David Zimmer: Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: And we have returning for a second time…
BK: You made the cut.
DZ: The incomparable Colin Buchanan.
BK: We got you back for the second one.
Colin Buchanan: Double shot.
BK: It is. And I made the cut with… They still gave me a bottle of water.
DZ: Yes. If you were listening to the first episode we did with Colin, in the history of the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast, seven seasons Bob’s never knocked over his water in God’s providence. Colin, you’re here.
CB: I’m here, and I nearly went out and bought a poncho. [laughter]
BK: But I did notice, you gave me a smaller bottle this time.
DZ: Yes. Yeah. Just so you wouldn’t hit it.
CB: For those who are listening, the bottle is very, very small.
BK: Yeah.
CB: It’s a baby bottle.
BK: Yeah. And you know, you mentioned me not putting the cap on it, why put the cap on it, because then you can’t drink it.
DZ: Yep. Okay. Here we are. Colin’s here.
CB: We’re about to start and Bob said, “Can you just… Remember, we’ve only got half an hour. None of that irrelevant stuff that you bring up. Keep it on task,” he said. “If you’re tempted to start talking about, for instance, your water bottle, forget it. This is a serious podcast.”
[laughter]
DZ: Colin, you have a little insight into our lives at Sovereign Grace Music.
BK: Oh, man, I feel crushed. Okay. Last time we talked about “Jesus, Strong and Kind,” which is actually the first time I think we had known who you are. You are not quite as known in the United States as you are in Australia. And we’re trying to change that by putting you on this podcast.
DZ: Yeah, this is gonna be the breakthrough.
CB: This is the moment.
BK: So I think a lot of people would be interested, and we would be as well, in knowing how that came about. And if you haven’t listened to the first podcast with Colin, you should. That tells more about his history. He’s really a country music star, and he’s done a lot of kids’ albums, but we’re gonna focus in this podcast on just your love for kids’ songs, for kids, and how to communicate God’s Word and the Gospel to them. But, “Jesus, Strong and Kind,” how did that come about?
CB: Well, CityAlight, based at St. Paul’s Castle Hill, so an Anglican church in Sydney. It’s on the sort of directly opposite side of Sydney to where I live. And Sydney, as you know, it’s a very spread out, five or six million people. It’s in a big basin. So I hadn’t had much interaction with the other side of town in terms of heading to St. Paul’s. And I noticed and really loved some of these CityAlight songs that we were singing at conventions…
BK: Yes, they write wonderful songs.
CB: Oh, yeah, loved it. And I noticed his name, Rich Thompson. I was thinking, I must look him up and meet him. And in the meantime, Mission Aviation Fellowship had me doing some stuff, and we were planning to head up to the Northern Territory. But a cyclone was coming through, and I was communicating with a guy called Rich Thompson about whether we’d go or not, because he’s a film director. And I hadn’t made the connection in my head until the cyclone did come through, so we weren’t able to go.
CB: So we’re shooting this Mission Aviation thing in my office and suddenly I said, “Just a minute, Rich Thompson the film guy is Rich Thompson the CityAlight guy. I’ve been wanting to talk about songs with you.” And he said, “Well, it’s funny you should say that,” because although we’d been communicating, and he’s a delight, Rich, just a humble, lovely man. And very creative, talented, just incredible, quiet energy that he brings to everything he does. And he said, “Well, actually, Johnny and I,” Johnny…
DZ: Robinson?
CB: Robinson, who they’ve sort of been the core writers really for CityAlight, said, we really love a song of mine called “Be Strong and Courageous,” which is just a very simple lullaby style song. And we all know, anyone who’s written a song knows that songs get a life of their own. And sometimes songs that you think deserve a life of their own have next to no life and you can’t sort of prescribe that. There’s nothing in the bottle to… There’s no genie in the bottle. You don’t know how it happens.
CB: And “Strong and Courageous” is just a beguilingly simple song that I don’t have a particular memory of one moment when I wrote it or a situation but it just came out and that song has just found its way into some of the most darkest, difficult, heartbreaking, you know, the stories, as you know, come back from songs. And so, yeah, it was a bit of a sort of benchmark song for me. And they said that’s what we’d like, a song like that for CityAlight. And so we all, yeah, they love “Jesus Loves Me” as a beautiful template. I mean, that is one of the great, if you want to call it a template.
BK: Yes, yes.
CB: And you know what, one of the key things on both those, I mean, I’m not putting my song next to “Jesus Loves Me,” but I think one of the key things about the comfort of those songs is in the last podcast, I mentioned now when God gets bigger, grace gets bigger. And it’s almost like if you want to help someone, let them know how great their Helper is, and then he can do the business of helping them. And I think “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” there’s authority, this is Jesus, the Word. “Little ones to him belong.” He is the owner. “They are weak, but he is strong.” There’s so much theology in that song.
BK: So much, it’s true.
CB: And it’s the doctrine of the nature and greatness of Jesus, which is, it’s not a silly little lullaby that you sing to the sky fairy. When you say, “Yes, Jesus loves me,” it’s a confession. And it can be sung over a crib and it can be sung at a graveside, in the nursing home and in the nursery. And I think that sort of song, it’s a great song to aspire to and it’s beguilingly simple.
BK: And very hard to write.
DZ: Yep. Very, very hard.
BK: I mean, I remember the first time I heard “Jesus, Strong and Kind” and I thought it says exactly what you wanted to say. Because even the last verse where it talks about, he will come to you, I’ll never remember the words, “and he showed me on that cross.” Yeah, that’s how you know how strong he is and how kind he is. And at Sovereign Grace Music, we’re always seeking to connect people to the person and work of Christ. It’s not an ambiguous God who made us that the Bible tells us about. He revealed himself to us in his son. And it’s stunning truth, it’s astounding truth that we keep returning to over and over and over again, and it just gets better. And so “Jesus, Strong and Kind” does that in this simple way. So you guys worked on that song together based on…
CB: Yeah. And I would say on that, that there are times when I feel like Jesus gets depersonalized with the best of intentions of put placing the gospel central. He gets depersonalized and becomes a part of the formula, and it’s like, there, look at that formula.
BK: Because we wanna reduce it and make it simple. Is that what you’re saying?
CB: Yeah, I think just that when we say Jesus, we must think the person, the nature and character of Jesus as we are, not the idea of Jesus, the function of Jesus, which, I mean, wonderful as that is and helpful as that is intellectually, because I think that’s the motivation. It’s not like people are trying to depersonalize Christ. But I’ve heard Sinclair Ferguson say, “you mustn’t preach the Old Testament like a crossword puzzle with every solution is a five-letter word starting with J.”
CB: And even this, and it’s a great way of putting it, but I think it blands out Christ and it blands out the Scriptures and the humanity of the Old Testament as well, and the realness of all that. But yes, so you were going to say, the simplicity of that song, if you look at how many… That’s the interesting thing, isn’t it? There’s not a lot of word changes between the verses. So it’s a very simple song to learn. And interestingly, Sinclair Ferguson did get in touch and said, that would make a great book. He got in touch through William McKenzie and Christian Focus.
BK: Yes.
CB: And so I got one of these random emails, which we were mentioning, a random Sinclair Ferguson email. I couldn’t believe it.
DZ: And it reads like a book. Like, it, yeah.
CB: And they have published a book where he takes the thirst, If I Thirst, and he’s just told the Bible stories, essentially. And Come All Ye Weak and Heavy Laden, and he’s told Bible story, and it’s a children’s book. And it’s telling, isn’t it? That Sinclair Ferguson, with all his Bible knowledge and academic experience and brilliance, is so focused on wanting to write children’s books.
DZ: Yes.
CB: And he writes them with a lovely, warm, fatherly tone. That’s a real delight.
BK: We… Go ahead.
DZ: Sorry, I was just gonna say, what was so profound too about when you guys released that song, is the music video that came with it.
BK: It’s wonderful.
DZ: I just… We love seeing young and old singing that simple song together. I mean, it’s just what you said, like the crib to the grave, we wanna do songs that children can have a general grasp of what they’re singing because these truths don’t change. But these old people can sing it as well because these truths don’t change.
BK: Yes, these truths don’t change.
CB: Yeah, too right. And look, in the case of that song, it’s the depths of those truths, human experience won’t diminish.
DZ: Yes, well said. Yes.
BK: Yes, yes.
CB: And, I will say, I’m not scared of children’s songs where, if you like, the sleeves are a little too long because there’s room to just grow into those truths. And is that not the case when you’re reading the scriptures or listening to a sermon, you think hundreds, thousands of times, this is something I’ve seen but I’ve not understood it in the way that I understand it today.
BK: Yes, yeah.
CB: Because God’s Spirit is working in us and our experiences change and perhaps we just, yeah, we’re too proud to hear it or we just have a need in a particular time. So I love injecting that into songs and, yeah.
DZ: Well, that’s a good segue to what we’re talking about today in terms of writing for kids. I like that analogy that the sleeves are too long, you can grow into this truth over time. So we briefly talked about it on the last podcast, but you have 25, 26 kids albums. That’s unbelievable.
CB: I nearly told you earlier and you said, no, no, no, don’t tell us now. But I did, there was a Christian album that I held in my hands in 1989. And it was a little like look around and then say, Lord, I would love to release a CD one day. And with a plastic cover and a little hinge like this one and a booklet like this one, you can pull out and the words are written there.
BK: What a lofty ambition.
[laughter]
DZ: Yes.
CB: But I just gave that to the Lord and it’s like… And I can’t help feeling so ungrateful when people say, “How many albums have you released?” “I can’t remember.” And Colin back there, looking at that CD’s going, “What?! You should know exactly how many. Look at you, you ungrateful wretch.” There’s a lot of albums and each one has been an act of, really has… Actually apart from the, I did a Christmas album and I had a couple of songs, but I went away and wrote for that one, the first kids Christmas album I did, but it’s been an act of corralling songs. So we talked just as we’ve talked together earlier about Together For the Gospel and the ministry of John Piper, they were things I was consuming and being encouraged to listen to in my local church. We had a young guy who was, in fact, first time I ever heard you speak, Bob, was it New Attitude Conference?
BK: Yeah, New Attitude. Wow.
CB: And there was a worship…
BK: Breakout?
CB: Breakout.
BK: Yeah.
CB: And this guy was listening and building a library in this small church and he’d say, “Here’s one that you’d like though.” And he was just always lending them out.
DZ: That’s awesome.
CB: And it just, I got the bug and…
DZ: That’s so cool.
CB: And found that there was what I call the happy Calvinists, which I was so grateful for, because the Calvinists that I’d known could tend to be just a little on the grim side.
BK: Which exactly contradicts the… For those Calvinists, the Reformed or we believe in the doctrines of grace, which means this life, this world, all of history is about the glory of God as he revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ, who will receive all glory. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess. Said about God in Isaiah, said about Jesus in Philippians 2. And it’s all about that. So that knowledge, so we don’t control it, we don’t make it happen, it’s not up to us, it’s not ultimately dependent on us.
BK: It’s about God and his sovereignty, beautiful, amazing, kind, wise sovereignty saying, this is the world I’m gonna make, it’s all gonna bring glory to me. We’re convinced of that. And so it should produce the most joyful people on the planet. I didn’t grow up Calvinist, I grew up Catholic. And so when I started recognizing what the Bible says about these things, I thought, “Oh, this makes me really happy.” And then I met the grim Reformed people and I thought, “What’s wrong with you guys? What are you missing?” So anyway.
CB: Yeah. Well, I was very grateful for just that snowball of Reformed theology that was just happening through the 2000s. And I was finding that I’d just listen to things or find a piece of scripture and think that’s an idea for a song. And I just found the instinct was, how do you make a children’s song out of that? And so part of the reason why I’ve been so prolific is that I’ve just found so many things to write about. So it’s really the cart and the horse. It was very much, I don’t know which is the cart and which is the horse in this analogy, but the songs were being corralled to make albums as opposed to, oh, quick, I better, I want to release another one.
BK: Yes.
CB: Better go and write some songs. It was, I mean, occasionally, I’d think, yeah, need to… You know, it’d be nice to have something here or something there. But essentially, I’ve always been, hard to believe I, loquacious in my songwriting as well as my podcast.
BK: Yeah. So these are some of the titles of your albums. “10-9-8, God is Great,” “I Want My Mummy.” That wasn’t a…
CB: That’s another story.
BK: We won’t even go there. Let’s not go there.
CB: That’s country and Egyptian.
BK: Okay. “Jesus Rocks the World,” “Practice Being Godly,” “Remember the Lord,” “God Rock, Baa-Baa-Doo-Baa-Baa.”
CB: That’s a memory verse.
BK: Yes, okay. I love that one. Yeah. So you have all these albums, very funny. Some of the songs are very funny. I mean, they’re catchy, but they’re blatantly, I was listening to “My God Is So Big,” and you’re making expressive things happening so that kids will go, yeah. But behind it all is this profound, deep theological knowledge and a desire to have kids grasp these things. Can you tell us more about how you connect those things? Because on the one hand, you have teachers, maybe even kids teachers, who it’s all about, we want them to have these deep truths. And then the other side, it’s, we just want them entertained.
DZ: Yeah, we want them to have fun.
BK: You seem to bring both of them together in a unique way. And what’s been your thinking in that?
CB: I’m very grateful that when I was 15, 16, and just, I like to say the Sunday school, teaching Sunday school for children in our church was a little like one of the log flume rides where it’s fairly benign at the front end. You’re in…
DZ: And then you’re hanging on for dear life.
CB: Well, you’re in Sunday school and you’re going, “This is fun.” And then you get to about 16 and suddenly you’re in, you think, “Oh, I’m actually getting fairly high here.” And no, you’re in teacher training class. You don’t sign up, you’re just straight in to teacher training class. There was a Bible study class before that and suddenly you’re teacher training and then, yeah. And not everyone wanted to or, but they’d sort of find themselves into that. But a friend of mine took over the teacher training and he was a trained teacher and what I call a grappler. He’s just always grappling with the truth. Some people find that fatiguing, but I just always found it invigorating. It wasn’t…
BK: May we all be grapplers.
CB: Yeah. It wasn’t stop, it was like, God’s at work. His word is just rich. Hadn’t seen that before. What about wait, those two don’t seem to fit together. Why don’t they fit together? And we should read this. And so Peter was great but he was also a great practitioner and a passionate teacher and a musician as well. And so we looked at Bible songs and said, well, there’s a lot of songs that have moralisms in them
BK: Yes, plenty.
CB: And they just don’t go, they’re very singular in their focus. And it’s possible to manipulate the behavior of a child without touching the heart or the mind particularly.
BK: Adults as well.
CB: That’s right. So we’d made that observation. We just observed that the word just wasn’t rich in these songs, just the breadth of the word, and you only have to go into a Christian bookstore. It struck me when I looked at that, especially books for little children. Most of my songs have been embraced by preschoolers primarily and then junior elementary. But so many of the books are, God made you, God loves you, you’re special. And it’s like a lot of books in the world take God out of it and you’re special.
CB: Like, it sort of feels like… So we’re not Christianizing a worldly message and we’re looking expecting to find treasures to share with children across the breadth of scripture. And I think coming from a covenantal church background as well, wanting children to understand the truths of scripture and teaching children as a sort of part of the covenant community was really critical to us. And yeah, they were really helpful observations. And not putting words in kids’ mouths, which and in all those albums, there are very few eye appropriation songs, and that’s a…
BK: Explain that, eye appropriation songs.
CB: Well, expressing something on behalf of the child, that is a heart response.
BK: What we might say a worship song?
CB: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So, I mean, “Jesus rocks the world. Jesus is the King of kings, Jesus rocks the world. Jesus is the Lord of lords, Jesus rocks the world. He rules the earth. He rules the sky. He’s the holy God on high. Every tongue is gonna cry, Jesus rocks the world.” It’s like it could have been Jesus rocks the world, I love you, Jesus. You’re the greatest. And that’s a good thing to sing if you love Jesus.
BK: Yes.
[laughter]
CB: And if you’re a child, and you could say that’s a blank spot. And interestingly, “Jesus, Strong and Kind” is… And we talked a lot about that, and that was something that they, Johnny and Rich, found really helpful. It could have so easily, it says we can… I can always run to Jesus is a statement of truth. It could have said, I will always run to Jesus. And there’s a big difference in that. And as you know, so just one word, left or right in songwriting has a massive change. And I…
DZ: That’s a great point.
CB: And we, I mentioned Ian Murray last time, last podcast, but the care that someone who’s preaching, who believes the truth of scripture and the power of preaching and the danger of error. I mean, one time, he stood up, and I said, I found this in the youth center and we’re not gonna sing songs like this. “God is better than football. God is better than pizza,” I don’t know what it was. He didn’t tear it up in front of us and he sort of, he had an emphatic, not an exuberant… John McArthur would have had the petrol out and wouldn’t he and the matches, but, at least.
[laughter]
BK: I don’t know if John would…
CB: But he, it was like, be careful with what you sing for kids. And, although one guy, I told him that story, God is better than football and he said, “Well, he is, isn’t he?”
BK: Maybe not the ideal comparison.
CB: No, exactly. It’s like, and so, I mean, that whole sense of he, like I’m reading Ezekiel at the moment just in personal Bible reading. And the weight, and that’s the guy if, my God is so big, I sing my God is so big, that’s the God you’re singing about. And there are terrors associated with the righteousness of God and the judgment of God, and he sees, he’ll call to account. And we believe that within the breadth of scripture, in the story of salvation, but salvation only really makes sense, again, because it sits within the understanding of God’s nature and character and his purposes and his plans. So it’s all his doing and remarkably his nature doesn’t fight, which is, to, I think it’s for us, RC Sproul, the Godness of God. He’s not made of the same stuff as us.
DZ: He’s way better than pizza.
[laughter]
CB: Yeah, yeah. Hang on, meat lovers? Or Hawaiia?
BK: So I have a question. So for, you’re obviously, yeah, think deeply about these things. How do you know, but your albums are very entertaining, and you are very entertaining. How do you know, and this is for those who work with kids, that you have been effective in not allowing the entertainment side of what you do to overshadow or negate the serious truths that you want kids to grasp over time. How do you measure that? I mean, you’ve sung for kids, thousands of kids, I’m sure.
DZ: That’s good.
BK: But for someone who’s working in their church, serving in their church, or even their families, how do you think about that? Would you say, oh, that’s too much or? How do you bring them together in a way that you know in evaluating it, yeah, I’ve reached what I believe God wants me to do?
CB: Well, a couple of things. One was you keep that sort of gravity of teaching God’s Word in your mind, that it’s not something to sort of push, right, got that? Push it out of the way. Now let’s entertain. But to try and sort of maintain that. “Baa Baa Doo Baa Baa, Isaiah 53:6” was one of the very early memory verses. And Peter, my friend who I mentioned, when I played it to him, he said, “Yeah, not sure. That’s a little bit flippant.” I mean, it’s a unique…
BK: That’s a great example.
CB: It’s a unique verse. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us have turned to…
BK: Baa Baa Doo Baa Baa.
CB: Yeah, that’s right. And I put Baa Baas in there. But the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Sing Baa Baa Doo Baa Baa, Isaiah 53:6. And it’s vandalized Bible readings. I think that a lot of preachers in Australia are too scared to use that… I noticed in their serious moments, they’ll read around Isaiah 53:6.
BK: Lest it come to anyone’s mind.
CB: But Riley…
BK: Spring?
CB: Yeah, Riley’s wife, Maddie. When we were…
BK: Sovereign Grace pastor in Sydney.
CB: Yeah, in Sydney, when we were writing “Jesus, Our Judge and Our Savior,” I don’t know if you were there, but she made a special point of saying, I was hanging on by a thread when I was a teenager and the thread was Isaiah 53:6. And the only reason I was there because of Baa Baa, the song. And I don’t take credit for that, but it’s such, when I wrote it, I thought all these kids are walking around singing hair care commercials and fast food commercials in a playground. It’s like, I wonder if we can get them singing memory verses in the playground. And so that one popped out and, yeah. And I remember thinking, well, one day, these kids could be in a, as they grow up at this crisis moment, in the crash at the end, and there’s no space, and the only thing that came back was, we’ve all gone astray and the Lord has laid on him. And I…
BK: The iniquity of us all.
CB: And that verse, there’s something to hold there. So it is sort of hilarious and funny to sing, and I can sort of sing it with all ages but I personally, if I finish the song and I have no trouble saying now, let me tell you what it’s about if that was required of me, and I find, like there’s another song, Every Tickety Tock is, tick of the clock is ruled by the hand of God. Our faces, what is it? He’s looking after history. I sing it with a sort of bad Australian Jewish accent. “He’s looking in after history to him. There is no mystery. He always did exist, you see. Not like your baby’s history.” Another shoehorned rhyme. But it’s sort of kooky in its delivery, but it’s, I think of the jars of clay.
CB: I don’t know whether that’s a… I’m not necessarily using the biblical analogy entirely as it was intended, but if that hilarity has the capacity to detach, sort of to break away and leave that truth there to see, then I, and look, there may be songs where it’s like, there is one of the Christmas songs I sort of put on a voice for, and I can remember thinking, oh, I wish I’d sung that straight. So sometimes, I can think, should’ve… But generally the fun things, it’s, yeah, I think I mentioned before, it helps to remember that you’re a kid and it helps to remember what it is that made things compelling to you as a kid. And fun is a remarkable vehicle for just joy and life and community and truth.
DZ: Yeah. And humor has this way of relaxing us to potentially the truth that God wants to show us, and I just think that just shows the kindness and creativity of God. That that humor can be kind of, yeah, lets our guard down. For kids it’s exciting and fun, but for adults, as that song is just in the back of their mind somewhere, that truth can come out at the right time.
CB: I remember a Baptist pastor said to me after I’d done a kids show, and it was, I don’t know, I’m singing Jesus said I am the way, dressed as a caveman, and then I’m out and are you serving captain Jesus as a pirate or, you know? And then there’s beach balls come out and we’re singing Jesus rocks the world and so popper at the end, and I’ve made a toilet paper blower out of a leaf blower. And it’s just absolute sort of chaos by the end of it. And he’s sort of standing out the back the whole time, while all of this is happening around. And afterwards, he sort of sidles up and says, “How can you be so direct?” It was like I struggled to just be direct with these people, and somehow dressed in a caveman suit and all the trappings, there’s been such directness.
CB: And a great friend of mine, Ed Drew, who’s from the UK, who would love joining this discussion, and if you ever get a chance to talk to Ed, but he’s a great advocate for children’s Bible teaching. And I would do concerts as part of the Co-Mission Church. And earlier on he’d say, “Now, I’d like a Bible talk during this.” And my sort of nearly hour concert doesn’t really sort of shut down. It’s using a template, which is an entertainment template. I’m pretty conscious of that. In that sense, it’s not a great example for kids ministry in terms of you can’t be… I’m a two headed monkey. I come to a church and it’s gone and then I move on. So I’m not there every week, and every week I have taught Sunday school every week, and I’ve, it takes a different shape.
BK: That’s good for people to know. Just don’t duplicate what you do in a concert because that’s not what you do in your local church.
CB: No, I’ll tell you what you can duplicate in a concert. You can lean into the truths of a song if they’re there. You need a song.
BK: Well, that’s pretty important.
CB: Yeah, yeah. If they’re there. But like you really…
BK: Let’s say it stronger then, can we say it stronger then? The truth should be there in the song.
CB: That’s right. Yeah. And they should be there for you to lean your own heart into. To just, if you’re singing “Jesus Rocks the World,” Jesus is supreme. If you’re singing “Jesus, Strong and Kind,” run to him in your heart. And I’ve seen… Yeah, I was singing that at a school, a Christian school, and a teacher was leading it, and she was in tears. And this is in the rehearsal. And she said, “We’ve rehearsed this over and over again and every time.” And it’s like… And she’s a cancer survivor. And she knows what it is to run to Jesus. So there’s, so leaning into the truths of a song are really, really critical, I think. And remembering, I think this is true for preachers too, that it’s God’s Word that was there before you came along and it’ll be there after you come along. And so wanting to just not get in the way of that but also…
DZ: Yeah, steward it well.
CB: Yeah. And remember whose word it is, just who’s responsible. And just the joy of the moment, I love the joy of the moment with kids. When they’re interested, they’re with you. And when they’re not interested, they’re not with you. And I’m putting on a concert, so there’s a particular way I do that. And that’s sort of amped up. But any teacher can see when kids aren’t interested. And I think you gotta work. If they’re not interested, it doesn’t matter how good the content is.
DZ: Yeah. True.
CB: And look…
BK: That’s on you.
CB: That’s right. But there is a sense too that year in, year out, faithful teaching, it doesn’t all have to ring the bell every time.
BK: Amen, amen.
CB: Just be faithful with God’s Word. And my son would come home ’cause we were in a church at the time where kids would stay in for the sermon. And we’d start with, you gotta listen for the first five minutes and then you can color in. And then you’re gonna listen to 10 minutes and as they got older.
DZ: That’s great.
CB: And he was maybe at the 10-minute mark. He might have been, I don’t know how old he was, six, seven, something like that. I don’t know, I can’t remember. But, maybe even younger. And we were at home having lunch and we were talking about the sermon together, and he was eating his lunch and he said, “Oh, that’s like that bit Mr. Murray said.” I was like, well, that was near the end of the sermon. And he was scratching away with his crayons at that point. He wasn’t, well, he was paying attention, which I mean, that’s a whole ‘nother question. But, yeah. I asked a question when I was seven of my Sunday school teacher, and it changed my spiritual life.
CB: After, I waited till all the kids were gone and I said, “Can you, when you pray,” ’cause we maybe had a Bible story about prayer, “Do you have to speak out loud or can you just think it? And if you don’t speak out loud, will God hear a prayer?” ‘Cause you can sort of say things to yourself. And she said, “Oh, no, you can think a prayer and God will hear it.” I said, “Thanks.” I went out to morning tea, and I’m walking around to get a biscuit. “Hey, Lord. I know you can hear me. I’m just walking through. Right now I am talking to God,” and these are my thoughts. That was, that presence of God in a simple, beautiful, mysterious, marvelous, fatherly way is something that is just the stuff of walking with God with the, you know?
BK: Yes. Well, you model all those things. I mean, if anyone’s listening and they are, they work with children or a parent, just the things you just said about how we’re to think about what we do, it makes a huge difference and I think a lot of people use songs for the kids, whether it’s in the church or in the family, without really thinking about what is this supposed to accomplish? It’s more like, can we keep them interested, but it’s much more than that. Can we draw them perhaps through entertaining means, but draw them to the truth. And, yeah. So you have modeled that, you’ve ministered to thousands and thousands of people and we’re among them. So just thanks for sharing your thoughts. We could have like five podcasts.
CB: All right.
DZ: Yes.
CB: Right-o. Well, join us next time. [laughter] Not again!
BK: So anyway, thank you for all you’re doing to serve the church.
DZ: Thank you, Colin.
CB: You’re welcome.
BK: And for partnering with us. It’s been great.
CB: Well, thank you for the encouragement and every blessing. And God bless every listener there and every child in the orbit of those listeners.
BK: Yes. Amen.
CB: May God be behind his good work.
BK: Amen. And thank you guys for joining us whether by, visually on YouTube or audioly, some of you…
CB: I think audionically is…
BK: Audionically, thank you. Thanks for being with us.
CB: Yeah.
DZ: Thanks.
