RELIGION Art Posters "100 Club" Art Posters RELIGION Art Posters "100 Club" Art Posters
INTRODUCTION to The "100 Club" Handbook Example of The 100 Club
THE
"100 Club"
HANDBOOK
124 pages, illustrated. Described in detail are all the steps to setting up a "100 Club" in your congregation. This book is a clear, lively, and challenging guide for successfully adding this excellent system to your congregation's "best evangelism" outreach program.
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History of "100 Club" Development
THE "100 Club" HANDBOOK
by Daniel B. Lyle, Ph.D.
1. HISTORY of 100 Club Development. -EXAMPLE-
2. STRUCTURE of the 100 Club.
WHEN?
-During the Regular Meeting Schedule.
-During Special Events.
WHERE?
-Making Them Prominently Visible to the Congregation and Themselves.
-Achieving a Critical Mass.
-At the Heart of the Congregation.
-The Main Targets of the Preaching.
-In the Place of Honor.
WHO?
-Totally Voluntary.
-Age of Kids.
-How young?
-How old?
-Facilitators.
HOW?
-Sitting Arrangement.
WITH WHAT TOOLS?
-The 100 CLUB “Master File”.
-The 100 Club Box.
-Individual Note Books.
-Blank Sermon Note Sheets.
-100 Club Sign-Up Sheet.
-The 100 Club Hand-Out.
-The 100 Club Handbook.
3. SEQUENCE of 100 Club Events.
PRE-SERVICE.
-Prizes.
-Grade the Essays that were Turned In During the Prior Week.
-Prepare the Initial Copy-Sheet for the Particular Lecture that Will be Given During the Service.
-Prepare In Advance the “Thought Question.”
-Prepare any Additional Blank Note Sheets, Sign-In Sheets, or 100 Club Handouts needed.
-Final Check.
-Pre-Positioning.
-Confirm Helper Facilitators plus Arrange Kids.
DURING SERVICE.
-Before the Sermon.
-Awarding a 100 Point Prize .
-Helping Kids Sing Songs.
-Finalizing Industrious Person Card.
-During the Sermon.
-Pass out blank note sheet.
-Pass around box of pens/pencil.
-Pass out Initial Copy-Sheet.
-Sequentially take down key points from the sermon onto a copy sheet, copy that onto other copy sheets, and re-distribute to helper facilitators.
-Example of pattern of copy-sheet flow.
-Toward end of sermon, pass out the Thought Question.
-After the Sermon.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER SERVICE.
-Briefly Listening to the kids.
-Giving out the “Industrious Person Carrot” and Candies.
-Clean-up.
-Not losing turned-in essays.
-Keeping good records.
4. RATIONALE for 100 Club Activities.
WHY TAKE FULL NOTES?
WHY HAVE VISUAL ILLUSTRATIONS?
WHY DO ESSAYS AND WHY GIVE POINTS FOR THEM?
WHY GIVE PRIZES?
-Why give Candy?
-Why give the “Industrious Person Carrot”?
-Why call it a “Carrot”?
-Why have all kids who are sitting in the 100 Club, each and every time as the potential recipient?
-Why have it a secret as to what it is?
-Why wait to the very last to announce the name?
-Why have a “buy-back” policy?
-Why give the 100 Club “Prize”? -EXAMPLE-
-Why give it at each 100 points?
-Why give a Biblical component?
-Why give a Money component?
-Why give up in front of the congregation?
-Why clap?
5. HELPFUL ADVICE for 100 Club Facilitation.
INITIATING THE PROGRAM.
-Approaching the Church Leadership.
-Not an “Unauthorized Change” to the Service.
-Involving the Entire Leadership Group.
-Consider Doing the 100 Club First as a Pilot.
-Present a Short Overview of the Program.
-Introducing the Program to the Congregation.
-Getting Prepared for the First Week.
-Do it.
USING THE MASTER FILE.
ON SITTING TOGETHER.
-Occasionally, Kids will Want to Sit Elsewhere and Take Notes.
-When Kids go to do Other Duties.
STANDING UP AT THE END OF THE SESSION.
-Regaining Control.
-Organizing the Kids.
-Positively Reinforcing Responses.
-Giving out the Prizes.
EXAMPLES OF 100 CLUB CARROTS.
-In general.
-Cost.
-Loose Change or Big Doll.
ADVANCED VISUAL AIDS.
EXAMPLES OF THOUGHT QUESTIONS.
-Thought Questions in Advance of the Talk.
-Constructing the Thought Question.
-Some Specific Examples of Thought Questions Actually Used to Promote Deep Thinking to Sermons.
-How Sophisticated should the Thought Question be?
GIVING POINTS TO THE ESSAYS.
-The Minimal Requirements.
-Why Have Each of the Minimal Requirements?
-On Accepting Papers.
-Giving Positive Feedback.
-Making Marks on Their Paper.
-Giving Points.
-Adjusting for Age of the Person.
-Involvement of Parents.
-Indicating the Points Awarded.
-Specific Examples.
EXAMPLES OF 100 POINT PRIZES.
-100 Point Prize.
-200 Point Prize, 300 Point Prize, 400 Point Prize, etc.
-On Signing the Gift.
-On Keeping Track of What Prizes are Given.
ON PAYING FOR THE 100 CLUB.
THE “100 CLUB PARTY” AND OTHER ACTIVITIES.
-Does Not Replace or Provide A Young People’s Activities Program.
-100 Club Party.
-Suggested Program.
-Who can come?
-Sunday Evening Activities.
FLEXIBILITY.
GENTLE, LOVING DISCIPLINE.
SHOWING APPROVAL.
-100 Club Opportunities to Show Approval.
-Striking Up a Conversation on the Kid’s Life.
-Bringing in the Whole Congregation.
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I started going to Church when I was two weeks old.
My Mom said I cried at times when everyone was together on Sunday morning, but that was ok. She wanted me to be raised going to Church, and I was.
I don’t remember much when I was two weeks old, but I do remember being in nice Bible classes as I got a bit older. They were fun. I got to cut up exercises with scissors, make angels and other things folding the paper together, get told interesting stories from the Bible, and answer questions.
Out in the main assembly, I started to recognize what was going on around me. I liked to sing. I couldn’t read too well yet, but I could sort of follow the notes up and down. I never did sing soprano, even though my voice was naturally that high as a two or three year-old. I started out singing alto, and worked from there to tenor, and later to base.
The sermons meant nothing to me.
They were just a buzz of noise way over the top of my head, while I had to sit still for what seemed like forever, and keep quiet.
As a small boy, during the sermon time at Church my Dad would give me a pencil and a piece of paper. He carried them in his shirt pocket. As the sermon started he’d silently reach into his pocket, unfold the blank paper, and give it to me with a pencil. That was really fun. I would draw all sorts of pictures on that paper.
Either I’d lay it over the top of a song book, or crouch down in the isle and draw on the wood surface of the pew. Sometimes the pencil scrapped a bit on the paper or the paper crunkled and made a little noise. I sort of noticed other people nearby looking a bit annoyed from time-to-time, but my Dad never acknowledged them or said anything about it to me.
Later on, somewhere during grade school, my piece of drawing paper just naturally changed into being a note-book into which I took notes to the sermon. I don’t even remember when that conversion took place.
Taking notes to the sermons was fun.
Even when we had a preacher that I later realized everyone said was about the most boring preacher on the face of the earth, I was still interested each week in his talk. It was a challenge to get down the main points and main scriptures he was saying. Also, I found that if I listened hard enough I’d always find something new or interesting to write down in my notes that I’d never heard before. Sometimes it was only one sentence, but it made the talk worth listening to.
Meanwhile, I was suffering through regular school.
School was a real pain.
I basically hated school. It wasn’t until years after I’d graduated from twelve years of college that I finally figured out why I disliked school so much.
School wasn’t there to teach you things. It was there to torture you. It wasn’t interested in helping you apply your mind to interesting challenges, work through them, and gain an ever-increasing edifice of knowledge. It was there to cram many, many, many facts into your head as quickly as possible (whether on economics, math, chemistry, biology, philosophy, or whatever)---so that you’d have to stay up very late at night until you were exhausted trying to remember them all---then spew them out on paper during a test, then soon after start an entirely new subject for which you’d have to do a “brain dump” to get rid of the old stuff to make room for the new facts!---and over, and over and over...
Yes, once in a while there were labs and papers to write and the such-like, but they too were mostly one-shot exercises you were expected to cram your head with the related facts and have questions on in the regular tests.
In other words, my frustration with normal school was that it did not for the most part accomplish its stated AIM. I hardly ever learned anything because we hardly ever did anything more than once. True learning comes from repeating doing important things a number of times. I’d “learn” about insects, say, then we’d go onto chemistry. Insects were forgotten. Then physics, with chemistry being forgotten. Meanwhile you’re being tortured to get the high grade (which you know you need to get into college, get into graduate school, get a good job, etc.) by memorizing better than anyone else huge piles of stuff you’d immediately forget.
Eventually (after graduating with a Ph.D.) I realized that the “educational system” has the real AIM of acquainting you with bodies of knowledge. For instance, I suffered through two quarters in college of general and medical entomology. I had to “learn” all the many classifications and names and characteristics of many kinds of insects. Today, I don’t have the foggiest of what those are or how to characterize them, but I do know there exists that body of knowledge and where to go to find the details. So I didn’t learn much entomology---but I certainly did get acquainted with the subject.
True, during the total of 24 years I spent in school, I did learn how to read, write, and do basic math. Those things I repeated many times. I learned the basic tools of survival in today’s world. But most of the rest was a huge waste of time and energy.
Oh yes, I also learned how to take excellent notes (necessary to those top grades.) Memorize your excellent class lecture notes and you’ve got 90-95% of the answers to most tests. Dead tired, head hurting, feeling I was going to drop dead from all the torture, my ears would still take in the droning of the lecturer, my brain would grab out the key information, and my hands would move on the paper, taking down the notes.
Only when I got into active research in graduate school did I finally start to learn things. There was a theme, it was something I was intensely interested in, much more than a grade was at stake, I was competing only against myself and not artificially being stacked up against others, the emphasis was on my own creativity and data rather than pleasing the teacher or having good spelling/grammar, and I got to do things over and over and build on all I’d previously accomplished.
Ok. I said all that to say the following. I know what it is to: 1) be a kid at church; 2) be bored or interested at church; 3) do dumb things that don’t make sense to not accomplish the real goal in school; 4) figure out the real AIM of learning and what it takes to achieve it; and 5) use note-taking to truly enhance my church-going experience.
Back to church: while I was in graduate school at the University of California, Riverside located in Riverside, California, I attended and participated in the work of the Lord at the Sunnymead Church of Christ congregation, in a town that came to be named Moreno Valley. For about eleven years I helped direct and drive the church “Joy Bus” that went out and picked up kids in the town and brought them to church services on Sunday morning.
Many of the kids brought in on the Joy Bus had not been raised in a church-going tradition, and so were not conditioned to survive the sermon time. They’d get very “fidgety,” bored, and hard to control. The matter was made even worse because their parents were not there to exert authority over them. When some parents did happen to come, they were quite critical of us, asking us why we “didn’t have anything for the kids during the sermon time?”
Well, this was quite a revelation for me, as I indeed was raised from the age of two weeks old to just expect a long boring monologue during the Sunday morning service as part of the normal scheme of things. It had never even entered my head that you could do things differently!
So this got me thinking that perhaps there might be a way to help these “non-conditioned” Joy Bus kids to better survive---and even derive good from---the 30+ minute sermon! The very-young little kids were being taken out during the sermon time to have a presentation on their level---an innovation that didn’t exist when I was a kid, but one I heartily approved of. The grade school level and up kids, though, were left in the service. So I focused on their needs, and realized that my note-taking strategy might work for them as well as for myself, in regards to helping to focus in on and derive good from the sermon.
But taking good notes is both a talent and a developed skill. I couldn’t expect them to spontaneously do all the things I did. They’d need help.
Ergo, I developed what I called the "100 Club." This I ran for a number of years before having to move from the West to the East coast to take a job in the town of Rockville, Maryland. I was quite pleased that after I left the congregation in Moreno Valley, the “100 Club” continued under the direction of others, and still exists today. After I left the congregation in Moreno Valley, with the approval of the elders of the Rockville Church of Christ congregation, I re-established the “100 Club” at my new congregation. I will have to admit, though---with some embarrassment---that I waited for several years before doing so. First of all, I wasn’t exactly burnt-out from the years and years of continuous heavy responsibility and exhausting work of helping drive/direct the Joy Bus plus run the “100 Club” each week, but I was sure singed around the edges.
I found it to very pleasant to sit by myself in the main worship service on Sunday morning, leisurely taking my own notes, with no additional responsibilities. Indeed, I’d changed my focus and was spending my church working-time engaged with adult Bible classes, facilitation of small working groups, and projects concerning adult single Christians. I didn’t do anything at all with the kids.
My church-related time was very productively and interestingly filled with activities, I was learning and developing new and different things, but I did feel a twinge of guilt now and then.
Especially on Sunday morning during the main worship service, I’d out of the corner of my eye see these isolated kids, sitting with their parents, keeping quiet and not making trouble during the sermon, but obviously by their expressions mostly bored stiff.
Furthermore, I didn’t even know the names of the kids, let alone was being helpful to them. And even though those kids were present all the time, I suspected that most of the adults didn’t even know their names either. They were just “Brother Green’s daughter” or “Sister Smith’s son.”
How could we show our great love and appreciation for those kids, bond them into the local Christian family, if we didn’t even know their names?
So after about seven years at the Rockville congregation, I finally geared up my determination to stop my pleasant, peaceful Sunday mornings and get back to the hectic, demanding task of running herd on a bunch of kids.
With the permission of the Church leaders, I re-established my "100 Club" at the new location.
That was three years ago from the present date (May, 1999), and I’m glad I did it.
I now know all the names of the kids, keep up with what’s going on in their lives, have seen most of them being honored up in front of the congregation as I name their names for everyone else in the congregation to hear and know (and thus be able to personally encourage them afterward), given out lots of large study Bibles and other Bible aids that will be with the kids for the rest of their lives, have graded many interesting essays on thought questions to the sermons where the kids actually take what they’ve heard home and think about it, and have seen the young folks really bonding with the congregation in Christian friendship and mutual appreciation.
It’s a fair amount of responsibility to run the 100 Club each week, but not oppressively so. It takes me about one to two hours of work in addition to the Sunday morning service time. It costs me some money out of my pocket.
But I can’t think of a better way to spend my time and money.
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WHEN CAN YOU TURN IT IN?
No later than 4 weeks after the sermon.
LENGTH REQUIRED:
The essay must be at least one good paragraph---and no longer than two pages. Also, you must include your notes to the sermon that the thought question came from.
CONTENT REQUIRED:
You don’t have to worry about grammar, spelling, or hand-writing. What’s important is your good ideas on the Thought Question. Also, you must include at least one Bible verse reference.
Example: on the topic “Why is God so good?”---you might have as part of your essay: “...and god loved us so much He sent Jesus to die for us, like it says in John 3:16.” At least one of the verses in your notes to the sermon that the Thought Question came from will work in your essay.
WHAT IS A “GOOD PARAGRAPH?”
A “good paragraph” has:
1) an opening sentence that tells what you’re going to write about,
2) one or more sentences in the middle that talk about the topic, and
3) a conclusion or summary sentence at the last.
Example: Why is God so good? God is so good because He loved us enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die for us. It says this in John 3:16. I’m very happy that God loves us and is so good to us.
POINTS FOR THE ESSAY:
Points will be given as follows, adjusted for the age and talents of the particular person. (Such as---more would be expected for the same # of points from a high school person versus a grade school person.)
10- Perfection! (The Facilitators couldn’t have done better themselves.)
9- Almost perfect. Very interesting thoughts and observations.
8- Very very good.
7- Very good.
6- Good.
5- Ok. At least one “good paragraph” turned in, with a verse reference.
4- Good paragraph, but lacking a verse reference.
3- Paragraph not complete.
2- Minimal.
1- You tried.
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INTRODUCTION to The "100 Club" Handbook "100 Club" Art Posters
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Copyright © 1999 Daniel B. Lyle