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INTRODUCTION to The "100 Club" Master File        Example of The 100 Club

A complete filing system and step-by-step instructions for setting up the "100 Club" in your congregation.  

Young people sit up in front of the congregation during the weekly main meeting, are facilitated in taking enjoyable, meaningful notes to the sermon, and are encouraged to look in the Bible and write essays at home on interesting "thought questions" based on the sermon topic.      

Example of The 100 Club

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Chief Facilitators have the 100 Club “Master File.”  This is a large 3-ring binder which contains the 100 Club records, plus other things needed in conducting a session.  Anyone can put together this sort of an organized system oneself, or purchase it made up and ready to use from Lyle Publishing.

The ready-made Master File contains the following things: 

[If you are making it up from scratch, I’d recommend putting together something similar to the following.]

1)        In the opening jacket:                

-a manila file with carefully-preserved, excellent “originals” of often-duplicated items (Blank Sermon Note-Sheet, Sign-Up sheet, 100 Club Hand-Out.)        

-blank 3 x 5 cards, plus 3 x 5 cards each with the name of one the kids on one side of the card that most regularly attend.        

-a green-ink-color pen.

2)        Sitting loose in the middle of the binder:        

-a manila file with blank Sermon Note-Sheets.        

-a manila file with blank Sign-Up Sheets.        

-a manila file with several 100 Club Hand-Outs.

3)        Bound into the 3 rings:

-sequential copies of each week’s Sermon Notes and Thought Question, in chronological order.                

-in alphabetical order by each kid’s first name, Sign Up Sheets, having on them a record of any points the kids have been given for essays, and what 100 Club Prizes have been given.

4)        Inside the back jacket:                

-a packet for “Essays Waiting to be Given Points.”        

-a packet for “Essays Given Points” but not-yet handed back.

 

5)        Contained loose within:

-1 copy of the "100 Club Handbook"---detailing all the steps and procedures necessary to setting up and running the 100 Club in a congregation.

Certainly many folks at a church lecture don’t take notes.  They sit and attentively listen to the talk.  What’s wrong with that?  And shouldn’t the kids be conditioned/taught to do likewise?

Yes, many people either would not profit from the trouble and distraction of writing things down in a notebook, or don’t have the developed talent to do it.  That’s fine.  One does not have to take notes to derive good from a lecture.  However, most people also could not tell you a week or two later even the topic of the talk, let alone the key points.

Most of us have poor memories, especially for details of a stand-up lecture, especially when no visuals aids are used.  It’s been said that people learn in various ways: by 1) hearing, 2) seeing, and 3) doing.  It’s true that some people are better than others at learning by just sitting and listening, but almost everybody can learn better when hearing is coupled to seeing is coupled to doing!

Taking notes converts a huge long monologue into visual elements in front of our eyes, made by our very own hands!  You might think that if this was really so important, that most preachers would use these techniques from the pulpit on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, it’s far easier to just stand up and talk than to put together excellent, well-organized visual aids.  It’s a time honored tradition for preachers and politicians to just stand up and talk with no visual aids and no active audience participation.  But that doesn’t mean that’s the best way to teach.

Jesus Himself spent most of His time engaged in the highest form of teaching: “OJT.”  OJT is a military term (at least that’s where I first became aware of it, during my time in training in the U.S. Air Force) meaning “On the Job Training.”  The highest and most effective form of teaching is not listening to a lecture, not even viewing powerful visuals, but when I actually and repeatedly try to apply what I’ve heard with my own two hands, to some task that is personally interesting and meaningful.

Jesus’ twelve apostles were taught directly by Jesus, usually in the form of stimulating questions rather than explicit explanations, as organized around physical activities.  Think about the miraculous feeding of the multitude with the fishes and loaves.  Think about being fishers of men.  Think about healing the sick.  Think about casting the first stone.  Think about calming the sea.  And so on and so on.        

The power of taking notes to a lecture is not just in getting down on paper a permanent record of the main points, but the very physical action required, that keeps repeating, and creates a powerful visual that I myself made!  It’s a powerful, personal learning technique.        

When I taught Medical Microbiology and Medical Immunology to graduate medical students at the University of Riverside in California, I required them to take notes.  Though it would have been quite easy to simply make copies of my lecture notes and hand them out, I carefully wrote down on the black board with colored chalk, in large letters, with many illustrations, the key points to what I was saying with my mouth.  The high-level, college-graduate medical students would then copy down in their own writing what I put on the board, and any additional information they thought was key to the lecture from the words coming out of my mouth.

That is common practice by most college professors.  They rarely give stand-up lectures with no visuals.  The students rarely ever just listen.  They take detailed notes.  

Why?

The students know that the information is critical to their success in school.  It needs to be learned, even if it’s only long enough to get a good grade on a test.  Instinctively, the students know full well that the class lecture time will be far better spent in taking excellent notes than by just sitting there.

Lastly, one might think that expert note-taking is an “adult thing,” requiring adult skills, and not something to try to get kids to do.  

Kids love to work with their hands.

Long before they’re writing essays, they are working with clay with their hands in kindergarten.  I remember kindergarten with great fondness.  You got to take naps, have milk and cookies, and make all sorts of neat things with your hands using different colored clay.  Also, you got to draw pictures.  Marvelous pictures.  With your own hands.

It was a great learning experience.  I loved kindergarten.  After that, school was all downhill for me.  But kindergarten was great.

As long as the information is simple, well-organized, contains a visual reference, and is regularly fed-out across the lecture period kids can not only do it, they can benefit greatly from the focused physical activity.  It keeps them rooted-into the lecture.  It dramatically points out the key points.  It burns the key points into their brains by being translated into physical activity.  It creates a record made by themselves with their own hands, which is 100 times as significant as the same thing handed to them typed up by someone else.  It is creative in that: 1) a picture or visual organizer to copy may be there which they can put their own twist on;  2) they can do it however they wish, as long as it’s valid notes they are working on; and  3) they know that their notes will help them deal with the creativity-inducing, open-ended Thought Question.

Even very young kids five years old and less that have had a strong desire to be with the 100 Club folks have succeeded in taking facilitated notes.  They may not even be able to read, but they can still copy down the letters.  Even though the words may be yet unknown, they can easily comprehend, draw, and burn into their brain a good visual illustration.

As any good instructor knows, for a student to truly get a good grasp on the material there must be personal involvement in a creative way.

In the sciences, this usually involves a laboratory portion to the course.          

The background information is given in a straight lecture format, in which the instructor talks, presents visuals (as from an overhead projector of transparencies onto a screen, or written in large letters up on a blackboard or whiteboard).  The students take notes.  Then the information is applied in laboratory exercises that involve doing different experiments and studying different situations...hands-on!

As a teaching instructor (TA), I was the instructor for many laboratory science courses, particularly general biology, parasitology, embryology, human development, immunology, and microbiology.  So I know about the difference between book-learning, and application.

When you actually use your hands to creatively apply the lecture material, you go to a whole new level of learning.  Instead of being a list of facts and topics, big masses of words, the material becomes real.

In the humanities or social sciences, labs are mostly replaced by assignments.  Here, after getting the background information through lectures, the application is done mostly by written papers and projects.  You go off to the library, search out information on some subject, put it all together, and write up a lengthy report---often involving your own distillation and analysis of the topic.

In science, this also happens.  The astute professor will allow a lot of flexibility in how the students choose their particular topics within an overall framework.  For instance, when taking a graduate course in developmental biology, I was able to turn an assignment dealing with the slime mold into producing a practice grant on making the organism a model system for cancer development.  How cancer occurs was a major interest of mine, and though I wasn’t all that keen on slime molds, suddenly the slime molds became very interesting when I could put my own creative slant on their study!

In the Church, we are very good at presenting information concerning the Bible.  However, typically, we are not so good at providing opportunity to in a facilitated manner apply that information.

In other words, we’re good at the lowest level of learning---lecturing (hearing), generally quite weak on the next level---visuals (seeing), and often outright poor at the highest level, hands-on training (doing.)

If we in the Church were to follow more closely the pattern laid down by the Master teacher, Jesus, we’d gear our lectures to vivid visual illustrations, and key the information directly into flexible applications that would engage the interests of individual members of the congregation in facilitated small group environments.

Certainly, there is activity in all congregations of some sort in all those categories, with some congregations doing much better than others.

However, overall, it’s been my experience across a number of congregations that such activities tend to be by accident rather than by design; hit-and-miss, based on personal initiative rather than deliberate help.  We’re strongest on the easiest, lowest level of learning, and weakest at the highest, most effective levels of learning.

Facilitated essay-writing to sermons is a way to deliberately stimulate the young people to go to a higher level of learning.

Note-taking is quite good in providing meaningful, focused physical activity that greatly augments engagement in and memory of particulars from the lecture.

However, note-taking for the most part is passive, not creative.

I as a note-taker am taking down the information supplied by the teacher, not doing my own deeper analysis or personal study into parts of it.

Directed essay writing stimulates the students’ own creative activity based on the lecture material.  

Instead of being quickly forgotten, the sermon has a further impact.  The young person has to work with it!  Furthermore, it’s not just a mental exercise.  Once again, it involves physical activity (writing) that helps to further burn the knowledge into the student’s brain.  A further incentive to giving it a best effort is that a knowledgeable person (the 100 Club Chief Facilitator), will be reading it, evaluating it, admiring it, and giving points for the effort.

In school, grades are usually given for assignments.  The theory is that grades provide incentive---both positive and negative.

If you get a bad grade, you’re in trouble.  If you get a good grade, it helps you.  So you do the work in order to stay out of trouble and/or to get some good thing (pass the course, excel above the others.)

There is, of course, big problems with giving out grades in school.  First of all, you as a teacher would most like a student to be intrinsically-motivated (fired by his/her own interest in the subject, not just going through the motions in order to survive).  Secondly, grading often means elevating some students over others (grading them against each other) such that a few get “A”s and the rest get lower grades.  This is subjective, and destructive to group cooperation and mutual support.  Thirdly, the assignments are usually artificial (a set-piece lab exercise) or fake (a topic with little meaning outside the classroom setting.)

In the “real world” your product is judged by the value it has for the recipient.          

Also, for the things you are most interested in, you do them because you want to, not because someone is standing over you with a grade book.   Businesses that are the most successful are where the enlightened executives and managers can tap-into the intrinsic motivation of their employees, not merely where bonuses are offered for extra work or firings are threatened by those not meeting arbitrary standards.

Furthermore, businesses that attempt to give out competitive awards find themselves doing more harm than good to the organization, as it’s almost impossible to validly “judge” one person versus another or separate the person from the system effects.  Inevitably, there is subjectivity by the evaluator(s) which will award one person while another person in the same office who’s done more or better is not rewarded.

All of the above seems to argue that---especially in the Church---we should not be giving out grades!  And I agree completely.        In the Church we should aim at stimulating a person’s own interests such that they want to be Christ-like for the personal rewards it brings.  We are admonished in the Bible to not “judge” (meaning “pronounce as acceptable or unacceptable in God’s eyes”) others, nor to have preference for one above the other.  And one thing that always irritates me, even if it’s a kindergarten class work-book, is “Mickey-Mouse” type exercises that have little or no deep meaning or real-world significance.

So I am not saying to give grades.

What I am saying is to give points.  The points are not competitive.  Points are given based on the content of the individual assay, not as to whether or not that one essay is better than another essay.  There’s no pressure.  Kids/parents can do it if they want.  The kids will not “flunk” out of the congregation if they choose to never even do a single essay!

But kids are kids, and do benefit from good incentives.  They don’t yet fully know or understand their own internal needs and desires.  They need and profit from helpful external motivation and direction, because they simply don’t know well enough yet themselves.  Furthermore, they need evaluation and positive support---which the Points help to indicate.

Also, there’s a deeper lesson the Points are helping to teach.  

If you do nothing, you get nothing.  If you persist in doing good, then results will come from that effort.  Tangible benefits will result from your good work.

Points.

According to my understanding of the Bible, God is not up there taking away points from me each time I goof up.  However, the good things I do in His name are noticed and appreciated.  I’m not “failed” and “kicked out” if while trying my best to be a Christian I do badly here and there.  But I am richly rewarded for striving to be and do my best in God’s name.

God offers mankind positive and negative incentives.

If I reject Him, I go to Hell.  If I accept and follow Him, I get to be with God in Heaven.  Isn’t that why most people initially choose to be baptized into Jesus/Jesus’ body/the Church?  ...that scary sermon where the preacher warns us of the possibility of getting killed that afternoon in a car crash before accepting and following God?  Wow, I sure don’t want to end up roasting in hell---and I’d sure like to be in heaven!  I’d better get myself baptized!

Then, after we’re a bit more mature in Jesus, we come to understand that the best internal motivation is to please God.  When we do good, we make God happy.  When we do bad, we hurt God.  That’s the mature motivation, which is far superior to the personal, selfish motivators of going to heaven or hell.  Furthermore, we come to understand that the things that make God happy are the things that are most good for me selfishly!  I am most effective in God’s service when I exercise the talents in the areas I am most interested in!   So everybody wins.  God wins, we win, and those we help in this life with our talents also win.

But it often starts out with personal, selfish, positive/negative incentives---then moves on to unselfish desire to make God happy with us, which is reflected back into internal motivation via our own talents/interests!

Kids can profit from gentle direction along that same path of learning.

Essays give them a chance to profit selfishly.  The negative motivation is that with no effort comes no profit.  The positive motivation is that with effort comes points.  The higher motivation is tweaked and encouraged because each essay---no matter how minimal or untrained the effort---is greatly appreciated, praised wherever possible, and visibly pleases the Chief Facilitator!  Internal motivation is encouraged in that the Thought Questions are made as open as possible, therefore allowing each kid to take their thoughts in whatever direction is most interesting to them personally.

I’m going to talk more on this topic and the concept of “earning” things below.  The “take-home” message is this: the points do not“earn” prizes, they qualify a person to receive free gifts.

Prizes are fun.  Prizes help focus one’s attention.  Prizes teach that we can qualify to receive free gifts that are impossible for us to “earn” at our present stage of development.  Prizes demonstrate to kids that we love them and want to find valid reasons to give them good things.  Prizes teach the kids that if they will exert self-control and do good things, good things will come back to them.  

And prizes give immature, selfishly-oriented, naturally-rebellious kids a reason to participate in active learning rather than just sitting in a daze doing nothing!  Those in the 100 Club get big candy bars, and the chance to get a neat “prize” (the "Industrious Person Carrot" when the group gathers after the service, given to whomever's name comes up from the deck [picked at random, name-down so no one is embarrassed], if that person has been "industrious" [striving to use his/her time the best that he/she can])!

Those who don’t join us in the 100 Club at the most get a few little candies (anyone that wants some can get a minimal amount).  At worst, they get nothing.

There’s valid incentive for a kid to put out the little work it takes to be with the 100 Club, pay attention, take down notes, and be on one’s best behavior!         

One might argue that kids should be taught to study the Bible for its own intrinsic worth, not to get a reward.  Yes, that’s true.  For the spiritually, mentally, and physically mature person, learning from the Bible is indeed its own reward.  It’s different, though for a kid---or for a spiritually immature adult.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

This is what the rich young ruler said who came to Jesus.

The rich young ruler was focused on receiving a reward (eternal life) for being good.  He did not say to Jesus: “Master, what must I do to be pleasing to God?”  The rich young ruler was at a very immature spiritual level.

That’s ok.  

We don’t immediately jump from being a baby to being a grown, mature adult.  We have to go through increasing levels of maturity, starting with immaturity.  A baby is totally selfish.  Gradually, it learns to do things altruistically, not just to please itself.

Our beginning of Christianity is often rooted in a selfish appeal: become part of Jesus to not go to hell and to, yes, go to heaven if we suddenly die!  God Himself offers rewards---"carrots" and "sticks"---to us to induce us to begin to follow Him.

Rewards give us inducement to start down the path of spiritual awakening.        

The 100 Club Prize is a valid way to help immature young people be motivated to do their own thinking and studying of the Bible in a personally-creative but closely-guided, encouraged, and supported fashion.

Just like the Industrious Person Carrot, it’s a valid way to focus and encourage movement down the proper, best pathway.

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