want people to just be able to like, fold the book in half, spiral bound, set it on their lap, and it's not a distraction from the relationship. So, yeah, yeah, that went into it. So that makes it easier for volunteers. But I think also, you don't have to adapt and cobble things together. And I know that's something that, you know, planning a lesson for small churches who are used to having to, you know, scale things from what's meant for a bigger group down to your group size. That's just takes time, and we wanted to take that time off of your plate, give it back to you to invest more in the relationship of the ministry, but also, you know, there are resources out there that are lesson books for the are more geared for small churches, but they're one offs. And we wanted to give you, like a comprehensive scope and sequence, a plan for working through the bible with kids so it it's a real curriculum. It's not just okay. I can get this now and then three months, I'm gonna have to find something else to do. It's a full curriculum for you.

Laurie Graham: 17:05

Yeah, yeah. And I really, I really, really, have always appreciated all the research and testing that group publishing has always done. I mean, I probably done children's ministry on and off for 30 years, and I have always that's something that the the the lessons work because you've tested them. You know, the philosophy behind it is also so sound. And I do want to talk about your philosophy. The real philosophy is that okay, if we talk about that for a second, because this is one of the things, like, when we started small church, ministry to minister to the needs of small churches, who you like, right on, under resourced, under under appreciated, underdeveloped, like, we kind of feel like the, you know, the left behind right even though we're the majority of, like, really, God's representatives around the whole world, and so we kind of have this, but we are interdenominational, and that gets sticky at times, because, you know, people are looking for, you know, the curriculum that fits their specific, you know, the a lot theology and all these kind of things. And, and I have long said we have more in common than we have a part, like we have so much in common that is just Jesus style ministry that it's crazy when we focus so intensely on all the differences, but groups, philosophy, R, E, A, l, which I'm just kind of Ali just walk through just just really briefly, like it's so me, and I don't know If it's because I was brought up with you all. I don't know if it's just because our philosophies like match, but I think it's so Jesus centered that we'll have people say, would this work in our denomination? To me, because of your philosophy, it works for all of us humans who love Jesus. So do you mind I didn't tell you were gonna I was going to ask you to Hallie, but do you mind walking through that

Ali Thompson: 18:53

a little bit I can but okay, first I want to touch on something you just said about, yeah, you're under appreciated, because that was another thing. As we were researching, like, what resources are out there for the small church, we were so excited to find you, Laurie, because you're so encouraging. But a lot of the resources we found out there, not just looking at children's ministry, but just small church in general, was basically like, here's how you grow your church, here's how you get bigger. And it felt like this underlying message of like, you're not enough, but we can help you get to be enough by growing bigger. And we were like, we don't we don't want that to be the message, or that to be the goal, like, Hey, this is how you grow your children's ministry, because you have so much value and so much to offer that is different and special than what a big church can offer. And so yeah, the two or more curriculum also has these celebrate small boxes in the margin that are just highlighting like, here's why your church specifically can excel at this activity. Love it, and here's the unique opportunity you have, because we want you to feel so encouraged when you're using this curriculum that you are enough, like you are, you are you have such an important role in the kingdom of God at the size you're at right now. So, yeah, that's just a little aside about hopefully, you know, when you said, under appreciate, I'm like, hopefully small church users of two or more will feel more appreciated for their size when,

Laurie Graham: 20:28

yeah, you and I could talk about a lot of stuff, like small church E. Like, I'm like, Ah, and we keep, like, pulling ourselves back. So I love it. Okay, so tell us about just groups underlying the R, E, A L, and why you've kind of developed everything you've done. Really, can work in many, many settings.

Ali Thompson: 20:45

Yeah. So real R, E, A L stands for relational, experiential, applicable and lifelong. And so everything we do, whether it's for small churches or not, goes through that filter. And so when we talk about relationship being an important opportunity that small churches have, we do build that into everything we do, even if it's not for small churches. But we thought, how does that look different? How does that look even more intimate and even more strategic for small churches? So like, for example, every week we start with just, like, a check in question that's not related to the lesson at all. One of them is just, what do you want to talk about this week? Like, what do you want to tell me? And it's just anything from like I went to a birthday party at the zoo yesterday, to I learned how to tie my shoes, whatever is on, rather than directing them down a specific path, they just get to share about their weeks and their lives. And that's something that's hard to do in a big church, because you'd spend the whole hour listening to everybody share their thing, right? Yeah. So I think that is, you know, a way we've built relationship in, but then also just throughout. I mean, there's so many questions that are personal questions that help kids think and process and share about their lives throughout, yeah, and then just in the activities they're doing together. So that's how we've built in relationship experiential means kids are never just like sitting and listening to you read the Bible story. They're experiencing it. They're in it. It's coming to life for them. We know that kids learn and adults but learn best through experience, and so we want to make sure that that is something that we have built into every lesson we do applicable means, like, what does this matter to my life when I'm learning about the Bible, if it's just a bunch of historical facts about David or Peter or Moses, like, who cares if you're a kid like, that doesn't really matter. So we want to make sure that every lesson there's a takeaway for kids. It's like, this is what this means for how I view God, or this is what I mean, what it means for how I live my life. And the Bible is is a not just a source of knowledge about things that happened in the past, but the active, living Word of God that is still making a difference in our lives today. Yeah, and then lifelong we want kids to not just walk away with that application for that week, but to be developing a lifelong faith that they continue that relationship with God even after they're out of children's ministry and youth ministry. So,

Laurie Graham: 23:25

yeah, real, experiential, applicable, lifelong like, that's what discipleship is, ya know. And as you were talking, I was thinking about the curriculum discussion that comes up sometimes in the faith world, right? And I've had people really push back on doing games or spending time, you know, just talking or building relationships, because they're like, you only have them for an hour. We need to, we need to disciple them. We need to get the information into them. They need this, you know, to and I'm just like, Jesus spent time with people like, you know, we talk so much about, it's in small church ministry, we talk a lot about, it's not about information. It's about transformation. Yeah, the information is great, and it can lead to transformation, but it doesn't always. Relationships pretty much always lead to transformation one way or another, like they make a difference in your life. Information, not so much. Read a book, use it or not, right? People, so much impact. And I believe Jesus modeled that. So when it comes to curriculum, Ali, small churches, struggle a lot, not just on finding what works, but also on cost, on even the rationale of, why can't we just teach the Bible, you know, like, let's just pick this in here. And you know, oftentimes people say, you know, what can I do that's free? Now, I am a fan of curriculum for a lot of reasons. Can you talk about why you are a fan of curriculum, knowing that the struggles small churches face, lack of training, oftentimes volunteers popping in, not having budget for a lot of things. You know, we don't have time to gather all these, you know, all the prep and all of that. Why are you a fan of curriculum for small churches?

Ali Thompson: 25:05

I feel like curriculum gives you a plan, gives you a strategy. I when I bought a house a few years ago that was a major fixer upper, needed a ton of work, and we just kept uncovering more and more DIY, horribly done solutions to problems that had caused, like, all this rot in the walls, because the water was pouring into the walls. And I just think about, like. When you don't have a plan and you're just kind of patching things together, like long term the effect that, like I saw that in my house, but I think that that can happen in kids faith too, if there's not a plan and an intentionality. And so curriculum just gives you that intentionality. And I think that I lost my thoughts, so edit that out. It's

Laurie Graham: 25:53

okay. I'm totally interrupt you, because I was going to just jump in, because I think the right curriculum saves time and money, and people push back. Well, how could it save money if I'm looking for free stuff, because you are, I can't even tell you how many free things I've tried to pull together and I buy, like, I don't know, the fidget toys or the supplies for a game, or, you know, things that I'm investing my own stuff in, right? Trying to pull things together without the right curriculum, because sometimes the right curriculum didn't exist, right? And so we've got to piece it together. But I really believe the right curriculum that fits is going to save you tons of time and tons of money and be more effective, because it it cuts down on stress for everyone. Yeah, you know, it's no more of, what are we going to do? Or how do I equip this volunteer? Or what's next is you have, you have a plan, you have a base, yeah, you can, you can throw things in. You can take a week off. You can take the summer off, if you want, right, and jump back into the curriculum again. It's not that it puts you in a box, but it gives you that base. I just, I think it relieves a lot of stress. Think it's great,

Ali Thompson: 27:00

yeah, and you mentioned, like, training volunteers. So there's a, like, a quick tip in every lesson that just kind of is a hey, here's how to handle discipline issues, or here, here's why it's important to share your own stories, or whatever the tip is, and that's great for training volunteers, and it's just like a paragraph every week, so it's in little bite sized pieces. But also, you mentioned cost. So one of the things, as we were researching, like things, not things that were already on the market, not fitting small church, aside from content, was cost. Most curriculum out there is just too expensive for small churches. So we did build this at a price point that we, you know from our research, feel like small Yeah, can afford, and that was important to us. We didn't want to offer you $150 quarter curriculum, yeah, yeah, you can't afford anyway. So yeah, this is $49 a quarter. Yeah,

Laurie Graham: 27:54

very affordable. So, yeah, I love it, and so I'm going to tell them where to find it, and a couple other fun stuff we're kind of putting together at small church ministry just to help this all go but then Ali, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm giving you a minute to think. Now I'm going to let you fill in whatever we didn't ask that you wish we would have asked, or anything you want to add after that. But if you're listening right now, you can actually check it out and even purchase it from our website. Just go to small church ministry.com/group, the fun, another fun, little exciting, I don't know thing I'm so excited about it is we created a little bit of like a tip. It's not really a course, but I've created a bunch of tips on how to use two or more like so well, in your church, we're putting we put together just a bunch of fun stuff about how to get the most impact, how to make it easy, and it's specifically for the two or more curriculum. So we're really excited about that. If you're listening to this podcast and you've listened to me before, if you've been around for a while, I've never endorsed a curriculum. I've never said hey, hey. I really think you all should look at this. You know, we know everybody's from a lot of different places, and totally stand behind two or more. Loved it, reviewed it, looked at it. We've had several other people, you know, kind of poking their heads in, saying, is this really as good as it as we think it's going to be, and and it is everybody. So if you're looking for kids, a kids curriculum for a small church, mixed ages, same room, whether you break out the preschoolers, not, this is such a great option. Allie, who is this right for as a church? Because we know everything isn't right for every church. So who should really go, Okay, this is it, because you also have simply loved, which some of our people in our community, just yesterday, we're talking about the simply loved. I don't know if you saw that in our Facebook community, they were talking about simply loved curriculum from group, and they're like, this is what we use. So how, how do they sort out? Like, who is two or more perfect for and who else would be better fit for simply loved or other other options.

Ali Thompson: 29:55

So if you typically have between two and 10 kids, again, we know sometimes you might flex more or whatever. But if you're generally somewhere in that two to 10 range, this is the right fit for you. I it's and if you're mixed ages with that two to 10 if you have, if again, we do have a preschool option. So if you have two to 10 in preschool and two to 10 in elementary, that would also work, but the lessons are really mostly geared for groups of 10 or less, and if you're bigger, you may find that. This doesn't work for you because we've written it for small church, so then you're going to have to adapt it to be bigger. So yeah, so may as well find the right curriculum fit, right? That case, dig in would be a great option, super flexible, and you can build your own lesson, or simply loved where kids are forming crews, or that's what we call like smaller groups. So I think that would be, those would be great fit if you're a little bit bigger, if you're in the teens or higher, but if you've got 10 or, sorry, two to 10 kids, typically, this is perfect. Okay,

Laurie Graham: 31:04

I just had, I'm so sorry. Everybody listening. I got this add ideas popping everywhere. But Allie, I want you to speak to something else I was just talking to, gosh, I think it was Kate over at group, and we were talking about mixed ages, and how you guys love mixed ages. And it's not like sometimes churches feel like it's a like we have to have mixed ages because we don't have enough kids. But even when I used your curriculum, I feel like it was even a couple decades ago for vacation Bible school, you were, you group was saying mixed age cruise, mixed age cruise, you intentionally will say mixed ages. Learn well together, like it's a choice, and it's like it's the first choice, yeah, not like the default, because we don't have enough kids. Can you speak to that? Just a little bit

Ali Thompson: 31:49

to get to speak to that. Okay, so good, good, good. Yes, yeah, we love mixed ages. And we have been we promote mixed age crews in our VBS. We have for years, we always get pushback from people who are new to our VBS and like that'll never work age graded. It's better. Kids want to be with their friends, but once they try it, they always find out, hey, this actually works better. It cuts down on discipline problems. It cuts down because you have, if you have a group of preteens, they're all trying to show off with their happiness, like impress each other with their fart noises or whatever. But when they are with younger kids, they can take on more of a leadership role, which is great for them, so they're growing as leaders and not goofing off as much, and then the younger kids have a role model to look up to, and can bring in some imagination and whimsy that can kind of help ground those those older Yeah, so I think it's just, it's such a powerful thing, and if It's if it's done intentionally, man, that that can really work well and be better. And so we we really want to make sure that that is something that we have tips throughout the curriculum, like, if you have mostly older kids this week, here's a here's a way you can skew up if you have mostly younger kids. Yeah, you can skew to a younger age. But also like, here's an opportunity for older kids to help younger kids. Here's an opportunity for older kids to be leaders, which also then helps your volunteers. So it's okay when everybody I remember leading a VBS crew where this first grader and sixth grader became best friends, inseparable. And when you just see those relationships blossom, they don't have to be the same age. So I think it's a good opportunity that small churches have.

Laurie Graham: 33:37

Yeah, I have always loved that that group has always said mixed ages, like our first choice. Like, I think sometimes in small churches, we're like, Oh, if we had more kids, we wouldn't have to do this. And if you're listening right now and you're in a mixed age situation in your church, can we just stop and celebrate that and say, this is like, this is like, top tier opportunity. This is like, a good thing. This is an excellent thing. This is a thing to celebrate that you have mixed ages, not to be depressed about, oh, we don't have enough kids to break into age groups. That is honestly for the birds. And I've done I've done it all, every which way. You don't I mean, but when you can have mixed ages, there is something so special that happens. Yeah? And once again, here's a curriculum that not only celebrates that, but teaches us how to how to get the most out of that have the most impact. Okay, ally. And by the way, I'll drop links in the show notes, so you'll be able to find this curriculum super easy at small church ministry.com/group+extra tips from me and a few other people talking about how they are using this and how to get the most out of your your small church using this specific curriculum too. But Ali, what else did we forget? Or what else do you want to give a shout out to at all?

Ali Thompson: 34:45

I just want to say, like we really want to continue to serve the small church two or more. We're hoping is just the beginning. And so we, I want to hear from you, like, what, what are you struggling with? What resources do you wish you had that we might be able to help with? Like, what are, what are your ministry successes that we could learn from? Like, all of the things just, I would love to hear from you and get to know what, how we can help you even more?

Laurie Graham: 35:14

So how do they connect with you, Allie, what's the best way

Ali Thompson: 35:17

they can email me? And I think you usually put the email in the show notes.

Laurie Graham: 35:20

Yeah, we'll put the email in the show notes. And you hang out in our community a lot. Allie pops into our conferences, so just watch for her, too. I hope you all can get some. Or Ellie, it's so great to have you just on the show today and just taking the time to be with us like, what a complete pleasure.

Ali Thompson: 35:40

Thank you. It's been a joy.

Laurie Graham: 35:43

And you know how we end the show? Do you want to end the show?

Ali Thompson: 35:46

Okay? So you guys, oh man, I'm nervous to do this.

Laurie Graham: 35:52

Okay? I did not give her heads up, you guys, that was just like straight up.

Ali Thompson: 35:56

Well, thank you for joining us today and until next time you